Stumbling Block Quotes & Sayings

Congenital naysayers are among the greatest stumbling blocks to thinking free. Rather than imagining how a new idea might possibly work, they instinctively think of all the reasons why it won't. They sincerely believe that they are doing everyone a favor by reducing the amount of time spent on bad or foolish ideas. But what they really do is undermine the creativity that can be harvested from thinking free. — Steven Sample

If you are living your life to the best of your ability, and pursuing your purpose, you will not be jealous, envious or try to place a stumbling block in the way of another person. — Dee Dee M. Scott

Its authors meant it to be ... a stumbling block to those who in after times might seek to turn a free people back into the hateful paths of despotism. They knew the proneness of prosperity to breed tyrants, and they meant when such should re-appear in this fair land and commence their vocation they should find left for them at least one hard nut to crack. — Abraham Lincoln

It is clear that all verbal structures with meaning are verbal imitations of that elusive psychological and physiological process known as thought, a process stumbling through emotional entanglements, sudden irrational convictions, involuntary gleams of insight, rationalized prejudices, and blocks of panic and inertia, finally to reach a completely incommunicable intuition. — Northrop Frye

Our great stumbling block, in our stride toward freedom, is not the White Citizens' Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner. It's the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who constantly says, like Bobby Kennedy: 'I agree with the goal you seek, but I cannot condone your methods. — Ken Follett

I say to my congregants, If you believe in God, the best thing you can do for yourself is to suspend your belief for a while, because undoubtedly your God is too small and you must grow beyond that God. On the other hand, if you don't believe in God, your very disbelief is a stumbling block. Kick it away and place your faith in somehting more ennobling than disbelief. Take a flier. Expand your purview. Take a leap of faith. — Forrest Church

If science could get rid of consciousness, it would have disposed of the only stumbling block to its universal application. — Brand Blanshard

Wise Blood was written by an author congenitally innocent of theory, but one with certain preoccupations. That belief in Christ is to some a matter of life and death has been a stumbling block for readers who would prefer to think it a matter of no great consequence. For them Hazel Motes' integrity lies in his trying with such vigor to get rid of the ragged figure who moves from tree to tree in the back of his mind. For the author Hazel's integrity lies in his not being able to. Does one's integrity ever lie in what he is not able to do? I think that usually it does, for free will does not mean one will, but many wills conflicting in one man. Freedom cannot be conceived simply. It is a mystery and one which a novel, even a comic novel, can only be asked to deepen. — Flannery O'Connor

The path to inspiration starts upon the trails we've known; each stumbling block is not a rock, but just a stepping stone. — Charles Ghigna

At root, evangelical anti-intellectualism is both a scandal and a sin. It is a scandal in the sense of being an offense and a stumbling block that needlessly hinders serious people from considering the Christian faith and coming to Christ. It is a sin because it is a refusal, contrary to Jesus' two great commandments, to love the Lord our God with our minds. Anti-intellectualism is quite simply a sin. Evangelicals must address it as such, beyond all excuses, evasions, or rationalizations of false piety. — Os Guinness

[T]he man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so to embalm it there, that to-day, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of reappearing tyranny and oppression. — Abraham Lincoln

I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season. — Martin Luther King Jr.

I often wonder if my knowledge about God has not become my greatest stumbling block to my knowledge of God. — Henri Nouwen

The definition of successful people is simply ordinary people with extraordinary determination. You cannot keep determined people from success. If you place stumbling blocks in their way, they will use them for stepping-stones and climb to new heights. People who succeed have a goal, a dream and make their plans and follow them. — Mary Kay Ash

The only real stumbling block is fear of failure. In cooking you've got to have a what-the-hell attitude. — Julia Child

We're still as confident, as optimistic as we ever were. You know we hit a little stumbling block here, but I think it's going to be good for us because we can learn from it. — Joey Harrington

I'm afraid that just as wealth and privilege can be a stumbling block on the path to the gospel, theological expertise and piety can also get in the way of the kingdom. Like wealth, these are not inherently bad things. However, they are easily idolized. The longer our lists of rules and regulations, the more likely it is that God himself will break one. — Rachel Held Evans

Perhaps the main stumbling block to a better, and more fruitful, theological relationship with Judaism and the Jewish people has been the tendency of many Christian theologians to see the Christ event as the end of history. — David Novak

