Keener Quotes

The point of reading is not reading but living. Reading helps you live with greater appreciation, keener insight and heightened emotional awareness. ~ Steve Leveen

I am one of the most successful economists, according to what markets tell us, though most of my professional colleagues, who are much keener to accept market outcomes than I am, would dismiss me as a crank or - the worst of all abuses among economists - a 'sociologist.' ~ Ha-Joon Chang

The keeper of the keys was one of the most important roles a household servant could hold (Mark 13:32-34). A higher official held the keys in a royal kingdom (Is 22:22) and in God's house, the temple. ~ Craig S. Keener

My enemies defeated, and yet the sorrow remained, keener, more true, more clean, for I had always owned it. It echoed back to the thorns, the tone of a bell resounding through the years. We're fashioned by our sorrows - not by joy - they are the undercurrent, the refrain. Joy is fleeting. ~ Mark Lawrence

How can you say that love is blind? Keener than a young eagle's is its sight. ~ Franz Grillparzer

As Elijah's mantle fell on Elisha and as other prophetic disciples sought to emulate their mentors, so the ascending Jesus empowered his church with the Spirit to carry on his mission to the ends of the earth (1:9–11). ~ Craig S. Keener

If one hears the call of the open places, why shall he not answer it as fully as he may while eyes will never be keener nor stride more lusty? ~ Bradford Angier

Those who look down on other Christians because they lack a particular gift or experience, or those who despise a particular gift and look down on Christians who have it, are not demonstrating spiritual maturity. ~ Craig S. Keener

Then they began saying, "Get hold of him. Put him in Mercury." Now as you know I have two sculptures by Brancusi and several pretty things and I did not want them to start getting rough, so I said, pacifically, "Dear sweet clodhoppers, if you knew anything of sexual psychology you would know that nothing could give me keener pleasure than to be manhandled by you meaty boys. It would be an ecstasy of the very naughtiest kind. So if any of you wishes to be my partner in joy come and seize me. If, on the other hand, you simply wish to satisfy some obscure and less easily classified libido and see me bathe, come with me quietly, dear louts, to the fountain. ~ Evelyn Waugh

Insecurity is just something that's there all the time. I've never been crippled by it. ~ Catherine Keener

Because the Bible is a theological book, it is a book of wrestlings, not a book of answers. In each age the people have to struggle to hear the word of the Lord for their time, and sometimes their hearing is keener than at other times. ~ Verna J. Dozier

Barley porridge, or a crust of barley bread, and water do not make a very cheerful diet, but nothing gives one keener pleasure than having the ability to derive pleasure even from that
and the feeling of having arrived at something which one cannot be deprived of by any unjust stroke of fortune. ~ Seneca.

Habit in most cases hardens and encrusts by taking away the keener edge of our sensations: but does it not in others quicken and refine, by giving a mechanical facility and by engrafting an acquired sense? ~ William Hazlitt

I have a hard time visualizing anything, which is why I'm not a director, and which is why I try to work with ones I know have a strong idea in mind. ~ Catherine Keener

Why is it - as I've noticed," Stepan Trofimovitch whispered to me once, "why is it that all these desperate socialists and communists are at the same time such incredible skinflints, so avaricious, so keen over property, and, in fact, the more socialistic, the more extreme they are, the keener they are over property... why is it? Can that, too, come from sentimentalism?" I ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

We should know and celebrate God with our whole person. While too many Christians neglect to serve God with the mind, others cultivate only their minds and neglect the emotional aspects of worship. ~ Craig S. Keener

Millions of Bible-reading Christians who today call themselves charismatics do not believe in health and wealth teachings. ~ Craig S. Keener

Two fears alternate in marriage, of loneliness and of bondage. The dread of loneliness being keener than the fear of bondage, we get married. For one person who fears being thus tied there are four who dread being set free. Yet the love of liberty is a noble passion and one to which most married people secretly aspire, -- in moments when they are not neurotically dependent -- but by then it is too late; the ox does not become a bull, not the hen a falcon.

