These were the hills of my blood, the land my father and all his fathers before him had worked and loved in, toiling in the coal mines, working the soil of their land, and falling in love with women who would give them proud Kentucky sons and daughters. For the first time since I'd been a little boy, I felt fierce with the love of home, of these mountains, of the people who lived here, trying, failing, trying again, hanging on by their fingernails to their God-given pride and their enduring love of Appalachia.
Scilurus on his death-bed, being about to leave fourscore sons surviving, offered a bundle of darts to each of them, and bade them break them. When all refused, drawing out one by one, he easily broke them,--thus teaching them that if they held together, they would continue strong; but if they fell out and were divided, they would become weak.
Strong are her sons, though rocky are her shores.
Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest. I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all. For man also knoweth not his time: as the fishes that are taken in an evil net, and as the birds that are caught in the snare; so are the sons of men snared in an evil time, when it falleth suddenly upon them.
The sons of torture victims make good terrorists.
Think of "living!" Thy life, wert thou the "pitifullest of all the sons of earth," is no idle dream, but a solemn reality. It is thy own; it is all thou hast to front eternity with.
Affliction's sons are brothers in distress; A brother to relieve,--how exquisite the bliss!
But whither am I strayed? I need not raise Trophies to thee from other men's dispraise; Nor is thy fame on lesser ruins built; Nor needs thy juster title the foul guilt Of Eastern kings, who, to secure their reign, Must have their brothers, sons, and kindred slain.
Adam the goodliest man of men since born His sons, the fairest of her daughters Eve.
Howbeit, this one thing, son, I assure you on my faith, that if the parties will at hands call for justice, then, all were it my father stood on the one side, and the devil on the other, his cause being good, the devil should have right. [To a son-in-law, reported by Nicholas Harpsfield in his The Life and Death of Sir Thomas More, Knight, Sometime Lord High Chancellor of England, Written in the Time of Queen Mary by Nicholas Harpsfield , in Roper & Harpsfield, Live of Saint Thomas More . London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1969, p. 83.]
Good actions ennoble us, and we are the sons of our own deeds.--_Cervantes._
And ne'er shall the sons of Columbia be slaves, While the earth bears a plant or the sea rolls its waves.
The morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy.
Salvation is a definite process. If a man refuse to submit himself to that process, clearly he cannot have the benefits of it. "As many as received Him to them gave He power to become the sons of God." He does not avail himself of this power. It may be mere carelessness or apathy. Nevertheless the neglect is fatal. He cannot escape because he will not. Natural Law, p. 109.
Angels are those beings who have been on an earth like this, and have passed through the same ordeals that we are now passing through. They have kept their first estate far enough to preserve themselves in the Priesthood. They did not so violate the law of the Priesthood and condemn themselves to the sin against the Holy Ghost as to be finally lost. They are not crowned with the celestial ones. They are persons who have lived upon an earth, but did not magnify the Priesthood in that high degree that many others have done who have become Gods, even the sons of God. Human beings that pertain to this world, who do not magnify or are not capable of magnifying their high calling in the Priesthood and receive crowns of glory, immortality, and eternal lives, will also, when they again receive their bodies, become angels and will receive a glory. They are single, without families or kingdoms to reign over. All the difference between men and angels is, men are passing through the day of trial that angels have already passed through.
Hail the heaven-born Prince of Peace! Hail the Sun of Righteousness! Light and life to all he brings, Risen with healing in his wings. Mild he lays his glory by, Born that man no more may die, Born to raise the sons of earth, Born to give us second birth. Hark! the herald angels sing, "Glory to the new born King!"
The road to success is not to be run upon by seven-leagued boots. Step by step, little by little, bit by bit,--that is the way to wealth, that is the way to wisdom, that is the way to glory. Pounds are the sons, not of pounds, but of pence.--_Charles Buxton._
Fly not yet; 't is just the hour When pleasure, like the midnight flower That scorns the eye of vulgar light, Begins to bloom for sons of night And maids who love the moon.
Had I a dozen sons, each in my love alike and none less dear than thine and my good Marcius, I had rather eleven die nobly for their country than one voluptuously surfeit out of action.
Eternal life consists in knowing that men have their Father and their true being in the only true God, and that as sons of this same Father, they are of like nature with God and Christ.
Canst thou guide Arcturus with his sons?
