“Don’t deceive yourself; laughing at someone’s weakness is not the way to reveal your strength. Your strength is in the help you offer, not the mockeries you deliver!”

“Let peace be the umpire in your life, deciding with finality every question that arises in your mind (see Colossians 3:15).”

“Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves, and, under a just God cannot retain it.”

“Emeth came walking forward into the open strip of grass between the bonfire and the Stable. His eyes were shining, his face was solemn, his hand was on his sword-hilt, and he carried his head high. Jill felt like crying when she looked at his face. And Jewel whispered in the King's ear, "By the Lion's Mane, I almost love this young warrior, Calormene though he be. He is worthy of a better god than Tash.”

“In case you missed it, this week, there was a tragedy in Kansas. Ten thousand people died -- an entire town destroyed." --on a Kansas tornado that killed 12 people”

“I thought ... that I was carried in the will of Him I love, but now I see that I walk with it. I thought that the good things He sent drew me into them as the waves lift the islands; but now I see that it is I who plunge into them with my own legs and arms, as when we go swimming. I feel as if I were living in that roofless world of [Earth] where men walk undefended beneath naked heaven. It is a delight with terror in it! One's own self to be walking from one good to another, walking beside Him as Himself may walk, not even holding hands. How has He made me so separate from Himself? How did it enter His mind to conceive such a thing? The world is so much larger than I thought. I thought we went along paths--but it seems there are no paths. The going itself is the path.”

“The sum of all your thoughts comprises your overall attitude.”

“It is not that I'm so smart. But I stay with the questions much longer.”

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”

“But whenever I tried to pin down this idea of self-esteem, the specific qualities we hoped to inculcate, the specific means by which we might feel good about ourselves, the conversation always seemed to follow a path of infinite regress. Did you dislike yourself because of your color or because you couldn’t read and couldn’t get a job? Or perhaps it was because you were unloved as a child—only, were you unloved because you were too dark? Or too light? Or because your mother shot heroin into her veins … and why did she do that anyway? Was the sense of emptiness you felt a consequence of kinky hair or the fact that your apartment had no heat and no decent furniture? Or was it because deep down you imagined a godless universe? Maybe one couldn’t avoid such questions on the road to personal salvation. What I doubted was that all the talk about self-esteem could serve as the centerpiece of an effective black politics. It demanded too much honest self-reckoning from people; without such honesty, it easily degenerated into vague exhortation. Perhaps with more self-esteem fewer blacks would be poor, I thought to myself, but I had no doubt that poverty did nothing for our self-esteem. Better to concentrate on the things we might all agree on. Give that black man some tangible skills and a job. Teach that black child reading and arithmetic in a safe, well-funded school. With the basics taken care of, each of us could search for our own sense of self-worth.”

“A leader does not reduce his speeds to meet the views of negative thinkers. He leaves them to do their job as he focuses.”

“We hear a great deal about the rudeness of the ris-  ing generation. I am an oldster myself and might be  expected to take the oldsters' side, but in fact I have  been far more impressed by the bad manners of par-  ents to children than by those of children to parents.  Who has not been the embarrassed guest at family  meals where the father or mother treated their  grown-up offspring with an incivility which, offered  to any other young people, would simply have termi-  nated the acquaintance? Dogmatic assertions on mat-  ters which the children understand and their elders  don't, ruthless interruptions, flat contradictions,  ridicule of things the young take seriously some-  times of their religion insulting references to their  friends, all provide an easy answer to the question  "Why are they always out? Why do they like every  house better than their home?" Who does not prefer  civility to barbarism?”

“It is vitally important for local church leaders to keep in touch with the spiritual state of their members, to discuss their level of biblical knowledge, and to teach them how to study God’s Word and pray.”

“The boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave. ”

“It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.”