Ordained Quotes

I'm a secular priest ordained by training, experience, and, most important, the willingness to accept the mantle of command. That willingness encompasses the realization that failure is easy, and such failure could kill me or, worse, kill someone else. ~ Laurence Gonzales

For the nearer everything is unto unpassionateness, the nearer it is unto power. And as grief doth proceed from weakness, so doth anger. For both, both he that is angry and grieveth, have received a wound, and cowardly have as it were yielded themselves unto their affections... For it was ordained unto holiness and godliness, which specially consist in an humble submission to God and His providence in all things; as well as unto justice: these also being part of those duties, which as naturally sociable, we are bound unto; and with without which we cannot happily converse one with another: yea and the very ground and fountain indeed of all just actions. ~ Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

Most God-ordained dreams die because we are not willing to do something that seems illogical ~ Mark Batterson

Today's television sitcoms ... the father is typically depicted as a clumsy buffoon, an inane and even unnecessary appendage. In creating that caricature, producers and directors have done irreparable damage to the God-ordained image of what may be one of the most significant roles and offices in eternity - that of a father, that of a real man. ~ Robert L. Millet

It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters. ~ Edmund Burke

Because in this view the domestic principles of an Islamic state were divinely ordained, non-Muslim political entities were illegitimate; they could never be accepted by Muslim states as truly equal counterparts. A peaceful world order depended on the ability to forge and expand a unitary Islamic entity, not on an equilibrium of competing parts. ~ Henry Kissinger

The wood-carver can fashion whatever he will. Yet his products are but toys of the moment, to be glanced at in jest, not fashioned according to any precept or law. When times change, the carver too will change his style and make new trifles to hit the fancy of the passing day. But there is another kind of artist, who sets more soberly about his work, striving to give real beauty to the things which men actually use and to give to them the shape which tradition has ordained. This maker of real things must not for a moment be confused with the maker of idle toys. ~ Murasaki Shikibu

Calamity was ordained for man. ~ Bill Vaughan

In the beginning, God ordained that man should labor, not as a curse, but as a blessing ~ American Federation Of Labor

The power of giving life and taking by death belong to God alone. He won't allow what He hasn't already ordained. And since He fixed the number of days your mother would walk on this earth, neither you nor anyone could do anything to prolong it, not even if you helped in a dozen ways. ~ Jody Hedlund

Unless Caesar Augustus is unwittingly complying with the will of God, if it is true that in His divine wisdom He has ordained that Joseph and Mary should go to Bethlehem at this time. ~ Jose Saramago

Everything comes from love, all is ordained for the salvation of man, God does nothing without this goal in mind. ~ St. Catherine Of Siena

The Constitution is not a panacea for every blot upon the public welfare. Nor should this Court, ordained as a judicial body, be thought of as a general haven for reform movements. ~ John Marshall Harlan

There is nothing more innately human than the tendency to transmute what has become customary into what has been divinely ordained. ~ Suzanne La Follette

O good Jesu Thou has bound my heart in the thought of Thy Name, and now I can not but sing it; therefore have mercy upon me, making perfect that Thou hast ordained. ~ Richard Rolle

It is easy to understand that the best deed is well done: and so well as the best deed is done - the highest - so well is the least deed done; and all thing in its property and in the order that our Lord hath ordained it to from without beginning. For there is no doer but He. ~ Julian Of Norwich

Unerring wisdom ordained your lot, and selected for you the safest and best condition. Remember this, had any other condition been better for you than the one in which you are, divine love would have put you there. You are placed by God in the most suitable circumstances. Be content with such things as you have, since the Lord has ordered all things for your good. ~ Charles Spurgeon

Twere better to be born a stone Of ruder shape, and feeling none, Than with a tenderness like mine And sensibilities so fine! Ah, hapless wretch! condemn'd to dwell Forever in my native shell, Ordained to move when others please, Not for my own content or ease; But toss'd and buffeted about, Now in the water and now out. ~ William Cowper

