Moral Tension Quotes

It is excruciating to be an unbeliever with a spirit that is deeply religious.

In the heart of man, there is a constant conflict between the flesh and the spirit.

There is something almost cruel about the Christian's being placed in a world which in every way wants to pressure him to do the opposite of what God bids him to do.

Political realism is aware of the moral significance of political action. It is also aware of the ineluctable tension between the moral command and the requirements of successful political action. And it is unwilling to gloss over and obliterate that tension and thus to obfuscate both the moral and the political issue by making it appear as though the stark facts of politics were morally more satisfying than they actually are, and the moral law less exacting than it actually is.

To be right with God has often meant to be in trouble with men. This is such a common truth that one hesitates to mention it, yet it appears to have been overlooked by the majority of Christians today.

Our whole life is startlingly moral. There is never an instant's truce between virtue and vice.

There is no such thing as a continuously carnal Christian.

If you've developed an ideology that what's good for you personally also happens to be good for everyone else, that's quite wonderful because there's no moral tension.

Life is sustained by the grinding opposition of moral entities.

As for conforming outwardly, and living your own life inwardly, I do not think much of that. Let not your right hand know what your left hand does in that line of business. It will prove a failure.... It is a greater strain than any soul can long endure. When you get God to pulling one way, and the devil the other, each having his feet well braced,--to say nothing of the conscience sawing transversely,--almost any timber will give way.

The thing that pleases is not always good and, helas, the good thing does not always please.

There are all kinds of things God wants me to do that I'm very obstreperous about.