“Let fear once get possession of the soul, and it does not readily yield its place to another sentiment.”

“Understand that you can’t achieve your dreams if you don’t connect with people who guide you to improve on upon the skills you have.”

“Everyone is watching you. If you don’t believe it, just pretend to fail and you’ll see many mockers. For this reason, work hard as if you are doing everyone’s business!”

“Because of what Jesus has done, I love and accept myself.”

“He's wild, you know. Not like a tame lion.”

“There’s a difference between hearing people and listening to them.”

“I have now learned that we do not even know what “happy” is until we forget about ourselves, start focusing on others, and become generous givers.”

“The question is not, “Will my calendar be full?” but “Who will fill my calendar?” If we are leaders of others, the question is not, “Will I see people?” but “Who will I see?

“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.”

“Our families cannot choose Christ for us. Our friends cannot do it. God is a great God, but even God can’t make the decision for us . . .we have to make our own choice.”

“Regimes planted by bayonets do not take root... Our military strength is a prerequisite to peace, but let it be clear we maintain this strength in the hope it will never be used, for the ultimate determinant in the struggle that's now going on in the world will not be bombs and rockets but a test of wills and ideas, a trial of spiritual resolve, the values we hold, the beliefs we cherish, the ideals to which we are dedicated.”

“Research shows that people getting healthy together lose twice as much weight as those who do it alone.”

“We were created to live in community. We are designed by God for relationships.” 

“Don't say it was delightful; make us say delightful when we've read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers Please will you do the job for me.”

“When this tent we live in—our body here on earth—is torn down, God will have a house in heaven for us to live in, a home he himself has made, which will last forever. 2 CORINTHIANS 5:1 TEV”