Lions For Lambs Quotes

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And so the lion fell in love with the lamb…" he murmured. I looked away, hiding my eyes as I thrilled to the word. "What a stupid lamb," I sighed. "What a sick, masochistic lion.
Stephenie Meyer (Twilight (The Twilight Saga, #1))
Rise and rise again until lambs become lions
John Mathew Gutch
And so the lion fell in love with the lamb.
Stephenie Meyer (Twilight (The Twilight Saga, #1))
Achilles glared at him and answered, "Fool, prate not to me about covenants. There can be no covenants between men and lions, wolves and lambs can never be of one mind, but hate each other out and out an through. Therefore there can be no understanding between you and me, nor may there be any covenants between us, till one or other shall fall
Homer (The Iliad)
Friendship gives us the strength to turn from lambs into lions.
Stephen Richards
Don't ask me who's influenced me. A lion is made up of all the lambs he's digested, and I've been reading all my life.
George Seferis
Only in art will the lion lie down with the lamb, and the rose grow without thorn.
Martin Amis
Edward: So the lion fell in love with the lamb. Bella: What a stupid lamb. Edward:What a sick masochistic lion.
Stephenie Meyer (The Twilight Saga Collection (Twilight, #1-4))
People think they have to be lions or lambs, but I’ve always just wanted to be something in between.” I bit my lip and lifted a shoulder. “Something that still has sharp teeth, just in case.
Mariana Zapata (Luna and the Lie)
Don't ask me who's influenced me. A lion is made up of the lambs he's digested, and I've been reading all my life.
Charles de Gaulle
I have the heart of a lion, and the circulatory system of a lamb.
Jarod Kintz (This Book Has No Title)
She was no lamb. She was a lion.
Renée Ahdieh (The Beautiful (The Beautiful, #1))
A human body in no way resembles those that were born for ravenousness; it hath no hawk’s bill, no sharp talon, no roughness of teeth, no such strength of stomach or heat of digestion, as can be sufficient to convert or alter such heavy and fleshy fare. But if you will contend that you were born to an inclination to such food as you have now a mind to eat, do you then yourself kill what you would eat. But do it yourself, without the help of a chopping-knife, mallet or axe, as wolves, bears, and lions do, who kill and eat at once. Rend an ox with thy teeth, worry a hog with thy mouth, tear a lamb or a hare in pieces, and fall on and eat it alive as they do. But if thou had rather stay until what thou eat is to become dead, and if thou art loath to force a soul out of its body, why then dost thou against nature eat an animate thing? There is nobody that is willing to eat even a lifeless and a dead thing even as it is; so they boil it, and roast it, and alter it by fire and medicines, as it were, changing and quenching the slaughtered gore with thousands of sweet sauces, that the palate being thereby deceived may admit of such uncouth fare.
Plutarch
And the lion fell in love with the lamb.
Stephenie Meyer
You’re a lamb in the lion’s den, child. You’re surviving. Isn’t that enough?
Laura Sebastian (Ash Princess (Ash Princess Trilogy, #1))
It's time to make love, douse the glim; The fireflies twinkle and dim; The stars lean together Like birds of a feather, And the loin lies down with the limb.
Conrad Aiken
It’s not in the nature of the lamb to mourn the lion.
Peter Watts (Blindsight (Firefall, #1))
And so the lion fell in love with the lamb…,” I whispered.
Stephenie Meyer (Midnight Sun (Twilight, #5))
I looked at the stained-glass image of the lamb in the window above me, but that only reminded me that lambs are famous for being led to slaughter, or sometimes hanging out with lions in ill-advised relationships.
Maureen Johnson (The Name of the Star (Shades of London, #1))
Some would say the Creator is a lamb. Some would say he's a lion. Some would say both. The fact is, he is neither a lamb nor a lion. These are fiction. Metaphors. Yet the Creator is both a lamb and a lion. These are both truths.
Ted Dekker (Black: The Birth of Evil (The Circle, #1))
I've always liked, someday the lamb will lay by the lion.... but it won't get much sleep.
Woody Allen
Sometimes you have to be a lion to be the lamb you really are.
African Proverb
The novelist does not long to see the lion eat grass. He realizes that one and the same God created the wolf and the lamb, then smiled, "seeing that his work was good".
André Gide
There is within you a lamb and a lion. Spiritual maturity is the ability to let lamb and lion lie down together.
