“Parents do overindulge their children, giving them a profusion of material things . . . without the stabilizing effects of earning one’s way, of making decisions, of sweating hard to attain some kind of goal, young people are grievously handicapped.”

“Whenever you are fed up with life, start writing: ink is the great cure for all human ills, as I have found out long ago.”

“Life is strange, and often imponderable! Both the successes and the failures have their roots in simple experiences.

“People who take a long view of their lives and careers always seem to make much better decisions about their time and activities than people who give very little thought to the future.”

“There are two sides to the life of every man, his individual life which is the more free the more abstract it's interests, and his elemental swarm-life in which he inevitably obeys laws laid down for him”

“Lack of direction, not lack of time, is the problem. We all have twenty-four hour days.”

“It has been said there was a cross in the heart of God long before the cross was erected at Calvary. As we think about it we will be overwhelmed at the wonder and greatness of His love for us.”

“I will study and prepare myself, and someday my chance will come.”

“God’s star promised peace to the whole world . . .too often man’s synthetic stars bring fear and anxiety. Our gadget-filled paradise, suspended in a hell of international insecurity, certainly does not offer us the happiness of which the last century dreamed. But there is still a star in the sky.”

“The day the flesh shapes and the flesh the day shapes.”

“It should be recognised as a crime (in reality it is a crime of the worst nature) for any parent to build inferiority complexes in the mind of a child through unnecessary criticism. Employers who understand human nature get the best there is out of people not by criticism but by constructive suggestion. Parents may accomplish the same results with their children. Criticism will plant fear or resentment in the human heart but it will not build love or affection.”

“Ah, you've come over the water. Powerful wet stuff, ain't it?”

“Instead of going to Paris to attend lectures, go to the public library, and you won't come out for twenty years, if you really wish to learn.”

“Your real, new self (which is Christ's and also yours, and yours just because it is His) will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for Him. Does that sound strange? The same principle holds, you know, for more everyday matters. Even in social life, you will never make a good impression on other people until you stop thinking about what sort of impression you are making. Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it. The principle runs through all life from top to bottom, Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.”

“Your dreams today are answers to what you are to do, where you are to go and what you have to say in later days of your life.”