Civitas Institute Quotes & Sayings

An ancient father says that a dog we know is better company than a man whose language we do not understand. — Michel De Montaigne

Therefore let every soul be in subjection to the higher powers' (Rom 13.1). The Christian must not be drawn to the bearers of high office; his calling is to stay below. The higher power are over him, and he must remain under them. The world exercises dominion, the Christian serves, and thus he shares the earthly lot of his Lord, who became a servant. 'For there is no power but of God.' (Mark 10.42-45) These words are addressed to the Christians, not to the powers. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Can accidentally eating halal food make you Muslim? Yes, the same way drinking a cosmo can make you gay. — Stephen Colbert

A death-like sleep,
A gentle wafting to immortal life. — John Milton

We don't choose what's going to wake us up. — Dani Shapiro

Today I am amazed at the things our children have done and their wide range of interests. They are all living their lives and not the ones I would have planned for them. But I have learned that their lives are theirs, not mine, and in living their own lives they have given me experiences and an education I would never have had if I'd been fool enough to make them do what I thought they should do. — Bernie Siegel

Time doesn't stop or give warning. It simply ticks along, marking time, ignoring humanity. — Amy Harmon

I was afraid of burglars and Indian thugs and snakes and fires and Jack the Ripper, when I should have been afraid of thirty years in a bank and a take-over bid and a premature retirement and the Deuil du Roy Albert. — Graham Greene

Her destination was the hospital in Beckley, West Virginia, a town of twenty thousand. — John Grisham

Out of the welter of life, a few people are selected for us by the accident of temporary confinement in the same circle. We never would have chosen these neighbors; life chose them for us. But thrown together on this island of living, we stretch to understand each other and are invigorated by the stretching. The difficulty with big city environment is that if we select - and we must in order to live and breathe and work in such crowded conditions - we tend to select people like ourselves, a very monotonous diet. All hors d'oeuvres and no meat; or all sweets and no vegetables, depending on the kind of people we are. But however much the diet may differ between us, one thing is fairly certain: we usually select the known, seldom the strange. We tend not to choose the unknown which might be a shock or a disappointment or simply a little difficult to cope with. And yet it is the unknown with all its disappointments and surprises that is the most enriching. — Anne Morrow Lindbergh

For me, it's all about being in a tiny room with little windows. It's almost like you have to be in a prison. — Madonna Ciccone