“Climb the mountain just a little bit to test that it’s a mountain. From the top of the mountain, you cannot see the mountain.”

“The true measure of a man is not how he behaves in moments of comfort and convenience but how he stands at times of controversy and challenges.”

“A single day in my own shoe that is comfortable for me is better than 365 days in someone else's shoes that does not fit me at all.”

“God, who foresaw your tribulation, has specially armed you to go through it, not without pain but without stain.”

“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.”

“She put both her hands on his shoulders and gazed at him long, with a deep look of ecstasy and yet searchingly. She scrutinized his face to make up for the time she had not seen him. She compared, as she did at every interview with him, the image her fancy painted of him (incomparably finer than, and impossible in actual existence) with his real self”

“When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are often stiffened.”

“How little wives may realize that a biting, stinging word in the morning will rob a husband of efficiency the whole day long. But a loving, tender, beautiful word—a little prayer word—will fill him with music and will lead him into victory.” 

“Lord have mercy! Pardon and help us!" he repeated the words that suddenly and unexpectedly sprang to his lips. And he, an unbeliever, repeated those words not with his lips only. At that instant he knew that neither his doubts nor the impossibility of believing with his reason- of which he was conscious- all prevented his appealing to God. It all flew off like dust. To whom should he appeal, if not to Him in whose hands he felt himself, his soul, and his love, to be?

“Our success has really been based on partnerships from the very beginning.”

“As Carlyle put it—“All that mankind has done, thought, gained or been—it is lying in matchless preservation in the pages of books.”

“Fear tries to get us to give up but faith takes us all the way through to victory”

“Our chaotic, confused world has no greater need than to hear the Gospel truth.” 

“Successful and unsuccessful people do not vary greatly in their abilities. They vary in their desires to reach their potential.”

“I shall find favor, good understanding, and high esteem in the sight [or judgment] of God and man. —PROVERBS 3:4”