“What I would say to my successor is that it is important not just to shoot but to aim”

“Sitting in his old schoolroom on the sofa with little cushions on the arms and looking into Natasha's wildly eager eyes, Rostov was carried back into that world of home and childhood which had no meaning for anyone else, but gave him some of the greatest pleasure in his life.”

“Life isn't all fricasseed frogs and eel pie.”

“Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless, like water. Be water, my friend.”

“Relationships are always worth restoring.”

“The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world's problems.”

“half of our happiness is determined by factors other than biology. Ten percent is connected to “life circumstances” and the other 40 percent is dependent on our life decisions.

“Would it not be better to be dead than to have this horrible fear that Aslan has come and is not like the Aslan we have believed in and longed for? It is as if the sun rose one day and were a black sun.”

“Going in the company of negative people is just like having thick muddy soil underfoot... They will only draw you back if you don't tear them off! Move out of your current disposal with the intention of getting to your true destination!”

“It does not matter where we come from or what we look like. If we recognize our abilities, are willing to learn and to use what we know in helping others, we will always have a place in the world.”

“There is an old Eastern fable about a traveler who is taken unawares on the steppes by a ferocious wild animal. In order to escape the beast the traveler hides in an empty well, but at the bottom of the well he sees a dragon with its jaws open, ready to devour him. The poor fellow does not dare to climb out because he is afraid of being eaten by the rapacious beast, neither does he dare drop to the bottom of the well for fear of being eaten by the dragon. So he seizes hold of a branch of a bush that is growing in the crevices of the well and clings on to it. His arms grow weak and he knows that he will soon have to resign himself to the death that awaits him on either side. Yet he still clings on, and while he is holding on to the branch he looks around and sees that two mice, one black and one white, are steadily working their way round the bush he is hanging from, gnawing away at it. Sooner or later they will eat through it and the branch will snap, and he will fall into the jaws of the dragon. The traveler sees this and knows that he will inevitably perish. But while he is still hanging there he sees some drops of honey on the leaves of the bush, stretches out his tongue and licks them. In the same way I am clinging to the tree of life, knowing full well that the dragon of death inevitably awaits me, ready to tear me to pieces, and I cannot understand how I have fallen into this torment. And Itry licking the honey that once consoled me, but it no longer gives me pleasure. The white mouse and the black mouse – day and night – are gnawing at the branch from which I am hanging. I can see the dragon clearly and the honey no longer tastes sweet. I can see only one thing; the inescapable dragon and the mice, and I cannot tear my eyes away from them. And this is no fable but the truth, the truth that is irrefutable and intelligible to everyone.

“I have a dream, that one day on the red hills of Georgia...”

“Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future.

“If a man repeats a lie over and over, he will eventually accept the lie as truth. Moreover, he will believe it to be the truth.”

“Power Thought: My thoughts are not hidden from God. I know I can change with His help.”