“Has this world been so kind to you that you should leave with regret? There are better things ahead than any we leave behind.”

“You can suffer the pain of change or suffer remaining the way you are.”

“Many people live in the waiting room, not because of God’s unwillingness to promote, but because of their unwillingness to be faithful in their current life situation.”

“The sane would do no good if they made themselves mad to help madmen.”

“And all people live, not by reason of any care they have for themselves, but by the love for them that is in other people.”

“The Bible says our warfare is with the devil, not with people (Ephesians 6:12).”

“Pray for your enemies, and bless those who mistreat you” (see Matt. 5:44).”

“When a man is getting better he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him. When a man is getting worse he understands his own badness less and less.”

“At the start of each new day, remind yourself: “I am talented. I am creative. I am greatly favored by God. I am equipped. I am well able. I will see my dreams come to pass.” Declare those statements by faith and before long, you will begin to see them in reality.”

“Possessions, outward success, publicity, luxury - to me these have always been contemptible. I believe that a simple and unassuming manner of life is best for everyone, best for both the body and the mind.”

“Good character keeps good brand safely. Bad character destroys hard earned brands.”

“The mind is the laboratory where products, both fake and genuine are manufactured. People grow wild weeds, others grow flourishing flowers!”

“Booker T. Washington said, “You measure the size of the accomplishment by the obstacles you have to overcome to reach your goals.”

“The three most harmful negative emotions are anger, guilt, and fear. And anger is number one. It is also the strongest and most dangerous of all passions.”

“In speaking of this desire for our own far off country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you—the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name. Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter. Wordsworth’s expedient was to identify it with certain moments in his own past. But all this is a cheat. If Wordsworth had gone back to those moments in the past, he would not have found the thing itself, but only the reminder of it; what he remembered would turn out to be itself a remembering. The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshipers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.”