Peter Kreeft
God gives us not only the truth but also the ability to believe it; not only the new thing to see but also the new eye to see it with.Collection: Believe
The block of marble is not the sculptor, and doesn't see that he's about to become a masterpiece... We're the block of marble and God is the sculptor, and the chisel is.... everything.Collection: Faith
The world was won for Christ not by arguments but by sanctity: "What you are speaks so loud, I can hardly hear what you say."Collection: World
If you place [your bet] with God, you lose nothing, even if it turns out that God does not exist. But if you place it against God, and you are wrong and God does exist, you lose everything.Collection: Doe
Only God is to be loved for His own sake. Everything else is to be loved for God's sake.Collection: God
Saints have to be tough as well as tender because saints are like Christ, and Christ was the toughest and the tenderest man who ever lived.Collection: Men
Bad times make good people, as mountainous pressures make diamonds or as fire tempers steel.Collection: Faith
The self is like a baseball. Throw it back to the divine pitcher who pitched it to you in the first place, and the game of love goes on. Hold it, and the game is over. That is the difference between Heaven and Hell.Collection: Baseball
If God is not a Trinity, God is not love. For love requires three things: a lover, a beloved, and a relationship between them.Collection: Catholic
The key to faith is love. We believe only if we love. Trust is the middle term; only if we love, do we trust; and only if we trust, do we believe.Collection: Faith
You have an evil twin who is always with you. He is called your ego.Collection: Evil
We modern egalitarians are tempted to the primal sin of pride in the opposite way from the ancients. The old, aristocratic form of pride was the desire to be better than others. The new, democratic form is the desire not to have anyone better than yourself. It is just as spiritually deadly and does not even carry with it the false pleasure of gloating superiority.Collection: Pride
God's love is as objective as light. Because the sun in a sense is light, or the source of light rather than being lit, it really gives its light to the earth. And because the earth really receives light from the sun, it is really transformed every morning from darkness to light. Just as objectively, because God is love, God really gives love to us. And because we receive real life-changing love from God, we are really transformed from darkness to light.Collection: God
Agape's object is always the concrete individual, not some abstraction called humanity. Love of humanity is easy because humanity does not surprise you with inconvenient demands. You never find humanity on your doorstep, stinking and begging.Collection: Life
There is no effective rational answer to the challenge: "But give me a reason why I should love someone who does not deserve it." Love is the highest thing. There can be no higher reason to justify it.Collection: Love
The rich fop Francis of Assisi was bored all his life-until he fell in love with Christ and gave all his stuff away and became the troubadour of Lady Poverty.Collection: Bored
The Inquisition confused sin with sinners and judged both. Modern Americans make the same mistake but judge neither.Collection: Confused
The more we realize we are loved, the more ashamed we are not to love back. The more we sin as a violation of love, not just of law, the more powerful a motive we will have to overcome it. For sin is attractive to us (otherwise we would never be attracted to it) and can be cast out only by something more attractive.Collection: Love
Even David Hume, one of history most famous skeptics, said it's just barely possible that God exists.Collection: Atheist
Of course the more you love the sinner the more you hate and make war on the sin, just as the more you love the person, the more you hate and kill the cancer cells that are killing the person. Compassion for cancer cells does not come from compassion for persons; it comes precisely from lack of compassion for persons.Collection: Hate
Agape is the catalyst that makes value appear in anything.Collection: Love
If there is a God, there is a map. If God has a map, his map is the true map.Collection: If There Is A God
God alone has the secret of eternal life and joy.Collection: Joy
Great saints are never wimps.Collection: Saint
Mary's light is like that of the moon, totally reflected from the sun, the Son of God.Collection: Son
Few Christians go into media or the arts today, or see it as a primary mission field or battlefield. But it is.Collection: Christian
The connection between art and Christ is like the connection between sunlight and the sun. It is, in fact, the connection between Sonlight and the Son.Collection: Art
We are artists, because God is.Collection: Artist
Our life here on Earth has as its purpose precisely to prepare for our eternal happiness. This world is a large womb. It is a 'test' as all opportunities are tests.Collection: Opportunity
Envy, though not the greatest sin, is the only one that gives the sinner no pleasure at all, not even fake and temporary satisfaction.Collection: Giving
Not all Tolkien haters are Orcs, but all Orcs are Tolkien haters.Collection: Orcs
Peace is a mark of the Holy Spirit.Collection: Catholic
Atheism is cheap on people, because it snobbishly says nine out of ten people through history have been wrong about God and have had a lie at the core of their hearts.Collection: Atheist
It is just as crazy not to be crazy about Christ as it is to be crazy about anything else.Collection: Crazy
Now if the religious skeptic is right, we can know nothing about God. And if we can know nothing about God, how can we know God so well that we can know that he cannot be known? How can we know that God cannot and did not reveal himself—and perhaps even through human reason?Collection: Religious
Indifference is more truly the opposite of love than hate is, for we can both love and hate the same person at the same time, but we cannot both love and be indifferent to the same person at the same time.Collection: Hate
Most people believe you have to have some moral absolutes if you want to hold back chaos.Collection: Believe
Put the Protestant flint and the Catholic steel together, and you will kindle a fire that will burn all around the world.Collection: Fire
Lack of prayer is the cause of lack of time.Collection: Prayer
This is the secret of life: the self lives only by dying, finds its identity (and its happiness) only by self-forgetfulness, self-giving, self-sacrifice, and agape love.Collection: Sacrifice
An argument in apologetics, when actually used in dialogue, is an extension of the arguer. The arguer's tone, sincerity, care, concern, listening, and respect matter as much as his or her logic - probably more. The world was won for Christ not by arguments but by sanctity: "What you are speaks so loud, I can hardly hear what you say.Collection: Listening
Protestants believe that the sacraments are like ladders that God gave to us by which we can climb up to Him. Catholics believe that they are like ladders that God gave to Himself by which He climbs down to us.Collection: Believe
Our soul, like Mary's body, is to receive God Himself if only we, like her, believe, consent and receive; if only we speak her truly magic word fiat, "let it be." It is the creative word, the word God used to create the universe.Collection: Faith
Science only answers the question, How does it work? Or at most, What's there? Science asks what and how, philosophy asks why, myth and religion ask who. Who's in charge here? Who's the author? That's what we really long to know.Collection: Philosophy
It was a very stupid mistake to think you could deal with heresy by burning heretics. It's the very same mistake that modernist Catholics are making today in reverse. They think you can love heretics by loving heresies.Collection: Stupid
Don't be more serious than God. God invented dog farts. God designed your body's plumbing system. God designed an ostrich. If He didn't do it, He permitted a drunken angel to do it. Empirical facts can add significantly to the meaning of "being godlike".Collection: Dog
Why pray if we cannot change God? ...is that why we pray? To change omniscient Love? Isn't it rather to learn what it is and to fulfill it? Not to change it by our acts, but to change our acts by it.Collection: Prayer
True love, unlike popular sentimental substitutes, is willing to suffer. Love is not "luv." Love is the cross. Our problem at first, the sheer problem of suffering, was a cross without Christ. We must never fall into the opposite and equal trap of a Christ without a cross.Collection: Love
Story is the oldest, commonest, most beloved, and most effective form of communication because our life is essentially a story. That's why the Bible is the most realistic of religious books. We can easily ignore or argue away abstractions, but we bump up against concretely real people, things, and events in story, as in life.Collection: Religious