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The secret of joy is hidden in the word itself: first J, then O, then Y: Jesus first, Others next, Yourself last.

Peter Kreeft

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Peter Kreeft
Age: 87
Born: 1937
Born: March 16
Philosopher
Professor
Theologian
Writer
Paterson
New Jersey
Peter John Kreeft
Word
Lasts
Last
Jesus
Next
Others
Hidden
Firsts
Joy
First
Secret

More quotes by Peter Kreeft

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We sin because we see sin as a bargain. We unconsciously calculate that it’s worth it, that it pays.
Peter Kreeft
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To those of you who would classify yourselves as conservatives I would say, meditate long and hard on Jesus' saying Whatever you do to the least of these you have done to me.
Peter Kreeft
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Envy, though not the greatest sin, is the only one that gives the sinner no pleasure at all, not even fake and temporary satisfaction.
Peter Kreeft
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Suffering is not blessed because it is suffering but because it is [Christ's]. Suffering is not the context that explains the cross the cross is the context that explains suffering.
Peter Kreeft
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True love, unlike popular sentimental substitutes, is willing to suffer. Love is not luv. Love is the cross. Our problem at first, the sheer problem of suffering, was a cross without Christ. We must never fall into the opposite and equal trap of a Christ without a cross.
Peter Kreeft
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Original sin is the proclivity to say my will be done instead of thy will be done.
Peter Kreeft
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Actually, we have misdefined hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is not the failure to practice what you preach but the failure to believe it. Hypocrisy is propaganda.
Peter Kreeft
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Now I see that God prefers to work through intermediaries - Mary and the saints. . . He wants us to pray through Mary and not only directly.
Peter Kreeft
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The big, blazing truth about man is that he has a heaven-sized hole in his heart, and nothing else can fill it. We pass our lives trying to fill the Grand Canyon with marbles. As Augustine said: Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.
Peter Kreeft
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We are all insane. That is what original sin means. Sin is insanity. It is preferring finite joy to infinite joy, creatures to the Creator, an unhappy, Godless self to a happy, God-filled self Only God can save us from this disease. That is what the name Jesus means: 'God saves'.
Peter Kreeft
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The only reason you are not yet a saint is because you do not wholly want to be one.
Peter Kreeft
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The block of marble is not the sculptor, and doesn't see that he's about to become a masterpiece... We're the block of marble and God is the sculptor, and the chisel is.... everything.
Peter Kreeft
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Love is faith's flower, hope is its stem. Grace comes into us by faith, like water through the roots of a tree. It rises in us by hope, like sap rising through the trunk of a tree. And it matures in us by [love] as fruit matures on a tree's branches, fruit for the neighbor's eating.
Peter Kreeft
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Story is the oldest, commonest, most beloved, and most effective form of communication because our life is essentially a story. That's why the Bible is the most realistic of religious books. We can easily ignore or argue away abstractions, but we bump up against concretely real people, things, and events in story, as in life.
Peter Kreeft
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No emotion, merely as an emotion, is a sin, because we cannot directly control the arising of an emotion in our soul.
Peter Kreeft
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Trying to fill the God-sized hole in our hearts with things other than God is like trying to fill the Grand Canyon with marbles.
Peter Kreeft
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Christ is the Word of God in person. The Bible is the Word of God in writing. Both are the Word of God in the words of men. Both have a human nature and a divine nature.
Peter Kreeft
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Since we are [Christ's] body, we too are the bread that is broken for others. Our failures help heal other lives our very tears help wipe away tears our being hated helps those we love.
Peter Kreeft
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Of course the more you love the sinner the more you hate and make war on the sin, just as the more you love the person, the more you hate and kill the cancer cells that are killing the person. Compassion for cancer cells does not come from compassion for persons it comes precisely from lack of compassion for persons.
Peter Kreeft
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The first rule for prayer, the most important first step, is not about how to do it, but to just do it not to perfect and complete it but to begin it. Once the car is moving, it's easy to steer it in the right direction, but it's much harder to start it up when it's stalled. And prayer is stalled in our world.
Peter Kreeft