“You do not have to stay in a bad situation. You get to make a choice, and that choice is 100% yours.”

“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.”

“Jesus also said, …In the world you have tribulation and trials and distress and frustration; but be of good cheer…For I have overcome the world… (John 16:33).” 

“You are the only person on earth who can use your ability.”

“Live your life in every way to earn and keep the respect of the people you respect.”

“I told [John Kruesi] I was going to record talking, and then have the machine talk back. He thought it absurd. However, it was finished, the foil was put on; I then shouted 'Mary had a little lamb', etc. I adjusted the reproducer, and the machine reproduced it perfectly.

“What you do with Christ here and now decides where you shall spend eternity.”

“No one is satisfied with his position, but every one is satisfied with his wit”

“A photograph never grows old. You and I change, people change all through the months and years but a photograph always remains the same. How nice to look at a photograph of mother or father taken many years ago. You see them as you remember them. But as people live on, they change completely. That is why I think a photograph can be kind.”

“Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance, the only thing it cannot be is moderately important.”

“The success you are enjoying today is the result of the price you have paid in the past.”

“Good attitudes among players do not guarantee a team’s success, but bad attitudes guarantee its failure.”

“Can I trust God? Trust is an essential ingredient to surrender. You won’t surrender to God unless you trust him, but you can’t trust him until you know him better. Fear keeps us from surrendering, but love casts out all fear. The more you realize how much God loves you, the easier surrender becomes.”

“If you want something really important to be done you must not merely satisfy the reason, you must move the heart also.”

“Our mouth gives expression to what we think, feel, and want. Our mind tells us what we think, not necessarily what God thinks. Our will tells us what we want, not what God wants. And our emotions tell us what we feel, not what God feels. As our soul is purified, it is trained to carry God’s thoughts, desires, and feelings; then we become a mouthpiece for the Lord!”