Bentley Quotes

It was becoming more and more evident that Salem was a town that celebrated individuality, a real live-and-let-live kind of place. Melody felt a gut punch of regret. Her old nose would have fit in here.
"Look!" She pointed at the multicolored car whizzing by. Its black door were from a Mercedes coupe, the white hood from a BMW; the silver trunk was Jaguar, the red convertible top was Lexus, the whitewall tires were Bentley, the sound system was Bose, and the music was classical. A hood ornament from each model dangled from the rear view mirror. Its license plate appropriately read MUTT.
"That car looks like a moving Benton ad."
"Or a pileup on Rodeo drive." Candace snapped a picture with her iPhone and e-mailed to her friends back home. They responded instantly with a shot of what they were doing. It must have involved the mall because Candace picked up her pace and began asking anyone under the age of fifty where the cool people hung out. ~ Lisi Harrison

When I was laying there in his arms nothing else mattered. My parents, my lack of funds, everything just seemed to melt away as I was lost in his lips- Bentley Evans ~ Magan Vernon

Now, as it happens, theology is actually a pitilessly demanding discipline concerning an immense, profoundly sophisticated legacy of hermeneutics, dialectics, and logic; it deals in minute detail with a vast variety of concrete historical data; over the centuries, it has incubated speculative systems of extraordinary rigor and intricacy, many of whose questions and methods continue to inform contemporary philosophy; and it does, when all is said and done, constitute the single intellectual, moral, spiritual, and cultural tradition uniting the classical, medieval, and early modern worlds. ~ David Bentley Hart

When I was seven, I'd asked my dad why he'd never remarried. He'd gotten a faraway look in his eyes and told me that once you found your reason to breathe, no one else could pass muster. ~ Harper Bentley

But, in fact, materialism is among the most problematic of philosophical standpoints, the most impoverished in its explanatory range, and among the most willful and (for want of a better word) magical in its logic, even if it has been in fashion for a couple of centuries or more. ~ David Bentley Hart

In the midst of a hive of customers and clerks, a small boy with blond hair neatly parted on one side stares up into the face of a bronze sculpture. It is Cuchulainn himself---the warrior light. The Hound of Coolan lashed to a boulder with spear drawn. But The Hound is leaning to one side and dying in a public hall of the Dublin Post Office. ~ Laura Treacy Bentley

Retracing the various episodes of one's life, one is disconcerted to discover that one was not as noble as one thought oneself at the time. ~ Phyllis Bentley

God's pleasure
the beauty creation possesses in his regard
underlies the distinct being of creation, and so beauty is the first and truest word concerning all that appears within being; beauty is the showing of what is; God looked upon what he had wrought and saw that it was good. ~ David Bentley Hart

The modern secular state's capacity for barbarism exceeds any of the evils for which Christendom might justly be indicted, not ~ David Bentley Hart

In every art the desire to practice it precedes both the full ability to do so and the possession of something worthwhile to express by its means. ~ Phyllis Bentley

Love's a living thing that has to be fed for it to grow, it has to be pushed around a little to make it stronger, and in the end, because of these things, it will triumph. ~ Harper Bentley

Somebody else is satisfied by five Bentleys. I'm satisfied by a beautiful string arrangement. ~ Beck

Materialism is a conviction based not upon evidence or logic but upon what Carl Sagan (speaking of another kind of faith) called a "deep-seated need to believe." Considered purely as a rational philosophy, it has little to recommend it; but as an emotional sedative, what Czeslaw Milosz liked to call the opiate of unbelief, it offers a refuge from so many elaborate perplexities, so many arduous spiritual exertions, so many trying intellectual and moral problems, so many exhausting expressions of hope or fear, charity or remorse. In this sense, it should be classified as one of those religions of consolation whose purpose is not to engage the mind or will with the mysteries of being but merely to provide a palliative for existential grievances and private disappointments. Popular atheism is not a philosophy but a therapy. ~ David Bentley Hart

To live and to laugh require a reason. But dancing is so close to one's guts that it has no reason and yet it needs none; it's physical, and as a source of good cheer it is end endless. ~ Toni Bentley