Why should the belief in the Son give everlasting life? Because Jesus has through His own sonship in God declared to us ours also. This knowledge gives us eternal life through the conviction that we too have something divine and eternal within us, namely, the word of God, the Son whom He hath sent. Jesus Himself, however, is the only begotten Son, the light of the world. He first fulfilled and illumined the divine idea which lies darkly in all men, and made it possible for all men to become actually what they have always been potentially--sons of God.
Ye sons of France, awake to glory! Hark! hark! what myriads bid you rise! Your children, wives, and grandsires hoary, Behold their tears and hear their cries!
The science of government it is my duty to study, more than all other sciences; the arts of legislation and administration and negotiation ought to take the place of, indeed exclude, in a manner, all other arts. I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy.
And live like Nature's bastards, not her sons.
All this time and at all times wait the words of true poems, The words of true poems do not merely please, The true poets are not followers of beauty but the august masters of beauty; The greatness of sons is the exuding of the greatness of mothers and fathers, The words of true poems are the tuft and final applause of science.
I can't see why anybody unless he was a child, or an angel, or a lucky simpleton like the pilgrim would even want to say a prayer to a Jesus who was the least bit different from the way he looks and sounds in the New Testament. My God! He's only the most intelligent man in the Bible, that's all! Who isn't he head and shoulders over? Who? Both Testaments are full of pundits, prophets, disciples, favorite sons, Solomons, Isaiahs, Davids, Pauls but, my God, who besides Jesus really knew which end was up? Nobody. Not Moses. Don't tell me Moses. He was a nice man, and he kept in beautiful touch with his God, and all that but that's exactly the point. He had to keep in touch. Jesus realized there is no separation from God.
After looking at mothers-in-law and seeing sons-in-law — I always felt that the jokes were on the wrong ones. No sir, you can look through everything I ever did write or say, and you never did hear me tell a joke about any mother-in-law — or any creed, color or religion, either.
If those who lead you say, "See, the Kingdom is in the sky", then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, "It is in the sea", then the fish will precede you. Rather, the Kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living Father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty and it is you who are that poverty.
The Jews and the Gentiles figured by the two sons.
I must study politics and war, that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain. [Letter to his wife Abigail; edited by Charles Francis Adams. May 12, 1780.]
In 1736 I lost one of my sons, a fine boy of four years old, by the small-pox, taken in the common way. I long regretted bitterly, and still regret that I had not given it to him by inoculation.
The morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy.
There are three means of believing--by inspiration, by reason, and by custom. Christianity, which is the only rational institution, does yet admit none for its sons who do not believe by inspiration.
The sons of Edward sleep in Abraham's bosom.
Words are men's daughters, but God's sons are things.
Prayer is the aspiration of our poor, struggling, heavy-laden soul towards its Eternal Father, and, with or without words, ought not to become impossible, nor need it ever. Loyal sons and subjects can approach the King's throne who have no "request" to make there except that they may continue loyal.
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood... I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today...
Words are men's daughters, but God's sons are things.
Marry, Sirs, if Merlin who was the Devil's son was a true King's man as ever ate bread, is it not a shame that you, being but the sons of bitches, must be rebels and regicides?
"And thus he shall return into his kingdom, but his sons shall be stirred up and shall prepare an exceeding great multitude"--Seleucus Ceraunus, Antiochus the Great.
I am not so lost in lexicography as to forget that _words are the daughters of earth, and that things are the sons of heaven_.
If honour calls, where'er she points the way, / The sons of honour follow and obey.
For emulation hath a thousand sons, / That one by one pursue; if you give way, / Or hedge aside from the direct forthright, / Like to an enter'd tide, they all rush by, And leave you hindmost.
When night Darkens the streets, then wander forth the sons Of Belial, flown with insolence and wine.
The oldest, and indeed only true, order of nobility known under the stars, is that of just men and sons of God, in opposition to unjust men and sons of Belial, which latter indeed are second oldest, and yet a very unvenerable order.
I told you stupid sons of bitches that this was going to happen!
Embosom'd in the deep where Holland lies. Methinks her patient sons before me stand, Where the broad ocean leans against the land.
A mass enormous! which in modern days No two of earth's degenerate sons could raise.
Few sons attain the praise Of their great sires, and most their sires disgrace.
Whoe'er amidst the sons Of reason, valour, liberty, and virtue Displays distinguish'd merit, is a noble Of Nature's own creating.
