“It's easier to maintain a good character than to recover it when it's gone bad!”

“Lazy people don’t succeed.”

“My difficulties lay deeper. It was more than I could believe that Jesus was the only incarnate son of God, and that only he who believed in him would have everlasting life. If God could have sons, all of us were His sons. If Jesus was like God, or God Himself, then all men were like God and could be God Himself. My reason was not ready to believe literally that Jesus by his death and by his blood redeemed the sins of the world. Metaphorically there might be some truth in it. Again, according to Christianity only human beings had souls, and not other living beings, for whom death meant complete extinction; while I held a contrary belief. I could accept Jesus as a martyr, an embodiment of sacrifice, and a divine teacher, but not as the most perfect man ever born. His death on the Cross was a great example to the world, but that there was anything like a mysterious or miraculous virtue in it my heart could not accept. The pious lives of Christians did not give me anything that the lives of men of other faiths had failed to give. I had seen in other lives just the same reformation that I had heard of among Christians. Philosophically there was nothing extraordinary in Christian principles. From the point of view of sacrifice, it seemed to me that the Hindus greatly surpassed the Christians. It was impossible for me to regard Christianity as a perfect religion or the greatest of all religions.”

“You can’t help the poor by becoming one of them.”

“Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.”

“Nothing will shake a man-or at any rate a man like me-out of his merely verbal thinking and his merely notional beliefs. He has to be knocked silly before he comes to his senses. Only torture will bring out the truth. Only under torture does he discover it himself.”

“Because God is with you all the time, no place is any closer to God than the place where you are right now.”

“Needless to say, you can love people without leading them, but you cannot lead people without loving them.”

“Jesus was born with the cross darkening His pathway . . . From the cradle to the cross, [Jesus’] purpose was to die.”

“I fear that so often we Christians give the idea that the truth is fiction by the way we live and by the lack of dedication to the teachings of our Lord.”

“Be thankful for what you have; you'll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don't have, you will never, ever have enough.” 

“Love Yourself Today: Remember, God always loves your “who,” even when your “do” could use some improvement!”

“Never obliterate a man unthinkingly, the way an entire fief might do it through some due process of law. Always do it for an overriding purpose—and know your purpose!”

“See failure as an opportunity to try again with a relatively powerful approach, skill, knowledge and conviction. Redefine yourself.”

“Discover more about yourself, dream wild dreams because what others see in you right is just a mild chapter of you; the wild chapter will unfold sooner! Dare to dream and shape the dream every day!”