Our Lord has sovereignly ordained that our refining process take place as we go through difficulties, not around them. The Bible is filled with examples of those who overcame as they passed through the desert, the Red Sea, the fiery furnace and ultimately the cross. God doesn't protect Christians from their problems - he helps them walk victoriously through their problems.4 ~ Gary L. Thomas

This is, indeed, an insightful observation. The Archbishop [Joseph L. Berardin] insists that the natural resemblance between Christ and his priests must not stop merely with the fact that they share a common masculinity. Our question is, 'Why must it BEGIN there?' If the faithful cannot see Christ in a male who exemplifies no godlike virtues - humility, gentleness, and self-effacing service - can they not see him in a female who does? Indeed, if the priest acts 'in persona Christi,' not 'in masculinitate Christi,' then 'NATURAL resemblance' between Christ and the priest, it would seem, does not entail PHYSICAL, that is SEXUAL resemblance, but a resemblance which is natural to the SPIRITUAL order with which the worshiping congregation has to do. And in this order there is neither male nor female, even as there is neither Jew nor Greek. We would, therefore, conclude that since the Word was made flesh, as the apostle John has declared him (John 1:14), we rightly heed those who, in the flesh, symbolize his presence as they speak and act in his name. But we see no reason to add to what the apostle said by insisting that the Word was made MALE flesh, for both male and female are equally bearers of the divine image. And since God created humankind in his image, male AND female, we can only conclude that women as well as men should be ordained to the priesthood, because femaleness, like maleness, is a fitting symbol (sacramental sign) of Deity. ~ Paul King Jewett

Prayer is God's ordained way to bring His miracle power to bear in human need. ~ Wesley L. Duewel

The misnamed "feminine" woman, so admired by her creator, man the woman who is acquiescent in her inferiority and who has swallowed man's image of her as his ordained helpmate and no more is in reality the "masculine" woman. The truly feminine woman "cannot help burning with that inner rage that comes from having to identify with her exploiter's negative image of her," and having to conform to her persecutor's idea of femininity and its man-decreed limitations. ~ Elizabeth Gould Davis

In this life struggle, here I am among you fully cognizant that a true believer has no fear of what God has ordained for him. Those who are visited by fear live only for their present, under the illusion that the world began with them and will end with their departure. ~ King Hussein I

Our whole lives as Christ-followers are to be given over to the identification and celebration of the limits God has ordained for us. ~ Jen Wilkin

I attribute my talent and my success to God, but I believe that the only way you can manifest what He has ordained for you is by being close to Him and by making it happen. But we have to stay close to Him in order to be an image of Him. ~ Nia Long

...Conway would give me no rest until I fought him. I felt it was ordained ages before our birth that we should meet on this planet and fight. ~ Thomas Bailey Aldrich

The genealogy of blessing always traces back to God-ordained risk. ~ Mark Batterson

When Heaven has an earthquake you fall to your knees and feel through the rubble to find the pieces of God. When my eternal, temple-blessed marriage shattered and everything that had been meaningful lay in jumbled shards around me, I had to slowly and carefully pick up every single piece and examine it, turning it over and over, to see if it was worthy to keep and to use in building a new house of meaning. As I gathered the broken pieces of God, I used only my own authority, only my own relationship with the divine, and the good, small voice that speaks inside me, to appraise them. I threw away many, and I kept many, assembling the bright pieces into One Great Thought. I asked only, "Do I see God's fingerprints on this? Does this little piece feel godly? Does it speak of love?" That made it easy. I was forever finished with the insane attempt to love a God who hurts me. When I picked up the little pieces of God-ordained polygamy, I smiled because there was no question. I thanked the God of Love, and threw that piece away. ~ Carol Lynn Pearson

The sinner is the gospel's reason for existence. You, my friend, to whom this word now comes, if you are undeserving, ill-deserving, hell-deserving, you are the sort of man for whom the gospel is ordained, and arranged, and proclaimed. God justifieth the ungodly. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