The fear of loneliness can be overcome, for it springs from weakness; human beings are intended to be free, and to be free is to be lonely, but the fear of bondage is the apprehension of a real danger, and so I find it all the more pathetic to watch young men and beautiful girls taking refuge in marriage from an imaginary danger, a sad loss to their friends ad a sore trial to each other. First love is the one most worth having, yet the best marriage is often the second, for we should marry only when the desire for freedom be spent; not till then does a man know whether he is the kind who can settle down. The most tragic breakings-up are of those couples who have married young and who have enjoyed seven years of happiness, after which the banked fires of passion and independence explode -- and without knowing why, for they still love each other, they set about accomplishing their common destruction. ~ Cyril Connolly

Any student of the New Testament eager to understand its Greco-Roman setting will profit greatly from this excellent book. I commend it highly for its up-to-date perspectives and usefulness. Jeffers writes with a breadth of expertise on the Greco-Roman world that few New Testament specialists can match. ~ Craig S. Keener

We look at the dance to impart the sensation of living in an affirmation of life, to energize the spectator into keener awareness of the vigor, the mystery, the humor, the variety, and the wonder of life. This is the function of the American dance. ~ Martha Graham

If we must "feel" God's presence before we believe he is with us, we again reduce God to our ability to grasp him, making him an idol instead of acknowledging him as God. ~ Craig S. Keener

The movies I usually do are maybe three or four weeks because they don't have a lot of money. ~ Catherine Keener

Fantasy is a natural human activity. It certainly does not destroy or even insult Reason; and it does not either blunt the appetite for, nor obscure the perception of, scientific verity. On the contrary. The keener and the clearer is the reason, the better fantasy will it make. If men were ever in a state in which they did not want to know or could not perceive truth (facts or evidence), then Fantasy would languish until they were cured. If they ever get into that state (it would not seem at all impossible), Fantasy will perish, and become Morbid Delusion.
For creative Fantasy is founded upon the hard recognition that things are so in the world as it appears under the sun; on a recognition of fact, but not a slavery to it. So upon logic was founded the nonsense that displays itself in the tales and rhymes of Lewis Carroll. If men really could not distinguish between frogs and men, fairy-stories about frog-kings would not have arisen. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

It looked something like a pen wiper and something like a piece of hearth-rug. A second and keener inspection revealed it as a Pekinese puppy. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

But in Republics there is a stronger vitality, a fiercer hatred, a keener thirst for revenge. The memory of their former freedom will not let them rest; so that the safest course is either to destroy them, or to go and live in them. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli

Reality was the keener for being fugitive, concealed, and doubtful... ~ Guy Davenport

War is new to her, power to destroy her enemies untried. When a woman meets her enemy she has no code of ethics. She's unhampered by a sense of honor. She has a much keener sense of kill-or-be-killed than we men. A woman faces her enemy and destroys him. ~ Fern Michaels

Revelation announces that God is still in control and that he will conclude this stage of history the way he has promised. He ~ Craig S. Keener

I confess to wincing every so often at a poorly chosen word, a mangled sentence, an expression of emotion that seems indulgent or overly practiced. I have the urge to cut the book by fifty pages or so, possessed as I am with a keener appreciation for brevity. ~ Barack Obama

I think people are always looking for a good comedy. ~ Catherine Keener

Since puberty I've always had this strange awareness that all the keener experiences I would have in my life would happen later than it would to my contemporaries. When it came to the career thing, I never worried about it. It's better if you're still peaking when you're 60, which I feel I am. ~ Richard Griffiths

I don't think I'm very ambitious at all. But I seem to play people who have that quality. ~ Catherine Keener

Never was keener anguish lavished upon a thing more charming or more delicate. ~ Victor Hugo

The keener the want the lustier the growth. ~ Wendell Phillips

A tart temper never mellows with age, and a sharp tongue is the only edged tool that grows keener with constant use. ~ Washington Irving

The intellect must not be kept at consistent tension, but diverted by pastimes ... The mind must have relaxation, and will rise stronger and keener after recreation. ~ Seneca The Younger

Spiritual giftedness does not guarantee that we hear from God rightly on every point. ~ Craig S. Keener

I can't stand THE DEPRESSED. It's like a job, it's the only thing they work hard at. Oh good my depression is very well today. Oh good today I have another mysterious symptom and I will have another one tomorrow. The DEPRESSED are full of hate and bile and when they are not having panic attacks they are writing poems. What do they want their poems to DO? Their depression is the most VITAL thing about them. Their poems are threats. ALWAYS threats. There is no sensation that is keener or more active than their pain. They give nothing back except their depression. It's just another utility. Like electricity and water and gas and democracy. They could not survive without it. ~ Deborah Levy

