“All the stories and descriptions of that time without exception peak only of the patriotism, self-sacrifice, despair, grief, and heroism of the Russians. But in reality it was not like that...The majority of the people paid no attention to the general course of events but were influenced only by their immediate personal interests.”

“You've no idea how good an old joke sounds when you take it out again after a rest of five or six hundred years.”

“Look at yourself before you pass judgment. Don’t make someone else clean up your mess.”

“Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong.”

“Start calling yourself healed, happy, whole, blessed, and prosperous. Stop talking to God about how big  your mountains are, and start talking to your mountains about how big your God is!”

“How much better to get wisdom than gold! And to get understanding is to be chosen rather than silver (Proverbs 16:16 NKJV).” 

“If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves. Moving, be like water. Still, be like a mirror. Respond like an echo. ”

“Another's wife is a white swan, and ours is bitter wormwood.”

“The difference between being a church attender and a church member is commitment. Attenders are spectators from the sidelines; members get involved in the ministry. Attenders are consumers; members are contributors. Attenders want the benefits of a church without sharing the responsibility. They are like couples who want to live together without committing to a marriage.”

“The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time.”

“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.”

“We are made for this moment, and we will seize it-so long as we seize it together.”

“There are no new sins—only new sinners. There are no new crimes—only new criminals, No new evils—only new evildoers. No new pleasures—only new pleasure seekers. We must distinguish between wholesome, God-ordained pleasure and sinful, worldly pleasure.”

“To lead yourself, use your head; to lead others, use your heart.”

“Maintain your integrity! Live life in such a way that when another person tells his or her truth, you'll not be committed for blame.”