You know I told the Lord, "Why can't I just move in healing and forget talking about all that other stuff." He said: " Because, Todd, you've got to get the people to believe in the angel". I said, "Why do I want people to believe in the angel. Isn't it about the people believing in Jesus?" He said, "The people already believe in Jesus but the church doesn't believe in the supernatural." ~ Todd Bentley

Two weeks ago at the Greater Glory Gathering Virginia Beach, the Lord spoke to me about contending for a greater outpouring of his presence, signs, and wonders. During this prophetic experience I saw the Revival Healing Angel that had visited us in Lakeland, Florida. ~ Todd Bentley

...the God in whom the majority of Christians throughout history have professed belief would appear to be evil (at least, judging by the dreadful things we habitually say about him). And I intend nothing more here than an exercise in sober precision, based on the presumption that words should have some determinate content.

(from Radical Orthodoxy 3.1 (2015): 1-17) ~ David Bentley Hart

Real life was messier than fiction, and in it you didn't always have time to do or say the right things. ~ Bentley Little

Her last call, at midnight, had been the worst. "I'll pull your cock out of your asshole," she'd said, and for some reason her voice at that moment had reminded him of his mother's. ~ Bentley Little

The snow crystals ... come to us not only to reveal the wondrous beauty of the minute in Nature, but to teach us that all earthly beauty is transient and must soon fade way. But though the beauty of the snow is evanescent, like the beauties of the autumn, as of the evening sky, it fades but to come again. ~ Wilson A. Bentley

Error processing is turning out to be one of the thorniest problems of modern computer science, and you can't afford to deal with it haphazardly. Some people have estimated that as much as 90 percent of a program's code is written for exceptional, error-processing cases or housekeeping, implying that only 10 percent is written for nominal cases (Shaw in Bentley 1982). With so much code dedicated to handling errors, a strategy for handling them consistently should be spelled out in the architecture. ~ Steve McConnell

The Spirit of the Lord says that God is placing a crown of manifestation on the heads of His faithful, diligent, chosen saints - a crown of great favor and authority with God and men - a new and greater installment of the fruits and blessings of the Spirit. Another measure, and another, and another. ~ Todd Bentley

I think readers appreciate those of us who stay in the trenches and fight the good fight even when times get tough. I know that I, personally, lost respect for writers who, when there was a downturn in the market, started shouting from the rooftops that they wrote thrillers and suspense novels rather than horror. As far as I'm concerned, those wussboys should sever all ties with the horror community if that's the way they feel and get out of the way so real horror writers can do their work. ~ Bentley Little

Life is short. Eternity is long. ~ Bentley Little

Country music has always been the best shrink that 15 bucks can buy. ~ Dierks Bentley

Christianity has from its beginning portrayed itself as a gospel of peace, a way of reconciliation (with God, with other creatures), and a new model of human community, offering the 'peace which passes understanding' to a world enmeshed in sin and violence. (1) ~ David Bentley Hart

The truth of no truths becomes, inevitably, truth: a way of naming being, language, and culture that guards the boundaries of thought against claims it has not validated. ~ David Bentley Hart

The pub door swings open when a man enters. A window of moonlit sky and sea illuminates the darkened pub, and a surge of cold ocean air charges its way inside. It's as if Cuchulainn's raging soul had passed through the doorway. ~ Laura Treacy Bentley

Away and away the aeroplane shot, till it was nothing but a bright spark; an aspiration; a concentration; a symbol (so it seemed to Mr. Bentley, vigorously rolling his strip of turf at Greenwich) of man's soul; of his determination, thought Mr. Bentley, sweeping round the cedar tree, to get outside his body, beyond his house, by means of thought, Einstein, speculation, mathematics, the Mendelian theory––away the aeroplane shot. ~ Virginia Woolf

It is pleasant to believe one's society is more "enlightened" or "rational" than all others, ~ David Bentley Hart

