“Anytime you use your God-given abilities to help others, you are fulfilling your purpose of life.  What matters is not the Duration of your life, but the Donation of it.”

“There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously - no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption.”

“Tend to the people, and they will tend to the business.”

“Are not 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.”

“You can’t go on “seeing through” things forever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it. To “see through” all things is the same as not to see.”

“Successful men become successful only because they acquire the habit of thinking in terms of success.”

“They, they, they. That was the problem with people like Joyce. They talked about the richness of their multicultural heritage and it sounded real good, until you noticed that they avoided black people. It wasn't a matter of conscious choice, necessarily, just a matter of gravitational pull, the way integration always worked, a one-way street. The minority assimilated into the dominant culture, not the other way around. Only white culture could be neutral and objective. Only white culture could be nonracial, willing to adopt the occasional exotic into its ranks. Only white culture had individuals. And we, the half-breeds and the college-degreed, take a survey of the situation and think to ourselves, Why should we get lumped in with the losers if we don't want to? We become only so grateful to lose ourselves in the crowd, America's happy, faceless marketplace; and we're never so outraged as when a cabbie drives past us or the woman in the elevator clutches her purse, not so much because we're bothered by the fact that such indignities are what less fortunate coloreds have to put up with every single day of their lives-- although that's what we tell ourselves-- but because we're wearing a Brooks Brothers suit and speak impeccable English and yet have somehow been mistaken for an ordinary nigger. Don't know who I am? I'm an individual!”

“Pray and trust God, and He will show you what to do at the right time. He will show you because He is a God Who never fails His children (see Deut. 31:6, 8). He is a God of faithfulness, and He always comes through.”

“In the years since man unlocked the power stored up within the atom, the world has made progress, halting, but effective, toward bringing that power under human control. The challenge may be our salvation. As we begin to master the destructive potentialities of modern science, we move toward a new era in which science can fulfill its creative promise and help bring into existence the happiest society the world has ever known.”

“Don’t go around year after year expecting the same thing the same way. God is a God of increase. He has greater levels. Where you are is not where you’re supposed to stay. You’re supposed to rise higher. Have a bigger vision.”

“The moment there is suspicion about a person's motives, everything he does becomes tainted.”

“Everyone has temptations but some folks entertain them . . .Get your eyes off the temptation and onto Christ!”

“No man who is resolved to make the most of himself can spare time for personal contention.”

“In one bold stroke, forgiveness obliterates the past and permits us to enter the land of new beginnings.”

“[Jesus] asked [His followers] to count the cost carefully, lest they should turn back when they met with suffering and privation. He told His followers that the world would hate them.”