Quotes about Identity

When God spreads his glory, he is not seeking to add to himself, rather, he is just being himself.

It is difficulties that show what men are.

Were I a nightingale, I would sing like a nightingale; were I a swan, like a swan. But as it is, I am a rational being, therefore I must sing hymns of praise to God.

Circumstances don't make the man, they only reveal him to himself.

Reality is all things simultaneously, or, in the Greek phrase, it is a process of "becoming" in which even apparently clearcut opposites lose identity and merge into each other.

The early Christians kept calling themselves a doulos in their letters to churches. They proudly bore the title of bond servant. They embraced the identity of a servant, and their identity impacted how they lived. Are you proud to be a bond servant of Christ? Or do you prefer another title? The reality: You are a servant.

Our exceptionalness is not for us but for others. That is the paradox at the heart of who we are. So what makes us different has nothing to do with jingoism and nationalistic chest beating. If we have ever been great, it is only because we have been good. If we have ever been great, it is only because we have longed to help make others great too. That earnest humility and generosity must be attended to.

She firmly believes feminism to be anti-woman because it pressures women to become more like men.

But the other piece of this puzzle has to do with the confusion that inevitably arises when the Christian faith becomes too closely related to a cultural or national identity. For many Germans, their national identity had become so melted together with whatever Lutheran Christian faith they had that it was impossible to see either clearly. After four hundred years of taking for granted that all Germans were Lutheran Christians, no one really knew what Christianity was anymore.

It didn't take the abbé long to get to the bottom of things, and once their identities were cleared up, Lageard put himself at their disposal, asking how he might improve their situation.

It's hard for most of us to accept that we are nine parts microbe and only one part human, at least as far as a count of our cells goes.

The English in politics are as the old Hebrews in religion, a favoured and peculiar people.