John Templeton Quotes

If we pursue theological knowledge for its own sake, it's bound to go bad on us. It will make us proud and conceited.

We have all heard of Young America. He is the most current youth of the age. Some think him conceited, and arrogant; but has he not reason to entertain a rather extensive opinion of himself? Is he not the inventor and owner of the present, and sole hope of the future?

God is so vastly wonderful, so utterly and completely delightful that He can, without anything other than Himself, meet and overflow the deepest demands of our total nature, mysterious and deep as that nature is.

When one comes to know God and His Son Jesus Christ through the scriptures, the Spirit, and personal revelation, it is impossible to feel anything other than overwhelmed by the attributes so perfectly developed in them and so tentatively and superficially developed in oneself. Even so, we are told to strive to become like them.

I don't understand what the nature of God is. But I do have the feeling that I'm at some feet, and lucky to be there.

The worst kind of arrogance is arrogance from ignorance.

If you think you are not conceited, it means you are very conceited indeed.

If God is God He is not good, if God is good He is not God; take the even, take the odd.

A man who overindulges lives in a dream. He becomes conceited. He thinks the whole world revolves around him; and it usually does.

Egotistical people are not pretty. We all know that, I'm sure everybody knows an egotistical person someplace.

If anyone would like to acquire humility, I can, I think, tell him the first step. The first step is to realize that one is proud. And a biggish step, too. At least, nothing whatever can be done before it. If you think you are not conceited, it means that you are very conceited indeed.

I'm very optimistic that there are sincere believers out there that are okay with tradition but don't want to endorse traditionalism for the sake of traditionalism but want to embrace tradition because it's God-honoring. I think that's a beautiful thing.

Our means of receiving impressions are absurdly few, and our notions of surrounding objects infinitely narrow. We see things only as we are constructed to see them, and can gain no idea of their absolute nature. With five feeble senses we pretend to comprehend the boundlessly complex cosmos.

Conceit is incompatible with understanding.

Well, there is something beautiful about ruins. I mean, in one sense it's not that different from going to Rome and looking at the Forum. But it's changing. It truly is. I'm optimistic but skeptical.

No people are more conceited than those who depict their own feelings, especially if they happen to have a little prose at their command for the occasion.

We've lost the sense of our own divinity. We think that we're separate from God, but we can't be. We must be like what we came from, and we came from an infinite, loving, kind, beautiful Source. We've forgotten that.

The realm of the real is Spirit. The unlikeness of Spirit is matter, and the opposite of the real is not divine, it is a human concept. Matter is an error of statement. This error in the premise leads to errors in the conclusion in every statement into which it enters. Nothing we can say or believe regarding matter is immortal, for matter is temporal and is therefore a mortal phenomenon, a human concept, sometimes beautiful, always erroneous.

A direct statement about yourself is considered objective only if it is negative. If it's positive, it is considered subjective. And 'objective' means it is accurate, and 'subjective' means it is conceited self-delusion.

For after all man knows mighty little, and may some day learn enough of his own ignorance to fall down again and pray. Not that Icare. Only, if such is God's will, and Fate and Evolution--let there be God!

If I use the Bible to prove I am right, I have yet to be humbled by the beautiful truths of the Bible.

We believe that man's value - as every creature's value, ultimately - lies not in the mere intellect but in the spirit: in the capacity to reflect that which, for lack of a more precise word, we choose to call “the divine,” i.e. that which is true and beautiful beyond all manifestation, that which remains timeless (and therefore unchangeable) within all changes.

It is my considered opinion that the human race (soi disant) is cruel, idiotic, sentimental, predatory, ungrateful, ugly, conceited and egocentric to the last ditch and that the occasional discovery of an isolated exception is as deliciously surprising as finding a sudden brazil nut in what you know to be five pounds of vanilla creams. These glorious moments, although not making life actually worth living, perhaps, at least make it pleasanter.

We cannot describe the natural history of the soul, but we know that it is divine. All things are known to the soul. It is not to be surprised by any communication. Nothing can be greater than it, let those fear and those fawn who will. The soul is in her native realm; and it is wider than space, older than time, wide as hope, rich as love. Pusillanimity and fear she refuses with a beautiful scorn; they are not for her who putteth on her coronation robes, and goes out through universal love to universal power.

But the conceited man did not hear him. Conceited people never hear anything but praise.