(...) one should never be too naive regarding the quality of the current philosophical culture, or imagine that the most recent thinking is in any meaningful sense more advanced or more authoritative than that of a century or a millennium or two millennia ago. There are certain perennial problems to which all interesting philosophy returns again and again; but there are no such things as logical discoveries that consign any of the older answers to obsolescence. Certain classical answers to those problems endure and recur, sometimes because they remain far more powerful than the answers (or evasions) produced by later schools of thought. And, conversely, weaker answers often enjoy greater favor than their rivals simply because they are in keeping with the prejudices of the age. ~ David Bentley Hart

The dead don't think of the living," Ethan said. "That part of their life is over. ~ Bentley Little

Ingenuity is true intelligence. Not study. ~ John Bentley

In Abigail's experience, women certainly loved their mothers, but there was always some kind of thing that lived between them. Envy? History? Hate? This thing, whatever it was, made girls gravitate toward their fathers. For his part, Hoyt Bentley had relished spoiling his only child. Beatrice, Abigail's mother, had resented the lost attention. Beautiful women did not like competition, even if it was from their own daughters. ~ Karin Slaughter

Like dreams, farces show the disguised fulfillment of repressed wishes. ~ Eric Bentley

Country music is always changing but the Opry is always there to serve as a lighthouse for what country music really is. The past, present and future is all encompassed by not only the physical structure of the building but also the radio show. ~ Dierks Bentley

All that is not eternal is eternally out of date. ~ C.S. Lewis

It's not my job to produce results. But it is my job to lay my hands on the sick, the oppressed, and to preach the Gospel. ~ Todd Bentley

You treat characters like people you meet in life-friends or mentors. ~ Wes Bentley

The reason the very concept of God has become at once so impoverished, so thoroughly mythical, and ultimately so incredible for so many modern persons is not because of all the interesting things we have learned over the past few centuries, but because of all the vital things we have forgotten. ~ David Bentley Hart

There are two roads to every place, and the wise man chooses the pleasant one. ~ Phyllis Bentley

There is something here. Something worth taking a chance on. And I want more than anything to give this a try. Just tell me you'll try. ~ Heather Bentley

No parents will in that future time have the right to burden society with a malformed or mentally incompetent child. ~ H. Bentley Glass

I try to make an album that reflects what I love about country music. It's not just all about happy parties all the time. There are some sad songs. ~ Dierks Bentley

I'm yours, Christina. I am all yours. I never stopped. ~ Heather Bentley

A light wind blew through here that carried with it scents of sadness and loss, not recognizable odors but smells that corresponded to nothing, chimerical fragrances able to evoke melancholic memories. ~ Bentley Little

This can't be constitutional," he said. "This is America, damn it. We still have freedom of speech here. ~ Bentley Little

Many weeks ago, the Holy Spirit told me to watch the dates "March 8 to April 8." He was speaking to me about how beginning with March 8, there was a new season of revival and fruitfulness for the Church. That this would be a new time of fresh visitation. ~ Todd Bentley

Any movement of the mind or will toward truth, goodness, beauty, or any other transcendental end is an adherence of the soul to God. It is a finite participation in the highest truth of existence. As Shankara says, the fullness of being, lacking nothing, is also boundless consciousness, ~ David Bentley Hart

If melodrama is the quintessence of drama, farce is the quintessence of theatre. Melodrama is written. A moving image of the worldis provided by a writer. Farce is acted. The writer's contribution seems not only absorbed but translated ... One cannot imagine melodrama being improvised. The improvised drama was pre-eminently farce. ~ Eric Bentley

Her only comfort was to curse each searing day with a creative lexicon she didn't know she possessed. ~ Bentley Little

Real life ... it was an ambiguous world, where actions sometimes had no meaning, where chaos reigned and no one was allowed to see the big picture, only their small portion of it. ~ Bentley Little

Who the fuck do you think you are, trying to take my date home?" Bentley shouted.
"I am her home, fucknut. ~ Penelope Ward

New Year's has never been a real holiday to me anyway. There's no gifts, no feast, just ... bad TV. ~ Bentley Little

An enigma? That's not a bad persona to have. I should probably shut up and let the mystery continue! It's good for my career. ~ Bentley Little

I do have a Bentley. I do go out. ~ Eduardo Saverin

Murder is an inherently evil act, no matter what the circumstances, no matter how convincing the rationalizations. ~ Bentley Little