Henri J.M. Nouwen (The Inner Voice of Love: A Journey Through Anguish to Freedom)
I am a caged lion living like a free-range lamb.
Jarod Kintz (This Book Has No Title)
And so the lion fell in love with the lamb." - Edward Cullen, Twilight
Stephenie Meyer
Why be the lamb when you can be the lion?
R.L. LaFevers
Rise and rise again and again like The Phoenix from the ashes; until the lambs have become lions.
Maitreya
For me, reading was adventure,but most of all, reading was escape-
Andrew E. Kaufman (The Lion, the Lamb, the Hunted)
But even lambs have to be lions sometimes.
Amy Christine Parker (Gated (Gated, #1))
Paradise is not a garden of bliss and changeless perfection where the lions lie down like lambs (what would they eat?) and the angels and cherubim and seraphim rotate in endless idiotic circles, like clockwork, about an equally inane and ludicrous -- however roseate -- unmoved mover. That particular painted fantasy of a realm beyond time and space which Aristotle and the church fathers tried to palm off on us has met, in modern times, only neglect and indifference passing on into oblivion it so richly deserved, while the paradise of which I write and wish to praise is with us yet, the the here and now, the actual, tangible, dogmatically real earth on which we stand.
Edward Abbey (Desert Solitaire)
Always afraid, never a coward
Margaret Killjoy (The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion (Danielle Cain, #1))
And so the lion fell in love with the lamb,
Stephenie Meyer (Twilight / Life and Death (The Twilight Saga))
She was no stripper with a heart of gold, that was for sure. A heart of steel, more like.
Shannon Celebi (The Lion Lies Down with the Lamb (Small Town Ghosts))
I’m a lion in my environment. But take me out of my cage, and I’m a lamb.
Jarod Kintz (A Zebra is the Piano of the Animal Kingdom)
Oh, no, I love going into a pen of lions wearing a sign that says Edible Lamb.” -- Manfred
Charlaine Harris (Grave Secret (Harper Connelly, #4))
Grant Gilmore: “In Heaven there will be no law, and the lion will lie down with the lamb….In Hell there will be nothing but law, and due process will be meticulously observed.
Antonin Scalia (Scalia Speaks: Reflections on Law, Faith, and Life Well Lived)
Isn’t it strange how a lamb can feel like a lion when comparing itself to a mouse, whereas a lion feels like a lamb when measuring itself against dragons?
Richelle E. Goodrich (Slaying Dragons: Quotes, Poetry, & a Few Short Stories for Every Day of the Year)
There can be no covenants between men and lions, wolves and lambs can never be of one mind, but hate each other out and out an through.
Homer
Law reflects but in no sense determines the moral worth of a society. The values of a reasonably just society will reflect themselves in a reasonably just law. The better the society, the less law there will be. In heaven there will be no law, and the lion shall lie down with the lamb. The values of an unjust society will reflect themselves in an unjust law. The worse the society, the more law there will be. In hell there will be nothing but law, and due process will be meticulously observed.
Grant Gilmore (The Ages of American Law (The Storrs Lectures Series))
So all this time you thought I was a vampire?' Edwart whispered furiously, pulling me a few inches to the left. 'Sure,' I said, 'you know, the lion falls for the lamb...' 'What?' 'Sorry. It's easier for me if I explain things in animal terms.
The Harvard Lampoon (Nightlight: A Parody)
We can affect people around us so much with our moods. A depressed person can make a room gloomy and a sweet nature can cause the lion to lie down with the lamb.
Polly Horvath (My One Hundred Adventures (My One Hundred Adventures, #1))
You've been a bitch, goddess. That's over. From now on, you step when I say walk. You eat when I feed you...
C.D. Reiss (Monica (Songs of Submission, #7.5; Songs of Dominance, #4))
I believe in a messy, imperfect world where we just, collectively or individually, figure things out.
