“I know quite certainly that I myself have no special talent; curiosity, obsession and dogged endurance, combined with self-criticism, have brought me to my ideas.”

“You don't drown by falling in water; you only drown if you stay there

“What separates a weak dreamer and a great dreamer is who is wishing and waiting or who is willing and working.”

“SEPTEMBER 5 Stay Out of Strife He who is of a greedy spirit stirs up strife, but he who puts his trust in the Lord shall be enriched and blessed. PROVERBS 28:25 Probably 80 percent of the places we visit in our ministry have church members who are riddled with strife. Strife is the devil’s tool against us. It takes personal self-control to stay out of strife. If you want to keep peace, you can’t always say everything you want to say. Sometimes you have to control yourself and apologize even when there is nothing in you that wants to do so. But if you sow the godly principle of harmony and unity today, a time will come when you will reap the blessings of all it can bring to you.”

“If you judge people you have no time to love them.”

“Each day is an unrepeatable miracle. Today will never happen again, so we must make it count.”

“Sickness is deep within the soul of our society—and that has always been God’s exclusive territory.”

“My own idea, for what it is worth, is that all sadness which is not either arising from the repentance of a concrete sin and hastening towards concrete amendment or restitution, or else arising from pity and hastening to active assistance, is simply bad; and I think we all sin by needlessly disobeying the apostolic injunction to 'rejoice' as much as by anything else. Humility, after the first shock, is a cheerful virtue.”

“What is reason given me for, if I am not to use it to avoid bringing unhappy beings into the world!”

“99% of the people in the world need to be told what to do and how to behave.”

“The castle of Cair Paravel on its little hill towered up above them; before them were the sands, with rocks and little pools of salt water, and seaweed, and the smell of the sea and long miles of bluish-green waves breaking for ever and ever on the beach. And oh, the cry of the seagulls! Have you ever heard it? Can you remember?”

“There is an old Eastern fable about a traveler who is taken unawares on the steppes by a ferocious wild animal. In order to escape the beast the traveler hides in an empty well, but at the bottom of the well he sees a dragon with its jaws open, ready to devour him. The poor fellow does not dare to climb out because he is afraid of being eaten by the rapacious beast, neither does he dare drop to the bottom of the well for fear of being eaten by the dragon. So he seizes hold of a branch of a bush that is growing in the crevices of the well and clings on to it. His arms grow weak and he knows that he will soon have to resign himself to the death that awaits him on either side. Yet he still clings on, and while he is holding on to the branch he looks around and sees that two mice, one black and one white, are steadily working their way round the bush he is hanging from, gnawing away at it. Sooner or later they will eat through it and the branch will snap, and he will fall into the jaws of the dragon. The traveler sees this and knows that he will inevitably perish. But while he is still hanging there he sees some drops of honey on the leaves of the bush, stretches out his tongue and licks them. In the same way I am clinging to the tree of life, knowing full well that the dragon of death inevitably awaits me, ready to tear me to pieces, and I cannot understand how I have fallen into this torment. And Itry licking the honey that once consoled me, but it no longer gives me pleasure. The white mouse and the black mouse – day and night – are gnawing at the branch from which I am hanging. I can see the dragon clearly and the honey no longer tastes sweet. I can see only one thing; the inescapable dragon and the mice, and I cannot tear my eyes away from them. And this is no fable but the truth, the truth that is irrefutable and intelligible to everyone.

“The antagonism between life and conscience may be removed in two ways: by a change of life or by a change of conscience.”

“If you want to be productive, you should try to learn to get joy from what gives the greatest return and discipline yourself to do those things.”

“Patience is not simply the ability to wait - it's how we behave while we're waiting.”