“Joy is the net of love by which we can capture souls. God loves the person who gives with joy. Whoever gives with joy gives more. The best way to show our gratitude to God and to people is to accept with joy.”

“I thought I saw how stories of this kind could steal past a certain inhibition which had paralysed much of my own religion in childhood. Why did one find it so hard to feel as one was told one ought to feel about God or the sufferings of Christ? I thought the chief reason was that one was told one ought to. An obligation to feel can freeze feelings. And reverence itself did harm. The whole subject was associated with lowered voices; almost as if it were something medical. But supposing that by casting all these things into an imaginary world, stripping them of their stained-glass and Sunday School associations, one could make them for the first time appear in their real potency? Could one not thus steal past those watchful dragons? I thought one could.”

“One of the most common causes of failure is the habit of quitting when one is overtaken by temporary defeat. Every person is guilty of this mistake at one time or another.”

“As I have often said, governments don’t produce economic growth, people do.”

“Faith points us beyond our problems to the hope we have in Christ.”

“Staying angry at someone who has hurt you is like taking poison hoping that your enemy will die.”

“The Pilgrims had vision and hope because they lived in the dimension of eternity. Their strength of spirit was forged by a personal faith in God, by tough discipline, and by regular habits of devotion.”

“Elle était jolie, Joyce, avec ses yeux verts, sa peau de miel et sa moue boudeuse. (...) Un jour je lui demandais si elle allait à la réunion de l'Association des étudiants noirs. Elle me lança un drôle de regard, puis elle secoua la tête (...): — Je ne suis pas noire, me répondit-elle. Je suis multiraciale. (...) Pourquoi voudrais-tu que je choisisse entre [mon père italien et ma mère africaine-indienne] ? (...) Ce ne sont pas les Blancs qui veulent me faire choisir, (...) ce sont les Noirs.”

“Para mucha gente en este mundo, lo que marca la diferencia nunca marcará la diferencia. ¿Por qué? Porque han escogido una actitud que no es una osesión valiosa para ellos. Si alguien no está escogiendo a propósito el tener la actitud correcta, entonces está escogiendo tener la actitud equivocada.”

“The pleasure lies not in discovering truth, but in searching for it.”

“There's a world of difference between a person who has a big problem and a person who makes a problem big.”

“Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness. —Martin Luther King Jr., civil rights leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner”

“Avoid the use of abusive words when communication is in session; you might scare away someone who is meant to become your mentor or your customer.”

“Scatter her enemies, And make them fall; Confound their politics, Frustrate their knavish tricks.”

“Involuntarily it appeared to me that there, somewhere, was someone who amused himself by watching how I lived for thirty or forty years: learning, developing, maturing in body and mind, and how, having with matured mental powers reached the summit of life from which it all lay before me, I stood on that summit -- like an arch-fool -- seeing clearly that there is nothing in life, and that there has been and will be nothing. And he was amused... But whether that "someone" laughing at me existed or not, I was none the better off. I could give no reasonable meaning to any single action or to my whole life. I was only surprised that I could have avoided understanding this from the very beginning -- it has been so long known to all. Today or tomorrow sickness and death will come (they had come already) to those I love or to me; nothing will remain but stench and worms. Sooner or later my affairs, whatever they may be, will be forgotten, and I shall not exist. Then why go on making any effort?... How can man fail to see this? And how go on living? That is what is surprising! One can only live while one is intoxicated with life; as soon as one is sober it is impossible not to see that it is all a mere fraud and a stupid fraud! That is precisely what it is: there is nothing either amusing or witty about it, it is simply cruel and stupid.”