“Good relationships require a lot of hard work, education, and willingness to meet each other’s needs.”

“The difference between what he had been then and what he now was, was enormous...Then he was free and fearless...now he felt himself caught in the meshes of a stupid, empty, valueless, frivolous life...He remembered how proud he was at one time of his straightforwardness, how he had made a rule of always speaking the truth...and he was now sunk deep in lies...lies considered as truth by all who surrounded him.”

“God isn’t finished with you when you retire! When we know Christ, we never retire from His service.”

“Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shpwrecked by the laughter of the gods.”

“While we worry about how fast we grow, God is concerned about how strong we grow. God views our lives from and for eternity, so he is never in a hurry.”

“They, they, they. That was the problem with people like Joyce. They talked about the richness of their multicultural heritage and it sounded real good, until you noticed that they avoided black people. It wasn't a matter of conscious choice, necessarily, just a matter of gravitational pull, the way integration always worked, a one-way street. The minority assimilated into the dominant culture, not the other way around. Only white culture could be neutral and objective. Only white culture could be nonracial, willing to adopt the occasional exotic into its ranks. Only white culture had individuals. And we, the half-breeds and the college-degreed, take a survey of the situation and think to ourselves, Why should we get lumped in with the losers if we don't want to? We become only so grateful to lose ourselves in the crowd, America's happy, faceless marketplace; and we're never so outraged as when a cabbie drives past us or the woman in the elevator clutches her purse, not so much because we're bothered by the fact that such indignities are what less fortunate coloreds have to put up with every single day of their lives-- although that's what we tell ourselves-- but because we're wearing a Brooks Brothers suit and speak impeccable English and yet have somehow been mistaken for an ordinary nigger. Don't know who I am? I'm an individual!”

“Believing in the cause creates your conviction. Believing in your vision fuels your inspiration. Believing in your people builds your motivation.”

“A man can't ride your back unless it's bent”

“This truth, that I have to please only God, is an important key to becoming resistant to being manipulated by disapproval from others.”

“believed that God is always a good God. Facing difficulties, he lost his job. His home was about to be taken and all seemed hopeless. Braxton prayed”

“There was no solution but that usual solution which life gives to all questions, even the most complex and insoluble. That answer one must live in the needs of one that - that is, forget oneself.”

“(Back during the Gold Rush you could go into a stream of water and pan out a little gold dust. But if you really wanted to make a strike and get down where the real gold was, you had to dig for it. In the same way you can skim along on the top of scriptures—but if you really want to find out what the Bible says, you’ll have to dig down into the Word of God.)”

“The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends for which we live. Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.”

“Shield!” the old woman snapped. “You well know the weakness there! Shield your son too much, Jessica, and he’ll not grow strong enough to fulfill any destiny.”

“As Christians, we are not to get our worlds mixed up . . . We are not to mingle with the world, but we are to witness to the world.”