Quotes

I love quotes, little snippets of wisdom presented in a concise manner, designed to help one remember things pertinent to living well.  I have collected these since fifth or sixth grade, sometimes writing them in a notebook, sometimes jotting them on any handy scrap of paper.  But something I read recently in George MacDonald's book (edited by Michael R. Phillips), The Poet's Homecoming, though it referred to poetry, made me think.  

"Asked what of all things he most admired, he might truly answer, 'The imaginative intellect.'  He was a fledgling poet.  He worshiped what he called thoughts, and would rave about a thought in the abstract, apostrophize an uncaught idea.  When a concrete thinkable one fell to him, he was jubilant over the isolate thing.  But his joy had nothing to do with its value or any practical result.  Of the doing of any action as a necessary result of some thought or idea, Walter never considered the possibility.  Thoughts and actions were to him as separate as night and day.  That thought might demand action would have been an idea to him unthinkable.  What could the one possibly have to do with the other?"

Then those verses from James about hearers and doers came to me.  "But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves." James 1:22.  We can collect all the greatest quotes and sayings in the world, but if we never apply them to our lives, of what good are they?  Scripture is the same way; we can read it, memorize it, hear it, but if we never act on it, of what good is it?  I'm a good reader, a pretty good listener, but am I a doer?  I'm afraid not really.  Lord, help me to be a doer!

Let me leave you with an apropos quote by Oscar Wilde:

     To live is the rarest thing in the world.  Most people exist, that's all.