“The great French Marshall Lyautey once asked his gardener to plant a tree. The gardner objected that the tree was slow growing and wouldn't reach maturity for 100 years. The Marshall replied, "In that case, there is no time to lose; plant it this afternoon!” 

“Books were my pass to personal freedom. I learned to read at age three, and there discovered was a whole world to conquer that went beyond our farm in Mississippi.”

“Every disability conceals a vocation, if only we can find it, which will 'turn the necessity to glorious gain.”

“One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty.”

“Christ . . . didn’t come to treat symptoms. He came to get at the very heart of man’s disease.”

“Grace is the power of God to help us in other areas in which we cannot help ourselves.” 

“There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.”

“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 possesed your soul have been but hints of it--tantalizing glimspes, 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 things 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.”

“If you find yourself cluttered up and done in by disorganization, ask yourself why you seem to hang on to everything that comes your way. Do you feel obligated to keep it just because someone gave it to you? Of course, we don’t want to hurt people’s feelings, but on the other hand, if a gift is given correctly, it comes with no strings attached. If someone truly gives you a gift, it should be yours to do with as you please.”

“What energy!' I thought. 'Man has conquered everything, and destroyed millions of plants, yet this one won't submit.”

“I wonder how much of our mental time is spent worrying, reasoning, and fearing—possibly more than is spent on anything else. Instead of meditating on our problems, let’s choose to meditate on the “alls” of God. He says you can cast “… [all your anxieties, all your worries, all your concerns, once and for all] on Him, for He cares for you…” (1 Pet. 5:7). Let us realize how unlimited His power is and trust Him to do what we cannot do.”

“The surest way to be happy is to seek happiness for others.”

“I am a sect by myself, as far as I know.”

“I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music.”

“You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist.”