To do well those thing which God ordained to be the common lot of all man-kind, is the truest greatness. To be a successful father or a successful mother is greater than to be a successful general or a successful statesman ...
We should never be discouraged in those daily tasks which God has ordained to the common lot of man ...
Let us not be trying to substitute an artificial life for the true one. ~ Joseph Fielding Smith

The average mind is slow in grasping a truth, but when the most thoroughly organized, centralized institution, maintained at an excessive national expense, has proven a complete social failure, the dullest must begin to question its right to exist. The time is past when we can be content with our social fabric merely because it is "ordained by divine right," or by the majesty of the law. ~ Emma Goldman

I think in my world of religion, you're called to preach or you don't preach. Called by God to preach. I never been ordained by God to preach the gospel. I have a calling, it's called to perform and sing. ~ Johnny Cash

But brokenhearted was brokenhearted. Never embraced. Never treasured. Never easy. Heath figured every human being had a certain amount of God-ordained grace to endure their own unique brand of loss and pain. ~ Rachel Hauck

Yet through virtuous living man is further ordained to a higher end, which consists in the enjoyment of God, as we have said above. Consequently, since society must have the same end as the individual man, it is not the ultimate end of an assembled multitude to live virtuously, but through virtuous living to attain to the possession of God. ~ Thomas Aquinas

Lincoln was raised in the thick of Old School Calvinism. In Kentucky and Indiana, his parents belonged to a fire-breathing sect called Separate Baptism, in which congregants heard - in the tradition of Jonathan Edward's famous sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" - that they were bound for eternal hellfire, and nothing they could do or say or think would change their fate. Preachers did allow that a chosen few were ordained for grace and would be saved, but these fortunate ones had been selected by God before time began. As one Baptist preacher in Lincoln's Kentucky explained it, "Long before the morning stars sang together . . . the Almighty looked down upon the ages yet unborn, as it were, in review before him, and selected one here and another there to enjoy eternal life and left the rest to the blackness of darkness forever." Such Baptist ministers were so intense that it has been said that they "out-Calvined Calvin. ~ Joshua Wolf Shenk

I couldn't help but think of Al's pre-ordained betrothal to Billo and of how hard the match-makers had worked to find the girl beautiful enough to match this extraordinary man - this extraordinary man of mine. ~ Ruth Ahmed

That which goeth up must needs come down; and that which is down must needs go up. But Brahma has ordained that the that that goeth up is seldom the same as the that that hath gone down. ~ Gautama Buddha

The same wakefulness the individual Calvinist was to use to keep watch over his own sins Winthrop and Cotton called for also in the group at large. This humility, this fear, was what kept their delusions of grandeur in check. That's what subsequent generations lost. From New England's Puritans we inherited the idea that America is blessed and ordained by God above all nations, but lost the fear of wrath and retribution. ~ Sarah Vowell

Grief is subversive, undermining the quiet agreement to behave and be in control of our emotions. It is an act of protest that declares our refusal to live numb and small. There is something feral about grief, something essentially outside the ordained and sanctioned behaviors of our culture. Because of that, grief is necessary to the vitality of the soul. Contrary to our fears, grief is suffused with life-force.... It is not a state of deadness or emotional flatness. Grief is alive, wild, untamed and cannot be domesticated. It resists the demands to remain passive and still. We move in jangled, unsettled, and riotous ways when grief takes hold of us. It is truly an emotion that rises from the soul. ~ Francis Weller

I was baptized as an infant. I was confirmed as an adolescent; I was active in my church's youth group and in my university student group. I was married before the church's altar; trained at the church's seminaries, ordained deacon and priest at age 24. ~ John Shelby Spong

