Vance Havner Quotes

At school he had done things which had formerly seemed to him very horrid and made him feel disgusted with himself when he did them; but when later on he saw that such actions were done by people of good position and that they did not regard them as wrong, he was able not exactly to regard them as right, but to forget about them entirely or not be at all troubled at remembering them.

Though I had success in my research both when I was mad and when I was not, eventually I felt that my work would be better respected if I thought and acted like a 'normal' person.

Whenever you see people talking about how real they are or how normal they are, it seems odd to have that self awareness that you could potentially not be normal.

Many Christians are unthinkably horrified when a real sinner is suddenly discovered among the righteous. So we remain alone with our sin, living in lies and hypocrisy...He who is alone with his sins is utterly alone.

Evil…doesn’t mean doing things that have bad consequences for people. It means private thoughts and actions that are not to “the Christian majority’s” private liking.

If I were in heaven, Nelly, I should be extremely miserable." "Because you are not fit to go there," I answered. "All sinners would be miserable in heaven.

Then no rightful cause was left, and the pain of anger was turning into the shameful pain of submission. He had no right to condemn anyone - he thought - to denounce anything, to fight and die joyously, claiming the sanctity of virtue. The broken promises, the unconfessed desires, the betrayal, the deceit, the lies, the fraud - he was guilty of them all. What form of corruption could he scorn? Degrees do not matter, he thought; one does not bargain about inches of evil.

Is anyone human actually normal? I'm beginning to think being normal is actually abnormal.

As a handful of sand thrown into the ocean, so are the sins of all flesh as compared with the mind of God.

Dear Hitler Take away the torches I'm not guilty I had to have this

Unless Christianity is wholly false, the perception of ourselves which we have in moments of shame must be the only true one.

Normal people have nothing to forget.

Normality wasn't normal. It couldn't be. If normality were normal, everybody could leave it alone. They could sit back and let normality manifest itself.

That was the dirty secret associated with her past. Not that she'd been abused but that somehow she felt that she deserved it because she'd let it happen. Even now, it shamed her, and there were times when she felt hideously ugly, as though the scars that had been left behind were visible to everyone.

Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man's face. It cannot be concealed.

Shame ain't black, like dirt, like I always thought it was. Shame be the color of a new white uniform your mother ironed all night to pay for, white without a smudge or a speck a work-dirt on it.

America was born a Christian nation. America was born to exemplify that devotion to the elements of righteousness, which are derived from Holy Scripture. Ladies and gentlemen, I have a very simple thing to ask of you. I ask of every man and woman in this audience that, from this night on, they will realize that part of the destiny of America lies in their daily perusal of this great Book of revelations. (The Bible) That if they would see America free and pure they will make their own spirits free and pure by the baptism of Holy Scripture.

If you are really spontaneous, people will think you are mad. If you go to a tree and start talking, or to a flower, people will think you are mad. If you go to a church and talk to a cross or to an image, nobody will think your are mad, they will think that you are religious. You are talking to a stone in a temple and everybody thinks you are religious because this is the authorized form.

You little know what you have done, when you have first broke the bounds of modesty; you have set open the door of your fancy to the devil, so that he can, almost at his pleasure ever after, represent the same sinful pleasure to you anew.

I'm a prodigal son. The black sheep of a white flock. I shall die on the gallows.

We're poor little lambs who've lost our way, Baa! Baa! Baa! We're little black sheep who've gone astray, Baa-aa-aa! Gentlemen-rankers out on the spree, Damned from here to Eternity, God ha' mercy on such as we, Baa! Yah! Bah!

Sins of the flesh are nothing. They are maladies for physicians to cure, if they should be cured. Sins of the soul alone are shameful.

I rot on the wall, my own Dorian Gray.

So, "normal" is really what society dictates as normal and if we're born in that world, we would see that as normal. But if you think about it for a second, is it really?