“Ivan Ilych had been a colleague of the gentlemen present and was liked by them all. He had been ill for some weeks with an illness said to be incurable. His post had been kept open for him, but there had been conjectures that in case of his death Alexeev might receive his appointment, and that either Vinnikov or Shtabel would succeed Alexeev. So on receiving the news of Ivan Ilych's death the first thought of each of the gentlemen in that private room was of the changes and promotions it might occasion among themselves or their acquaintances.”

“The Bible teaches that Satan is the author of sin. Sin is the reason we have afflictions, including death. All of our problems and our suffering are a result of man’s rebellion against God. But God has provided a rescue in His Son.”

“Don’t you know who I am? I’m an individual!

“That which makes a man superhuman is terrifying.”

“Life's battles don't always go To the stronger of faster man, But soon or later the man who wins Is the man who thinks he can!”

“If politics were a musical, it would be "Promises, Promises"

“Nada es más importante que conocer los propósitos de Dios para tu vida, y nada puede compensarte por no conocerlos; ni siquiera el éxito, la riqueza, la fama o los placeres.”

“Passion gives you energy.”

“There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair.”

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”

“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.”

“I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.”

“This is the process of “systematic desensitization.” By confronting your fear, and by repeatedly doing the thing you fear, the fear eventually disappears.”

“Once you have confidence in your instincts, you must never allow other people’s refusal to believe, or their data to refute, what you instinctively know is true.”

“Shut your mouth; open your eyes and ears.”