God hates violence. He has ordained that all men fairly possess their property, not seize it. ~ Euripides

the Church is a kingdom not of this world.' If it is not of this world, then it cannot exist on earth at all. In the Gospel, the words 'not of this world' are not used in that sense. To play with such words is indefensible. Our Lord Jesus Christ came to set up the Church upon earth. The Kingdom of Heaven, of course, is not of this world, but in Heaven; but it is only entered through the Church which has been founded and established upon earth. And so a frivolous play upon words in such a connection is unpardonable and improper. The Church is, in truth, a kingdom and ordained to rule, and in the end must undoubtedly become the kingdom ruling over all the earth. For that we have the divine promise." He ~ Anton Chekhov

As long as we practice with a vow to help others, we are the Bodhisattva of Great Compassion, and we become the leading figure in the Heart Sutra, whether we are a layperson or are ordained, whether whether celibate or married, living in the monastery or living in secular society. ~ Dosung Yoo

There is nothing which Nature so clearly reveals, and upon which science so strongly insists, as the universal reign of law, absolute, universal, invariable law ... Not one jot or tittle of the laws of Nature are unfulfilled. I do not believe it is possible to state this fact too strongly ... Everything happens according to law, and, since law is the expression of Divine will, everything happens according to Divine will, i.e. is in some sense ordained, decreed. ~ Joseph LeConte

Theologies of glory ascend to heaven with humanly devised methods for bringing Christ down or for descending into the depths to make him living and real to us, but a theology of the cross receives him in the humble and weak form of those creaturely means that he has ordained.3 ~ Michael S. Horton

These ordained atheists cultivate their egoism, the source of every atheist's activity, but they defile it and it becomes repulsive whereas the egoism of good atheists is a beautiful principle. They preach raging sermons not because they fear for the eternal damnation of their fold, but because they fear for the eternal damnation of their gold; before every sermon they feel their pockets to see if there's a hole, and if there is, they mend it with a sermon instead of a patch. ~ N.G. Pomyalovsky

I will frankly confess that I was convinced that God had ordained me to do certain things for the service of my nation, things that perhaps could not be done by anyone else. In whatever I have done and whatever I do in the future, I consider myself as an agent of the will of God. ~ Mohammed Reza Pahlavi

Thus was born the Service Archive, a 'tool for correlating current events with historical precedents', which would be of incalculable strategic use assuming it was ever actually operational. Currently, though, its status was not dissimilar to that of countless other Civil Service projects, in that its existence had been ordained, the process for bringing it into being had been set in motion, and it would thus continue gestating until it was officially put a stop to, despite having long been forgotten about by everyone concerned in its conception.
Pg 202 ~ Mick Herron

What if you are just one bend in the road away from achieving your God-ordained purpose? If you give up on your faith now, could you live with knowing that your chance of a lifetime was only one act of faith away? ~ DeVon Franklin

Each particular being, in its individuality, its concrete nature and entity, with all its own characteristics and its private qualities and its own inviolable identity, gives glory to God by being precisely what He wants it to be here and now, in the circumstances ordained for it by His Love and His infinite Art. ~ Thomas Merton

God ordained the days of your life, just like it says in Psalm 139. The story you so desperately wanted to hear was written by Him. ~ Mindy Starns Clark

Christ will remain a priest and king; though He was never consecrated by any papist bishop or greased by any of those shavelings; but he was ordained and consecrated by God Himself, and by Him anointed. ~ Martin Luther

To narrow natural rights to such neat slogans as "liberty, equality, fraternity" or "life, liberty, property," . . . was to ignore the complexity of public affairs and to leave out of consideration most moral relationships. . . .

Burke appealed back beyond Locke to an idea of community far warmer and richer than Locke's or Hobbes's aggregation of individuals. The true compact of society, Burke told his countrymen, is eternal: it joins the dead, the living, and the unborn. We all participate in this spiritual and social partnership, because it is ordained of God. In defense of social harmony, Burke appealed to what Locke had ignored: the love of neighbor and the sense of duty. By the time of the French Revolution, Locke's argument in the Second Treatise already had become insufficient to sustain a social order. . . .

