Quotes about Means

The soul is frail, but God is full of compassion for the distress of the soul, for the failure of the heart. It is said in the Talmud: "There are some who desire [to help others] but have not the means; whilst others have the means [and help] but have not the desire [to help]." Yet both kinds of people are holy in the eyes of God.

Only when Christian faith in God is lost do people feel compelled to make use of all means—even criminal—to force the victory of their cause.

Happiness is love's outcome, never its motive. Where someone is loved he is an end in himself and certainly not a means toward something else. It is therefore of love's essence, wherever it is found, that the loved one seem precious, beautiful, and worthy of love.

A perfection of means, and confusion of aims, seems to be our main problem.

But the nature of the universe is such that the ends never justify the means. On the contrary, the means always determine the end.

To give organisations precedence over persons is to subordinate ends to means.

Sixth, the Spiritual Disciplines are means, not ends. The end—that is, the purpose of practicing the Disciplines—is godliness.

So while we cannot be godly without the practice of the Disciplines, we can practice the Disciplines without being godly if we see them as ends and not means.

The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends for which we live.

Men invent means and methods of coming at God's love, they learn rules and set up devices to remind them of that love, and it seems like a world of trouble to bring oneself into the consciousness of God's presence. Yet it might be so simple. Is it not quicker and easier just to do our common business wholly for the love of him?

The first reason for the preponderant influence of those Evangelicals who define themselves as advocates of Religious Right theological and political ideologies is that they have both the financial means and technological know-how to make widespread use of modern electronic forms of communication.

Prayer is thus a means ordained to receive what God has planned to bestow.