Margaret Killjoy (The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion (Danielle Cain, #1))
The aspirant would do well to avoid those ‘spiritual teachers’ who delight in pointing out the evils of the world. These are immature egos attempting to discard their own negativities by projecting them onto others. The true yogi is one who is like a lion with himself, always striving to eradicate that which shadows his inner light, and like a lamb with others, always striving to see their inner light, no matter how dense may be the clouds that hide it. He is the king of the jungle of his world. He hides from no one and seeks escape from nothing. (88)
Prem Prakash (The Yoga of Spiritual Devotion A Modern Translation of the Narada Bhakti Sutras (Transformational Bo)
Hektor, argue me no agreements. I cannot forgive you. As there are no trustworthy oaths between men and lions, nor wolves and lambs have spirit that can be brought to agreement but forever these hold feelings of hate for each other, so there can be no love between you and me, nor shall there be oaths between us, but one or the other must fall before then to glut with his blood Ares the god who fights under the shield's guard.
Homer
In that day the wolf and the lamb will live together; the leopard will lie down with the baby goat. The calf and the yearling will be safe with the lion, and a little child will lead them all. —Isaiah 11:6
Gary Chapman (Love Is a Verb Devotional: 365 Daily Inspirations to Bring Love Alive)
Here at our ministry we refuse to present a picture of “gentle Jesus, meek and mild,” a portrait that tugs at your sentiments or pulls at your heartstrings. That’s because we deal with so many people who suffer, and when you’re hurting hard, you’re neither helped nor inspired by a syrupy picture of the Lord, like those sugary, sentimental images many of us grew up with. You know what I mean? Jesus with His hair parted down the middle, surrounded by cherubic children and bluebirds. Come on. Admit it: When your heart is being wrung out like a sponge, when you feel like Morton’s salt is being poured into your wounded soul, you don’t want a thin, pale, emotional Jesus who relates only to lambs and birds and babies. You want a warrior Jesus. You want a battlefield Jesus. You want his rigorous and robust gospel to command your sensibilities to stand at attention. To be honest, many of the sentimental hymns and gospel songs of our heritage don’t do much to hone that image. One of the favorite words of hymn writers in days gone by was sweet. It’s a term that down’t have the edge on it that it once did. When you’re in a dark place, when lions surround you, when you need strong help to rescue you from impossibility, you don’t want “sweet.” You don’t want faded pastels and honeyed softness. You want mighty. You want the strong arm an unshakable grip of God who will not let you go — no matter what.
Joni Eareckson Tada (A Place of Healing: Wrestling with the Mysteries of Suffering, Pain, and God's Sovereignty)
so the lion fell in love with the lamb...what a stupid lamb...what a sick masochistic lion
Stephenie Meyer (Twilight (The Twilight Saga, #1))
It’s better to live one day as a lion than a hundred years as a lamb. —John Gotti CHAPTER
Lisa Renee Jones (Hard Rules (Dirty Money #1))
Well'm, faith ain't no magic wand or money-back gar'ntee, either one. Hit's jest a way a'livin'. Hit means you don't worry th'ew the days. Hit means you go'on be holdin' on to God in good or bad times, and you accept whatever happens. Hit means you respect life like it is - like God made it- even when it ain't what you'd order from the wholesale house. Faith don't mean the Lord go'n make lions lay down with lambs jest cause you ast him to, or make fire not burn. Some folks, when they pray to git well and don't even git better, they say God let'm down. But I say that warn't even what Jesus was a-talkin' bout. When Jesus said ast and you'll git it, He was givin' a gar'ntee a-spiritual healin, not body healin'. He was sayin' thet if'n you git beat down - scairt to death you cain't do what you got to, or scairt you go'n die, ir scairt folks won't like you- why, all you got to do is put yore hand in God's and He'll lift you up.
Olive Ann Burns (Cold Sassy Tree)
If you yield yourself up to His divine working, the Lord will alter your nature; He will subdue the old nature, and breathe new life into you. Put your trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, and He will take the stony heart out of your flesh, and He will give you a heart of flesh. Where everything was hard, everything shall be tender; where everything was vicious, everything shall be virtuous: where everything tended downward, everything shall rise upward with impetuous force. The lion of anger shall give place to the lamb of meekness; the raven of uncleanness shall fly before the dove of purity; the vile serpent of deceit shall be trodden under the heel of truth.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon (All of grace (Summit Books))
Hearing about what happened to you, seeing what Dallin lives with, and knowing that nothing means anything, that we’re just trapped on this rock hurtling through a cosmic abyss, and all we do is make more suffering for each other—it’s hard. It’s so hard sometimes I can’t breathe.
Gregory Ashe (The Same Breath (The Lamb and the Lion, #1))
The lions are now lunching with the lambs.
Alyson Noel
The lion fell in love with the lamb.