The Constitution is not a theoretical document at all, and the influence of Locke upon it is negligible, although Locke's phrases, at least, crept into the Declaration of Independence, despite Jefferson's awkwardness about confessing the source of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

If we turn to the books read and quoted by American leaders near the end of the eighteenth century, we discover that Locke was but one philosopher and political advocate among the many writers whose influence they acknowledged. . . .

Even Jefferson, though he had read Locke, cites in his Commonplace Book such juridical authorities ~ Russell Kirk

The source of all glory is acceptance of whatsoever the Lord hath bestowed, and contentment with that which God hath ordained. ~ Bahaullah

This is the Book (the Qur'aan), whereof there is no doubt, a guidance to those who are Al-Muttaqoon [the pious and righteous persons who fear Allaah much (abstain from all kinds of sins and evil deeds which He has forbidden) and love Allaah much (perform all kinds of good deeds which He has ordained)]. ~ Anonymous

I am now officially ordained. Yep, that's right - Reverend Tori Spelling! ~ Tori Spelling

Here was the shattering of the second wall: I had read the Bible many times through, and I saw for myself that it had a holy Author; I saw for myself that it was a canonized collection of sixty-six books with a unified biblical revelation. I heard for myself that when the words "this is mine" came out of my mouth in congregational singing, I was attesting to this one, simple truth: that the line of communication that God ordained for his people required this wrestling with Scripture, and that I truly wanted both to hear God's voice breathed in my life, and I wanted God to hear my pleas. The fog burned away. The whole Bible, each jot and tittle, was my open highway to a holy God. ~ Rosaria Champagne Butterfield

It is as disastrous to true government in the state, and home, to teach all womankind to submit to the authority of man, as divinely ordained, as it is to teach all mankind to bow down to the authority of kings and Popes, as divinely ordained. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Biblical literacy and theological expertise are not, therefore, the end of the Word but a God-ordained means to an end, and the end is a radically transformed life because the worship at the center of that life has been reclaimed. ~ Paul David Tripp

We can stretch our personalities, but only up to a point. Our inborn temperaments influence us, regardless of the lives we lead. A sizable part of who we are is ordained by our genes, by our brains, by our nervous systems. And yet the elasticity that Schwartz found in some of the high-reactive teens also suggests the converse: we have free will and can use it to shape our personalities.
These seem like contradictory principles, but they are not. Free will can take us far, suggests Dr. Schwartz's research, but it cannot carry us infinitely beyond our genetic limits. Bill Gates is never going to be Bill Clinton, no matter how he polishes his social skills, and Bill Clinton can never be Bill Gates, no matter how much time he spends alone with a computer.
We might call this the "rubber band theory" of personality. We are like rubber bands at rest. We are elastic and can stretch ourselves, but only so much. ~ Susan Cain

Out of the wastes of nothingness, with the clay of My command I made thee to appear, and have ordained for thy training every atom of existence and the essence of all created things. ~ Bahaullah

I may not be the best mom. I may not even get back to being the average mother I once claimed to be. But I'm here. I'm getting back up. I'm not leaving. And I'm the mom God ordained for these fours souls, and therefore I am their best mom. ~ Gillian Marchenko

We have it all arranged in our minds, and the less often we see a particular person the more satisfying it is to check how obediently he conforms to our notion of him every time we hear of him. Any deviation in the fates we have ordained would strike us as not only anomalous but unethical. We would prefer not to have known our neighbor, the retired hot-dog stand operator, if it turns out he has just produced the greatest book of poetry his age has seen. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

A wedding is a celebration of marriage, of an institution ordained by God at the creation of man, to be entered into with solemnity as well as with joy. ~ Elisabeth Elliot

Our second remark is, that the office is of divine appointment, not merely in the sense in which the civil powers are ordained of God, but in the sense that ministers derive their authority from Christ, and not from the people. ~ Charles Hodge

Leave your home, O youth, and seek out alien shores. A wider range of life has been ordained for you. ~ Petronius

It is simultaneously the blessing and the curse of the reflective Christian that believers are called to live out their faith in the church. No institution has accomplished so much for good in the world; none has fallen so short of its calling! The church is God-ordained, God-inspired, but accomplishes its work through human beings subject to every possible failing. ~ Daniel Taylor

