“I am rather inclined to silence, and whether that be wise or not, it is at least more unusual nowadays to find a man who can hold his tongue than to find one who cannot.”

“Energy rests upon love; and come as it will, there's no forcing it.”

“Many things--such as loving, going to sleep, or behaving unaffectedly--are done worst when we try hardest to do them.”

“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.”

“The happiness you feel is in direct proportion to the love you give.”

“The emotion of DESIRE The emotion of FAITH The emotion of LOVE The emotion of SEX The emotion of ENTHUSIASM The emotion of ROMANCE The emotion of HOPE”

“I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.”

“Make a decision and watch your life move forward.”

“God never said that we wouldn’t have unfair situations, that we wouldn’t experience loss. But He promised if we would stay in faith, He would restore everything that was stolen.”

“right; maybe once you stripped away the rationalizations, it always came down to a simple matter of escape. An escape from poverty or boredom or crime or the shackles of your skin.”

“If you fail to control your own mind, you may be sure you will control nothing else.”

“The devil will tremble when you pray.”

“Life did not stop, and one had to live.”

“Have you ever gone to the furniture store to buy a chair without sitting in it? Have you ever purchased a car without test-driving it? Of course not, and God also tests us to reveal the quality of our faith. No matter what we think of ourselves, we find out what we are truly like in times of difficulty. Good times don’t bring the worst out of us, but hard times do. That is why God says these difficult times are good for us. They allow us to see what is in our character that needs to be changed. They also give us opportunity to use our faith, and faith only grows through our using it. As we choose to learn to trust God instead of getting upset about something, we experience His faithfulness, which, in turn, increases our faith for the next time we need it. The more we use our muscles, the more they grow—and our faith is the same way.”

“The heart of the Christian Gospel with its incarnation and atonement is in the cross and the resurrection. Jesus was born to die.”