“those who master and apply the secret will reach high stations, accumulate riches, and bargain with life on their own terms, even if their schooling has been meagre.”

“However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”

“What can I say to get others involved around the table? How can I draw them in?”

“I never will, by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance or admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others.”

“For it is easy to criticize and break down the spirit of others, but to know yourself takes a lifetime.”

“Positive people know what they are about to do and why. Because of this, when they are being haunted by the premature quest to give up, they focus their minds onto the joy of accomplishing their pursuits.”

“I learned from Hussein how to achieve victory while being oppressed”

“man was designed for accomplishment, engineered for success, and endowed with the seeds of greatness.”

“You have been endowed with the power to use the most highly organized form of energy known to man, that of thought.” 

“He will use you to accomplish great things on the condition that you believe much more in His love than in your weakness.”

“Wow! you might actually have to act like a Christian sometimes!”

“You may have noticed that the books you really love are bound together by a secret thread. You know very well what is the common quality that makes you love them, though you cannot put it into words: but most of your friends do not see it at all, and often wonder why, liking this, you should also like that. Again, you have stood before some landscape, which seems to embody what you have been looking for all your life; and then turned to the friend at your side who appears to be seeing what you saw -- but at the first words a gulf yawns between you, and you realise that this landscape means something totally different to him, that he is pursuing an alien vision and cares nothing for the ineffable suggestion by which you are transported. Even in your hobbies, has there not always been some secret attraction which the others are curiously ignorant of -- something, not to be identified with, but always on the verge of breaking through, the smell of cut wood in the workshop or the clap-clap of water against the boat's side? Are not all lifelong friendships born at the moment when at last you meet another human being who has some inkling (but faint and uncertain even in the best) of that something which you were born desiring, and which, beneath the flux of other desires and in all the momentary silences between the louder passions, night and day, year by year, from childhood to old age, you are looking for, watching for, listening for? You have never had it. All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it -- tantalising glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear. But if it should really become manifest -- if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself -- you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say "Here at last is the thing I was made for". We cannot tell each other about it. It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want, the thing we desired before we met our wives or made our friends or chose our work, and which we shall still desire on our deathbeds, when the mind no longer knows wife or friend or work. While we are, this is. If we lose this, we lose all.”

“You can gain or buy friends by letting them control you, but you will have to keep them the same way you got them. After allowing them to control you to keep their friendship for a while, you will eventually get tired of having no freedom. Being lonely is actually better than being manipulated and controlled. When you enter into a new relationship, be careful how you get started. What you allow in the beginning will come to be expected throughout your association with that person. The behavior you tolerate at the start of a relationship should be behavior you can be happy with permanently. Let people know by your actions that even though you would like their approval, you can live without it. Respect others, and let them know you expect them to respect you, too.”

“Step one is to decide what you want from God and find scriptures that promise you the things you desire. Step number two to receiving answered prayer is ask God for the things you want and believe that you receive them. Certainly, the Lord knows what we need even before we ask, but He still said for us to ask Him. The Bible says, “. . . your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things” (Matt. 6:32). But He also tells you to ask for what you need: “. . . ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full” (John 16:24).”

“Evil and suffering are real . . . They aren’t an illusion, nor are they simply an absence of good. We are fallen creatures living in a fallen world that has been twisted and corrupted by sin, and we all share in its brokenness. Most of all, we share in its tragic legacy of disease and death.”