So if I asked you about art you could give me the skinny on every art book ever written...Michelangelo? You know a lot about him I bet. Life's work, criticisms, political aspirations. But you couldn't tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel. You've never stood there and looked up at that beautiful ceiling. And if I asked you about women I'm sure you could give me a syllabus of your personal favorites, and maybe you've been laid a few times too. But you couldn't tell me how it feels to wake up next to a woman and be truly happy. If I asked you about war you could refer me to a bevy of fictional and non-fictional material, but you've never been in one. You've never held your best friend's head in your lap and watched him draw his last breath, looking to you for help. And if I asked you about love I'd get a sonnet, but you've never looked at a woman and been truly vulnerable. Known that someone could kill you with a look. That someone could rescue you from grief. That God had put an angel on Earth just for you. And you wouldn't know how it felt to be her angel. To have the love be there for her forever. Through anything, through cancer. You wouldn't know about sleeping sitting up in a hospital room for two months holding her hand and not leaving because the doctors could see in your eyes that the term 'visiting hours' didn't apply to you. And you wouldn't know about real loss, because that only occurs when you lose something you love more than yourself, and you've never dared to love anything that much. I look at you and I don't see an intelligent confident man, I don't see a peer, and I don't see my equal. I see a boy. Nobody could possibly understand you, right Will? Yet you presume to know so much about me because of a painting you saw. You must know everything about me. You're an orphan, right? Do you think I would presume to know the first thing about who you are because I read 'Oliver Twist?' And I don't buy the argument that you don't want to be here, because I think you like all the attention you're getting. Personally, I don't care. There's nothing you can tell me that I can't read somewhere else. Unless we talk about your life. But you won't do that. Maybe you're afraid of what you might say.
|
We falsely attribute to men a determined character - putting together all their yesterdays - and averaging them - we presume we know them. Pity the man who has character to support - it is worse than a large family - he is the silent poor indeed.
|
If the people are happy, united, wealthy, and powerful, we presume the rest. We conclude that to be good from whence good is derived.
|
My worst enemies are those who presume me to be harmless. They cannot imagine how much I resent and disdain them, or just how great a threat they would face if I could get at them. Everything in their behavior speaks of insult and presumptuousness, and for now it is all I can do to make constructive use of my anger toward them. At this time, I just make a list of them and keep a watch on. Some day, with the help of time, space, and circumstance, I will be able to humiliate them properly - not in a manner they would enjoy, but in a style calculated to make them wish that they had never been born.
|
We presume that we would be ready for battle if confronted with a great crisis, but it is not the crisis that builds something within us—it simply reveals what we are made of already.
|
We falsely attribute to men a determined character -- putting together all their yesterdays -- and averaging them -- we presume we know them. Pity the man who has character to support -- it is worse than a large family -- he is the silent poor indeed.
|
In politics we presume that everyone who knows how to get votes knows how to administer a city or a state. When we are ill... we do not ask for the handsomest physician, or the most eloquent one.
|
Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of mankind is man.
|
When an author is too meticulous about his style, you may presume that his mind is frivolous and his content flimsy.
|
Romans 2:4:
Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, forbearance and patience, not realizing that God's kindness is intended to lead you to repentance?
(NIV)
Or are you [so blind as to] trifle with and presume upon and despise and underestimate the wealth of His kindness and forbearance and long-suffering patience? Are you unmindful or actually ignorant [of the fact] that God's kindness is intended to lead you to repent (to change your mind and inner man to accept God's will)?
(AMP)
Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance?
(KJV)
|
The whole order of things is as outrageous as any miracle which could presume to violate it.
|
Know then thyself, presume not God to scan,The proper study of Mankind is Man.
|
I look only to the good qualities of men. Not being faultless myself, I won't presume to probe into the faults of others.
|
James 3:1:
Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers and sisters, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly.
(NIV)
NOT MANY [of you] should become teachers (self-constituted censors and reprovers of others), my brethren, for you know that we [teachers] will be judged by a higher standard and with greater severity [than other people; thus we assume the greater accountability and the more condemnation].
(AMP)
My brethren, be not many masters, knowing that we shall receive the greater condemnation.
(KJV)
|
Every scholar, I presume, is not, necessarily, a man of sense.
|
Ladies and gentlemen, let me tell you again what you are to presume. I am the judge. I am telling you that. Presume he is innocent. When you sit there, I want you to look and say to yourself, There sits an innocent man.
|
Presume not that I am the thing I was.
|