Kenneth Rexroth Quotes

I'm trying to lead a good Christian life, so there ain't too much spicy to tell about me.

Perfection does not consist in any singular state or condition of life, or in any particular set of duties, but in holy and religious conduct of ourselves in every state of Life.

Though language forms the preacher, 'Tis good works make the man.

To live well and honorably and justly are the same thing.

If we live good lives, the times are also good. As we are, such are the times.

Holiness, not happiness, is the chief end of man.

So live with men as if God saw you and speak to God, as if men heard you.

That's a central part of philosophy, of ethics. What do I owe to strangers? What do I owe to my family? What is it to live a good life? Those are questions which we face as individuals.

Death is not more certainly a separation of our souls from our bodies than the Christian life is a separation of our souls from worldly tempers, vain indulgences, and unnecessary cares.

My ultimate goal is to become a saint.

No man can become a saint in his sleep.

Piety is the most solid goodness, and the vilest of what is evil is vice.

The Epistle is a correction of profession without life, and most valuable in this respect.

The New Testament persistently presses us upward, toward higher motives for being good.

He who is educated and eloquent must not measure his saintliness merely by his fluency.

Genuine religion is not about speculating about God or the soul or about what happened in the past or will happen in the future; it cares only about one thing—finding out exactly what should or should not be done in this lifetime.

The road to holiness necessarily passes through the world of action.

I partly know why I have not led a perfect life like other believers. But I avow to my Lord, and I do not lie, that from the time when I first knew him, the love of God and the fear of him has grown in me from my youth so that I have, by the power of God, always till now kept the faith.

We should be living a life of purity.

Amongst other our secular businesses and cures, our principal intent and fervent desire is to see virtue and cleanness of living to be advanced, increased, and multiplied, and vices and all other things repugnant to virtue, provoking the high indignation and fearful displeasure of God, to be repressed and annulled.

To have done no man a wrong...to walk and live, unseduced, within arm's length of what is not your own, with nothing between your desire and its gratification but the invisible law of rectitude-this is to be a man.

Do not think that saintliness comes from occupation; it depends rather on what one is. The kind of work we do does not make us holy, but we may make it holy.

Good deeds are many, but good lives are few.

Holiness is the sum of a million little things — the avoidance of little evils and little foibles, the setting aside of little bits of worldliness and little acts of compromise, the putting to death of little inconsistencies and little indiscretions, the attention to little duties and little dealings, the hard work of little self-denials and little self-restraints, the cultivation of little benevolences and little forbearances.

Do you advocate the Ten Commandments as a guide to the good life? Then I can only presume that you don't know the Ten Commandments.