Sheldon Vanauken Quotes

• It is, I think, that we are all so alone in what lies deepest in our souls, so unable to find the words, and perhaps the courage to speak with unlocked hearts, that we don't know at all that it is the same with others.

  Sheldon Vanauken

  Lying, Heart, Thinking

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• Between the probable and proved there yawns A gap. Afraid to jump, we stand absurd, Then see behind us sink the ground and, worse, Our very standpoint crumbling. Desperate dawns Our only hope: to leap into the Word That opens up the shuttered universe.

  Sheldon Vanauken

  Faith, Inspiration, Dawn

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• Not only are we harried by time, we seem unable, despite a thousand generations, even to get used to it. We are always amazed at it–how fast it goes, how slowly it goes, how much of it is gone. Where, we cry, has the time gone? We aren’t adapted to it, not at home in it. If that is so, it may appear as a proof, or at least a powerful suggestion, that eternity exists and is our home.

  Sheldon Vanauken

  Powerful, Home, Suggestions

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• God gives us many gifts, but never permanence; that we must seek in his arms.

  Sheldon Vanauken

  Giving, Arms, Permanence

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• If it's half as good as the half we've known, here's Hail! to the rest of the road.

  Sheldon Vanauken

  Half, Hail, Known

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• …though I wouldn’t have admitted it, even to myself, I didn’t want God aboard. He was too heavy. I wanted Him approving from a considerable distance. I didn’t want to be thinking of Him. I wanted to be free—like Gypsy. I wanted life itself, the color and fire and loveliness of life. And Christ now and then, like a loved poem I could read when I wanted to. I didn’t want us to be swallowed up in God. I wanted holidays from the school of Christ.

  Sheldon Vanauken

  Distance, School, Holiday

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• ...So Englishmen saw it. Lincoln's insincerity was regarded as proven by two things: his earlier denial of any lawful right or wish to free the slaves; and, especially, his not freeing the slaves in 'loyal' Kentucky and other United States areas or even in Confederate areas occupied by United States troops, such as New Orleans.

  Sheldon Vanauken

  War, Kentucky, Two

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• But Love is the final reality; and anyone who does not understand this, be he writer or sage, is a man flawed in wisdom.

  Sheldon Vanauken

  Reality, Love Is, Men

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• It is not possible to be incidentally a Christian. The fact of Christianity must be overwhelmingly first or nothing.

  Sheldon Vanauken

  Christian, Firsts, Facts

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• Whatever one of us asked the other to do - it was assumed the asker would weigh all the consequences - the other would do. Thus one might wake the other in the night and ask for a cup of water; and the other would peacefully (and sleepily) fetch it. We, in fact, defined courtesy as 'a cup of water in the night'. And we considered it a very great courtesy to ask for the cup as well as to fetch it.

  Sheldon Vanauken

  Night, Water, Fetch

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• Art is first a seeing and then a revealing

  Sheldon Vanauken

  Art, Firsts, Revealing

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• It is not possible to be 'incidentally a Christian.' The fact of Christianity must be overwhelmingly first or nothing. This suggests a reason for the dislike of Christians by nominal or non-Christians: their lives contain no overwhelming first but many balances.

  Sheldon Vanauken

  Christian, Balance, Firsts

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• Both Heaven and Hell are retroactive, all of one's life will eventually be known to have been one or the other.

  Sheldon Vanauken

  Heaven, Hell, Has Beens

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• The adult must seem to mislead the child, and the Master the dog. They misread the signs. Their ignorance and their wishes twist everything. You are so sure you know what the promise promised! And the danger is that when what He means by ‘wind’ appears you will ignore it because it is not what you thought it would be—as He Himself was rejected because He was not like the Messiah the Jews had in mind.

  Sheldon Vanauken

  Dog, Children, Ignorance

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• Signs must be read with caution. The history of Christendom is replete with instances of people who misread the signs.

  Sheldon Vanauken

  People, Caution, Instance

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• Religiously, we longed for the lively life in Christ, but we did not fully see that we were equally longing for the lively life of the mind - the delights of conversation at once serious and gay, which is, whatever its subject, Christ or poetry or history, the ultimately civilized thing.

  Sheldon Vanauken

  Gay, Mind, Delight

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• But I was not obeying the first and greatest commandment - to love God first - nor is it clear that I was obeying the second - to love my neighbour. Hating the oppressors of my neighbour isn't perhaps quite what Christ had in mind.

  Sheldon Vanauken

  Hate, Mind, Firsts

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• A man in the jungle at night, as someone said, may suppose a hyena's growl to be a lion's; but when he hears the lion's growl, he knows damn well it's a lion.

  Sheldon Vanauken

  Night, Men, Lions

  Sheldon Vanauken (2011). “A Severe Mercy”, p.17, Harper Collins

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