Men will always seek gods in whose name they may perform great deeds or commit unspeakable atrocities, even when those gods are not gods but "tribal honor" or "genetic imperatives" or "social ideals" or "human
destiny" or "liberal democracy." Then again, men also kill on account of money, land, love, pride, hatred, envy, or ambition. They kill out of conviction or out of lack of conviction. Harris ~ David Bentley Hart

They lived in a Wikipedia world, where knowledge was no longer required and only the ability to access it mattered. ~ Bentley Little

When one forgets the distinction between method and truth, one becomes foolishly prone to respond to any question that cannot be answered from the vantage of one's particular methodological perch by dismissing it as nonsensical, or by issuing a promissory note guaranteeing a solution to the problem at some juncture in the remote future, or by simply distorting the question into one that looks like the kind one really can answer after all. ~ David Bentley Hart

Her interest in natural history was confined to observation of the crows' feet gathering around her eyes. ~ Nicolas Bentley

Evidence for or against God, if it is there, saturates every moment of the experience of existence, every employment of reason, every act of consciousness, every encounter with the world around us. ~ David Bentley Hart

Horror writers can write about everything in the real world that a mainstream novelist can
plus the supernatural, which is the most fertile field for metaphor imaginable. ~ Bentley Little

Christian thought, from the outset, denies that (in themselves) suffering, death, and evil have any ultimate value or spiritual meaning at all. It claims that they are cosmic contingencies, ontological shadows, intrinsically devoid of substance or purpose, however much God may - under the conditions of a fallen order - make them the occasions for accomplishing his good ends. ~ David Bentley Hart

Either the material order is the whole of being, wherein all transcendence is an illusion, or it is the phenomenal surface - mysterious, beautiful, terrible, harsh, and haunting - of a world of living spirits ... One should ... be able to recognize that it is only the latter view that has ever had the power - over centuries and in every realm of human accomplishment - to summon desire beyond the boring limits marked by mortality, to endow the will with constancy and purpose, and to shape imagination towards ends that should not be possible within the narrow economies of the flesh. ~ David Bentley Hart

Nowhere, not even in the sciences, does there exist a "purely natural" realm of knowledge. To encounter the world is to encounter its being, which is gratuitously imparted to it from beyond the sphere of natural causes, known within the medium of an intentional consciousness, irreducible to immanent processes, that grasps finite reality only by being oriented toward a horizon of transcendental ends (or, better, "divine names"). ~ David Bentley Hart

The claim that there cannot be an infinite regress of contingent ontological causes raises a truly difficult challenge to pure materialism; but to imagine that it can be extended to undermine the claim that there must be an absolute ontological cause is to fall prey to an obvious category error. ~ David Bentley Hart

My dad and grandpa were in the army and as a country singer you're constantly playing at military bases all across the country and meeting soldiers and their families and hearing their stories. ~ Dierks Bentley

I do not mean that there is anything intellectually contemptible in being formally "godless"
that is, in rejecting all religious dogmas and in refusing to believe in the God those dogmas describe.
One might very well conclude, for instance, that the world contains far too much misery for the pious idea of a good, loving, and just God to be taken very seriously, and that any alleged creator of the universe in which children suffer and die hardly deserves our devotion.
It is an affective
not a strictly logical
position to hold, but it is an intelligible one, with a certain sublime moral purity to it; I myself find it deeply compelling; and it is entirely up to each person to judge whether he or she finds any particular religion's answer to the "problem of evil" either adequate or credible. ~ David Bentley Hart

Some places, because of their spiritual history, are noted to be locations where people will often experience an open heaven. In fact, there are places where the heavens are open more than in other places. Most of you are familiar with previous moves of God in places such as Toronto (The Toronto Blessing), the meetings in Pensacola, and Argentina, just to name a few. Just like in Jacob's day, today, there are certain places where heaven is open, geographical locations where you are more likely to have an encounter with God. ~ Todd Bentley

We sent so many risque pictures to each other that I was pretty sure after that year I could pick out Jag's penis in a police lineup any old day. ~ Harper Bentley