So other people hurt me? That's their problem. Their character and actions are not mine. What is done to me is ordained by nature, what I do by my own. ~ Marcus Aurelius

The friends we have lost do not repose under the ground ... they are buried deep in our hearts. It has been thus ordained that they may always accompany us ... ~ Alexandre Dumas

Anesthesia was discovered. Do you know what it means to relieve man of his pain and suffering? Anesthesia is the most humane of all of man's accomplishments, and what a merciful accomplishment it was. For this great discovery we are indebted to Dr. W. T. G. Morton.

Do you know that the religionists opposed the use of anesthesia on the ground that God sent pain as a punishment for sin, and it was considered the greatest of sacrileges to use it - just think of it, a sin to relieve man of his misery! What a monstrous perversion! This one instance alone should convince you of the difference in believing in God or not.

No believer in God would have spent his energies to discover anesthesia. He would have been in mortal fear of the wrath of his God for interfering with his 'divine plan,' of making man suffer for having eaten of the fruit of the 'Tree of Knowledge.'

The very crux of the matter is in this one instance. Man seeks to relieve his fellow man from the suffering of disease and the pangs of mental agony. The believers in God are content that man's suffering is ordained, and therefore he accepts life and its trials and tribulations as a penance for living.

The fear of the wrath of God has been a stumbling block to progress. ~ Joseph Lewis

Nowhere is it ordained that history moves in a straight line. ~ Barack Obama

I do not believe the homosexual community deserves minority status. One's misbehavior does not qualify him or her for minority status. Blacks, Hispanics, women, etc., are God-ordained minorities who do indeed deserve minority status. ~ Jerry Falwell

My creed on the subject of slavery is short. Slavery per se is not sin. It is a social condition ordained from the beginning of the world for the wisest purposes, benevolent and disciplinary, by Divine Wisdom. ~ Samuel Morse

Modernity has abandoned the household gods, not because we have rejected the idolatry as all Christians must, but because we have rejected the very idea of the household. We no longer worship Vesta, but have only turned away from her because our homes no longer have any hearths. Now we worship Motor Oil. If our rejection of the old idols were Christian repentance, God would bless it, but what is actually happening is that we are sinking below the level of the ancient pagans. But when we turn to Christ in truth, we find that He has ordained every day of marriage as a proclamation of his covenant with the church. A man who embraces what is expected of him will find a good wife and a welcoming hearth. He who loves his wife loves himself. ~ Douglas Wilson

The man who sanctifies his wife understands that this is his divinely ordained responsibility ... Is my wife more like Christ because she is married to me? Or is she like Christ in spite of me? Has she shrunk from His likeness because of me? Do I sanctify her or hold her back? Is she a better woman because she is married to me? ~ R. Kent Hughes

War and the 'war of the sexes' are neither divinely nor biologically ordained. ~ Riane Eisler

God made sin possible just as he made all lying wonders possible, but he never made it a fact, never set anything in his plan to harmonize with it. Therefore it enters the world as a forbidden fact against everything that God has ordained. ~ Horace Bushnell

When I was ordained, it was for a special ministry, that of serving children and families through television. I consider that what I do through "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" is my ministry. A ministry doesn't have to be only through a church, or even through an ordination. And I think we all can minister to others in this world by being compassionate and caring. I hope you will feel good enough about yourselves that you will want to minister to others, and that you will find your own unique ways to do that. ~ Fred Rogers

The suggestion that the Alf Yeom is the work of jinn is surely a curious one. The Quran speaks of the hidden people in the most candid way, yet more and more the educated faithful will not admit to believing in them, however readily they might accept even the harshest and most obscure points of Islamic law. That God has ordained that a thief must pay for his crime with his hand, that a woman must inherit half of what a man inherits-these things are treated not only as facts, but as obvious facts, whereas the existence of conscious beings we cannot see-and all the fantastic and wondrous things that their existence suggests and makes possible-produces profound discomfort among precisely that cohort of Muslims most lauded for their role in that religious "renaissance" presently expected by western observers: young degree-holding traditionalists. Yet how hollow rings a tradition in which the law, which is subject to interpretation, is held as sacrosanct, yet the word of God is not to be trusted when it comes to His description of what He has created.
I do not know what I believe. ~ G. Willow Wilson

