• “The glory of great men should always be measured by the means they have used to acquire it.” — La Rochefoucauld

• “What is the best safeguard against false doctrine? The Bible regularly read, regularly prayed over, regularly studied.” — J. C. Ryle

• “When she married you, she gave you her life to spend. Are you spending your life wisely?” — Dan Horn

• "When a Christian shuns fellowship with other Christians, the devil smiles. When he stops studying the Bible, the devil laughs. When he stops praying, the devil shouts for joy." — Corrie ten Boom

• “The world is a book, and those who do not travel, read only a page.” — St. Augustine

• “A ship in the harbor is safe—but that is not what ships are built for.” — John Shedd

• “Good government generally begins in the family, and if the moral character of a people once degenerate, their political character must soon follow.” — Elias Boudinot

• “Music is a discipline, and a mistress of order and good manners, she makes the people milder and gentler, more moral and more reasonable.” — Martin Luther

• “My dear friend, when grief presses you to the dust, worship there.” — C. H. Spurgeon

• “True education is not giving in the answer, it’s in showing them how to find it.” — Kelly Crawford

• “Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.” — Sir Richard Steele

• “Luther once said, ‘The devil hates goose quills,’ and, doubtless, he has good reason, for ready writers, by the Holy Spirit’s blessing, have done his kingdom much damage.” — C. H. Spurgeon

• “I find television very educational. Every time someone turns it on, I go in the other room and read a book.” — Groucho Marx

• “Paul’s life was a prophetic book for Jews to read and see how to be saved, so our lives should be an easy to read book for the lost on how they can easily be saved.” — Ken Ham

• “If you don’t fear God, you’ll fear everything.” — Dan Horn

• “I have enough money to last me the rest of my life, unless I buy something.” — Jackie Mason

• “Non-Christian investigators of nature are as successful as they are because they work with stolen capital.” — Cornelius Van Til

• “The cold water of persecution is often thrown on the church’s face to fetch her to herself when she is in a swoon of indolence or pride.” — C. H. Spurgeon

• “I will keep the ground that God has given me and perhaps in his grace, he will ignite me again. But ignite me or not, in his grace, in his power, I will hold the ground.” — John Knox

• “Even if you are on the right track, but just sit there, you will still get run over.” — Will Rogers

• “Question everything but Scripture.” — Geoff Botkin

• “Self-righteousness is being more aware of and irritated by the sins of others than you are conscious of and grieved by your own.” — Paul Tripp

• “Every post is honorable in which a man can serve his country.” — George Washington

• “People will not look forward to posterity who will not look backward to their ancestors.” — Edmund Burke

• “Some people get an education without going to college; the rest get it after they get out.” — Mark Twain

• “The happiest people don’t have the best of everything, they simply make the best of everything they have.” — Unknown

• “Drag and Drop for Windows users: DRAG your peecee off your desk, and DROP it in the trash.” — some forum member’s tagline

• “You don’t have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body.” — C. S. Lewis

• “Dreams don’t work unless you do.” — John C. Maxwell

• “One proud, surly, lordly word, one needless contention, one covetous action, may cut the throat of many a sermon. Take heed to yourselves, lest your example contradict your doctrine.” — Richard Baxter

• “I’m not lost.” — Frank Churchill

• “Man does not need to know exhaustively in order to know truly and certainly.” — Cornelius Van Til

• “Television is an invention that permits you to be entertained in your own living room by people you wouldn’t have in your house.” — David Frost

• “The measure of a great teacher isn’t what he or she knows; it’s what the students know.” — John C. Maxwell

• “Thanks, modest girls. Appreciated by a male whose time studying the ground is proportional to each degree of rising temperature.” — Unknown

• “People fall in private, long before they fall in public. The tree falls with a great crash, but the secret decay which accounts for it, is often not discovered until it is down on the ground.” — J. C. Ryle

• “We should never do what we cannot pray God to bless.” — James Smith

• “A lot of men have a wishbone where they ought to have a backbone.” — Unknown

• “People who have time on their hands will inevitably waste the time of people who have work to do.” — Thomas Sowell

• “The very familiarity of blessings sometimes makes us insensible to their value."— J. C. Ryle

• “Be as careful of the books you read as of the company you keep, for your habits and character will be as much influenced by the former as by the latter.” — Paxton Hood

• “I began my education at a very early age—in fact, right after I left college.” — Winston Churchill

• “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."
 — Edmund Burke

• “I have so much to do that I shall spend the first three hours in prayer.” 
— Martin Luther

• “[N]ot one particle remains to man as a ground of boasting. The whole is of God.” — John Calvin (Institutes 2.3.6)

• “[T]he ministry of Satan is employed to instigate the reprobate, whenever the Lord, in the course of his providence, has any purpose to accomplish in them...” — John Calvin (Institutes 2.4.5)

• “Heaven is eternity in the presence of God through a Mediator. Hell is eternity in the presence of God with no Mediator.” — Tony Reinke

• “TV. If kids are entertained by two letters, imagine the fun they’ll have with twenty-six. Open your child’s imagination. Open a book.” — Unknown

— May 5th, 2012 —

Movie Review: “Hugo”

After his clockmaker father perishes in a museum fire, Hugo goes to live with his Uncle Claude, a drunkard who maintains the clocks at a Paris train station. When Claude disappears, Hugo carries on his work and fends for himself by stealing food from area merchants. In his free time, he attempts to repair an automaton his father rescued from the museum, while trying to evade the station inspector, a World War I veteran with no sympathy for lawbreakers. When Georges, a toymaker, catches Hugo stealing parts for his mechanical man, he recruits him as an assistant to repay his debt. If Georges is guarded, his open-hearted ward, Isabelle, introduces Hugo to a kindly bookseller, who directs them to a motion-picture museum, where they meet film scholar René. In helping unlock the secret of the automaton, they learn about the roots of cinema, starting with the Lumière brothers, and give a forgotten movie pioneer his due, thus illustrating the importance of film preservation, a cause to which the director has dedicated his life. If Scorsese’s adaptation of The Invention of Hugo Cabret isn’t his most autobiographical work, it just may be his most personal.” — from Amazon.com

 
Hugo had me from the beginning. Hugo Cabret is a young boy, an orphan, who lives alone in a train station in Paris. He’s intrigued with and enjoys fixing mechanisms—gears, springs, teeny screws; and his father, before tragically passing away, obtained an old automaton—a mechanical man—and spent time with his son working to restore the robot.
 
But a terrible disaster happens, and now Hugo is alone—until a young book-loving girl, Isabelle, befriends him and they work together to repair the automaton. Neither Hugo nor Isabelle know it, but one of the great pioneers of movie production is living right under their noses. Together the two uncover the wondrous history of this man and bring the proper recognition to him that he deserves.
 
From a production standpoint, Hugo is an astonishingly colorful film. Blues and yellows, turquoise, reds, silver: every single frame from the film is a beautiful tapestry. The cinematography is excellent as well, and the storyline and characters are compelling and endearing.
 
Hugo is, in short, a visual treat and a wonderful story.
 
 
 
INDECENCY: Very little. Some of the very old films pictured have rather immodest women. A man makes a comment regarding possible infidelity—but this is so quick that, unless you have subtitles on, it will likely be missed by anyone not looking for it—especially children.
LANGUAGE: Surprisingly, none.
AGE RANGE: Family-friendly.

Posted on May 5th, 2012 by Kyle Shepherd | Tags: ,fiction |

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