“I’ve learned that if you want people to be impressed, you can talk about your successes; but if you want people to identify with you, it’s better to talk about your failures.”

“Pride builds walls between people; humility builds bridges.”

“...never [enter] into dispute or argument with another. I never saw an instance of one of two disputants convincing the other by argument. I have seen many, on their getting warm, becoming rude, & shooting one another. ... When I hear another express an opinion which is not mine, I say to myself, he has a right to his opinion, as I to mine; why should I question it? His error does me no injury, and shall I become a Don Quixote, to bring all men by force of argument to one opinion? ... There are two classes of disputants most frequently to be met with among us. The first is of young students, just entered the threshold of science, with a first view of its outlines, not yet filled up with the details & modifications which a further progress would bring to their knoledge. The other consists of the ill-tempered & rude men in society, who have taken up a passion for politics. ... Consider yourself, when with them, as among the patients of Bedlam, needing medical more than moral counsel. Be a listener only, keep within yourself, and endeavor to establish with yourself the habit of silence, especially on politics. In the fevered state of our country, no good can ever result from any attempt to set one of these fiery zealots to rights, either in fact or principle. They are determined as to the facts they will believe, and the opinions on which they will act. Get by them, therefore, as you would by an angry bull; it is not for a man of sense to dispute the road with such an animal.”

“Bereavement is not the truncation of married love,” C. S. Lewis wrote, “but one of its regular phases—like the honeymoon.”

“If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is ‘Thank you,’ it will be enough.” —Meister Eckhart”

“The price we paid was the price men have always paid for achieving a paradise in this life--we went soft, we lost our edge.”

“The most mentally deranged people are those who see in others indications of insanity they do not notice in themselves.”

“The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one's 'own,' or 'real' life. The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one's real life -- the life God is sending one day by day.”

“The law of Forced Efficiency says that "There is never enough time to do everything, but there is always enough time to do the most important thing.”

“Blessed are those who endure when they are tested. When they pass the test, they will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him.”

“Your vehicle of leadership is fueled by your willingness to learn. You can't lead if you can't learn!”

“Such will be a great lesson of peace: teaching men that what they cannot take by and election, neither can they take by war; teaching all the folly of being the beginners of a war.”

“The men who followed Jesus were unique in their generation. They turned the world upside down because their hearts had been turned right side up.”

“I wonder, sometimes, whether men and women in fact are capable of learning from history--whether we progress from one stage to the next in an upward course or whether we just ride the cycles of boom and bust, war and peace, ascent and decline.”

“You must make a decision that you are going to move on. It wont happen automatically. You will have to rise up and say, ‘I don’t care how hard this is, I don’t care how disappointed I am, I’m not going to let this get the best of me. I’m moving on with my life.”