christian living on Excellence

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then is not an act but a habit.”.

We should not judge people by their peak of excellence; but by the distance they have traveled from the point where they started.

There is only one road to true human greatness: the road through suffering.

Qui cessat esse melior cessat esse bonus (He who ceases to be better ceases to be good)

In his highly insightful work, Inside Job , Stephen W. Smith provides an important analogy about the importance of spiritually preparing ourselves for the adversity and challenges that come with su...

One of the seductions that continues to bedevil Christian obedience is the construction of utopias, whether in fact or fantasy, ideal places where we can live the good and blessed and righteous life w...

The climax of God's happiness is the delight He takes in the echoes of His excellence in the praises of His people.

Saints are not canonized for the excellence of their intellects but for the excellence of their lives.

George Garrett, a novelist and amateur boxer wrote about a transformation that often takes place for fighters who stick with the sport. Throughout their journey to boxing excellence, in which they mus...

In The Seven Storey Mountain , Thomas Merton describes his life of sin and his eventual turning to God in his early years. He despised and ridiculed the word virtue, which had come to mean “prudery p...

Another example struck me forcibly during the 2014 season of Promenade Concerts in the Albert Hall in London. (The “Proms,” as they are known, make up a major annual festival, offering world-class mus...

Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue reconnected thinking about ethics back to virtue by connecting virtue to the story a life is a part of. In order to know how we ought to live, we first need to answ...

In the late 1800’s, no business matched the financial and political dominance of the railroad. Trains dominated the transportation industry of the United States, moving both people and goods throughou...

Great achievement is usually born of great sacrifice, and is never the result of selfishness.

Without exception … all try their hardest to reach the same goal, that is, joy.

Well done is better than well said.

Competing is exciting and winning is exhilarating, but the true prize will always be the self-knowledge and understanding that you have gained along the way.

To be really great in little things, to be truly noble and heroic in the insipid details of everyday life, is a virtue so rare as to be worthy of canonization.

I suspect that this is the most important thing I’ve said in all my interviews and talks as well as in this book. It’s a truth that applies to more than writing. It applies to anything that is importa...

Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its value only to its scarcity.

Like supernatural effervescence, praise will sometimes bubble up from the joy of simply knowing Christ. Praise like that is...delight. Pure pleasure! But praise can also be supernatural determination....

How goodness heightens beauty!

Expect great things from God. Attempt great things for God.

Goodness is beauty in the best estate.

To seek the highest good is to live well.

Relational congruence is the ability to be fundamentally the same person with the same values in every relationship, in every circumstance and especially amidst crisis. It is the internal capacity to ...

Success has nothing to do with how gifted or how resourced you are; it has everything to do with glorifying God in any and every situation by making the most of it. Success is spelled stewardship, and...

In the battle of life, it is not the critic who counts; nor the one who points out how the strong person stumbled, or where the doer of a deed could have done better. The credit belongs to the person ...

A clear vision, along with the courage to follow through, dramatically increases your chances of coming to the end of your life, looking back with a deep abiding satisfaction, and thinking, I did it. ...

Words can sometimes, in moments of grace, attain the quality of deeds.