“Every one who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe-a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble.”

“If you know who you are, make the changes you must in order to learn and grow, and then give everything you've got to your dreams, you can achieve anything your heart desires.”

“It doesn't really matter whether you grip the arms of the dentist's chair or let your hands lie in your lap. The drill drills on.”

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

“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.”

“The saving of our world from pending doom will come, not through the complacent adjustment of the conforming majority, but through the creative maladjustment of a nonconforming minority.”

“thoughts are things,” and powerful things at that, when they are mixed with definiteness of purpose, persistence, and a burning desire for their translation into riches, or other material objects.”

“He walked down, for a long while avoiding looking at her as at the sun, but seeing her, as one does the sun, without looking.”

“encouragement and hope are the two most powerful qualities any person can provide to others.”

“While wisdom dictates the need for education, education does not necessarily make one wise.”

“An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law”

“The mouse is a fair treat but this one would talk the hind legs off a donkey.”

“Al pasar por tiempos difíciles, asegúrese de que pase la prueba. No sea testarudo y obstinado, reconozca que Dios le está refinando, quitando algunos de sus lados ásperos. Manténgase firme y pelee la buena batalla de la fe porque Dios nos ha llamado a ser campeones; está destinado a ganar. Si coopera con Dios y mantiene una buena actitud, entonces no importará lo que venga en contra de usted, la Biblia dice que todas las cosas—no sólo las cosas buenas de la vida, sino todas las cosas—le ayudarán a bien.5”

“Fear makes you feel surrounded by an enemy. Faith makes you realize you are surrounded by God.”

“People do not wander around and then find themselves at the top of Mount Everest.”