Grief is an artist of powers as various as the instruments upon which he plays his dirges for the dead, evoking from some the sharpest, shrillest notes, from others the low, grave chords that throb recurrent like the slow beating of a distant drum. Some natures it startles; some it stupefies. To one it comes like the stroke of an arrow, stinging all the sensibilities to a keener life; to another as the blow of a bludgeon, which in crushing benumbs. ~ Ambrose Bierce

I'm not a public figure at all. I don't really go out a lot to places where there are people like those who sit at the bottom of your driveway. ~ Catherine Keener

The more people involved in making a movie, the worse it is, generally. ~ Catherine Keener

The movies I'm in not a lot of people see, but it's alright. ~ Catherine Keener

But the divinest poem, or the life of a great man, is the severest satire ... The greater the genius, the keener the edge of the satire. ~ Henry David Thoreau

So pervasively has Enlightenment culture's anti-supernaturalism affected the Western church, especially educated European and North American Christians, that most of us are suspicious of anything supernatural. ~ Craig S. Keener

We will simply say here that, as a means of contrast with the sublime, the grotesque is, in our view, the richest source that nature can offer art. Rubens so understood it, doubtless, when it pleased him to introduce the hideous features of a court dwarf amid his exhibitions of royal magnificence, coronations and splendid ceremonial.
The universal beauty which the ancients solemnly laid upon everything, is not without monotony; the same impression repeated again and again may prove fatiguing at last. Sublime upon sublime scarcely presents a contrast, and we need a little rest from everything, even the beautiful.
On the other hand, the grotesque seems to be a halting-place, a mean term, a starting-point whence one rises toward the beautiful with a fresher and keener perception. The salamander gives relief to the water-sprite; the gnome heightens the charm of the sylph. ~ Victor Hugo

Some folks are born different, Nance. They are born on the outside of things, with skin a little a thinner, eyes a little keener to what goes unnoticed by most. Their hearts swallow more blood than ordinary hearts; the river runs differently for them. ~ Hannah Kent

A sharp bolt of hunger hit Luther hard. His knees almost buckled, his poker face almost grimaced. For two weeks now his sense of smell had been much keener, no doubt a side effect of a strict diet. Maybe he got a whiff of Mabel's finest, he wasn't sure, but a craving came over him. Suddenly, he had to have something to eat. Suddenly, he wanted to snatch the bag from Kendall, rip open a package, and start gnawing on a fruitcake. ~ John Grisham

No kind of sensation is keener and more active than that of pain its impressions are unmistakable. ~ Marquis De Sade

The celebrity-making machine-photographers, paparazzi, press and stuff like that-can be ruthless. ~ Catherine Keener

So, have you been enjoying yourself these days, Kazami?'
I'm having lots of fun.'
It was true. That made the sense of regret even keener, that this time in my life would soon be a thing of the past. I felt as if I could understand a little of what my mother had been through, and the feelings she may have had at different times. I wasn't a child anymore, and this made me feel awfully lonesome, and utterly alone. ~ Banana Yoshimoto

One of the first steps we should take in knowing God's voice is knowing God's heart. ~ Craig S. Keener

Until those charismatic churches who have poor teaching can supply both spiritual empowerment and sounder teaching, many of them will continue to be only a way station for Christians who need a fresh spiritual experience but who end up taking it elsewhere once they have it. ~ Craig S. Keener

I encounter really tough men and women who are just so harsh, you can't bend them. You do come across these kinds of people in every profession-just unyielding. ~ Catherine Keener

Sometimes it just doesn't translate to people. You just move on, and you feel bad because people worked so hard on it and everyone loved it ... Everybody was treated so well and was going for something and trying to do the best work possible. ~ Catherine Keener

The rights of man are poor things beside the eyes of hungry children. Their hurts are keener than the soreness of injustice. ~ Richard Llewellyn

Most times when people pitch you as being perfect for a part ... they don't look at you as an actor who can transform. A lot of people are so literal. ~ Catherine Keener