Stephenie Meyer
The beasts of the field and forest had a Lion as their king. He was neither wrathful, cruel, nor tyrannical, but just and gentle as a king could be. During his reign he made a royal proclamation for a general assembly of all the birds and beasts, and drew up conditions for a universal league, in which the Wolf and the Lamb, the Panther and the Kid, the Tiger and the Stag, the Dog and the Hare, should live together in perfect peace and amity. The Hare said, “Oh, how I have longed to see this day, in which the weak shall take their place with impunity by the side of the strong.” And after the Hare said this, he ran for his life.
Aesop (Aesop’s Fables)
Christians like to dream of the perfect world, a place where there is no fighting, where sword-blades are hammered into plowshares, and where the lion, whatever that is, sleeps with the lamb. It is a dream. There has always been war and there will always be war. So long as one man wants another man’s wife, or another man’s land, or another man’s cattle, or another man’s silver, so long will there be war. And so long as one priest preaches that his god is the only god or the better god there will be war.
Bernard Cornwell (War of the Wolf (The Saxon Stories, #11))
Lamb stood, gazed at the nearest tree as if in sudden awe of nature, lifted a heel from the ground and farted. "Sign of a good curry," he said, "Sometimes they just bubble about inside you for ages." "I keep meaning to ask why you have never married," River said.
Mick Herron (Dead Lions (Slough House, #2))
It was never the same thing twice, whatever it was. It touched you, and your skin tightened, and your breath sharpened, and something inside, something that might be the soul, caught fire and flared for an instant. And then it went out, and the world was back at arm’s length.
Gregory Ashe (The Same Breath (The Lamb and the Lion, #1))
If we never come to him, we will experience a judgment so fierce it will be like a double-edged sword coming out of his mouth at us (Rev. 1:16; 2:12; 19:15, 21). If we do come to him, as fierce as his lion-like judgment would have been against us, so deep will be his lamb-like tenderness for us (cf. Rev. 5:5–6; Isa. 40:10–11). We will be enveloped in one or the other. To no one will Jesus be neutral.
Dane C. Ortlund (Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers)
In fact, amid all the musical laments over not having a heart, a brain, or the nerve, did anyone notice that they didn’t have a penis among them? I think it would have shown on the Lion and the Tin Man, and when the Scarecrow has his pants destuffed, you don’t see a flying monkey waving an errant straw Johnson around anywhere, do I think I know what song I’d be singing: Oh, I would while away the hours, Wanking in the flowers, my heart all full of song, I’d be gilding all the lilies as I waved about my willie If I only had a schlong.
Christopher Moore (Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal)
Only in art will the lion lie down with the lamb, and the rose grows without the thorn
Martin Amis
And so the lion fell in love with the lamb. what a stupid lamb. what a sick, masochistic lion.
Stephenie Meyer (Twilight (The Twilight Saga, #1))
Lions don't worry about what lambs think.
Francis Shenstone (The Explorer's Mindset: Unlock Health Happiness and Success the Fun Way)
doing, in the figure of a lamb, the feats of a lion
William Shakespeare (Much Ado About Nothing)
There are no compacts between Lions and Men: and Wolves and lambs have no concord.- Homer
Rick Royster
Humble, with God on your side. Make him proud in Jesus's name. Like a lamb in a lion's mouth, to the end of time. You will be forgiven.
Brenda Rae Schoolcraft
And so the lion fell in love with the lamb...," I whispered (367).
Stephenie Meyer
he hath borne himself beyond the promise of his age; doing, in the figure of a lamb, the feats of a lion:
William Shakespeare (Much Ado About Nothing)
Some primeval force must truly be at work when the lamb can be made into a lion.
Bill Wasik (Rabid: A Cultural History of the World's Most Diabolical Virus)
It was strange, having someone grate on your nerves so much but also being willing to die for them.
Charlotte Anne Hamilton (Lambs Can Always Become Lions (Until Lambs Become Lions, #1))
It's better to live one day as a lion than a thousand as a lamb." -- Nicodemo "Little Nicky" Scarfo (boss of the Philadelphia/Atlantic City Mafia Family)
Roman Martin
And so the lion fell in love with the lamb." -Twilight
Stephanie Meyer
In the human desert, where there are so many lambs, be lions!
