“I do the same exercises I did 50 years ago and they still work. I eat the same food I ate 50 years ago and it still works.”

“Remember, the thoughts that you think and the statements you make regarding yourself determine your mental attitude. If you have a worthwhile objective, find the one reason why you can achieve it rather than hundreds of reasons why you can’t.”

“If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.”

“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.”

“Now the story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened: and one must be content to accept it in the same way, remembering that it is God’s myth where the others are men’s myths: i.e., the Pagan stories are God expressing Himself through the minds of poets, using such images as He found there, while Christianity is God expressing Himself through what we call 'real things'.”

“What is the most difficult word for young people to pronounce? It’s the word no. When we say no [to what is against God], He will help us to stand by it. He will give us courage.”

“All the books were beginning to turn against me. Indeed, I must have been blind as a bat not to have seen it long before, the ludicrous contradiction between my theory of life and my actual experiences as a reader. George MacDonald had done more to me than any other writer; of course it was a pity that he had that bee in his bonnet about Christianity. He was good in spite of it. Chesterton has more sense than all the other moderns put together; bating, of course, his Christianity. Johnson was one of the few authors whom I felt I could trust utterly; curiously enough, he had the same kink. Spenser and Milton by a strange coincidence had it too. Even among ancient authors the same paradox was to be found. The most religious (Plato, Aeschylus, Virgil) were clearly those on whom I could really feed. On the other hand, those writers who did not suffer from religion and with whom in theory my sympathy ought to have been complete -- Shaw and Wells and Mill and Gibbon and Voltaire -- all seemed a little thin; what as boys we called "tinny". It wasn't that I didn't like them. They were all (especially Gibbon) entertaining; but hardly more. There seemed to be no depth in them. They were too simple. The roughness and density of life did not appear in their books.”

“Levin was almost of the same age as Oblonsky; their intimacy did not rest merely on champagne. Levin had been the friend and companion of his early youth. They were fond of one another in spite of the difference of their characters and tastes, as friends are fond of one another who have been together in early youth. But in spite of this, each of them—as is often the way with men who have selected careers of different kinds—though in discussion he would even justify the other's career, in his heart despised it. It seemed to each of them that the life he led himself was the only real life, and the life led by his friend was a mere phantasm. Oblonsky could not restrain a slight mocking smile at the sight of Levin. How often he had seen him come up to Moscow from the country where he was doing something, but what precisely Stepan Arkadyevitch could never quite make out, and indeed he took no interest in the matter. Levin arrived in Moscow always excited and in a hurry, rather ill at ease and irritated by his own want of ease, and for the most part with a perfectly new, unexpected view of things. Stepan Arkadyevitch laughed at this, and liked it. In the same way Levin in his heart despised the town mode of life of his friend, and his official duties, which he laughed at, and regarded as trifling. But the difference was that Oblonsky, as he was doing the same as every one did, laughed complacently and good-humoredly, while Levin laughed without complacency and sometimes angrily.”

“Become grounded in the Bible. As Christians, we have only one authority, one compass: the Word of God.”

“Throughout our culture we have been led to the idea that we accept death as the end of life on earth . . .Time bound as we are and goal oriented to achievements in our lifetime, we find it strange to anticipate heaven.”

“like politics?” I was familiar with the question, a variant on the questions asked of me years earlier, when I’d first arrived in Chicago to work in low-income neighborhoods. It”

“I firmly believe God continues to answer the prayers of His people even after He has taken them to heaven. Never forget that God isn’t bound by time the way we are. We see only the present moment; God sees everything. We see only part of what He is doing; He sees it all.”

“Yesterday was the last day on the calender of the past. Tomorrow will be the first day on the calender of the future. Today is both the first and the last day of the present. Use it well.”

“Seven Steps to Success 1) Make a commitment to grow daily. 2) Value the process more than events. 3) Don't wait for inspiration. 4) Be willing to sacrifice pleasure for opportunity. 5) Dream big. 6) Plan your priorities. 7) Give up to go up.”

“Philosophers play with the word, like a child with a doll. It does not mean that everything in life is relative.”