Category: Commonplace Quotes

Tuesday, April 1, 2025 No Fooling!

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That’s right – there are no April Fool’s pranks associated with this blog. You’re welcome.

Quotes from the Commonplace Book:

If a book is well written,
I always find it too short.
Jane Austen

God has promised to supply all our needs.
What we don’t have now,
we don’t need now.
Elisabeth Elliot

This is every cook’s opinion
No savory dish without an onion,
But lest your kissing should be spoil’d,
Your onions must be thoroughly boil’d.
Polish cookbook

There are many heads lying on Christ’s bosom,
but there is room for yours among the rest.
It is our heaven to lay many weights and burdens on Christ.
Lay all your loads and your weights by faith upon Christ.
Ease yourself, and let Him bear all.
He can,
He does,
He will bear you.
Samuel Rutherford

I know worrying works,
because none of the stuff I worried about
ever happened.
Will Rogers

That photo has been languishing in my blog photos file for quite some time now. Time to let it out.

I’ll be deletin’ this in the morning, no foolin’. Maybe.

Tuesday, March 18, 2025 Weather Whiplash, Quotable Quotes

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We’ve got a blizzard headed our way tomorrow. Does anyone besides me remember reading about how Pa Ingalls got stuck in a blizzard on his way back from Mankato? He had to dig himself a little cave in the snow for protection and ended up eating all the candy he’d bought to bring home to the kids. I think of that sometimes when I’m sitting in my nice home drinking hot chocolate while the storm rages outside.

It’s a balmy 52 degrees today, and with a blizzard coming tomorrow, I’m inclined to agree with a friend of mine who said, “March is full of weather whiplash.” Indeed! When I got on the weather app for more information, I also found this important news:

So at least there’s that. I sort of feel like no matter how nice it is in March in Minnesota, the mosquito risk ought to be placed at ZERO. But there might be an exceptionally hardy breed of mosquitos out there that burst out of the starting gate when it gets up to 50 degrees. The chance of those mosquitos living through a blizzard though is ZERO. Equilibrium restored.

Quotes from the Commonplace Book

You wouldn’t worry so much about what others think of you
if you realized how seldom they do.
Eleanor Roosevelt

Masculinity is the glad assumption of sacrificial responsibility.
Femininity is the warm response to sacrificial responsibility.
Douglas Wilson

Duties are ours.
Events are the Lord’s.
Samuel Rutherford

Wherever you are, be all there. Live to the hilt every situation you believe to the be the will of God.
Jim Elliot

This is what the incarnation is all about – the author of the story becoming not just a character, but a human character. In this narrative, God is the storyteller and the main character. He is the bard and the hero. He authors the fairy tale and then comes to kill the dragon and get the girl.
Joe Rigney in the book Things of Earth

The risk of deleting this is low, but never zero.

Tuesday, March 11, 2025 Psalm-A-Day

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We’re sorting through some old stuff and I came across the very first birthday gift that I gave to my husband after we were married.

What is it, you ask? Somehow I thought that what he most needed in life was a Japanese-style canister with verses from the Psalms in it, so he could pick out one per day to read and ponder. I decided to write out one verse from each Psalm (there are 150 Psalms), cut each one out and fold it. And I had to do it when he wasn’t around. As I recall, it took a long time, a true labor of love. In retrospect, it seems like an underwhelming gift, but he received it with gratitude and used it daily at least one time through all 150 verses. That was 40 years ago!

Quotes to Share

Confess all known sin; Get rid of everything doubtful; obey the Spirit immediately; proclaim Christ publicly.
Evan Roberts, in the 1904 Welsh Revival

Friendship is a sheltering tree.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Song can turn melancholy into joy,
and weakness to overwhelming power.
Peter Leithart in From Silence to Song

You say grace before meals. All right.
But I say grace before the play and the opera,
And grace before the concert and the pantomime,
And grace before I open a book,
and grace before sketching, boxing, walking, playing, dancing;
And grace before I dip the pen in the ink.
G.K. Chesterton

And now I’ve got to figure out how the font changed. Very mysterious. I’ll probably delete this before I figure it out though.

Tuesday, February 11, 2025 The Velvet Glove, The Iron Fist

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What books are y’all reading these days? I’m working on the Georgette Heyer book, The Grand Sophy that was a favorite of my mom’s – this is probably my second read-through. I’m re-reading Surprised by Oxford, for the third or fourth time. It’s a memoir written by Carolyn Weber about her experience in unexpectedly finding Christ at Oxford. The commentary on Hosea by John Calvin is one that I’m plodding through and don’t expect to finish any time soon. I’m enjoying the book The Things of Earth, Treasuring God by Enjoying His Gifts, by Joe Rigney. My husband and I are reading through a book called How to be Unlucky by Joshua Gibbs, a second read-through for me and first for him.

Quotes from the Commonplace Book

There, peeping among the cloud-wracked above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end, the Shadow was only a small and passing thing; there was light and high beauty forever beyond its reach. …for a moment, his own fate, and even his master’s, ceased to trouble him. He crawled back into the brambles and laid himself by Frodo’s side, and putting away all fear, he cast himself into a deep untroubled sleep.
JRR Tolkien, The Return of the King

I always found that to be such a lovely quote near the end of The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien. In the midst of the most oppressive darkness over Frodo and Sam while they march forward to Mount Doom, Tolkien inserts this beautiful meditation by Sam as he sees a star peeping through the nearly unbreakable cloud cover. That last part reminds me of 1 Peter 5:7, in which we are told to “cast all our anxiety on Him, because He cares for you.”

Being a writer doesn’t just mean writing. It means finishing.
Andrew Peterson, Adorning the Dark p. 15

Ouch, Andrew.

The tyranny of evil looks like love until you mount resistance. Underneath the velvet glove there lurks the iron fist.
Andree Sue Peterson

A guest in my home is God in my home.
Polish Saying

Would it be tyranny if I delete this in the morning?