Good and evil people

Remember that, as I said, the right direction leads not only to peace but to knowledge. When a man is getting better he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him. When a man is getting worse he understands his own badness less and less. A moderately bad man knows he is not very good: a thoroughly bad man thinks he is all right. This is common sense, really. You understand sleep when you are awake, not while you are sleeping. You can see mistakes in arithmetic when your mind is working properly: while you are making them you cannot see them. You can understand the nature of drunkenness when you are sober, not when you are drunk. Good people know about both good and evil: bad people do not know about either.

From Mere Christianity by C S Lewis

Wake up, sleeper!

However late, then, it may seem, let us rouse ourselves from lethargy. That is what scripture urges on us when it says: The time has come for us to rouse ourselves from sleep. Let us open our eyes to the light that can change us into the likeness of God. Let our ears be alert to the stirring call of his voice crying to us every day: Today, if you should hear his voice, do not harden your hearts. And again: Let anyone with ears to hear listen to what the Spirit says to the churches. And this is what the Spirit says: Come my children, hear me, and I shall teach you the fear of the Lord. Run, while you have the light of life, before the darkness of death overtakes you.

Benedict of NursiaSaint Benedict's Rule

Writing

‎"I have always found it a mistake to attempt to complete a manuscript in one day. I like to do part of it--enough to get the theme well on to my mind--and then go to bed with the work half-done. I do not consciously review the matter during the night: yet I invariably wake up with a batch of ideas that were not there the previous day."

Ships of Pearl, 16, by F W Boreham. 

Waking Up

Waking up is hard to do
But once we see
How deep the suffering goes
How high the purpose of human beings
Created in the image of the Creator
What is sleep, but settling for so much less?
What is sleep, but surrendering to a tiny, lazy savior?
What is sleep, but biding time in such boredom
That eternity becomes bad news?

Kirstin Vander Giessen-Reitsma
"A blessing for wakefulness" in catapult magazine