Angels had been present on many august occasions, and they had joined in many a solemn chorus to the praise of their Almighty Creator. They were present at the creation: "The morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy." They had seen many a planet fashioned between the palms of Jehovah, and wheeled by His eternal hands through the infinitude of space. They had sung solemn songs over many a world which the Great One had created. We doubt not, they had often chanted, "Blessing and honor, and glory, and majesty, and power, and dominion, and might, be unto Him that sitteth on the throne," manifesting Himself in the work of creation. I doubt not, too, that their songs had gathered force through ages. As when first created, their first breath was song, so when they saw God create new worlds, then their song received another note; they rose a little higher in the gamut of adoration. But this time, when they saw God stoop from His throne and become a babe hanging upon a woman's breast, they lifted their notes higher still; and reaching to the uttermost stretch of angelic music, they gained the highest notes of the divine scale of praise and they sang, "Glory to God _in the highest_," for higher in goodness they felt God could not go. Thus their highest praise they gave to Him in the highest act of His Godhead.--_Spurgeon._
The pessimist is commonly spoken of as the man in revolt. He is not. Firstly, because it requires some cheerfulness to continue in revolt, and secondly, because pessimism appeals to the weaker side of everybody, and the pessimist, therefore, drives as roaring a trade as the publican. The person who is really in revolt is the optimist, who generally lives and dies in a desperate and suicidal effort to persuade all the other people how good they are. It has been proved a hundred times over that if you really wish to enrage people and make them angry, even unto death, the right way to do it is to tell them that they are all the sons of God.
_Perpetuity._--Let it be considered that from the beginning of the world the expectation or the worship of the Messiah has subsisted without a break; that there have been men who said that God had revealed to them the future birth of a Redeemer who should save his people; that afterwards came Abraham saying he had had a revelation that the Messiah was to spring from him by a son who should be born; that Jacob declared that of his twelve sons the Messiah would spring from Judah; that Moses and the prophets then came to declare the time and the manner of his advent; that they said their law was only provisional till that of the Messiah, that it should last till then but the other should endure eternally; that thus either their law or that of the Messiah, of which it was the promise, would be always upon earth; that in fact it has always endured; that at last Jesus Christ has come with all the circumstances foretold. How wonderful is this!
Words are men's daughters, but God's sons are things.
Snatch from the ashes of your sires / The embers of their former fires; / And he who in the strife expires / Will add to theirs a name of fear / That tyranny shall quake to hear, / And leave his sons a hope, a fame, / They too would rather die than shame.
Gude breeding and siller mak' our sons gentlemen.
Each generation gathers together the imperishable children of the past, and increases them by new sons of light, alike radiant with immortality.--_Bancroft._
Nature is despotic, and will not be fooled or abated of any jot of her authority by the pertest of her sons.
O sons of earth, attempt ye still to rise, / By mountains piled on mountains, to the skies? / Heav'n still with laughter the vain toil surveys, / And buries madmen in the heaps they raise.
Certain it is that there is no kind of affection so purely angelic as that of a father to a daughter. In love to our wives there is desire; to our sons, ambition; but to our daughters there is something which there are no words to express.
Ardon was greeted by several of the members of the tribe of Dan. They were an unruly, quarrelsome group, and Ardon remembered the prophecy that Jacob, the grandson of Abraham, had given on his deathbed. He had identified the nature of each of his sons, and of Dan he had said, “Dan will be a serpent by the roadside, a viper along the path, that bites the horse’s heels so that its rider tumbles backward.” A grim smile touched Ardon’s broad lips. “Old Jacob got it right that time. Dan has some good soldiers, but they are not to be trusted.
As he said in Machiavel, _omnes eodem patre nati_, Adam's sons, conceived all and born in sin, etc. "We are by nature all as one, all alike, if you see us naked; let us wear theirs and they our clothes, and what is the difference?"
Filii non plus possessionum quam morborum h?redes sumus=--We sons are heirs no less to diseases than to estates.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal." I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave-owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state, sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.
"Take that, you hostile sons-of-bitches!"
Happy is the woman who has first daughters, then sons.
Brightest and best of the sons of the morning, Dawn on our darkness, and lend us thine aid.
Tell me, doc. Tell me. Why do they have wars?” I shook my head. Was there ever a good reason? To make the world safe for democracy? To stop the death camps? To free the slaves? Maybe. Those were better reasons than cheap oil. But up close, no matter what the reason, it was husbands and sons and brothers who never came home.
"Neither let the strangers, that have joined themselves to the Lord, say, God will separate me from his people. For thus saith the Lord: Whoso will keep my sabbaths, and choose the things that please me, and take hold of my covenant; Even unto them will I give in mine house a place and a name better than of sons and of daughters: I will give them an everlasting name, that shall not be cut off....
