01UndatedWhat is the world? What is it for? It is an art. It is the best of all possible art, a finite picture of the infinite. Assess it like prose, like poetry, like architecture, sculpture, painting, dance, delta blues, opera, tragedy, comedy, romance, epic. Assess it like you would a Faberge egg, like a gunfight, like a musical, like a snowflake, like a death, a birth, a triumph, a love story, a tornado, a smile, a heartbreak, a sweater, a hunger pain, a desire, a fufillment, a desert, a waterfall, a song, a race, a frog, a play, a song, a marriage, a consummation, a thirst quenched. Assess it like that. And when you're done, find an ant and have him assess the cathedrals of Europe.N.D. Wilson / quote ↗
02UndatedSometimes standing against evil is more important than defeating it. The greatest heroes stand because it is right to do so, not because they believe they will walk away with their lives. Such selfless courage is a victory in itself.N.D. Wilson / quote ↗
03UndatedLay your life down. Your heartbeats cannot be hoarded. Your reservoir of breaths is draining away. You have hands, blister them while you can. You have bones, make them strain-they can carry nothing in the grave. You have lungs, let them spill with laughter. With an average life expectancy of 78.2 years in the US (subtracting eight hours a day for sleep), I have around 250,00 conscious hours remaining to me in which I could be smiling or scowling, rejoicing in my life, in this race, in this story, or moaning and complaining about my troubles. I can be giving my fingers, my back, my mind, my words, my breaths, to my wife and my children and my neighbors, or I can grasp after the vapor and the vanity for myself, dragging my feet, afraid to die and therefore afraid to live. And, like Adam, I will still die in the end.N.D. Wilson / quote ↗
04UndatedTruth: We are the present. We are now. We are the razor's edge of history. The future flies at us and from that dark blur we shape the past. And the past is forever.N.D. Wilson / quote ↗
05UndatedA man's words reveal, first, the man. The words are not the man, and yet they reveal him faithfully and are to be identified with him. Out of the abundance of the heart, the man speaks. The foundational nature of all language is therefore metaphorical because every word a man speaks reveals himself—just as God reveals Himself through the Word. Every word spoken ultimately reveals the speaker.N.D. Wilson / quote ↗
06UndatedTom shut his eyes again, because when his eyes were shut, he could tell himself that there was light.N.D. Wilson / quote ↗
07UndatedWe are narrative creatures, and we need narrative nourishment—narrative catechisms.N.D. Wilson / quote ↗
08UndatedHenry successfully kept his mind on the game, which might seem strange for a boy who slept beside a wall of magic. But baseball was as magical to him as a green, mossy mountain covered in ancient trees. What's more, baseball was a magic he could run around in and laugh about. While the magic of the cupboards was not necessarily good, the smell of leather mixed with dusty sweat and spitting and running through sparse grass after a small ball couldn't be anything else.N.D. Wilson / quote ↗
09UndatedAffectation is really a question of heart motive. Growing into a persona is an essential part of maturing. Anything you might choose to do is going to contribute to one persona or another. People will only call attention to it if it is markedly different from the course you were apparently on before.N.D. Wilson / quote ↗
11UndatedI've watched goldfish make babies, and ants execute earwigs. I've seen a fly deliver live young while having its head eaten by a mantis. And I had a golden retriever behave like one.N.D. Wilson / quote ↗
12UndatedI listened to you tell me, tell everyone, and all the world, “Praise the Lord.” You were broken, but not by bullets and bombs. You were broken by grace.N.D. Wilson / quote ↗
13UndatedThe fall of man did not introduce evil; it placed us on the wrong side of it, under its rule, needing rescue.N.D. Wilson / quote ↗
15UndatedHenry flopped onto his bed, and his steam leaked slowly out. He began telling himself a story in his head. It was about how just and kind and understanding he was. It was about right he had been, how necessary his tone and word choice. It was about a girl who just didn't understand, who was completely ignorant. Then, for some reason, the narrator of the story included an incident in which Henry ha pushed an envelope into a strange place just to see what would happen. It hadn't even been an accident. The incident did not fit with the rest of the story, so Henry tried to ignored it. He couldn't ignore it, so he tried to explain it. Completely different things. The post office was obviously not dangerous. It was yellow. I just wanted to see what the mailman would do. The flashlight was stupid. I didn't shine a flashlight into the post office. She didn't even act sorry. I would have acted sorry. I always act sorry when people get upset. She didn't even care that I probably saved her life. She didn't know. She was unconscious. Oh, shut up.N.D. Wilson / quote ↗
16UndatedStories are like catechisms, but they're catechisms for your impulses, they're catechisms with flesh on.N.D. Wilson / quote ↗
17UndatedLife is a story. Why do we die? Because we live. Why do we live? Because our Maker opened His mouth and began to tell a story.N.D. Wilson / quote ↗
18UndatedGlory is sacrifice, glory is exhaustion, glory is having nothing left to give.Almost.It is death by living.N.D. Wilson / quote ↗
19UndatedI love it with all of its villains and pretty liars and self-righteous pompersN.D. Wilson / quote ↗
20UndatedI love it as it is, because it is a story, and it isn't stuck in one place.N.D. Wilson / quote ↗
21UndatedIt has thick skin, and all the most important thinkers have become part of it.N.D. Wilson / quote ↗
22UndatedTo exist in this poem [of creation] is a greater gift than any finite creature can imagine. To be so insignificant and yet still be given a speaking part, to be given scenes that are my own, and my own only, scenes where the audience is limited to the Author Himself (scenes that I often flub), to have been here with my frozen nose, to have been crafted with at least as much care as a snowflake (though I'm harder to melt), and to hear and feel and see and taste and smell the heavy poetry of God, that is enough.N.D. Wilson / quote ↗
23UndatedWelcome to His poem. His play. His novel. Skip the bowls of fruit and statues. Let the page flick your thumbs. This is His spoken word.N.D. Wilson / quote ↗
24UndatedYour father died for me, and dying with you would be an honor, though not as great as dying to save you.N.D. Wilson / quote ↗