Wild Cherry Tree (c. 1901) by John Henry Twachtman:
In all true Christian asceticism, [there is] respect for the thing rejected which, I think, we never find in pagan asceticism. Marriage is good, though not for me; wine is good, though I must not drink it; feasts are good, though today we fast.
Valley in the Mountains (c. 1930s) by Louis Hovey Sharp:
Pasadena Light by Louis Hovey Sharp:
Annie Dillard (HT: Austin Kleon):
One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.
David F. Ford, commenting on John 13:34-35:
Love among the “little children,” in the Christian family, is to be the primary sign that we really are disciples of Jesus—in other words, that we are learning from him, imitating him, following him, being inspired by him. The mission of the church is inseparable from the sort of community the church is.
C. S. Lewis, from “On the Transmission of Christianity”:
None can give to another what he does not possess himself. No generation can bequeath to its successor what it has not got. You may frame the syllabus as you please. But when you have planned and reported ad nauseam, if we are sceptical we shall teach only scepticism to our pupils, if fools only folly, if vulgar only vulgarity, if saints sanctity, if heroes heroism. Education is only the most fully conscious of the channels whereby each generation influences the next. It is not a closed system. Nothing which was not in the teachers can flow from them into the pupils. We shall all admit that a man who knows no Greek himself cannot teach Greek to his form: but it is equally certain that a man whose mind was formed in a period of cynicism and disillusion, cannot teach hope or fortitude.