“Humility is not denying your strengths. Humility is being honest about your weaknesses. All of us are a bundle of both great strengths and great weaknesses and humility is being able to be honest about both.”

“He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our People, and eat out their substance.”

“There comes with every experience of temporary defeat, and every failure and every form of adversity, the seed of an equivalent benefit”

“When you give of yourself, it benefits you, the organization, and the receiver.”

“We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty.”

“Who regulates the heat of the sun? Who pays the bills of the energy we obtain from the sun? Leave all judgments to that man if you believe we all walk under that same sun!”

“Until we mature enough to understand that God uses everything for good in our lives, we harbor resentment toward God over our appearance, background, unanswered prayers, past hurts, and other things we would change if we were God. People often blame God for hurts caused by others. This creates what William Backus calls “your hidden rift with God.”

“Don’t let hatred control you, no matter what others do that causes [anger]. You would only become guilty of the same sin that afflicts them, and nothing would be solved.”

“...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.”

“A whole woman will always attract a whole man. And when they touch, they will fuse to create a whole marriage. Ultimately, when the time is right, they will produce whole children.”

“There is time for everything; a time to MAKE the BEST and a time to TAKE a REST...”

“An almost perfect relationship with his father was the earthly root of all his wisdom. From his own father, he said, he first learned that Fatherhood must be at the core of the universe. [speaking of George MacDonald]”

“Wherever you are you will always be in my heart.”

“the great mass of our Citizens require only to understand matters rightly, to form right decisions.”

“Experience alone isn’t a good enough teacher – evaluated experience is.”