“Today there are more people who know the words to a television commercial than know the words in the Bible.”

“Does the prophet see the future or does he see a line of weakness, a fault or cleavage that he may shatter with words or decisions as a diamond-cutter shatters his gem with a blow of a knife? —”

“The Simple Path Silence is Prayer Prayer is Faith Faith is Love Love is Service The Fruit of Service is Peace”

“Make use of this tool of communication by which God speaks to us—namely, the Bible! Read it, study it, memorize it. It will change your entire life. It is not like any other book. It is a “living” book that works its way into your heart, mind, and soul.”

“One of the paradoxes of life is that the things that initially make you successful are rarely the things that keep you successful.”

“Whatever your mind feeds upon your mind attracts to you.”

“Possessions and positions may promote our happiness but cannot create it. Happiness is a state created by self through the realization of how the self is important to the creator.”

“You can’t be living always in the promise of the clouds; it must rain now. Leave the talking and live by walking… It will yield an indelible impact!”

“If there were no God, and everything was a result of random chance, there would be no purpose to your life. It all starts with God.”

“You can have Jesus in your spirit and an outrgeous mess in your soul, and if you don't know what that's called it's called religion. That's what it's called dead dry religion......Jesus said you are a bunch of white washed tombs full of dead men's bones, and I tell you if that didn't describe me I don't know what did, because on Sunday mornings I dressed it up and took it to church.”

“Only God is able. It is faith in Him that we must rediscover. With this faith we can transform bleak and desolate valleys into sunlit paths of joy and bring new light into the dark caverns of pessimism.”

“The person who reads too much and uses his brain too little will fall into lazy habits of thinking..”

“Your attitude determines your altitude.

“But whenever I tried to pin down this idea of self-esteem, the specific qualities we hoped to inculcate, the specific means by which we might feel good about ourselves, the conversation always seemed to follow a path of infinite regress. Did you dislike yourself because of your color or because you couldn’t read and couldn’t get a job? Or perhaps it was because you were unloved as a child—only, were you unloved because you were too dark? Or too light? Or because your mother shot heroin into her veins … and why did she do that anyway? Was the sense of emptiness you felt a consequence of kinky hair or the fact that your apartment had no heat and no decent furniture? Or was it because deep down you imagined a godless universe? Maybe one couldn’t avoid such questions on the road to personal salvation. What I doubted was that all the talk about self-esteem could serve as the centerpiece of an effective black politics. It demanded too much honest self-reckoning from people; without such honesty, it easily degenerated into vague exhortation. Perhaps with more self-esteem fewer blacks would be poor, I thought to myself, but I had no doubt that poverty did nothing for our self-esteem. Better to concentrate on the things we might all agree on. Give that black man some tangible skills and a job. Teach that black child reading and arithmetic in a safe, well-funded school. With the basics taken care of, each of us could search for our own sense of self-worth.”

“Henri Nouwen said, “In order to be of service to others we have to die to them; that is, we have to give up measuring our meaning and value with the yardstick of others…. thus we become free to be compassionate.” When you base your worth and identity on your relationship to Christ, you are freed from the expectations of others, and that allows you to really serve them best.”