Leon Degrelle
It goes without saying that even those of us who are going to hell will get eternal life—if that territory really exists outside religious books and the minds of believers, that is. Having said that, given the choice, instead of being grilled until hell freezes over, the average sane human being would, needless to say, rather spend forever idling in an extremely fertile garden, next to a lamb or a chicken or a parrot, which they do not secretly want to eat, and a lion or a tiger or a crocodile, which does not secretly want to eat them.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana (The Use and Misuse of Children)
The lion-sheep splice was commissioned by the Lion Isaiahists in order to force the advent of the Peaceable Kingdom. They’d reasoned that the only way to fulfil the lion/lamb friendship prophecy without the first eating the second would be to meld the two of them together.
Margaret Atwood (The Year of the Flood (MaddAddam, #2))
A beastly ambition, which the gods grant thee t' attain to! If thou wert the lion, the fox would beguile thee; if thou wert the lamb, the fox would eat three: if thou wert the fox, the lion would suspect thee, when peradventure thou wert accused by the ass: if thou wert the ass, thy dulness would torment thee, and still thou livedst but as a breakfast to the wolf: if thou wert the wolf, thy greediness would afflict thee, and oft thou shouldst hazard thy life for thy dinner: wert thou the unicorn, pride and wrath would confound thee and make thine own self the conquest of thy fury: wert thou a bear, thou wouldst be killed by the horse: wert thou a horse, thou wouldst be seized by the leopard: wert thou a leopard, thou wert german to the lion and the spots of thy kindred were jurors on thy life: all thy safety were remotion and thy defence absence. What beast couldst thou be, that were not subject to a beast? and what a beast art thou already, that seest not thy loss in transformation!
William Shakespeare (Timon of Athens)
Only on love's terrible other side is found the place where lion and lamb abide." 'What's that?" he asked sharply. "something of Mado's. Marguerite Dominique de la Valeur Renier." She drew out the syllables lovingly. "My husband's grandmother. Your great-great-grandmother. Love's terrible other side. The other side of the sun. You can't go around it, Theron. You have to go through it.
Madeleine L'Engle (The Other Side of the Sun)
Once, modestly enough, Doremus had assumed that he had a decent knowledge of finance, taxation, the gold standard, agricultural exports, and he had smilingly pontificated everywhere that Liberal Capitalism would pastorally lead into State Socialism, with governmental ownership of mines and railroads and water-power so settling all inequalities of income that every lion of a structural steel worker would be willing to lie down with any lamb of a contractor, and all the jails and tuberculosis sanatoria would be clean empty.
Sinclair Lewis (It Can't Happen Here)
but in Heaven we will have total peace We will be completely changed when we get to Heaven—and so, too, will those we couldn’t get along with while on earth. If God can make the lion and the lamb lie down together, we can trust Him to take care of our fractured relationships as we enter our heavenly home.
Billy Graham (The Heaven Answer Book)
The righteously displeased crowds existed now in every part of the world. The total membership of the Churches of God the Utterly Indifferent was a good, round three billion. The young lions who had first taught the creed could now afford to be lambs, to contemplate such oriental mysteries as water trickling down a bell rope.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (The Sirens of Titan)
We think we long for eternal life, but maybe what we’re really longing for is perfect and unconditional love; a world in which lions actually do lay down with lambs; a world free of famines and floods, concentration camps and Gulag archipelagos; a world in which we grow up to love others in the same helplessly exuberant way we once loved our parents; a world in which we’re forever adored like a precious baby; a world built on an entirely different logic from our own, one in which life needn’t eat life in order to survive.
Susan Cain (Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole)
One of the children of slaves is marrying a royal whose forerunners sanctioned slavery; the lion is lying down with the lamb.
Denise Crawford
and the lamb transforms becomes the lion.
Ellen Hopkins (People Kill People)
Sometimes you have to pull a knife.
Margaret Killjoy (The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion (Danielle Cain, #1))
I think like an academic egghead, believing that if I write enough paragraphs about a scary subject, give enough lectures about it, it will give up and go away quietly. And if everyone took enough classes about the biology of violence and studied hard, we’d all be able to take a nap between the snoozing lion and lamb. Such is the delusional sense of efficacy of a professor.
