“...it is not to be understood that I am with him [Jesus] in all his doctrines. I am a Materialist, he takes the side of spiritualism; he preaches the efficacy of repentance toward forgiveness of sin. I require a counterpoise of good works to redeem it... Among the sayings & discourses imputed to him by his biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence: and others again of so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so much untruth, charlatanism, and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same being.

“Strive not with your superiors in argument, but always submit your judgment to others with modesty.”

“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way in which its animals are treated.”

“It is every man's obligation to put back into the world at least the equivalent of what he takes out of it.”

“And most important, listen.”

“The underlying principle of all Satan’s tactics is deception. He is a crafty and clever camouflager.”

“Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.”

“One of the primary goals in life should be to prepare for death. Everything else should be secondary.”

“In speaking of this desire for our own far off country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you—the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name. Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter. Wordsworth’s expedient was to identify it with certain moments in his own past. But all this is a cheat. If Wordsworth had gone back to those moments in the past, he would not have found the thing itself, but only the reminder of it; what he remembered would turn out to be itself a remembering. The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshipers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.”

“Running is the greatest metaphor for life, because you get out of it what you put into it. ”

“Those who are afraid of new ideas are doomed before they start.”

“God intentionally allows you to go through painful experiences to equip you for ministry to others.”

“Forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could have been any different.”

“Your faith will help you overcome your obstacles.”

“In order to get to heaven, Jesus said that you must be converted. I didn’t say it—Jesus said it!”