But if rejection was his only stumbling block, then pride was his real problem — Mesu Andrews

For us in the Pacific, in Asia, in India, and in Africa, Christian unity is not an optional extra. It is an urgent necessity, for our divisions are a real stumbling-block to the proclamation of the Gospel. — John Vockler

The bible and the church have been the greatest stumbling block in the way of women's emancipation. — Elizabeth Cady Stanton

God gave a law ... called justice. But they have made a law for themselves that is terrible and intricate, and they cannot escape it, for the evil will and the good will are caught alike in its meshes, and it is darkness to the eyes that see and a stumbling block to the feet that run. This law is called necessity. — Jessie Sampter

That belief in Christ is to some a matter of life and death has been a stumbling block for readers who would prefer to think it a matter of no great consequence. — Flannery O'Connor

But as you say, the fundamental stumbling block is the question of the future of the economy. And it's not just the sort of economic laboratory question, of what kind of system would best generate growth, which is the way it's presented. — Joe Slovo

The cancer wasn't a stumbling block. — Joel Osteen

I offer my life's breath for the sake of the Cross, which is a stumbling block to the unbelievers, but to us it is salvation and eternal life. — Ignatius Of Antioch

We cultivate refinement without extravagance and knowledge without effeminacy; wealth we employ more for use than for show, and place the real disgrace of poverty not in owning to the fact but in declining the struggle against it. Our public men have, besides politics, their private affairs to attend to, and our ordinary citizens, though occupied with the pursuits of industry, are still fair judges of public matters; for, unlike any other nation, regarding him who takes no part in these duties not as unambitious but as useless, we Athenians are able to judge at all events if we cannot originate, and instead of looking on discussion as a stumbling-block in the way of action, we think it an indispensable preliminary to any wise action at all. — Pericles

I don't go in for being sorry for people. For one thing it's insulting. One is only sorry for people if they are sorry for themselves. Self-pity is the biggest stumbling block in our world today.

~Jessop — Agatha Christie

The stumbling block will turn out to be the traditional one for students of consciousness: the flashlight is incapable of shining on itself, so we can't trust what its light reveals. — Jonathan Lethem

Racism may be as systemic as it always was. It is the great problem of America. It's the one stumbling block that I don't believe was ever smoothed over. — Robert Guillaume

The art of growing old is the art of being regarded by the oncoming generations as a support and not as a stumbling-block. — Andre Maurois

A stepping-stone can be a stumbling block if we can't see it until after we have tripped over it. — Cullen Hightower

Man's inability to understand and appreciate the thought and viewpoint of another man would be a stumbling block which no amount of mechanical ability could overcome. — Clifford D. Simak

This divergence of experience was not a stumbling block to conversation; indeed, it was what made the conversation interesting. — Michael David Lukas

Aleister Crowley told a friend he could make any random fall over without touching them. To illustrate, he walked behind a stranger for a block or so, matching his footsteps precisely to the stranger's. He then scuffed his heels, as if stumbling and falling. And the stranger fell over. The stranger had heard himself fall, and so he fell. If Facebook tells you that everything around you is sad and depressing often enough, you get sad and depressed. All hail the Great Beast 666 of black marketing. — Warren Ellis

Draw a line in the sand. "I will no longer be a stumbling block for my husband." With God's help, you'll find yourself being supportive, encouraging. You become his partner rather than his opponent. This attitude of obedience unfolds blessings without end, reaching your heart, his, your children, and the watching world. — Amy Williams

Gut check. Is your current fear a stumbling block or a stepping stone? — Richie Norton

If isolation tempers the strong, it is the stumbling-block of the uncertain. — Paul Cezanne

13Then let us no longer judge one another, but rather resolve never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of a brother. — Anonymous

What we sometimes consider a stumbling block is rather a rock we can step on. — Mother Teresa

Are you going to let the obstacles in your life be stumbling blocks or stepping stones? Choose the positive. You are the master of your attitude. — Bruce Lee

A stumbling block to the pessimist is a stepping-stone to the optimist. — Eleanor Roosevelt

It is the eye of ignorance that assigns a fixed and unchangeable color to every object; beware of this stumbling block. — Paul Gauguin