Robert M. Sapolsky (Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst)
Violence promises us something we all deeply desire, something we genuinely want; violence promises us peace. Violence promises us, that in the end, when the last battle is fought, the last bomb is dropped, and the last enemy is slain, we will have what we always dreamed of – safety, a world without suffering, death or bloodshed; a world at rest. Yet, these are the very things Christ offers with the Kingdom of God. A world where the lamb will lay down with the lion, where swords are beaten into plowshares, where mercy and justice flow down like the waters, where every tear will be wiped away from our eyes, and where there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. Christ and violence seem to offer the same final result, the two being competitors for our allegiance.
Ronnie McBrayer (The Jesus Tribe: Following Christ in the Land of the Empire)
You know how you told me that everything ends?” Jem said quietly. “How death is what gives life meaning, and how our anxiety over death, our fear of it, propels us to live life truly and authentically? How everything has to have an end, and how looking into the face of that reality is so terrifying that most people will choose something safer, something easier, rather than coexist with their fear?
Gregory Ashe (The Same End (The Lamb and the Lion, #3))
There's a special madness strikes travellers from the North when they reach the lovely land where the lemon trees grow. We come from countries of cold weather; at home, we are at war with nature but here, ah! you think you've come to the blessed plot where the lion lies down with the lamb. Everything flowers; no harsh wind stirs the voluptuous air. The sun spills fruit for you. And the deathly, sensual lethargy of the sweet South infects the starved brain; it gasps: 'Luxury! more luxury!' But then the snow comes, you cannot escape it, it followed us from Russia as if it ran behind our carriage, and in this dark, bitter city has caught up with us at last, flocking against the windowpanes to mock my father's expectations of perpetual pleasure as the veins in his forehead stand out and throb, his hands shake as he deals the Devil's picture books.
Angela Carter (The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories)
The Kingdom of the Lion   THE BEASTS of the field and forest had a Lion as their king. He was neither wrathful, cruel, nor tyrannical, but just and gentle as a king could be. During his reign he made a royal proclamation for a general assembly of all the birds and beasts, and drew up conditions for a universal league, in which the Wolf and the Lamb, the Panther and the Kid, the Tiger and the Stag, the Dog and the Hare, should live together in perfect peace and amity. The Hare said, "Oh, how I have longed to see this day, in which the weak shall take their place with impunity by the side of the strong." And after the Hare said this, he ran for his life.
Aesop (Aesop's Fables (Illustrated))
It is constantly assured, especially in our Tolstoyan tendencies, that when the lion lies down with the lamb the lion becomes lamb-like. But that is brutal annexation and imperialism on the part of the lamb. That is simply the lamb absorbing the lion instead of the lion eating the lamb. The real problem is—Can the lion lie down with the lamb and still retain his royal ferocity? That is the problem the Church attempted; that is the miracle she achieved.
G.K. Chesterton (Orthodoxy)
Achilles replies that there is no equality of right between the weak and the strong, for men have never made pacts with lions nor have lambs and wolves ever shared the same desires. This was the law of the heroic gentes, based on the belief that the strong were of a different and more noble nature than the weak. Hence arose that law of war through which, by force of arms, the victors deprive the defeated of all their rights of natural liberty, so that the Romans took them as slaves in place of material things.
Giambattista Vico (Vico: The First New Science (Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought))
I saw the sky descending, black and white, Not blue, on Boston where the winters wore The skulls to jack-o’-lanterns on the slates, And Hunger’s skin-and-bone retrievers tore The chickadee and shrike. The thorn tree waits Its victim and tonight The worms will eat the deadwood to the foot Of Ararat: the scythers, Time and Death, Helmed locusts, move upon the tree of breath; The wild ingrafted olive and the root Are withered, and a winter drifts to where The Pepperpot, ironic rainbow, spans Charles River and its scales of scorched-earth miles. I saw my city in the Scales, the pans Of judgement rising and descending. Piles Of dead leaves char the air— And I am a red arrow on this graph Of Revelations. Every dove is sold. The Chapel’s sharp-shinned eagle shifts its hold On serpent-Time, the rainbow’s epitaph. In Boston serpents whistle at the cold. The victim climbs the altar steps and sings: “Hosannah to the lion, lamb, and beast Who fans the furnace-face of IS with wings: I breathe the ether of my marriage feast.” At the high altar, gold And a fair cloth. I kneel and the wings beat My cheek. What can the dove of Jesus give You now but wisdom, exile? Stand and live, The dove has brought an olive branch to eat.
