“Have to sow excellent seeds to have an excellent life. Must start with sowing excellent thoughts.”

“In every adversity or defeat there is a seed of equal or greater benefit.”

“Though men in their hundreds of thousands had tried their hardest to disfigure that little corner of the earth where they had crowded themselves together, paving the ground with stones so that nothing could grow, weeding out every blade of vegetation, filling the air with the fumes of coal and gas, cutting down trees and driving away every beast and every bird -- spring, however, was still spring, even in the town. The sun shone warm, the grass, wherever it had not been scraped away, revived and showed green not only on the narrow strips of lawn on the boulevards but between the paving-stones as well, and the birches, the poplars and the wild cherry-trees were unfolding their sticky, fragrant leaves, and the swelling buds were bursting on the lime trees; the jackdaws, the sparrows and the pigeons were cheerfully getting their nests ready for the spring, and the flies, warmed by the sunshine, buzzed gaily along the walls. All were happy -- plants, birds, insects and children. But grown-up people -- adult men and women -- never left off cheating and tormenting themselves and one another. It was not this spring morning which they considered sacred and important, not the beauty of God's world, given to all creatures to enjoy -- a beauty which inclines the heart to peace, to harmony and to love. No, what they considered sacred and important were their own devices for wielding power over each other.”

“The way you give your name to others is a measure of how much you like and  respect yourself.”

“Tell me the truth. When you were leaving prison after twenty-seven years and walking down that road to freedom, didn’t you hate them all over again?” And he said, “Absolutely I did, because they’d imprisoned me for so long. I was abused. I didn’t get to see my children grow up. I lost my marriage and the best years of my life. I was angry. And I was afraid, because I had not been free in so long. But as I got closer to the car that would take me away, I realized that when I went through that gate, if I still hated them, they would still have me. I wanted to be free. And so I let it go.”

“It’s sad to say, but as much as I cared for the Old Man, and worried about him, I was glad not to have to live with him. I just left him to himself and never looked back.”

“Leadership is built on true character! You lose your leadership when you fake your character. The degree of leadership potential a person can expose will depend on how potent he can maintain his true character!”

“It's not about you.”

“We all need a daily checkup from the neck up to avoid stinkin' thinkin' which ultimately leads to hardening of the attitudes.”

“You are entitled to know that two entities occupy your body. One of these entities is motivated by and responds to the impulse of fear. The other is motivated by and responds to the impulse of faith. Will you be guided by faith or will you allow fear to overtake you?”

“The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just.”

“I learnt the lesson on non-violence from my wife, when I tried to bend her to my will. Her determined resistance to my will on the one hand, and her quiet submission to the suffering my stupidity involved on the other, ultimately made me ashamed of myself and cured me of my stupidity in thinking that I was born to rule over her, and in the end she became my teacher in non-violence.”

“None of us deserves God’s love. All of us deserve His righteous judgment and wrath (John 3:18, 36; Romans 3:9–12). It is easy to think of an evil and depraved man like Adolf Hitler deserving divine judgment . . .But think of the kind and good people that you know . . .They too will be lost if they refuse and neglect God’s offer of mercy and forgiveness. God’s judgment applies to them too.”

“These others, they have treated you badly. They are just too lazy to work for themselves.’ And you know what he would say to me? He would say, ‘How do you know that man does not need this small thing more than me?”

“Pain prompts us to face who we are and where we are. What we do with that experience defines who we become.”