By the study of Boltzmann I have been unable to understand him. He could not understand me on account of my shortness, and his length was and is an equal stumbling block to me. — James Clerk Maxwell

In the constant pursuit of perfection, junk food will always be a rather painful stumbling block — C.S. Woolley

If Jesus ever commanded us to do something that He was unable to equip us to accomplish, He would be a liar. And if we make our own inability a stumbling block or an excuse not to be obedient, it means that we are telling God that there is something which He has not yet taken into account. — Oswald Chambers

I was born into an Irish Catholic family in the New York area in this great, wonderful, and safe country, but the Holocaust has always haunted me, and it has long stood as a stumbling block to faith. How could such a thing be? How is that consistent with the concept of a loving God? — James Comey

He was never deterred by opposition, never disheartened by criticism, and never ashamed, for any reason, of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Although that gospel was then, and still is today, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, it is the only way God has provided for the salvation of men, and Paul was both overjoyed and emboldened by the privilege of proclaiming its truth and power wherever he went. — John F. MacArthur Jr.

The message of the cross will always be foolishness to some, a stumbling block to others. But if our attention is on the market reaction, we move away from the power of the gospel. This fearfulness to talk about the blood of Christ is an overreaction. Worse than that, it borders on heresy, distorting and deflating the power of the Good News. — Jim Cymbala

In a manner of speaking, the fact that humankind itself is unpredictable is the quintessential stumbling-block for archaeologists. We have to assume that the people whose dwelling-places, artefacts, lives even, we are dealing with were rational, integrated, sane and sensible human beings. Then we look around at our own contemporaries and wonder how this belief can possibly be sustained. — Laurence Flanagan

Your greatest difficulty is with yourself; for you are your own stumbling-block. You do not know what you want. You are better at approving the right course than at following it out. You see where the true happiness lies, but you have not the courage to attain it. — Seneca.

Dedication requires a specific sacrifice and for many Christians this becomes a stumbling block — Sunday Adelaja

Forgiving ourselves and learning from our inevitable mistakes transforms failure from a stumbling block into a stepping stone. — L.R. Knost

There are three things in the text. First, a gospel rejected - "Christ, crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block, and to the Greeks foolishness;" secondly, a gospel triumphant - "unto those which are called, both Jews and Greeks;" and thirdly, a gospel admired-it is to them who are called "the power of God; and the wisdom of God. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

There is nothing in this world that you cannot do. Every goal is achievable. You just need to focus on your objectives, be persistent in your efforts and work hard to make it happen. There can be no hurdle uncrossable, no obstacle invincible and no stumbling block insurmountable. — Roopleen

Inconsistent professors are the greatest stumbling blocks to the spread of the cause of Christ! — Charles Spurgeon

What are stumbling blocks and defeat to the weak and vacillating are but stepping stones to victory to the determined soul. — Orison Swett Marden

The democracy of to-day hold the liberty of one man to be absolutely nothing when in conflict with another man's right of property...
This is a world of compensations; and he would -be- no slave must consent to -have- no slave. Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it.
All honor to Jefferson - to the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so embalm it there, that to-day, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of re-appearing tyranny and oppression. Your obedient Servant,
[Abraham Lincoln]
April 6, 1859, in a letter to MA State Rep Henry L. Pierce
Springfield, Ill. — Abraham Lincoln

Advocates for a single line of progress encounter their greatest stumbling block when they try to find a smooth link between the apparently disparate designs of the invertebrates and vertebrates. — Stephen Jay Gould

Our wounds ultimately give us wisdom. Our stumbling blocks inevitably become our stepping stones. And our setbacks lead us to our strengths — Robin Sharma

Women have ever been the stumbling block and betrayers of ambition. — Arthur Desmond

The real stumbling-block of totalitarian regimes is not the spiritual need of men for freedom of thought; it is men's inability to stand the physical and nervous strain of a permanent state of excitement, except during a few years of their youth. — Simone Weil

Most of the time I liked school and got good grades. In junior high, though, I hit a stumbling block with math - I used to come home and cry because of how frustrated I was! But after a few good teachers and a lot of perseverance, I ended up loving math and even choosing it as a major when I got to college. — Danica McKellar

Why did the achievers overcome problems while thousands are overwhelmed by theirs? They refused to hold on to the common excuses for failure. They turned their stumbling blocks into stepping stones. They realized that they couldn't determine every circumstance in life but they could determine their choice of attitude towards every circumstance. — John C. Maxwell

Let your pain birth your purpose. Let your mess become your message. Let this be a stepping-stone and not a stumbling block. Change — Tony A. Gaskins Jr.