Robert Lowell
Most of all, God will not be weeping. Yes, our sufferings matter to the Almighty and he has wept in empathy, crying at the graveside of Lazarus; he often wept when he prayed, pouring out tears in the garden of Gethsemane. But heaven will reveal something different. An eternal plan that was never threatened, never in jeopardy of collapsing, never on the edge of defeat. There will be no need for tears. “Then one of the elders said to me, ‘Do not weep! See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah…has triumphed.’” But it is not a lion that commands center stage: “Then I saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain, standing in the center of the throne…Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth…singing: ‘To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power, for ever and ever!’” (Revelation 5:5-6, 13).
Joni Eareckson Tada (When God Weeps: Why Our Sufferings Matter to the Almighty)
I don’t want to spin the world,” Barney said. “I don’t know what I want, but I do know it’s not that.” “Nor do I!” Claire shook her head. “Poor Troy” If you can do almost anything, it’s all the harder to choose the right thing to do. Poor Cole, too – coming in like a lion and then staying like a pet lamb. I suppose if most of us were asked, we’d think that magicians would be free of care, but somehow or other there are always rules.
Margaret Mahy (The Haunting)
The world exists for our education; it is the nursery of God's children, served by troubled slaves, troubled because the children are themselves slaves—children, but not good children. Beyond its own will or knowledge, the whole creation works for the development of the children of God into the sons of God. When at last the children have arisen and gone to their Father; when they are clothed in the best robe, with a ring on their hands and shoes on their feet, shining out at length in their natural, their predestined sonship; then shall the mountains and the hills break forth before them into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Then shall the wolf dwell with the lamb, and the leopard lie down with the kid and the calf, and the young lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. Then shall the fables of a golden age, which faith invented, and unbelief threw into the past, unfold their essential reality, and the tale of paradise prove itself a truth by becoming a fact. Then shall every ideal show itself a necessity, aspiration although satisfied put forth yet longer wings, and the hunger after righteousness know itself blessed. Then first shall we know what was in the Shepherd's mind when he said, 'I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly.
George MacDonald (Unspoken Sermons Series I., II., and II.)
Man wills to make of earth, not one Jerusalem but two; this sacramental blood de- clears the double mind by which he wills to lift both lion and lamb beyond the killing to exchange unaccount- able and vast. Man's priestliness therefore bespeaks his refusal of despair; proclaims acceptance of a world which, by its murderous hand, subscribes the insupportable dilemma of its being—the war of lion and lamb having no other, likely outcome here than two im- possibilities: The one, a pride of victors feeding on the slain; but leaving the lion as he was before, trapped in ancient reciprocities by which at last all power falls to crows; And the other, a hymn to despair no victim will accept; it is not enough, in this paroxysm of two martyrdoms, to stand upon the ship- wrecks of the slain and praise the weak for weakness; the lamb's will, too, was life; he died refusing death. Sacrifice therefore Not written off, but recognized, a sign in blood of the vaster end of blood; a redness turning all things white; an impossibility prefiguring the last exchange of all. The old order, of course, unchanged; the deaths of bulls and goats achieving nothing; Aaron still ineffectual; creation still bloody; But haunted now by bells within the veil where Aaron walks in shadows sprinkling blood and bids a new Jerusalem descend. Endless smoke now rising Lion become priest And lamb victim The world awaits The unimaginable union By which the Lion lifts Himself Lamb slain And, Priest and Victim, Brings The City Home.
Robert Farrar Capon (The Supper of the Lamb: A Culinary Reflection (Modern Library Food))
In a word, every man for his own ends. Our summum bonum is commodity, and the goddess we adore Dea Moneta, Queen Money, to whom we daily offer sacrifice, which steers our hearts, hands, affections, all: that most powerful goddess, by whom we are reared, depressed, elevated, esteemed the sole commandress of our actions, for which we pray, run, ride, go, come, labour, and contend as fishes do for a crumb that falleth into the water. It is not worth, virtue (that's bonum theatrale [a theatrical good]), wisdom, valour, learning, honesty, religion, or any sufficiency for which we are respected, but money, greatness, office, honour, authority; honesty is accounted folly; knavery, policy; men admired out of opinion, not as they are, but as they seem to be: such shifting, lying, cogging, plotting, counterplotting, temporizing, flattering, cozening, dissembling, "that of necessity one must highly offend God if he be conformable to the world," Cretizare cum Crete [to do at Crete as the Cretans do], "or else live in contempt, disgrace, and misery." One takes upon him temperance, holiness, another austerity, a third an affected kind of simplicity, whenas indeed he, and he, and he, and the rest are hypocrites, ambidexters, outsides, so many turning pictures, a lion on the one side, a lamb on the other.
