Decalogue Quotes & Sayings

The Sinai covenant itself, then, is a law-covenant. The land is given to Israel, but for the purpose of fulfilling its covenantal vocation. Remaining in the land is there fore conditional on Israel's personal performance of the stipulations that people swore at Sinai ... The ultimate promise of a worldwide family of Abraham
sinners justified and glorified in a renewed creation
is unconditional in its basis, while the continuing existence of the national theocracy as a type of that everlasting covenant depended on Israel's obedience ... The Decalogue and Joshua 24 fit this suzerainty pattern, but as Mendenhall observe, "it can readily be seen that the covenant with Abraham (and Noah) is of completely different form." P.15 — Michael S. Horton

A Decalogue of Canons for Observation in Practical Life:
1. Never put off to tomorrow what you can do to-day.
2. Never trouble another with what you can do yourself.
3. Never spend your money before you have it.
4. Never buy a thing you do not want, because it is cheap, it will be dear to you.
5. Take care of your cents: Dollars will take care of themselves.
6. Pride costs us more than hunger, thirst and cold.
7. We never repent of having eat too little.
8. Nothing is troublesome that one does willingly.
9. How much pain have cost us the evils which have never happened.
10. Take things always by their smooth handle.
11. Think as you please, and so let others, and you will have no disputes.
12. When angry, count 10. before you speak; if very angry, 100. — Thomas Jefferson

The Moral Law is summarily contained in the Decalogue or Ten Commandments; written by the finger of God on two tablets of stone, and delivered to Moses on Mount Sinai. — Noah Webster

Alice watched and listened and focused beyond the words the actress spoke. She saw her eyes become desperate, searching, pleading for truth. She saw them land softly and gratefully on it. Her voice felt at first tentative and scared. Slowly, and without getting louder, it grew more confident and then joyful, playing sometimes like a song. Her eyebrows and shoulders and hands softened and opened, asking for acceptance and offering forgiveness. Her voice and body created an energy that filled Alice and moved her to tears. She squeezed the beautiful baby in her lap and kissed his sweet-smelling head.
The actress stopped and came back into herself. She looked at Alice and waited.
"Okay, what do you feel?"
"I feel love. It's about love. — Lisa Genova

Men who can hear the Decalogue, and feel To self-reproach. — William Wordsworth

When God gave Israel the Commandments on Sinai (Exodus 20:1-17), he introduced them by introducing himself. "God spoke all these words, saying, 'I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of . . . bondage. You shall . . .'" (verse 1ff.). What God is and has done determines what his people must be and do. So study of the Decalogue should start by seeing what it tells us about God. — J.I. Packer

We are going to continue having these meetings, everyday, until I find out why no work is getting done. — Richard Moran

The Decalogue is not negative law in any sense whatsoever. The Decalogue is not taking anything away from human beings. The Decalogue is God's perfect way to ensure human safety and well-being. It is leading them along the path of holiness. The commandments of the Decalogue are indeed the special way of life for the redeemed, saved, and liberated children of God whom He wishes to be holy as He is holy. Since the giving of the law follows Israel's redemption, it is evident that the law cannot be used for the sake of gaining salvation (Issues in Revelation and Inspiration, p. 164). — Gerhard F. Hasel

What he realised, and more clearly as time went on, was that money-worship has been elevated into a religion. Perhaps it is the only real religion-the only felt religion-that is left to us. Money is what God used to be. Good and evil have no meaning any longer except failure and success. Hence the profoundly significant phrase, to make good. The decalogue has been reduced to two commandments. One for the employers-the elect, the money priesthood as it were- 'Thou shalt make money'; the other for the employed- the slaves and underlings'- 'Thou shalt not lose thy job.' It was about this time that he came across The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists and read about the starving carpenter who pawns everything but sticks to his aspidistra. The aspidistra became a sort of symbol for Gordon after that. The aspidistra, the flower of England! It ought to be on our coat of arms instead of the lion and the unicorn. There will be no revolution in England while there are aspidistras in the windows. — George Orwell

The Fifth Commandment of the Decalogue demands that one honor one's mother and father. That is not about calling home. It is about this: Their God is your God, their friends are your friends, their debts are your debts, their enemies are your enemies and their fate is your fate. — George Friedman

They will get it straight one day at the Sorbonne.
We shall return at twilight from the lecture
Pleased that the irrational is rational — Wallace Stevens

There is hardly a place on Earth where people do not log, pave, spray, drain, flood, graze, fish, plow, burn, drill, spill or dump. There is no life zone, with the possible exception of the deep ocean, that we are not degrading. — Donella Meadows

These are the kinds of curious, mysterious, and original minds that often end up making major contributions to our world; to reach their full potential, however, they need the latitude to follow their own oblique, nonstandard paths. That latitude is seldom found in a conventional, box-shaped classroom in which everyone is supposed to be doing the exact same lesson, and "differentness" is generally used as a negative. — Salman Khan

The Beatitudes correspond to the Decalogue, with blessings in lieu of the forbidden. — James Mikolajczyk

It is well for us if we have learned to listen to the sweet persuasion of the Beatitudes, but there are crises in all lives which require also the emphatic "Thou shalt not" of the decalogue which the founders wrote on the gateposts of their commonwealth. — John Greenleaf Whittier

DECALOGUE, n. A series of commandments, ten in number - just enough to permit an intelligent selection for observance, but not enough to embarrass the choice. — Ambrose Bierce

Ruby in Paradise and the intensity and quality that I was able to experience on Smoke were equally as important to me as working on this movie every day for three-and-a-half months. — Ashley Judd

In the right hands, literature is not resorted to as a consolation, and by the broken and decayed, but as a decalogue. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

In the center of the sofa were two oblong companion pillows, shouldered so closely together that they looked like the Decalogue tablets. They were white, or had been white, and painfully stitched upon them with blue thread were companion mottoes, companion pictures. In the left pillow lies a girl, her long blue hair asprawl about her face, her eyes innocently shut, asleep. The motto: I SLEPT AND DREAMED THAT LIFE WAS BEAUTY. But the story continued, and on the next pillow her innocence is all torn away: there she stands, gripping a round broom; her hair now is pinned up severely and behind her sits a disheartening barrel churn. I WOKE AND FOUND THAT LIFE WAS DUTY. The pillows sat, stuffed and stiff as disapproving bishops; they could, he thought, serve as twin tombstones for whole gray generations. — Fred Chappell

Harvey never had an original idea or thought in his life. I was out wandering around the country doing charity benefits, mainly, when I asked him to come along. — Tim Conway

If you want to know if I'm a Godly man, follow me home. — Andy Stanley

For in every particular of the Word there is an internal sense which treats of things spiritual and heavenly, not of things natural and worldly, such as are treated of in the sense of the letter. — Emanuel Swedenborg

I saw the void beneath the surface of the world; it threatened to pull me under. — Rachel Hartman