"Now are we the sons of God." That is the pier upon one side of the gulf. "It doth not yet appear what we shall be, but when He shall appear we shall be like Him." That is the pier on the other. How are the two to be connected? There is only one way by which the present sonship will blossom and fruit into the future perfect likeness, and that is, if we throw across the gulf, by God's help day by day, the bridge of growing likeness to Himself, and purity therefrom.--_Alex. McLaren._
Those parents who do not educate their sons are their enemies; for as is a crane among swans, so are ignorant sons in a public assembly.
We must never forget that it was not the principal object of Christ's teaching to make others believe that He only was divine, immortal, or the son of God. He wished them to believe this for _their own_ sake, for _their own_ regeneration. 'As many as received Him to them gave He power to become the sons of God.' It might be thought, at first, that this recognition of a Divine element in man must necessarily lower the conception of the Divine. And so it does in one sense. It brings God nearer to us, it bridges over the abyss by which the Divine and the human were completely separated in the Jewish, and likewise in many of the pagan religions. It rends the veil of the temple. This lowering, therefore, is no real lowering of the Divine. It is an expanding of the concept of the Divine, and at the same time a raising of the concept of humanity, or rather a restoration of what is called human to its true character,--a regeneration, or a second birth, as it is called by Christ Himself. 'Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.'
Our duties toward God and man, our love for God and for man, are as nothing without the firm foundation which is formed only by our faith in God, as the Thinker and Ruler of the world, the Father of the Son, who was revealed through Him as the Father of all sons, of all men.
Then it is said, Is not Christ God? Yes, He is, but in His own sense, not in the Jewish nor in the Greek sense, nor in the sense which so many Christians attach to that article of their faith. Christ's teaching is that we are of God, that there is in us something divine, that we are nothing if we are not that. He also teaches that through our own fault we are now widely separated from God, as a son may be entirely separated and alienated from his father. But God is a perfect and loving Father--He knows that we can be weak, and yet be good, and when His lost sons return to Him He receives them and forgives them as only a father can forgive. Let us bestow all praise and glory on Christ as the best son of God. Let us feel how unworthy we are to be called His brothers, and the children of God, but let us not lose Christ, and lose our Father whom He came to show us, by exalting Jesus beyond the place which He claimed Himself. Christ never calls Himself the Father, He speaks of His Father with love, but always with humility and reverence. All attempts to find in human language a better expression than that of son have failed. Theologians and philosophers have tried in vain to define more accurately the relation of Christ to the Father, of man to God. They have called Christ another person of the Godhead. Is that better than Christ's own simple human language, I go to my Father?
"These are my jewels."= _Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi, when she presented her five sons to a lady who had paraded her ornaments before her._
No sooner is there a good thing in the world than a _division is necessary_. Light and darkness have no communion; God has divided them, let us not confound them. Sons of light must not have fellowship with deeds, doctrines, or deceits of darkness. The children of the day must be sober, honest, and bold in their Lord's work, leaving the works of darkness to those who shall dwell in it forever.
"... Then shall a man no more teach his neighbour, saying, There is the Lord, _for God will make himself felt by all, your sons shall prophesy_. _I will put my spirit and my fear in your heart._"
I have a dream. I have a dream that one day, on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. -- Martin Luther King, Jr.
This is the story of the bee Whose sex is very hard to see You cannot tell the he from the she But she can tell, and so can he The little bee is never still She has no time to take the pill And that is why, in times like these There are so many sons of bees.
Every man who has reached even his intellectual teens begins to suspect that life is no farce; that it is not genteel comedy even; that it flowers and fructifies on the contrary out of the profoundest tragic depths of the essential death in which its subject's roots are plunged. The natural inheritance of everyone who is capable of spiritual life is an unsubdued forest where the wolf howls and the obscene bird of night chatters. -- Henry James Sr., writing to his sons Henry and William
Our sires' age was worse that our grandsires'. We their sons are more worthless than they: so in our turn we shall give the world a progeny yet more corrupt. -- Quintus Horatius Flaccus (Horace)
We've tried each spinning space mote And reckoned its true worth: Take us back again to the homes of men On the cool, green hills of Earth. The arching sky is calling Spacemen back to their trade. All hands! Standby! Free falling! And the lights below us fade. Out ride the sons of Terra, Far drives the thundering jet, Up leaps the race of Earthmen, Out, far, and onward yet-- We pray for one last landing On the globe that gave us birth; Let us rest our eyes on the fleecy skies And the cool, green hills of Earth. -- Robert A. Heinlein, 1941