Is Western Christianity genuinely different enough from our cultures to delay God's judgment on our societies? ~ Craig S. Keener

God alone is God, and he alone merits first place - beyond every other love, every other anxiety, every other fear that consumes us. ~ Craig S. Keener

What the radical Enlightenment excluded as implausible based on the principle of analogy, much of today's world can accept on the same principle of analogy. Hundreds of millions of people worldwide claim to have experienced or witnessed what they believe are miracles. Eyewitness claims to dramatic recoveries appear in a wide variety of cultures, among Christians often successfully emulating models of healings found in the Gospels and Acts. Granted, such healings do not occur on every occasion and are fairly unpredictable in their occurrence; yet they seem to appear with special frequency in cultures and circles that welcome them. ~ Craig S. Keener

If you give a character room to breathe, they come alive. ~ Catherine Keener

This author has nothing but imagination ... there are people who claim that imagination has clearer and keener eyes than a wise, old mind.
Translated from: Und Friede auf Erden, (1904) (And Peace on Earth) ~ Karl May

Haven't I told you scores of times, that you're always beginners, and the greatest satisfaction was not in being at the top, but in getting there, in the enjoyment you get out of scaling the heights? That's something you don't understand, and can't understand until you've gone through it yourself. You're still at the state of unlimited illusions, when a good, strong pair of legs makes the hardest road look short, and you've such a mighty appetite for glory that the tiniest crumb of success tastes delightfully sweet. You're prepared for a feast, you're going to satisfy your ambition at last, you feel it's within reach and you don't care if you give the skin off your back to get it! And then, the heights are scaled, the summits reached, and you've got to stay there. That's when the torture begins; you've drunk your excitement to the dregs and found it all too short and even rather bitter, and you wonder whether it was really worth the struggle. From that point there is no more unknown to explore, no new sensations to experience. Pride has had its brief portion of celebrity; you know that your best has been given and you're surprised it hasn't brought a keener sense of satisfaction. From that moment the horizon starts to empty of all hopes that once attracted you towards it. There's nothing to look forward to but death. But in spite of that you cling on, you don't want to feel you're played out, you persist in trying to produce something, like old men persist in trying to make l ~ Emile Zola

Revelation addresses many issues that have not changed because human nature and God's character have remained constant. It ~ Craig S. Keener

The image of keys (plural) perhaps suggests not so much the porter, who controls admission to the house, as the steward, who regulates its administration (Is 22:22, in conjunction with 22:15). The issue then is not that of admission to the church (which is not what the kingdom of heaven means; see pp. 45-47) but an authority derived from a delegation of God's sovereignty. ~ Craig S. Keener

Using only nonnarrative portions of the Bible to interpret narrative is not only disrespectful to the narrative portions but also suggests a misguided approach to nonnarrative parts of the Bible. ~ Craig S. Keener

The ears of the hunted grow even keener than a hunter's. ~ Phyllis Bottome

God is consistent with his nature and declared purposes in Scripture, but he is not limited to our finite understanding of him or the ways we think he should work. ~ Craig S. Keener

I know many great actors who have small heads. ~ Catherine Keener

It had been well if he had been left with only a wounded heart, but in that heart lay wounded pride. He hid it carefully, and the keener in consequence grew the sensitiveness, almost feminine, which no stranger could have suspected beneath the manner he wore. Under that bronzed countenance, with its firm-set mouth and powerful jaw--below that clear blue eye, and that upright easy carriage, lay a faithful heart haunted by a sense of wrong: he who is not perfect in forgiveness must be haunted thus; he only is free whose love for the human is so strong that he can pardon the individual sin; he alone can pray the prayer,"Forgive us our trespasses," out of a full heart. Forgiveness is the only cure of wrong. And hand in hand with Sense-of-injury walks ever the weak sister-demon Self-pity, so dear, so sweet to many--both of them the children of Philautos, not of Agape. ~ George MacDonald

Luck favors the prepared ~ Catherine Keener

The mind is sharper and keener in seclusion and uninterrupted solitude. No big laboratory is needed in which to think. Originality thrives in seclusion free of outside influences beating upon us to cripple the creative mind. Be alone, that is the secret of invention; be alone, that is when ideas are born. That is why many of the earthly miracles have had their genesis in humble surroundings."
~ Tesla