Robert Burton (The Anatomy Of Melancholy: What It Is, With All The Kinds, Causes, Symptoms, Prognostics And Several Cures Of It)
This puts me in mind of a circumstance that occurred when I was laboring on a mission in London many, many years ago: We had an old gentleman there that had been in the army. He was a war veteran and he was preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ on the streets. A man came up and slapped him on the face. "Now," he says, "if you are a Christian turn the other cheek." So old daddy turned the other cheek, but he said: "Hit again and down you go." He would have gone down, too, if he had struck again. True, Jesus Christ taught that non-resistance, was right and praiseworthy and a duty under certain circumstances and conditions; but just look at him when he went into the temple, when he made that scourge of thongs, when he turned out the money-changers and kicked over their tables and told them to get out of the house of the Lord! "My house is a house of prayer," he said, "but ye have made it a den of thieves." Get out of here! Hear him crying, "Woe unto you Scribes, Pharisees, hypocrites, ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and then ye make him ten-fold more the child of hell than he was before." That was the other side of the spirit of Jesus. Jesus was no milksop. He was not to be trampled under foot. He was ready to submit when the time came for his martyrdom, and he was to be nailed on the cross as a sacrifice for the sins of the world, but he was ready at any time to stand up for his rights like a man. He is not only called "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world," but also "the Lion of the Tribe of Judah," and He will be seen to be terrible by and by to his enemies. Now while we are not particularly required to pattern after the "lion" side of his character unless it becomes necessary, the Lord does not expect us to submit to be trodden under foot by our enemies and never resist. The Lord does not want us to inculcate the spirit of war nor the spirit of bloodshed. In fact he has commanded us not to shed blood, but there are times and seasons, as we can find in the history of the world, in [the] Bible and the Book of Mormon, when it is justifiable and right and proper and the duty of men to go forth in the defense of their homes and their families and maintain their privileges and rights by force of arms.
Charles W. Penrose
Now the last age by Cumae's Sibyl sung has come and gone, and the majestic roll of circling centuries begins anew: justice returns, returns old Saturn's reign, with a new breed of men sent down from heaven. Only do thou, at the boy's birth in whom the iron shall cease, the golden race arise, befriend him, chaste Lucina; 'tis thine own apollo reigns. And in thy consulate, this glorious age, O Pollio, shall begin, and the months enter on their mighty march. Under thy guidance, whatso tracks remain of our old wickedness, once done away, shall free the earth from never-ceasing fear. He shall receive the life of gods, and see heroes with gods commingling, and himself be seen of them, and with his father's worth reign o'er a world at peace. For thee, O boy, first shall the earth, untilled, pour freely forth her childish gifts, the gadding ivy-spray with foxglove and Egyptian bean-flower mixed, and laughing-eyed acanthus. Of themselves, untended, will the she-goats then bring home their udders swollen with milk, while flocks afield shall of the monstrous lion have no fear. Thy very cradle shall pour forth for thee caressing flowers. The serpent too shall die, die shall the treacherous poison-plant, and far and wide Assyrian spices spring. But soon as thou hast skill to read of heroes' fame, and of thy father's deeds, and inly learn what virtue is, the plain by slow degrees with waving corn-crops shall to golden grow, fom the wild briar shall hang the blushing grape, and stubborn oaks sweat honey-dew. Nathless yet shall there lurk within of ancient wrong some traces, bidding tempt the deep with ships, gird towns with walls, with furrows cleave the earth. Therewith a second Tiphys shall there be, her hero-freight a second Argo bear; new wars too shall arise, and once again some great Achilles to some Troy be sent. Then, when the mellowing years have made thee man, no more shall mariner sail, nor pine-tree bark ply traffic on the sea, but every land shall all things bear alike: the glebe no more shall feel the harrow's grip, nor vine the hook; the sturdy ploughman shall loose yoke from steer, nor wool with varying colours learn to lie; but in the meadows shall the ram himself, now with soft flush of purple, now with tint of yellow saffron, teach his fleece to shine. While clothed in natural scarlet graze the lambs.
Virgil (The Eclogues)