“He was afraid of defiling the love which filled his soul.”

“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.”

“This is a wonderful time to be alive. There have never been more possibilities and opportunities for you to achieve more of your goals than exist today.”

“It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.”

“Before success comes in any man's life, he's sure to meet with much temporary defeat and, perhaps some failures. When defeat overtakes a man, the easiest and the most logical thing to do is to quit. That's exactly what the majority of men do.”

“What do they teach them at these schools?”

“The first rule of frog eating is this: If you have to eat two frogs, eat the ugliest one first.”

“To me, when I read the Bible, it’s God’s Word. I believe it. That settles it. And that’s the end of it. There’s no use in discussing it. Because the Bible says so, His Words are health. They are medicine. To all their flesh.”

“Si nuestras oraciones no son contestadas, bien puede ser porque no estamos haciendo lo que Dios, con claridad, nos ha dicho que hagamos.”

“God welcomes our prayers. He is much more concerned about our hearts than our eloquence.”

“Un país, una civilización se puede juzgar por la forma en que trata a sus animales.”

“This self-confident generation has produced more alcoholics, more drug addicts, more criminals, more wars, more broken homes, more assaults, more embezzlements, more murders, and more suicides . . .it is time all of us . . . begin to take stock of our failures, blunders, and costly mistakes. It is about time that we place less confidence in ourselves and more trust and faith in God.”

“Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do doesn't mean it's useless.”

“Dogs are my favorite role models. I want to work like a dog, doing what I was born to do with joy and purpose. I want to play like a dog, with total, jolly abandon. I want to love like a dog, with unabashed devotion and complete lack of concern about what people do for a living, how much money they have, or how much they weigh. The fact that we still live with dogs, even when we don't have to herd or hunt our dinner, gives me hope for humans and canines alike.”

“Integrity is vitally important to our walk with God. People with integrity take responsibility for their actions. They keep their commitments instead of making excuses for not keeping them. They do what they tell people they are going to do, and, if for some reason they absolutely cannot, then they contact the person, give an explanation (not an excuse), and ask to be released from the commitment.”