John Ortberg Quotes
Being deeply contented with God in my everyday life is a focused attitude. It is always available. It means practicing letting go of my obsession with how I'm doing. It means training myself to learn to actually be present with people, and seeking to love them.
Quotes to Explore
-
It is not God's will merely that we should be happy, but that we should make ourselves happy.
-
Hallucinatory - that's just the way everyday life is, in Colombia. All the time, you say to yourself, did I just see that?
-
This opinion, however, is held by most, that the devil was an angel, and that, having become an apostate, he induced as many of the angels as possible to fall away with himself, and these up to the present time are called his angels.
-
I just try to live a really simple, natural life, because obviously, life has an impact on your voice.
-
Don't see the point in reading ghost-written autobiographies, even though some of these published lives may fascinate me. The 'ghost' is always present, manipulating an interview into first-person singular text, and it feels like I'm reading a lie.
-
I don't think the 9/11 attacks taught us anything we didn't already know about religion. It has long been obvious - even to the deeply religious - that religious fanaticism is an extremely dangerous deranger of otherwise sane and goodhearted people.
-
I've seen myself on those lists of the 100 best guitarists, and if they think that I'm that good, thank them. Thank God for them. But I don't think so.
-
People know more about baseball players' contracts than they do about the policies that govern the fate of our children's lives in twenty years. Think about it. People used to say, the whole time I was growing up, 'Do you want to bring a child into this world?' That's pretty dire.
-
I was very lucky. Things happened, both bad and good, but I never got into real, deep trouble. But it wore me down. By the time I was 18, I was done. I didn't want to live the life any more. I needed to develop past the point that busking takes you to.
-
For almost seventy years the life insurance industry has been a smug sacred cow feeding the public a steady line of sacred bull.
-
To have a relationship that is pure and passionate and beautiful - I think people are scared of having that now. Especially guys.
-
When one tears away the veils and shows them naked, people's souls give off such a pungent smell of decay.
-
I have a lot of different stages in my life when training has been easy or hard. Now, it seems that I have been training for so long that it has become almost second nature to me.
-
I believe, for a long time, protracted wars test the will of any democracy, to be sure, and people will underwrite a protracted war if they see some progress. But if they don't see progress, and it appears to be futile and useless, then that political support begins to evaporate rather quickly.
-
Individual warrants every day are used to arrest dangerous people.
-
Mental prayer in my opinion is nothing else than an intimate sharing between friends; it means taking time frequently to be alone with Him who we know loves us. The important thing is not to think much but to love much and so do that which best stirs you to love. Love is not great delight but desire to please God in everything.
-
One must choose in life between boredom and suffering.
-
I try to make myself do things for other people when I'm feeling down. Like, you can call your local hospital and help out in the pediatric unit.
-
We do hear perhaps too many accolades generally aimed at people like Steve Jobs. We have to remember that there are other classic things in life that we undervalue and take them for granted. If you think of the classic lines of the modern jet aircraft, it's really been there since early World War II.
-
I don't think of myself as giving interviews. I just have conversations. That gets me in trouble.
-
That strategy of racing for the top five and racing for the win is where everybody wants to be.
-
I have a vivid memory of loving Keith Hernandez, the first baseman for the '86 Mets. I grew up in Queens, so when the Mets won the World Series that year, it was a big deal.
-
Being deeply contented with God in my everyday life is a focused attitude. It is always available. It means practicing letting go of my obsession with how I'm doing. It means training myself to learn to actually be present with people, and seeking to love them.
