“Here I am...wanting to accomplish something and completely forgetting it must all end--that there is such a thing as death.”

“Most people have heard of Mahatma Gandhi, the man who led India to independence from British rule. His life has been memorialized in books and film, and he is regarded as one of the great men in history. But did you know Gandhi did not start out as a great hero? He was born into a middle-class family. He had low self-esteem, and that made him reluctant to interact with others. He wasn’t a very good student, either, and he struggled just to finish high school. His first attempt at higher education ended in five months. His parents decided to send him to England to finish his education, hoping the new environment would motivate him. Gandhi became a lawyer. The problem when he returned to India was that he didn’t know much about Indian law and had trouble finding clients. So he migrated to South Africa and got a job as a clerk. Gandhi’s life changed one day while riding on a train in South Africa in the first-class section. Because of his dark skin, he was forced to move to a freight car. He refused, and they kicked him off the train. It was then he realized he was afraid of challenging authority, but that he suddenly wanted to help others overcome discrimination if he could. He created a new vision for himself that had value and purpose. He saw value in helping people free themselves from discrimination and injustice. He discovered purpose in life where none had existed previously, and that sense of purpose pulled him forward and motivated him to do what best-selling author and motivational speaker Andy Andrews calls “persist without exception.” His purpose and value turned him into the winner he was born to be,” 

“Oh, yes, we all want to help others reach their full potential, especially our children and grandchildren. But the bottom line is that none of us can do that for someone else, and no one else can do it for us. We must each do it for ourselves. We must each discover our own God-given gifts and talents, what we are truly capable of, and then put ourselves to the task of developing those gifts, talents and capabilities to their fullest extent.” 

“Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.”

“Success can locate and visit you even if you are static wherever you are... But you are responsible for constructing the roads... Go, make the roads!”

“You are built not to shrink down to less but to blossom into more.”

“it's much better to do good in a way that no one knows anything about it.”

“We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in numbers, wealth, and power. … But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us. (“A National Day of Fasting, Humiliation, and Prayer.” Proclamation March 30, 1863)”

“How can a person who has awakened to the truth about his body ever die? Such a one attains to immortality.”

“A joyful heart is the normal result of a heart burning with love. She gives most who gives with joy.”

“Once God leads you to make a decision, don’t draw back. Instead, trust His leading, and believe He goes before you—because He does.”

“If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves. Moving, be like water. Still, be like a mirror. Respond like an echo. ”

“In order not to give myself up to the desire to kill him on the spot, I felt compelled to treat him cordially.”

“in the state capital. But the years had also taken their toll. Some of it was just a function of my getting older, I suppose, for if you are paying attention,”

“At present we are on the outside… the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the pleasures we see. But all the pages of the New Testament are rustling with the rumor that it will not always be so. Someday, God willing, we shall get “in”… We will put on glory… that greater glory of which Nature is only the first sketch. We do not want to merely “see” beauty -- though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words–to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.”