This is the greatest stumbling block in our spiritual discipline, which, in actuality, consists not in getting rid of the self but in realizing the fact that there is no such existence from the first. — Thomas Merton

Many college text-books, which were a weariness and stumbling-block when I studied, I have since read a little with pleasure and profit. — Henry David Thoreau

In point of fact, Western philosophy has never set itself free of Christianity: wherever Christianity did not have a hand in the construction of modern philosophy it served instead as a stumbling block. — Jacques Maritain

Some folks may be really bummed to find that "God bless America" does not appear in the Bible. So often we do things that make sense to us and ask God to bless our actions and come alongside our plans, rather than looking at the things God promises to bless and acting alongside of them. For we know that God's blessing will inevitably follow if we are with the poor, the merciful, the hungry, the persecuted, the peacemakers. But sometimes we'd rather have a God who conforms to our logic than conform our logic to the God whose wisdom is a stumbling block to the world of smart bombs and military intelligence. — Shane Claiborne

God's righteousness and His unchangeable law make Christianity a stumbling block for many. Organizations and individuals carry a political and moral agenda that aims to remove all obstacles to their sin. Their goal is to 'break God's bands asunder and cast away His cords.' They counsel together to rid themselves of the law of God; anyone who preaches the gospel or stands for righteousness stands in the way of their agenda. — Carman

Great truths that are stumbling blocks to the natural man are nevertheless the very foundations upon which the confidence of the spiritual man is built. — Henry Allen Ironside

Inertia is, perhaps, the single most powerful stumbling block to writing. It takes energy, courage, patience, and commitment to keep writing in your journal. It's no small thing to open doors, let down barriers, enter sealed rooms, and walk obscure avenues of memory that haven't been traveled in years - or perhaps ever been traveled. — Frank McCourt

Pride is the great stumbling block of Zion ... Pride is ugly; it says if you succeed I am a failure ... Pride is basically competitive in nature. When competition ends, pride ends. — Ezra Taft Benson

The prevailing tendency to regard all the marked distinctions of human character as innate, and in the main indelible, and to ignore the irresistible proofs that by far the greater part of those differences, whether between individuals, races, or sexes are such as not only might but naturally would be produced by differences in circumstances, is one of the chief hinderances to the rational treatment of great social questions, and one of the greatest stumbling blocks to human improvement. — John Stuart Mill

The truth is that so long as we hold both sides of the proposition together they contain nothing inconsistent with right belief, but as soon as one is divorced from the other, it is bound to prove a stumbling block. "Only those who believe obey" is what we say to that part of a believer's soul which obeys, and "only those who obey believe" is what we say to that part of the soul of the obedient which believes. If the first half of the proposition stands alone, the believer is exposed to the danger of cheap grace, which is another word for damnation. If the second half stands alone, the believer is exposed to the danger of salvation through works, which is also another word for damnation. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

By exerting its will, Descartes declared, the immaterial human mind could cause the material human machine to move. This bears repeating, for it is an idea that, more than any other, has thrown a stumbling block across the path of philosophers who have attempted to argue that the mind is immaterial: for how could something immaterial act efficaciously on something as fully tangible as a body? Immaterial mental substance is so ontologically different-that is, such a different sort of thing-from the body it affects that getting the twain to meet has been exceedingly difficult. To be sure, Descartes tried. He argued that the mental substance of the mind interacts with the matter of the brain through the pineal gland, the organ he believed was moved directly by the human soul. The interaction allowed the material brain to be physically directed by the immaterial mind through what Descartes called "animal spirits"-basically a kind of hydraulic fluid. — Jeffrey M. Schwartz

Obstacles are not opposing you, but merely and gently re-routing you. It is important not to view that which stands in your way as your 'enemy.' It can often be your best friend, sending you on a detour that takes you around what would have been your biggest stumbling block. — Neale Donald Walsch

