“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.”

“You may have had so many failures at changing the way you eat or exercise or think or act that the possibility of lasting change feels like an unreachable goal. Well, to be honest with you, it probably will be — unless you plug into God’s power. What is impossible from a human standpoint is easy to God. With God, today’s impossibility is tomorrow’s miracle.”

“Even the rich are hungry for love, for being cared for, for being wanted, for having someone to call their own.”

“One needs to be slow to form convictions, but once formed they must be defended against the heaviest odds.”

“When I came to you out of all that dust and heat and toil, I positively smelt violets at once. But not the sweet violet - you know, that early dark violet that smells of melting snow and spring grass.”

“Love is not patronizing and charity isn't about pity, it is about love. Charity and love are the same -- with charity you give love, so don't just give money but reach out your hand instead.”

“He was not to blame for being born with an irrepressible charachter and a mind some how constrained.”

“Because you have honored God, He will put you in a position you never could have attained on your own. It’s not just your education, not just your talent, or the family you come from. It’s the hand of God shifting you to a new level of your destiny.”

“Promise people with the hope of not letting any fracture misalign you from fulfilling those promises. That gives you a recommendable brand.”

“Through the written Word we discover the Living Word—Jesus Christ.”

“Good Thinking Produces More Good Thinking”

“You know you’re surrendered to God when you rely on God to work things out instead of trying to manipulate others, force your agenda, and control the situation. You let go and let God work.”

“If people paid more attention to death, eternity, and judgment, there would be more holy living on earth.”

“the underlying struggle - between worlds of plenty and worlds of want; between the modern and the ancient; between those who embrace our teeming, colliding, irksome diversity, while still insisting on a set of values that binds us together, and those who would seek, under whatever flag or slogan or sacred text, a certainty and simplification that justifies cruelty toward those not like us...” 

“I seemed to hear God saying, "Put down your gun and we'll talk.”