“No day needs to be ordinary if we realize the gift God is giving us when He gives us another day to live and enjoy. An extraordinary attitude can quickly turn an ordinary day into an amazing adventure. Jesus said He came so that we might have and enjoy life (see John 10:10). If we refuse to enjoy it, then it’s no one’s fault but our own. I would like to suggest that you take responsibility for your joy and never again give anyone else the job of keeping you happy.”

“My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it Himself.”

“When you give of yourself, it benefits you, the organization, and the receiver.”

“Sometimes we are afraid because success puts pressure on us to continue to succeed.”

“You may have noticed that the books you really love are bound together by a secret thread. You know very well what is the common quality that makes you love them, though you cannot put it into words: but most of your friends do not see it at all, and often wonder why, liking this, you should also like that. Again, you have stood before some landscape, which seems to embody what you have been looking for all your life; and then turned to the friend at your side who appears to be seeing what you saw -- but at the first words a gulf yawns between you, and you realise that this landscape means something totally different to him, that he is pursuing an alien vision and cares nothing for the ineffable suggestion by which you are transported. Even in your hobbies, has there not always been some secret attraction which the others are curiously ignorant of -- something, not to be identified with, but always on the verge of breaking through, the smell of cut wood in the workshop or the clap-clap of water against the boat's side? Are not all lifelong friendships born at the moment when at last you meet another human being who has some inkling (but faint and uncertain even in the best) of that something which you were born desiring, and which, beneath the flux of other desires and in all the momentary silences between the louder passions, night and day, year by year, from childhood to old age, you are looking for, watching for, listening for? You have never had it. All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it -- tantalising glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear. But if it should really become manifest -- if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself -- you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say "Here at last is the thing I was made for". We cannot tell each other about it. It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want, the thing we desired before we met our wives or made our friends or chose our work, and which we shall still desire on our deathbeds, when the mind no longer knows wife or friend or work. While we are, this is. If we lose this, we lose all.”

“There is something in natural affection which will lead it on to eternal love more easily than natural appetite could be led on. But there's also something in it which makes it easier to stop at the natural level and mistake it for the heavenly. Brass is mistaken for gold more easily than clay is. And if it finally refuses conversion its corruption will be worse than the corruption of what ye call the lower passions. It is a stronger angel, and therefor, when it falls, a fiercer devil.”

“Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier.”

“A good leader can engage in a debate frankly and thoroughly, knowing that at the end he and the other side must be closer, and thus emerge stronger. You don't have that idea when you are arrogant, superficial, and uninformed.”

“They practice daily disciplines. They implement systems for their personal growth. They make it a habit to maintain a positive attitude. At the very least, these things keep their personal momentum going. At their very best, they make every day a masterpiece.”

“Gary wondered, 'If God intentionally made us all different, why should everyone be expected to love God in the same way?”

both success and failure are largely the results of habit!” 

“Опыт показывает, что к хорошо образованным людям часто относятся как раз те, кто вынужден был заниматься самообразованием и самовоспитанием. Никакое учебное заведение не сделает из Вас образованного человека. Образованным можно считать только того, кто получает от жизни все, что он хотел бы получить без насилия над другими людьми, на равных правах с ними. Образование подразумевает не столько знания, сколько умение их к чему-нибудь приложить. Ценятся не знания сами по себе, а то, как они могут быть употреблены.

“The most amazing thing about the world is that we understand it.”

“Too often we get caught up in our own words concerning prayer. Sometimes we try to pray so long, loud, and fancy that we lose sight of the fact that prayer is our conversation with God. The length or loudness or eloquence of our prayer is not the issue; it is the sincerity of our heart and the confidence we have that God hears and will answer us that is important.”

“Value the unconditional love of God more than the conditional approval of other human beings, and you will overcome rejection.”