“SEPTEMBER 5 Stay Out of Strife He who is of a greedy spirit stirs up strife, but he who puts his trust in the Lord shall be enriched and blessed. PROVERBS 28:25 Probably 80 percent of the places we visit in our ministry have church members who are riddled with strife. Strife is the devil’s tool against us. It takes personal self-control to stay out of strife. If you want to keep peace, you can’t always say everything you want to say. Sometimes you have to control yourself and apologize even when there is nothing in you that wants to do so. But if you sow the godly principle of harmony and unity today, a time will come when you will reap the blessings of all it can bring to you.”

“Never forget that when we are dealing with any pleasure in its healthy and normal and satisfying form, we are, in a sense, on the Enemy’s (God’s) ground…He [God] made the pleasure: all our research so far has not enabled us to produce one. All we can do is to encourage the humans to take the pleasures which our Enemy [God] has produced, at at times, or in ways, or in degrees, which He [God] has forbidden. ”

“Remember that it is not the lawyer who knows the most law, but the one who best prepares his case, who wins. If your "case" is properly prepared and presented, your victory will have been more than half won at the outset.

“The future is not a gift-it is an achievement.”

“Daughter of Eve from the far land of Spare Oom where eternal summer reigns around the bright city of War Drobe, how would it be if you came and had tea with me?”

“Develop the wings of loyalty and you will fly above the dooms of disappointments. Disloyalty has one whistle; when it’s blown, opportunities take to their heels!”

“Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things - trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one.”

“When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That's my religion.”

“For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness.”

“Experience has proven that the best-educated people are often those who are known as ‘self-made’ or self-educated. It takes more than a university degree to make one a person of education. Any person who is educated has learned to get whatever they want in life without violating the rights of others. Education consists not so much of knowledge, but of knowledge effectively and persistently applied. People are paid not merely for what they know, but more particularly for what they do with what they know.”

“Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier.”

“A healthy, dose of guilt never hurt anybody. It’s what civilization was built on, guilt. A highly underrated emotion.”

“In most cases, those who want power probably shouldn't have it, those who enjoy it probably do so for the wrong reasons, and those who want most to hold on to it don't understand that it's only temporary.”

“Every lie is a poison; there are no harmless lies. Only the truth is safe. Only the truth gives me consolation - it is the one unbreakable diamond.”

“We did live in dire poverty. And one of the things that I hated was poverty. Some people hate spiders. Some people hate snakes. I hated poverty. I couldn't stand it. My mother couldn't stand the fact that we were doing poorly in school, and she prayed and she asked God to give her wisdom. What could she do to get her young sons to understand the importance of developing their minds so that they control their own lives? God gave her the wisdom. At least in her opinion. My brother and I didn't think it was that wise. Turn off the TV, let us watch only two or three TV programs during the week. And with all that spare time read two books a piece from the Detroit Public Libraries and submit to her written book reports, which she couldn't read but we didn't know that. I just hated this. My friends were out having a good time. Her friends would criticize her. My mother didn't care. But after a while I actually began to enjoy reading those books. Because we were very poor, but between the covers of those books I could go anywhere. I could be anybody. I could do anything. I began to read about people of great accomplishment. And as I read those stories, I began to see a connecting thread. I began to see that the person who has the most to do with you, and what happens to you in life, is you. You make decisions. You decide how much energy you want to put behind that decision. And I came to understand that I had control of my own destiny. And at that point I didn't hate poverty anymore, because I knew it was only temporary. I knew I could change that. It was incredibly liberating for me. Made all the difference.”