“It should be remembered also that the outlook from the bottom is not so very bright or encouraging. It has a tendency to kill off ambition. We call it “getting into a rut,” which means that we accept our fate because we form the HABIT of daily routine, a habit that finally becomes so strong we cease to try to throw it off.”

“MAY 10 Light Shines Through Cracked Pots Let not those who wait and hope and look for You, O Lord of hosts, be put to shame through me; let not those who seek and inquire for and require You [as their vital necessity] be brought to confusion and dishonor through me, O God of Israel. PSALM 69:6 Everyone is like a pot that carries life. But not everyone carries a presence that blesses others. Religion tries to force people to follow laws to make them perfect, like pots without cracks. But if a light is put within a flawless pot and then covered, no one is able to see the light inside the pot. Perfect pots are not able to reveal internal light to illumine the way for others. God chooses to shine through imperfect, cracked pots. People are blessed when our cracked pots let the light of Jesus shine through. Choose to be a glory-filled, cracked pot rather than an empty, pretty vessel.”

“Some people die and you realize that the only mark they left on earth are the tomb stones under which they lie. The impacts you make on earth should be something worthy to improve lives.”

“So then faith cometh. . . .” We know it comes. From where does it come? How does it come? “. . . faith cometh by hearing. . . .” It doesn’t come by seeing. It doesn’t come by feeling. It comes by hearing. Hearing what? “. . . and hearing by the word of God.” It comes by hearing the Word of God.”

“Your happiness is meaningless unless it is linked with the total liberation of people around you! You matter; others also matter! Live life so well!”

“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.”

“Can you remember your first taste of spice?” “It tasted like cinnamon.”

“Great relationships are one of the most precious treasures in life, but we must feed them regularly by putting time into them. If you find you have no time to develop and maintain strong, intimate relationships with God, with yourself, and with your family and friends, then you are absolutely too busy.”

“You cannot have a negative mouth and a positive life.” 

“A young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be too careful of his reading.”

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

“Some of us learn from other people’s mistakes and the rest of us have to be other people.”

“What I know for sure is that pleasure is energy reciprocated: What you put out comes back. Your base level of pleasure is determined by how you view your whole life.” 

“I may repeat 'Do as you would be done by' till I am black in the face, but I cannot really carry it out till I love my neighbor as myself: and I cannot learn to love my neighbor as myself till I learn to love God;and I cannot learn to love God except by learning to obey him.”

“Success is no magic; grab a handful of hope and never let it go till you get there!”