"Mark and Bev Tindall" <> wrote in message news:<>... "Christine" wrote:

was it Sartre who said that people lead lives of quiet desparation?

No ... It was Henry David Thoreau in "Walden'

His words should be carefully considered by modern Christians ..... it is one of my favourite books.

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From Henry David Thoreau "Walden and Civil Disobedience" (W W Norton & Co; New York:1966)

p. 5 The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things. ... It is never too late to give up our prejudices. No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof. What everybody echoes or in silence passes by as true today may turn out to be falsehood tomorrow, mere smoke of opinion, which some had trusted for a cloud that would sprinkle fertilizing rain on their fields. What old people say you cannot do try and find that you can. old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new. ... Here is life, an experiment to a great extent untried by me ....

p. 6 Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant?

p. 7 One generation abandons the enterprises of another like stranded vessels.

p. 9 To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically.

p. 25 We have adopted Christianity merely as an improved method of agriculture. We have built for this world a family mansion, and for the next a family tomb. The best works of art are the expression of man's struggle to free himself from his condition, but the effect of our art is merely to make this low state comfortable and that higher state to be forgotten. There is actually no place in this village for a work of fine art, if any had come down to us, to stand, for our lives, our houses and streets, furnish no proper pedestal for it. There is not a nail to hang a picture on, nor a shelf to receive the bust of a hero or saint.

p. 27 The civilized man is a more experienced and wiser savage.

p. 31 No doubt another may also think for me; but it is not therefore desirable that he should do so to the exclusion of my thinking for myself.

p. 35 Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things.

p. 36 .... spending the best part of one's life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it ....

p. 51 Be sure that you give the poor the aid they most need, though it be your example which leaves them far behind. If you give money, spend yourself with it, and do not merely abandon them to it.

p. 61 I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what I had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. ... I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life .... Our life is frittered away by detail.

p. 101 ... he was thinking for himself and expressing his own opinion, a phenomenon so rare that I would any day walk ten miles to observe it ...

p. 102 ...Ministers who spoke of God as if they enjoyed a monopoly of the subject, who could not bear all kinds of opinions ...

p. 138 Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth. Rise free from care before the dawn, and seek adventures. ... Let not to get a living be thy trade, but thy sport.

p. 147 What avails it that you are a Christian, if you are not purer than the heathen ...? ... We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones.

p. 212 Let them wander and scrutinize the outlandish Australians.

p. 214 I learned this, at least, that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavours to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favour in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of higher order beings.

p. 215 While England endeavours to cure the potato-rot, will not any endeavour to cure the brain-rot, which prevails so much more widely and fatally? ... If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.

p. 217 However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault finder will find faults in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is.

p. 219 Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.