View a stumbling block as a learning opportunity. If you allow it to defeat you, it will. Honestly, if I give everything I have, I can't be disappointed with the outcome. — Elana Meyers

The greatest stumbling block for children in worship is that their parents do not cherish the hour. Children can feel the difference between duty and delight. Therefore, the first and most important job of a parent is to fall in love with the worship of God. You can't impart what you don't possess. — John Piper

Arrogance is blind to the stumbling block. — Toba Beta

From the beginnings of Israelite religion the belief that God had chosen this particular people to carry out His mission has been both a cornerstone of Hebrew faith and a refuge in moments of distress. And yet, the prophets felt that to many of their contemporaries this cornerstone was a stumbling block; this refuge, an escape. They had to remind the people that chosenness must not be mistaken as divine favoritism or immunity from chastisement, but, on the contrary, that it meant being more seriously exposed to divine judgment and chastisement. — Abraham Joshua Heschel

The difference between a stumbling block and a stepping stone is how high you raise your foot. — Benny Lewis

Many a professing Christian is a stumbling-block because his worship is divided. On Sunday he worships God; on weekdays God has little or no place in his thoughts. — Dwight L. Moody

We are ourselves the stumbling-blocks in the way of our happiness. Place a common individual - by common, I mean with the common share of stupidity, custom, and discontent - place him in the garden of Eden, and he would not find it out unless he were told, and when told, he would not believe it. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Turn your stumbling blocks into steppingstones to success. — Brian Tracy

The farmer was and remains the stumbling block to socialist experiments everywhere. Since he raises his own food and tends to live in his own house, he is less "controllable" than say, the urban dweller. — Erik Von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

The Bible teaches that we are to live in this world, but we are not to partake of the evils of the world. We are to be separated from the world of evil. When I face something in the world, I ask: Does it violate any principle of Scripture? Does it take the keen edge off my Christian life? Can I ask God's blessing on it? Will it be a stumbling block to others? Would I like to be there, or reading that, or be watching that, if Christ should return at that time? — Billy Graham

The long history of mankind is studded with convergences, perhaps most notably in social systems and the use of artefacts and technology. But for human history, set in the arrow of time, there appears to be one intolerable stumbling-block. This is the catastrophic failure in human values and decency. — Simon Conway Morris

Ultimately, success is not measured by first-place prizes. It's measured by the road you have traveled: how you have dealt with the challenge and the stumbling blocks you've encountered along the way. — Nicole Haislett

Utopians ... consider individual freedom as the stumbling block on which the grandiose idea of mankind's totalization may flounder. — Thomas Steven Molnar

Everyone faces defeat. It may be a stepping-stone or a stumbling block, depending on the mental attitude with which it is faced. — Napoleon Hill

The virgin birth has never been a major stumbling block in my struggle with Christianity; it's far less mind boggling than the Power of all Creation stooping so low as to become one of us. — Madeleine L'Engle

And though it be their sin and vanity that is the cause [of lust], it is nevertheless your sin to be the unnecessary occasion ... You must not lay a stumbling-block in their way, nor blow up the fire of their lust ... You must walk among sinful persons as you would do with a candle among straw or gunpowder; or else you may see the flame which you did not foresee, when it is too late to quench it. — Richard Baxter

We throw at female artists this expectation that their work has to speak to the female experience. And if it doesn't, you're letting the side down. Throwing this stumbling block in the way of female artists is counterintuitive. — Eleanor Catton

You know what my greatest personal stumbling block is? My shyness. — Susan Lucci

Your only stumbling block is the man in the mirror — Thabiso Monkoe

Not every affection which seems good is to be immediately followed. Neither is every opposite affection to be immediately avoided. Sometimes it is expedient to use restraint even in good desires and wishes, lest through importunity you fall into distraction of mind, lest through want of discipline you become a stumbling block to others. — Thomas A Kempis

Nothing should become a stumbling block in your relationship with the people who surround you — Sunday Adelaja

To my thinking, miracles are never a stumbling block to the realist. It is not miracles that dispose realists to belief ... Faith does not, in the realist, spring from the miracle but the miracle from faith. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

As entrepreneurs, we often get pressured into hiring an industry executive. While it's good to hire people with experience, it can also be a stumbling block because they think about the business the same way everyone else does. — Blake Mycoskie