“In speaking of this desire for our own far off country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you—the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name. Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter. Wordsworth’s expedient was to identify it with certain moments in his own past. But all this is a cheat. If Wordsworth had gone back to those moments in the past, he would not have found the thing itself, but only the reminder of it; what he remembered would turn out to be itself a remembering. The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshipers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.”

“The man who does more than he is paid for will soon be paid for more than he does.”

“It may look impossible, but God can do the impossible. Just because you don’t see anything happening doesn’t mean God is not working”

“No matter where we are, God is as close as a prayer. He is our support and our strength. He will help us make our way up again from whatever depths we have fallen.”

“Pretentiousness repels but authenticity attracts, and vulnerability is the pathway to intimacy.”

“Your success lies behind your choices... To get there, you must choose it and drive your dreams in that chosen direction!”

“If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts.”

“Never make your most important decisions when you are in your worst mood

words are powerful and should not be spoken frivolously.”

“analogy: It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”

“One of the real tests of Christian character is to be found in the lives we live from day to day.”

“If you can't be the change, you can set an example for change. If you can't set an example for change, you can go and sleep! By all means, you can do something!”

“What’s the key to relating to others? It’s putting yourself in someone else’s place instead of putting them in their place.”

“You can change everything about your business by changing your thinking about your business.”

“You will not be in heaven two seconds before you cry out, “Why did I place so much importance on things that were so temporary? What was I thinking? Why did I waste so much time, energy, and concern on what wasn’t going to last?”