In my ministry, I teach my disciples, "Power first, then the Word. Go in and prophesy first, or demonstrate the power of God first in some way." ~ Todd Bentley

I didn't know anything about Opus Die except from pop culture, like Dan Brown novels, which I knew wasn't really knowing anything about Opus Die. ~ Wes Bentley

Christians, indeed, have a special obligation not to forget how great and how inextinguishable the human proclivity for violence is, or how many victims it has claimed, for they worship a God who does not merely take the part of those victims, but who was himself one of them, murdered by the combined authority and moral prudence of the political, religious, and legal powers of human society. ~ David Bentley Hart

God so understood is not something posed over against the universe, in addition to it, nor is he the universe itself. He is not a "being," at least not in the way that a tree, a shoemaker, or a god is a being; he is not one more object in the inventory of things that are, or any sort of discrete object at all. Rather, all things that exist receive their being continuously from him, who is the infinite wellspring of all that is, in whom (to use the language of the Christian scriptures) all things live and move and have their being. ~ David Bentley Hart

What distinguishes modernity from the age of Christendom is not that the former is more devoted to rationality than was the latter but that its rationality serves different primary commitments ~ David Bentley Hart

Physics explains everything, which we know because anything physics cannot explain does not exist, which we know because whatever exists must be explicable by physics, which we know because physics explains everything. There is something here of the mystical. ~ David Bentley Hart

If something is worth being rude about, it is worth understanding as well. ~ David Bentley

The only thing you need to be certain of is that you can be whatever you want yourself to be and this does not need to be defined by who you were. ~ Brenda J. Bentley

Enlightenment, if left unclouded by pathetic fancy, leads to a very special and bracing sort of nihilism - positivist, rationalist ... merciless. ~ David Bentley Hart

Afterwards Isabelle often wondered if the moments themselves were greater or the memory of them. At least the memory did not pass, while the moments passed all too fast. Life whizzed by; she no longer had time to recollect it. Her notebooks to this day retain the story of her desperate attempt to hold together her self, her mind, her reason, her order, her morals. ~ Toni Bentley

Christ is a persuasion, a form evoking desire, and the whole force of the gospel depends upon the assumption that this persuasion is also peace: that the desire awakened by the shape of Christ and his church is one truly reborn as agape, rather than merely the way in which a lesser force succumbs to a greater, as an episode in the endless epic of power. (3) ~ David Bentley Hart

Serenity Point, where the excitement is just a naked eighty year old away. ~ Harper Bentley

As Augustine says, God is at once both nearer than what is inmost to me and beyond what is highest in me. We can say all of this with some confidence merely because we can observe the divine simplicity's plural expressions and effects in contingent things, and from those abstract toward the reality of their unconditioned source. But, in the end, how that simplicity might be "modulated" within itself is strictly unimaginable for us. At that uncrossable intellectual threshold, religions fall back upon inscrutable doctrines, philosophers upon inadequate concepts, and mystics upon silence. "Si comprehendis, non est deus," as Augustine says: If you comprehend it, it is not God. ~ David Bentley Hart

There's a very fine line between winning and losing. Every team in the NFL has talent,but attitude is the biggest thing that counts - that, and playing together as a team. If you can capture that feeling, then you'll have success. ~ Ray Bentley

You won't enjoy it," sighed Crowley. "It's been in the car for more than a fortnight." A heavy bass beat began to thump through the Bentley as they sped past Heathrow. Aziraphale's brow furrowed. "I don't recognize this," he said. "What is it?" "It's Tchaikovsky's 'Another One Bites the Dust'," said Crowley, closing his eyes as they went through Slough. To while away the time as they crossed the sleeping Chilterns, they also listened to William Byrd's "We Are the Champions" and Beethoven's "I Want To Break Free." Neither were as good as Vaughan Williams's "Fat-Bottomed Girls. ~ Terry Pratchett

In Vegas, everyone lets their hair down a little bit and it's a little looser. You expect to see some different stuff and hear some different stuff. Even the red carpet is different here. ~ Dierks Bentley

Everything looks so Christmassy here. I love it," she whispered. "I hope I can get some presents for Mom and Dad." Storm ~ Sue Bentley

