“destiny close to your heart. Keep listening to your own voice. Hold on to your revelation. Avoid sharing your calling. Everyone is not worthy of knowing your inner voices; don’t give the haters an opening to tear you down.”

“Fear is a self-imposed prison that will keep you from becoming what God intends for you to be.”

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?"

“Upnext" is your success... but before that, remember "up there" is your God who requires from you to be "upright" to fulfill your destiny! Be "up" and keep going!”

“To say that a work of art is good, but incomprehensible to the majority of men, is the same as saying of some kind of food that it is very good but that most people can’t eat it.”

“Right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.”

“To keep a lamp burning, we have to keep putting oil in it.”

“Ninety-five percent of the difficulties you will experience as a Christian can be traced to a lack of Bible study and reading.”

“Mientras no descubras un propósíto impulsor para tu vida, todo lo que estás haciendo es existir.”

“You cannot love a fellow creature fully till you love God.”

“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.”

“There had been in his past, as in every man's, actions, recognized by him as bad, for which his conscience ought to have tormented him; but the memory of these evil actions was far from causing him so much suffering as those trivial but humiliating reminiscences.”

“We go through life discovering the truth about who we are and determining who has earned the right to share the space within our heart. And now I simply want to share what I've been given. I want to continue to encourage as many people as I can to open their hearts to life, because if I know anything for sure, it's that opening my heart is what has brought me the greatest success and joy.”

“At the moment that we persuade a child, any child, to cross that threshold, that magic threshold into a library, we change their lives forever, for the better”

“There are many rivers to cross to our successful destinations. Never fear the crocodiles. They may look frightful, but they will not harm you. You will get there! With the right attitude, you ignore the ugly face of the shore and you can paddle your boat to the right destination!”