“We cannot control the temperaments we are born with; they are God’s choice. We can work with the Holy Spirit to achieve balance, but basically we are who we are.”

“Children have one kind of silliness, as you know, and grown-ups have another kind.”

“Success is a lousy teacher.It seduces smart people into thinking they can't lose”

“Six Ways to Turn Desires into Gold.   The method by which desire for riches can be transmuted into its financial equivalent, consists of six definite, practical steps, viz:      First: fix in your mind the exact amount of money you desire. It is not sufficient merely to say “I want plenty of money.” Be definite as to the amount. (There is a psychological reason for definiteness which will be described in a subsequent chapter.)      Second: determine exactly what you intend to give in return for the money you desire. (There is no such reality as “something for nothing.”)      Third: establish a definite date when you intend to possess the money you desire.      Fourth: create a definite plan for carrying out your desire, and begin at once, whether you are ready or not, to put this plan into action.      Fifth: write out a clear, concise statement of the amount of money you intend to acquire, name the time limit for its acquisition, state what you intend to give in return for the money, and describe clearly the plan through which you intend to accumulate it.      Sixth: read your written statement aloud, twice daily, once just before retiring at night, and once after arising in the morning. As you read—see and feel and believe yourself already in possession of the money.”

“You can’t wake up one day and suddenly become a leader. You first discover that specific thing God created you for, develop it into something specific that the world will need, and then you have already leading started leading.”

“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.”

“I am very little inclined on any occasion to say anything unless I hope to produce some good by it.”

“if anyone present wishes to make me the subject of his wit, I am very much at his service--with my sword--whenever he has leisure.”

“[The fairy tale] stirs and troubles him (to his life-long enrichment) with the dim sense of something beyond his reach and, far from dulling or emptying the actual world, gives it a new dimension of depth. He does not despise real woods because he has read of enchanted woods: The reading makes all real woods a little enchanted.”

“You don't become what you want, you become what you believe.” 

“I am not afraid of an opponent who practiced ten thousand kicks once. What I am afraid of is an opponent who practiced one kick, ten thousand times”

“Vulnerability is an endearing quality; we are naturally drawn to humble people.”

“But Ransom, as time wore on, became aware of another and more spiritual cause for his progressive lightening and exultation of heart. A nightmare, long engendered in the modern mind by the mythology that follows in the wake of science, was falling off him. He had read of 'Space': at the back of his thinking for years had lurked the dismal fancy of the black, cold vacuity, the utter deadness, which was supposed to separate the worlds. He had not known how much it affected him till now-now that the very name 'Space' seemed a blasphemous libel for this empyrean ocean of radiance in which they swam. He could not call it 'dead'; he felt life pouring into him from it every moment. How indeed should it be otherwise, since out of this ocean all the worlds and all their life had come? He had thought it barren: he now saw that it was the womb of worlds, whose blazing and innumerable offspring looked down nightly even upon the earth with so many eyes-and here, with how many more! No: Space was the wrong name.”

“A walk begins with one step and then another and another. No matter how long your journey seems, if you take enough steps in the right direction, you will eventually arrive at your desired destination.”