William Stringfellow Quotes

• Listening is a rare happening among human beings. You cannot listen to the word another is speaking if you are preoccupied with your appearance, or with impressing the other, or are trying to decide what you are going to say when the other stops talking, or are debating about whether what is being said is true or relevant or agreeable.
  Such matters have their place, but only after listening to the word as the word is being uttered.
  Listening is a primitive act of love in which a person gives himself to another’s word, making himself accessible and vulnerable to that word.

  William Stringfellow

  Talking, Giving, Listening

  55 Copy quote

• The practice of the Christian life consists of the discernment of (the seeing and hearing), and the reliance upon (the reckless and uncalculating dependence), and the celebration (the ready and spontaneous enjoyment) of the presence of the Word of God in the common life of the world.

  William Stringfellow

  Christian, Practice, World

  William Stringfellow (1999). “A Private and Public Faith”, p.56, Wipf and Stock Publishers

  52 Copy quote

• The biblical lifestyle is always a witness of resistance to the status quo in politics, economics, and all society. It is a witness of resurrection from death. Paradoxically, those who embark on the biblical witness constantly risk death - through execution, exile, imprisonment, persecution, defamation, or harassment - at the behest of the rulers of this age. Yet those who do not resist the rulers of the present darkness are consigned to a moral death, the death of their humanness. That, of all the ways of dying, is the most ignominious.

  William Stringfellow

  Biblical, Darkness, Risk

  38 Copy quote

• Being holy . . . does not mean being perfect but being whole; it does not mean being exceptionally religious or being religious at all; it means being liberated from religiosity and religious pietism of any sort; it does not mean being morally better, it meas being exemplary; it does not mean being godly, but rather being truly human.

  William Stringfellow

  Religious, Mean, Godly

  24 Copy quote

• Where money is an idol, to be poor is a sin.

  William Stringfellow

  Money, Idols, Lawyer

  William Stringfellow (2006). “Dissenter in a Great Society: A Christian View of America in Crisis”, p.40, Wipf and Stock Publishers

  36 Copy quote

• The characteristic place to find Christians is among their enemies. The first place to look for Christ is in Hell.

  William Stringfellow

  Christian, Enemy, Looks

  William Stringfellow, Bill Wylie Kellermann (1994). “A Keeper of the Word: Selected Writings of William Stringfellow”, p.165, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

  17 Copy quote

• Perhaps the moral ambiguity of money is most plainly evidenced in the popular belief that money itself has value and that the worth of other things or of men is somehow measured in monetary terms, rather than the other way around.

  William Stringfellow

  Men, Way, Belief

  William Stringfellow (2006). “Dissenter in a Great Society: A Christian View of America in Crisis”, p.36, Wipf and Stock Publishers

  14 Copy quote

• Dorothy Day, of blessed memory, did not like to be called (as she often was, for good reason) a saint, because it usually meant that she was not being taken seriously. She heard it as an accusation — a device ostensibly distinguishing her from ordinary people so as to simultaneously discount her words and deeds while exempting others from moral responsibility to speak and act.

  William Stringfellow

  Memories, Blessed, Taken

  William Stringfellow (2005). “A Simplicity of Faith: My Experience in Mourning”, p.134, Wipf and Stock Publishers

  11 Copy quote

• The Fall is where the nation is. The Fall is the locus of America.

  William Stringfellow

  Fall, America, Nations

  William Stringfellow (2004). “An Ethic For Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land”, p.19, Wipf and Stock Publishers

  11 Copy quote

• Biocides, for example, are designed to kill bacteria—it's not a benign material.

  William Stringfellow

  Bacteria, Example, Benign

  4 Copy quote

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