“Sometimes it’s best to start moving in the direction you think God may want you to go, and then trust Him to lead you—closing doors He doesn’t want you to go through and opening up others.”

“We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.”

“Riches do not respond to wishes. They respond only to definite plans, backed by definite desires, through constant persistence.

“Life is something for which there is no answer; it must be understood from moment to moment.”

“Struggles often serve to release the wisdom, patience, and strength we all possess but too seldom demonstrate.”

“Knowing your purpose prepares you for eternity.”

“Surely you know that if a man can't be cured of churchgoing, the next best thing is to send him all over the neighbourhood looking for the church that "suits" him until he becomes a taster or connoisseur of churches.”

“Laughter can be used to sooth the mind and get rid of those awful thoughts.”

“No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, no culture comparable to that of the garden...But though an old man, I am but a young gardener.”

“This world is a great sculptor’s shop. We are the statues and there’s a rumor going around the shop that some of us are someday going to come to life.”

“Intellect has powerful muscles, but no personality.”

“The Lord is your shepherd; don’t ever say “I am lost”. He leads you to green pastures; don’t ever say “I am broke”. Let the weak shout; “ I am very very very strong”!”

“Europe I travelled third—and only once first, just to see what it was like—but there I noticed no such difference between the first and the third-classes. In South Africa third-class passengers are mostly Negroes, yet the third-class comforts are better there than here.”

“What right does any church have even attempting to approve of lifestyles or certain acts for which God prescribed the death penalty in the Old Testament?”

“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.”