Prayer is thus a means ordained to receive what God has planned to bestow.[22] ~ Joel R. Beeke

We are glad you have been ordained as the first priest of your people. Now you can help us with their problem.' Tagoona asked, 'What is a problem?' and the white man said, 'Tagoona, if I held you by your heels from a third-story window, you would have a problem.' Tagoona considered this long and carefully. Then he said, 'I do not think so. If you saved me, all would be well. If you dropped me, nothing would matter. It is you who would have the problem. ~ Margaret Craven

Those things which we call extraordinary,remarkable, or unusual may make history, but they do not make real life.
After all, to do well those things which God ordained to be the common lot of all mankind, is the truest greatness. To be a successful father or a successful mother is greater than to be a successful general or a successful statesman.' (Juvenile Instructor, 15 Dec. 1905,
p. 752.) ...
True greatness is never a result of a chance occurrence or a one-time effort or achievement. It requires the development of character. It requires a multitude of correct decisions for the everyday choices between good and evil. ~ Joseph Fielding Smith

In this hour I would ask of the Lord God only this: that, as in the past, so in the years to come He would give His blessing to our work and our action, to our judgement and our resolution, that He will safeguard us from all false pride and from all cowardly servility, that he may grant to us to find the straight path which His Providence has ordained for the German people, and that he may ever give us the courage to do the right, never to falter, never to yield before any violence, before any danger. ~ Adolf Hitler

Because the night you asked me,
the small scar of the quarter moon
had healed - the moon was whole again;
because life seemed so short;
because life stretched out before me
like the halls of a nightmare;
because I knew exactly what I wanted;
because I knew exactly nothing;
because I shed my childhood with my clothes -
they both had years of wear in them;
because your eyes were darker than my father's;
because my father said I could do better;
because I wanted badly to say no;
because Stanly Kowalski shouted "Stella...;"
because you were a door I could slam shut;
because endings are written before beginnings;
because I knew that after twenty years
you'd bring the plants inside for winter
and make a jungle we'd sleep in naked;
because I had free will;
because everything is ordained;
I said yes. ~ Linda Pastan

I am Not In This Place By Chance, I am Called , Chosen And Ordained; This Is Why I Fit In Perfectly ~ Jaachynma N.E. Agu

Upon my word and honour I seem to be fated, and destined, and ordained, to live in the midst of things that I am never to hear the last of. ~ Charles Dickens

the whole Scripture of God is divided into two parts: precepts and promises. The precepts certainly teach us what is good, but what they teach is not forthwith done. For they show us what we ought to do, but do not give us the power to do it. They were ordained, however, for the purpose of showing man to himself, that through them he may learn his own impotence for good and may despair of his own strength. For this reason they are called the Old Testament, and are so. ~ Martin Luther

Our own theory is that sin was ordained only in view of redemption, and that accordingly redemption shows forth as the gain bound up with sin; in comparison with which there can be no question whatever of mischief due to sin, for the merely gradual and imperfect unfolding of the power of the God-consciousness is one of the necessary conditions of the human stage of existence. ~ Friedrich Schleiermacher

They say that to do injustice is, by nature, good; to suffer injustice, evil, but that the evil is greater than the good. And so when men have both done and suffered injustice and have had experience of both, not being able to avoid the one and obtain the other, they think that they had better agree among themselves to have neither; hence there arise laws and mutual covenants, and that which is ordained by law is termed by them lawful and just. This they affirm to be the origin and nature of justice, it is a mean or compromise, between the best of all, which is to do injustice and not be punished, and the worst of all, which is to suffer injustice without the power of retaliation, and justice, being at a middle point between the two, is tolerated not as a good, but as the lesser evil, and honored by reason of the inability of me to do injustice. For no man who is worthy to be called a man would ever submit to such an agreement if he were able to resist; he would be mad if he did. ~ Plato

