Christian diligence
It is not fit that heaven should take all the
pains to bring earth to it; earth must do somewhat to bring itself to heaven.
God’s bountifulness is beyond our thankfulness; yet thankfulness is not enough;
there is matter of labour in it. If the lord of a manor have given thee a tree,
thou wilt be at the charges to cut it down and carry it home. He who works
first in thy conversion hath in wisdom made thee a second. Thou seest God’s
bounty; now look to thine own duty.
I. Diligence. Here, first, for the quality. There is
no matter wherein we hope for God in the event, accomplished without diligence
in the act. He that expects a royalty in heaven must admit a service on earth.
The good man is weary of doing nothing, for nothing is so laborious as
idleness. Satan’s employment is prevented when he finds thee well employed
before he comes. It is observable that albeit the Romans were so idle as to
make idleness a god, yet they allowed not that idle idol a temple within the
city, but without the walls. There are four marks and helps of diligence:
1.
Vigilance. A serious project, which we can hardly drive to our desired
issue, takes sleep from our eyes.
2.
Carefulness (Ecc_5:1).
3.
Love. This diligence must fetch the life from affection, and be moved
with the love of virtue.
4.
Study (2Ti_2:15).
II. Give diligence. Not a pragmatical business in
others’ affairs; but rectify thy diligence, confining it principally to
thyself. Dress thine own garden, lest it be overrun with weeds.
III. All diligence. Here is the quantity—“all.”
1.
The working up of salvation is no easy labour; thereto is requirable
all diligence. Such a diligence respects so great an object, and such an object
requires so great a diligence. Refuse no labour for such a reward. The best
things are the hardliest come by (Mat_11:12).
Spare no invention of wit, no intention of will, no contention of strength
about it. Will we adventure our estates, our lives, to find out new lands where
may be gold, and spend no diligence for that where we are sure there is gold,
and such as cannot perish?
2.
God requires “the whole duty of man” (Ecc_12:13);
that is God’s due. What, nothing left for this world? Yes, moderate providence;
the saving of souls hinders not provision for bodies, but furthers and blesses
it (Mat_6:33). Follow thou Christ; the
rest shall follow thee.
IV. beside this
… add
1. “There is no doubt
that creativity is the most important human resource of all. Without
creativity, there would be no progress, and we would be forever repeating the
same patterns.” — Edward de Bono
2. “There is only one of you in all time, this expression is
unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and
it will be lost.” — Martha Graham
3. “Creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is
doing new things.” — Theodore Levitt
4. “A new idea is
delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn; it can be stabbed to death by
a quip and worried to death by a frown on the right man’s brow.” — Charles
Brower
5. “When we engage in what we are naturally suited to do,
our work takes on the quality of play and it is play that stimulates creativity.”
– Linda Naiman
6. “The creative is the place where no one else has ever
been. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of
your intuition. What you’ll discover will be wonderful. What you’ll discover is
yourself.” — Alan Alda
7. “It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be
wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all.” — Edward de Bono
8. “A painter told me
that nobody could draw a tree without in some sort becoming a tree; or draw a
child by studying the outlines of its form merely . . . but by watching for a
time his motions and plays, the painter enters into his nature and can then
draw him at every attitude . . .” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
9. “Genius means little more than the faculty of perceiving
in an un habitual way.” — William James
10. “The creative
person wants to be a know-it-all. He wants to know about all kinds of things ancient
history, nineteenth century mathematics, current manufacturing techniques, hog
futures. Because he never knows when these ideas might come together to form a
new idea. It may happen six minutes later, or six months, or six years. But he
has faith that it will happen.” — Carl Ally
11. “Creativity is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking
risks, breaking rules, making mistakes, and having fun.” — Mary Lou Cook
12. “You can’t wait for inspiration, you have to go after it
with a club.” — Jack London
13. “Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints
his own nature into his pictures.” — Henry Ward Beecher
14. “The key question isn’t “What fosters creativity?” But
it is why in God’s name isn’t everyone creative? Where was the human potential
lost? How was it crippled? I think therefore a good question might be not why
do people create? But why do people not create or innovate? We have got to
abandon that sense of amazement in the face of creativity, as if it were a
miracle if anybody created anything.” — Abraham Maslow
15. “Nothing is done. Everything in the world remains to be
done or done over. The greatest picture is not yet painted, the greatest play
isn’t written, the greatest poem is unsung. There isn’t in all the world a
perfect railroad, nor a good government, nor a sound law. Physics, mathematics,
and especially the most advanced and exact of the sciences are being
fundamentally revised. . . Psychology, economics, and sociology are awaiting a
Darwin, whose work in turn is awaiting an Einstein.” — Lincoln Steffens
16. “The world is but a canvas to the imagination.” — Henry
David Thoreau
17. “We have come to think of art and work as incompatible,
or at least independent categories and have for the first time in history
created an industry without art.” — Ananda K. Coomaraswamy
18. “So you see, imagination needs moodling – long,
inefficient, happy idling, dawdling and puttering.” — Brenda Ueland 19.
