Robert L Dabney Quotes & Sayings

There can be, therefore, no true education without moral culture, and no true moral culture without Christianity. The very power of the teacher in the school-room is either moral or it is a degrading force. But he can show the child no other moral basis for it than the Bible. Hence my argument is as perfect as clear. The teacher must be Christian. But the American Commonwealth has promised to have no religious character. Then it cannot be teacher. — Robert Dabney

The moral judgments and acts of the soul all involve an exercise of reason, so that it is impossible to separate the ethical and intellectual functions. — Robert Lewis Dabney

Every line of true knowledge must find its completeness as it converges on God, just as every beam of daylight leads the eye to the sun. If religion is excluded from our study, every process of thought will be arrested before it reaches its proper goal. The structure of thought must remain a truncated cone, with its proper apex lacking. — Robert Dabney

As a moral and social institution, a weekly rest is invaluable. It is a quiet domestic reunion for the bustling sons of toil. It ensures the necessary vacation in those earthly and turbulent anxieties and affections, which would otherwise become inordinate and morbid. It brings around a season of periodical neatness and decency, when the soil of weekly labour is laid aside, and men meet each other amidst the decencies of the sanctuary, and renew their social affections. But above all, a Sabbath (one day of rest in seven) is necessary for man's moral and religious interests. — Robert Dabney

A truth is not necessary, because we negatively are not able to conceive the actual existence of the opposite thereof;but a truth is necessary when we positively are able to apprehend that the negation thereof includes an inevitable contradiction. It is not that that we can see how the opposite comes to be true, but it is that the opposite can not possibly be true. — Robert Lewis Dabney

God, I'm hungry. Have you tried the 5:2 diet? This is my fast day. I am dying of starvation. — Liane Moriarty

The instructor has to teach history, cosmogony, psychology, ethics, the laws of nations. How can he do it without saying anything favorable or unfavorable about the beliefs of evangelical Christians, Catholics, Socinians, Deists, pantheists, materialists, or fetish worshipers, who all claim equal rights under American institutions? His teaching will indeed be "the play of Hamlet, with the part of Hamlet omitted." — Robert Dabney

The first beginnings of things cannot be distinguished by the eye. — Lucretius

I predict that the time will come in this once free America when the battle for religious liberty will have to be fought over again, and will probably be lost, because the people are already ignorant of its true basis and conditions. — Robert Dabney

That is what marriage really means; helping one another to reach the full status of being persons, responsible and autonomous beings who do not run away from life. — Paul Tournier

In friendship as well as love, ignorance very often contributes more to our happiness than knowledge. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Classics are books which, the more we think we know them through hearsay, the more original, unexpected, and innovative we find them when we actually read them. — Italo Calvino

He that is not with his God is against Him ... Hence, as there cannot be in any soul a non-Christian state which is not anti-Christian, it follows that any training which attempts to be non-Christian is therefore anti-Christian. — Robert Lewis Dabney

Have you ever been homesick for someplace that doesn't
actually exist anymore? Someplace that exists only in your
mind? — Jenny Lawson

The pure Christian State is a State in which theological law prevails. This law attains to real power or, to be more exact, absolute power, when through its results which are identical with those of opium, it puts all parts of humanity to sleep. If some occasionally awake they carry out crimes that horrify humanity which has not yet become Christian in the full sense of the word or has already abandoned the Christian framework. — Bruno Bauer

I desire before I leave the world, as my best legacy to my family,, my serious, solemn advice, to make choice of my God for their God. He has been my father's God, and the God of your Mother's predecessors. I solemnly charge you to make it your first care to seek after peace with God, and being reconciled, to make it your study to please God in all things. — Robert Dabney

Where are you going?"
"To get my Bible."
"Right now? You can't get your Bible out right now! I'm, I'm, we're just about to ... "
She'd never be able to go through with this if he got out his Bible. She wiped all humor from her face.
"I believe you. Proverbs 5:18. Rejoice, relish, and romp with your husband."
He chuckled. "I'm serious, Connie, and I won't have you feeling ashamed or unclean over anything we do in that bed, tonight or any other night."
"I won't. I feel unashamed and very clean. I promise. But please don't get out that Bible."
"What? Think you that God can't see us right now?"
Groaning, she slid off his lap and covered her face with her hands. He sunk to his knees in front of her, drawing her hands down.
"I love you. You love me. We are man and wife. God is watching, Connie, and He is very, very pleased. — Deeanne Gist

Princes and sovereign states have frequently fancied that they had a temporary interest to diminish the quantity of pure metal contained in their coins; but they seldom have fancied that they had any to augment it. — Adam Smith

My reflection stared back at me, the smudges just as dark as before. Disappointment hit a split second before I realized something else was wrong. Something far worse. I wasn't smiling-but my reflection was — Gena Showalter