The Week In Words

Welcome to The Week In Words, where we share quotes from the last week’s reading. If something you read this past week  inspired you, caused you to laugh, cry, think, dream, or just resonated with you in some way, please share it with us, attributing it to its source, which can be a book, newspaper, blog, Facebook — anything that you read. More information is here.

This first quote is from Hope and Help For Your Nerves by Dr. Claire Weekes, p.118:

You are never defeated while you are ready to go on. The road to recovery is beset with many temporary failures. It is like traveling across the foothills toward the mountains. You travel downhill so often that it is difficult to realize that, in spite of this, you are still climbing.

There are so many applications of this beyond just the scope of this book. Any recovery from anything, any improvement, any change of bad habits for a good one, etc., all have that up and down aspect, but that word picture of going through the foothills is such a great one: we’re still climbing even though we’re on and up-and-down path, and we’re never defeated unless we give up.

I haven’t been using Joy and Strength as a devotional book this year, but I used it for a number of years and marked some of my favorite quotations from it. The June 6 reading is:

I will run the way of Thy commandments, when Thou shalt enlarge my heart.
PSALMS 119:32

My hands also will I lift up unto Thy commandments, which I have loved.
PSALMS 119:48

LOVE is higher than duty. But the reason is that love in reality contains duty in itself. Love without a sense of duty is a mere delusion, from which we cannot too soon set ourselves free. Love is duty and something more.
FREDERICK TEMPLE

THINK not anything little, wherein we may fulfil His commandments. It is in the midst of common and ordinary duties that our life is placed; common occupations make up our lives. By faith and love we obey; but by obedience are the faith and love, which God gives us, strengthened. Then shall we indeed love our Lord, when we seek to please Him in all things, speak or are silent, sleep or wake, labor or rest, do or suffer, with a single eye to His service. God give us grace so to love Him, that we may in all things see Him; in all, obey; and, obeying, see Him more clearly and love Him less unworthily; and so, in that blissful harmony of obedience and of love, be prepared to see Him “face to face.”
EDWARD B. PUSEY

I like the thoughts about how love and duty are intertwined.  We tend to shrink away from words like “duty” and “obedience,” yet they show what and how we love.

And going along with the above quotes is this from page 46 of  Jane Austen’s Little Instruction Book, a “mini-book” compilation of quotes from her books.

There is one thing…which a man can always do, if he chooses, and that is, his duty; not by maneuvering and finessing, but by vigour and resolution. Mr. Knightly, Emma.

I would add that without Him we can do nothing (John 15:5), but we “can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth” us (Philippians 4:13).

If you’re joining us for The Week In Words with your own post, please leave a link to your family-friendly quotes for today below so other participants can read them.