Please read prayerfully what I'm about to write. When God puts a passion in your heart, whether it be relieving starvation in Africa or educating children in the inner city or making movies with redemptive messages, that God-ordained passion becomes your responsibility. And you have a choice to make. Are you going to be irresponsibly responsible or responsibly irresponsible? ~ Mark Batterson

Ordained Baptist minister; I make no apology for my faith. ~ Mike Huckabee

Detachment also involves accepting reality - the facts. It requires faith - in ourselves, in God, in other people, and in the natural order and destiny of things in this world. We believe in the rightness and appropriateness of each moment. We release our burdens and cares, and give ourselves the freedom to enjoy life in spite of our unsolved problems. We trust that all is well in spite of the conflicts. We trust that Someone greater than ourselves knows, has ordained, and cares about what is happening. We understand that this Someone can do much more to solve the problem than we can. So we try to stay out of His way and let Him do it. In time, we know that all is well because we see how the strangest (and sometimes most painful) things work out for the best and for the benefit of everyone. ~ Melody Beattie

I felt sorry for the inhabitants and went into the forest to admonish the wolf in God's name not to eat any more sheep. I called him, he came - and do you know what his answer was? 'Francis, Francis,' he said, 'do not destroy God's prescribed order. The sheep feeds on grass, the wolf on sheep - that's the way God ordained it. Do not ask why; simply obey God's will and leave me free to enter the sheepfolds whenever I feel the pinch of hunger. I say my prayers just like Your Holiness. I say: "Our Father who reignest in the forests and hast commanded me to eat meat, Thy will be done. Give me this day my daily sheep so that my stomach may be filled, and I shall glorify Thy name. Great art Thou, Lord, who hast created mutton so delicious. And when the day cometh that I shall die, Grant, Lord, that I may be resurrected, and that with me may be resurrected all the sheep I have eaten - so that I may eat them again!"' That, Brother Leo, is what the wolf answered me. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

If women can organize missionary societies, temperance societies, and every kind of charitable organization ... why not permit them to be ordained to preach the Gospel and administer the sacraments of the Church? ~ Frances E. Willard

It is therefore no wonder that modern thought, to the extent that it reduces man from a spiritual to a purely biological entity, elevates the state of inexorable competition, conflict, and self-serving aggression from a tragic lapse of our ordained destiny into the primary principle of the natural order. ~ Sanford Schwartz

God doesn't ordain stupidity. ~ Shannon L. Alder

Valentine reposes within the walls of Paris, and to leave Paris is like losing her a second time."
"Maximilian," said the count, "the friends that we have lost do not repose in the bosom of the earth, but are buried deep in our hearts, and it has been thus ordained that we may always be accompanied by them. ~ Alexandre Dumas

No human law can abolish the natural and original right of marriage, nor in any way limit the chief and principal purpose of marriage ordained by God's authority from the beginning: Increase and multiply. ~ Pope Leo XIII

Since all social orders and hierarchies are imagined, they are all fragile, and the larger the society, the more fragile it is. The crucial historical role of religion has been to give superhuman legitimacy to these fragile structures. Religions assert that our laws are not the result of human caprice, but are ordained by an absolute and supreme authority. This helps place at least some fundamental laws beyond challenge, thereby ensuring social stability. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

It is there within and among us, for we are ordained of God to be people of hope. It is there by virtue of our being in the image of the promissory God. It is sealed there in the sacrament of baptism. It is dramatized in the Eucharist - "until he come." It is the structure of every creed that ends by trusting in God's promises. Hope is the decision to which God invites Israel, a decision against despair, against permanent consignment to chaos (Isa 45:18), oppression, barrenness, and exile. ~ Walter Brueggemann