“all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

“Some people have just rented your body to live in it for sometime and depart. Others consider you as a permanent residence to dwell in forever. Which ever, you must remember to accommodate all those who want to be accommodated. Be each other's keeper”

“The art of life is the art of avoiding pain.”

“If I am doing the best I can and people don’t approve, what they think will have to be between them and God.

“But one of the worst results of being a slave and being forced to do things is that when there is no one to force you any more you find you have almost lost the power of forcing yourself.”

“The dead should not rule the living.”

“It was only at her prayers that she felt able to think calmly and clearly either of Prince Andrey or Anatole, with a sense that her feelings for them were as nothing compared with her feel of worship and awe of God.”

“Almost every man wastes part of his life in attempts to display qualities he does not possess.”

“Most good leaders want the perspective of people they trust.”

“It's not where you start or even what happens to you along the way that's important. What is important is that you persevere and never give up on yourself.”

“Salt and light speak of the influence Christians can exercise for good in society.”

“When you get yourself under complete control, you can be your own boss.”

“Christians do not take advantage of what belongs to them. Either they do not know how to take advantage of what belongs to them, or the do not know what belongs to them.”

“Not everybody can be famous but everybody can be great because greatness is determined by service... You only need a heart full of grace and a soul generated by love.”

“God created things which had free will. That means creatures which can go wrong or right. Some people think they can imagine a creature which was free but had no possibility of going wrong, but I can't. If a thing is free to be good it's also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. A world of automata -of creatures that worked like machines- would hardly be worth creating. The happiness which God designs for His higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other in an ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman on this earth is mere milk and water. And for that they've got to be free. Of course God knew what would happen if they used their freedom the wrong way: apparently, He thought it worth the risk. (...) If God thinks this state of war in the universe a price worth paying for free will -that is, for making a real world in which creatures can do real good or harm and something of real importance can happen, instead of a toy world which only moves when He pulls the strings- then we may take it it is worth paying.”