Quotes By Author: Peter Kreeft
“Reading a book about something can be an obstacle to doing it because it gives you the impression that you are doing what you are only thinking about doing. It is tempting to remain in the comfortable theater of our imagination instead of the real world, to fall in love with the idea of becoming a saint and loving God and neighbor instead of doing the actual work, because the idea makes no demands on you. It is like a book on a shelf. But, as Dostoyevsky says, ‘love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams’ (The Brothers Karamazov).”
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“I guarantee you that after you die you will not say ‘I spent too much time praying; I wish I had watched more TV instead.”
“Trusting God’s grace means trusting God’s love for us rather than our love for God. […] Therefore our prayers should consist mainly of rousing our awareness of God’s love for us rather than trying to rouse God’s awareness of our love for him, like the priests of Baal on Mount Carmel (1 Kings 18:26-29).”
“Only is a bird doesn’t swim in the ocean but flies in the air can it enter the ocean from above; only because God is not temporal can he enter into time.”
“One of the few things in life that cannot possibly do harm in the end is the honest pursuit of the truth.”
“If we rely on anything else besides faith to maintain the practice of the presence of God, we will certainly fail, whether this is our feelings, or experiences, or sincerity, or good intentions, or reasonings, or plans. The reason these things will fail while faith will not fail is that all these things depend on us, while faith depends on God. It is a gift of God.”
“God really performs the miracle of multiplying our time, but only if we give it to him first.”
“The only way God can strengthen his presence in our will is to weaken his presence in our feelings. Otherwise we would become spiritual cripples, unable to walk without emotional crutches. This is why he gives us dryness, sufferings, and failures.”
“Conscience is thus explained only as the voice of God in the soul.”
“Protestants believe that the sacraments are like ladders that God gave to us by which we can climb up to Him. Catholics believe that they are like ladders that God gave to Himself by which He climbs down to us.”
“The saints, too, had wandering minds. The saints, too, had constantly to recall their constantly wandering mind-child home. They became saints because they continued to go after the little wanderer, like the Good Shepherd.”
“If you place [your bet] with God, you lose nothing, even if it turns out that God does not exist. But if you place it against God, and you are wrong and God does exist, you lose everything.”