“Creativity is… seeing something that doesn’t exist already. You need to find
out how you can bring it into being and that way be a playmate with God.” —
Michele Shea
20. “The most potent muse of all is our own inner child.”–
Stephen Nachmanovitch
21. “As competition intensifies, the need for creative
thinking increases. It is no longer enough to do the same thing better . . . no
longer enough to be efficient and solve problems” — Edward de Bono
22. “Listen to anyone with an original idea, no matter how
absurd it may sound at first. If you put fences around people, you get sheep.
Give people the room they need.” — William McKnight, 3M President
23. “Everyone who’s ever taken a shower has had an idea.
It’s the person who gets out of the shower, dries off and does something about
it who makes a difference.” — Nolan Bushnell
24. “All great deeds
and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning.” — Albert Camus
25. “You write your first draft with your heart and you
re-write with your head. The first key to writing is to write, not to think.” —
Sean Connery 26. “Around here, however, we don’t look backwards for very long.
We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things, because
we’re curious… and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.” — Walt Disney
27. “God is really another artist. He invented the giraffe,
the elephant and the cat. He has no real style. He just goes on trying other
things.” — Pablo Picasso
28. “To draw, you must close your eyes and sing.” — Pablo
Picasso
29. “A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a
single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.” —
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
30. “The wastebasket
is a writer’s best friend.” — Isaac Bashevis Singer
31. “Ideas are like
rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you
have a dozen.” — Jonh Steinbeck
32. “If you hear a voice within you say, ‘You cannot paint,’
then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.” — Vincent van Gogh
33. “Where observation is concerned, chance favors the
prepared mind.” – Louis Pasteur
34. “I shall become a master in this art only after a great
deal of practice.” — Erich Fromm
35. “I began by tinkering around with some old tunes I knew.
Then, just to try something different, I set to putting some music to the
rhythm that I used in jerking ice-cream sodas at the Poodle Dog. I fooled
around with the tune more and more until at last, lo and behold, I had
completed my first piece of finished music. ” — Duke Ellington
36. “Because of their courage, their lack of fear, they
(creative people) are willing to make silly mistakes. The truly creative person
is one who can think crazy; such a person knows full well that many of his
great ideas will prove to be worthless. The creative person is flexible; he is
able to change as the situation changes, to break habits, to face indecision
and changes in conditions without undue stress. He is not threatened by the
unexpected as rigid, inflexible people are.” — Frank Goble
37. “Invention strictly speaking, is little more than a new
combination of those images which have been previously gathered and deposited
in the memory; nothing can come from nothing.” — Sir Joshua Reynolds
38. “Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to
give up every conceived notion, follow humbly wherever and whatever abysses
nature leads, or you will learn nothing.” — Huxley, Thomas
39. There is no use trying,” said Alice. “One can’t believe
impossible things.” “I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen.
“When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes
I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” — Lewis
Carroll
40. “Creativity is contagious. Pass it on.” — Albert
Einstein
41. “The principle
goal of education is to create men who are capable of doing new things, not
simply of repeating what other generations have done – men who are creative,
inventive and discoverers.” — Jean Piaget
42. “The creative
person is willing to live with ambiguity. He doesn’t need problems solved
immediately and can afford to wait for the right ideas.” — Abe Tannenbaum
43. “An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea
whose time has come.” — Victor Hugo
44. “An idea that is
developed and put into action is more important than an idea that exists only
as an idea.” — Edward de Bono
45. ” Conditions for creativity are to be puzzled; to
concentrate; to accept conflict and tension; to be born everyday; to feel a
sense of self.” — Erich Fromm
46. ” Creativity is the quality that you bring to the
activity that you are doing. It is an attitude, an inner approach – how you
look at things . . . Whatsoever you do, if you do it joyfully, if you do it
lovingly, if your act of doing is not purely economical, then it is creative.”