There is rest in this world nowhere except in Christ, the manifested love of God. Trust in excellence, and the better you become, the keener is the feeling of deficiency. Wrap up all in doubt, and there is a stern voice that will thunder at last out of the wilderness upon your dream. ~ Frederick William Robertson

There can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way in which it treats its children. ~ Nelson Mandela

Marriage has, for its share, usefulness, justice, honour, and constancy; a stale but more durable pleasure. Love is grounded on pleasure alone, and it is indeed more gratifying to the senses, keener and more acute; a pleasure stirred and kept alive by difficulties. There must be a sting and a smart in it. It ceases to be love if it has no shafts and no fire. ~ Michel De Montaigne

I wasn't really terribly familiar with the Beatles when I met George. They were just emerging. They certainly weren't as big as they became later on. I just knew them as a pop group, and that's all. I was keener on George as a man and a person, as opposed to someone in a band. ~ Pattie Boyd

In my public statements I have earnestly urged that there rested upon government many responsibilities which affect the moral andspiritual welfare of our people. The participation of women in elections has produced a keener realization of the importance of these questions and has contributed to higher national ideals. Moreover, it is through them that our national ideals are ingrained in our children. ~ Herbert Hoover

When I was in college, at Wheaton-I inadvertently got cast in a play, and I had a really great time doing it. I didnt know I had any knack for it, but I really enjoyed myself. It was a complete surprise. ~ Catherine Keener

As a young Christian, I was praying fervently one day for guidance on a particular issue when I felt the Spirit gently interrupt. I was shocked to think I heard him suggest that I was too busy seeking his will. How could that be? Then I heard the rest of his suggestion. "Don't seek my will in this matter. Seek me - and then you will know my will." Seeking God's will is important, but in this case my focus was wrong. ~ Craig S. Keener

But two things are wanting in American civilization - a keener and deeper, broader and tenderer sense of justice - a sense of humanity, which shall crystallize into the life of a nation the sentiment that justice, simple justice, is the right, not simply of the strong and powerful, but of the weakest and feeblest of all God's children ... ~ Frances Harper

And rural nature is full of the same quickening spirit-it is, in fact, the exhaustless mine from which the poet and the painter have brought such wondrous treasures-an unfailing fountain of intellectual enjoyment, where all may drink, and be awakened to a deeper feeling of the works of genius, and a keener perception of the beauty of our existence. For those whose days are all consumed in the low pursuits of avarice, or the gaudy frivolities of fashion, unobservant of nature's loveliness, are unconscious of the harmony of creation ~ Thomas Cole

He nothing common did, or mean, / Upon that memorable scene, / But with his keener eye / The axe's edge did try. ~ Andrew Marvell

I never get tired of looking at her [Catherine Keener] and it always surprises me, despite how many hours of film I've shot on that face. She's fantastic. She does comedy and tragedy so equally well. She wears her feeling so on the surface for both. I try to stop myself from casting her but I just keep coming back to her. She's just so fantastic to work with. ~ Nicole Holofcener

I'm unqualified for anything else. I'm barely qualified for this. ~ Catherine Keener

I was appalled at the amount of study necessary in order to qualify in medicine, and gradually my desire was blunted by a keener - and secret - wish to become an actor. ~ Conrad Veidt

What time has been wasted during man's destiny in the struggle to decide what man's next world will be like! The keener the effort to find out, the less he knew about the present one he lived in. The one lovely world he knew, lived in, that gave him all he had, was, according to preacher and prelate, the one to be least in his thoughts. He was recommended, ordered, from the day of his birth to bid goodbye to it. Oh, we have had enough of the abuse of this fair earth! It is no sad truth that this should be our home. Were it but to give us simple shelter, simple clothing, simple food, adding the lily and the rose, the apple and the pear, it would be a fit home for mortal or immortal man. ~ Sean O'Casey

Western theology invariably asks the question: Are miracles possible? This of course addresses the Enlightenment problem of a closed universe. In much of Asia that is a non-question because the miraculous is assumed and fairly regularly experienced. - Hwa Yung ~ Craig S. Keener

Joy gives us wings! In times of joy our strength is more vital, our intellect keener, and our understanding less clouded. We seem better able to cope with the world and to find our sphere of influence. ~ Abdu'l- Baha