You can't write about stuff you don't know about. You have to live it. You have to roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty. Live life to be a good songwriter. ~ Dierks Bentley

There is an old Scholastic distinction between religious treatises written "de Deo uno" and those written "de Deo trino": between, that is, those that are "about the one God" known to persons of various faiths and philosophies and those that are "about the Trinitarian God" of Christian doctrine. ~ David Bentley Hart

Like most authors, I'm a raging egomaniac. I know that about myself. And I know that, if I had internet access, I would waste countless hours looking up things about myself, writing fake posts about how great I am and arguing with people who don't like my work. It saves me a lot of time and frustration to just stay out of the loop. ~ Bentley Little

At the very moment Mrs. Bentley was smiling down upon them with her yellow mask face, around a corner like an elfin band came an ice-cream wagon. It jingled out icy melodies, as crisp and rimmed as crystal wine-glasses tapped by an expert, summoning all. The children sat up, turning their heads, like sunflowers after the sun. (Season of Disbelief) ~ Ray Bradbury

Nick sat on the stairs, completely comatose. He stared straight ahead as if he'd been frozen in place.

"Nick? You all right?"

He didn't respond.

Kyrian moved around him until he stood in front of him. He snapped his fingers in front of Nick's face. "Kid?"

Nick blinked before he met Kyrian's gaze. "I'm not worthy," he said in a breathless tone.

Baffled by his comment, Kyrian stared at him. "What?"

Nick gestured towards his cars. "Dude that's a Ferrari, Lamborghini, Bugatti, Alfa Romeo, Aston Martin, and a Bentley. And I'm not talking the cheap models. Those are the top of the top of the top of the line, fully loaded. I swear, that's real gold trim in the Bugatti. There's more money in metal in here than my brain can even tabulate. Oh my God! I shouldn't even be breathing the same air."

Kyrian laughed at his awed tone. "It's all right, Nick. I need you to clean them."

"Are you out of your ever-loving mind? What if I scratch them?"

"You won't"

"Nah I might. Those aren't cars, Kyrian. Those are works of art. I'm talking serious modes of transportation."

"I know, and I drive them all the time."

"No, no, no, no, no. I can't touch something so fine. I can't"

Kyrian cuffed him on the shoulder. "Yes, you can. They don't bite, and they need to be washed. ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

I don't mean to in any way impugn the makers of Bentley, but that car is nuts. When I do drive, I drive a Toyota Prius. So driving around the streets of Albuquerque in a Bentley made me feel so fake-a-rooney. ~ Jessica Hecht

Materialism, being a fairly coarse superstition, tends to render its adherents susceptible to a great many utterly fantastic notions. All that is needed to make even the most outlandish theory seem plausible to the truly doctrinaire materialist is that it come wrapped in the appurtenances of empirical science. ~ David Bentley Hart

There were shadows galore in the dim light, but there was one shadow that did not correspond to any object in the room. It lurked next to the fireplace, a formless, undulating darkness. ~ Bentley Little

From listening in on these chicks wax rhapsodic over these brothers, if they were anything less than Nick Bateman clones, well, then I'd be highly disappointed. ~ Harper Bentley

Beliefs regarding God concern the source and ground and end of all reality, the unity and existence of every particular thing and of the totality of all things, the ground of the possibility of anything at all. ~ David Bentley Hart

And I know that this is prophetic: that God is going to send this mighty wave - I want everyone here to prophecy with me in Lakeland - that this mighty wave is going all the way out to California, Highway 40, coast to coast aaaaah! and we want to release that mighty Holy Ghost in. Send it all over the world. The wave is moving. The wave is moving the wave is. Come on! Catch the wave. Catch the wave in Canada. Catch it in Canada. Catch it in Australia. Catch it in England. Catch it in Asia. Catch it in Europe. Catch it all over the world. ~ Todd Bentley

The Revelation was my master's project, and after I finished it, I thought I'd send it off to a publisher and within a year or so be a rich and famous writer. Two years later I finally sold it. For a whopping $4,000. A year after that, it finally came out. Which explains why there are all those terrible jobs on my resume! ~ Bentley Little