– Osho
47. “You become more divine as you become more creative. All
the religions of the world have said God is the creator. I don’t know whether
he is the creator or not, but one thing I know: the more creative you become,
the more godly you become. When your creativity comes to a climax, when your
whole life becomes creative, you live in God. So he must be the creator because
people who have been creative have been closest to him. Love what you do. Be
meditative while you are doing it – whatsoever it is!” — Osho
48. “Every day is an
opportunity to be creative – the canvas is your mind, the brushes and colours
are your thoughts and feelings, the panorama is your story, the complete
picture is a work of art called, ‘my life’. Be careful what you put on the
canvas of your mind today – it matters.” — Innerspace
49. “It seems to be one of the paradoxes of creativity that
in order to think originally, we must familiarize ourselves with the ideas of
others.” — George Kneller
50. “The highest prize we can receive for creative work is
the joy of being creative. Creative effort spent for any other reason than the
joy of being in that light filled space, love, god, whatever we want to call
it, is lacking in integrity. . . – Marianne Williamson
51. “The world is but a canvas to the imagination.” — Henry
David Thoreau
52. “To be creative means to be in love with life. You can
be creative only if you love life enough that you want to enhance its beauty,
you want to bring a little more music to it, a little more poetry to it, a
little more dance to it.” –Osho
53. “We will discover the nature of our particular genius
when we stop trying to conform to our own and other’s people’s models, learn to
be ourselves and allow our natural channel to open.” — Shakti Gawain
54. “When you are describing, A shape, or sound, or tint;
Don’t state the matter plainly, But put it in a hint; And learn to look at all
things, With a sort of mental squint.” –Lewis Carroll
55. “Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward; they may
be beaten, but they may start a winning game.” — Goethe
56. “I can’t understand why people are frightened of new
ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones.” John Cage
57. “What is an
artist? A provincial who finds himself somewhere between a physical reality and
a metaphysical one…. It’s this in-between that I’m calling a province, this
frontier country between the tangible world and the intangible one—which is
really the realm of the artist.” — Federico Fellini
58. “Some people use things; they destroy. You’re a creator,
a builder.” — Amelia AtwaterRhodes Quotes
59. “To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being
wrong.” — Joseph Chilton Pierce Quotes
60. “You can’t use up
creativity. The more you use, the more you have.” — Maya Angelou
61. “By believing
passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The
nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.” Nikos Kazantzakis
62. “Behind all creation is silence. Silence is the
essential condition, the vital ingredient for all creation and all that is
created. It is a power in its own right. The artist starts with a blank canvas
– silence. The composer places it between and behind the notes. The very ground
of your being, out of which comes all your thoughts, is silence. The way to
silence is through meditation. When you arrive in your own silence you will
know true freedom and real power. Stop, take a minute, and listen to the
silence within you today. Then be aware of what disturbs your inner silence. It
could be negative thoughts, memories, sensations. And when you are aware, you
will know what is draining your creative power, and you will know what needs to
change…on the inside!” — Relax7.com
63. “One of my early
mentors, poet David Wagoner, who divides the creative process into three phases
– madman, poet and critic – once told me that you need to find your own magic
to stay in the world of creative play.” — Sonia Gernes
64. “A man may die,
nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on.” — John F. Kennedy
65. “Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every
opinion now accepted was once eccentric.” — Bertrand Russell
66. “The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas
as in escaping from old ones.” — John Maynard Keynes
67. “Held in the palms of thousands of disgruntled people
over the centuries have been ideas worth millions – if they only had taken the
first step and then followed through.” – Robert M. Hayes
68. “Life is trying things to see if they work.” – Ray
Bradbury
69. “The stone age didn’t end because they ran out of
stones.” – unknown
70. “Truly creative
people care a little about what they have done, and a lot about what they are
doing. Their driving focus is the life force that surges in them now.” — Alan
Cohen
71. “An artist
paints, dances, draws, writes, designs, or acts at the expanding edge of
consciousness. We press into the unknown rather than the known. This makes life
lovely and lively.” — Julia Cameron
72. “A truly creative
person rids him or herself of all self-imposed limitations.” — Gerald G.
Jampolsky 73. “Creative power, is that receptive attitude of expectancy which
makes a mold into which the plastic and as yet undifferentiated substance can
flow and take the desired form.” — Thomas Troward
74. “Creativity can solve almost any problem. The creative
act, the defeat of habit by originality, overcomes everything.” — George Lois
75. “A harmless hilarity and a buoyant cheerfulness are not
infrequent concomitants of genius; and we are never more deceived than when we
mistake gravity for greatness, solemnity for science, and pomposity for
erudition.” — Charles Caleb Colton
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