To a poet, silence is an acceptable response, even a flattering one.

When a deep injury is done to us, we never recover until we forgive.

Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.

I often wonder if my knowledge about God has not become my greatest stumbling block to my knowledge of God.

It is not my business to think about myself.  My business is to think about God.  It is for God to think about me.

When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people.

What screws us up most in life is the picture in our head of how it is supposed to be.

Success is not a reward to be enjoyed but a trust to be administered.

We all live under the same sky, but we don’t all have the same horizon.

We must strive to place ourselves completely in God’s hands. Then He will cause us to feel the effects of His goodness and protection–which are at times extraordinary.

Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.

People who demand neutrality in any situation are usually not neutral but in favor of the status quo.

We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.

An artist should never be a prisoner of himself, prisoner of style, prisoner of reputation, prisoner of success, etc.

The reason we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our behind-the-scenes with everyone else’s highlight reel.

The most important discoveries will provide answers to questions that we do not yet know how to ask and will concern objects we have not yet imagined.

The most perfect technique is that which is not noticed at all.

We can all be heroes
in our virtues,
in our homes,
in our lives.

In the case of good books, the point is not how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.

You have not converted a man because you have silenced him.

Men build too many walls and not enough bridges.

One filled with joy preaches without preaching.

Whatever happens to you, never give up praying. It would be like giving up breathing.

The test of generosity is not how much you give, but how much you have left.

We do the praying but not the waiting. Let us not be afraid to be silent before Him thinking it is wasted time.

Life only demands from the strength you possess.  Only one feat is possible-not to have to run away.

If we do not show love to one another, the world has a right to question whether Christianity is true.

It’s not hard to make decisions when you know what your values are.

When you are hurting, your head says that God is far away, but Jesus says, in fact, that God is closer than ever.

Christmas waves a magic wand over this world, and behold, everything is softer and more beautiful.

The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge, but imagination.

No one else sees the world the way you do, so no one else can tell the stories that you have to tell.

God grant you the light in Christmas, which is faith;
the warmth of Christmas, which is love;
the all of Christmas, which is Christ.

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.

Life is made up, not of great sacrifices or duties, but of little things in which smiles and kindness and small obligations, given habitually, are what win and preserve the heart and secure comfort.

The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.

How can we tell what coming people are aboard the ships that may be sailing to us now from the unknown seas?

If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

One of the truest tests of integrity is its blunt refusal to be compromised.

A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs, jolted by every pebble in the road.

If there is any kindness I can show, or any good thing I can do to any fellow being, let me do it now, and not deter or neglect it, as I shall not pass this way again.

Nice guys may appear to finish last, but usually they are running in a different race.

Sometimes God allows what he hates to accomplish what he loves.

We are designed to function poorly, to feel overwhelmed and alone apart from our relationship with Jesus. We are made to be lost without God.

Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.

You don’t have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body.

I believe in the sun even if it isn’t shining. I believe in love even when I am alone. I believe in God even when He is silent.

The devil is content to let us profess Christianity as long as we do not practice it.

I could open a rosebud, Lord, but I would spoil the flower. I can move the hands of the clock but I can’t change the time.

When we ask God to do something for us, He generally wants to do something in us.

The life that is righty related to God is as natural as breathing.

The man who walks with God always gets to his destination.

We haven’t yet learned how to stay human when assembled in masses.

Not what we say about our blessings, but how we use them, is the true measure of our thanksgiving.

Where there’s too much, something is missing.

Fame is a bee.
It has a song
It has a sting
Ah, too, it has a wing.

I avoid looking forward or backward, and try to keep looking upward

The question is whether or not you choose to disturb the world around you, or if you choose to let it go on as if you had never arrived.

Wait quietly.
Wait patiently.
Wait attentively.
He makes all things beautiful in His time.

A preacher comes up to a farmer in his field and remarks, “Mighty fine farm you and the Lord have made.” “Yep,” replies the farmer, “but you should have seen it when He had it all to Himself.”

The mind is its own place, and in itself / Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.

Not what I have, but what I do, is my kingdom.

Because you’re not what I would have you be, I blind myself to who, in truth, you are.

Prayer shouldn’t be casual or sporadic, dictated only by the needs of the moment. Prayer should be as much a part of our lives as breathing.

If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.

If you don’t have a smile, I’ll give you one of mine.

If you want to know God as he speaks to you through the Bible, you should study the Bible daily, systematically, comprehensively, devotionally, and prayerfully.

When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace.

“Courage is the first virtue that makes all other virtues possible.”

“What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.”

“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.”

“Everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fear.”

“When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy.’ They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.”

“When one door of happiness closes, another opens, but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us.”

“A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.”

“Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.”

“If you hear a voice within you say, ‘You cannot paint,’ then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced.”

“The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.”

“Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.”

“It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light.”

“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.”

“When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.”

“Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.”

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do, so throw off the bowlines, sail away from safe harbor, catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

“Do or do not. There is no try.”

“To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart.”

“Nothing is impossible, the word itself says ‘I’m possible’!”

“I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination.”

“Remember no one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”

“If you look at what you have in life, you’ll always have more. If you look at what you don’t have in life, you’ll never have enough.”

“Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.”

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the water to create many ripples.

“The safest road to hell is a gradual one. This safe road has a gentle slope, without turns, without milestones, without signposts, without warnings.”

“Every person we ever meet is God’s opportunity.”

“If you will not worship God seven days a week, you do not worship him on one day a week.”

“Inside the will of God there is no failure. Outside the will of God there is no success.”

“The breathing I did yesterday will not keep me alive today- I must continue to breathe afresh every moment, or my life will cease. In like manner, yesterday’s grace and spiritual strength must be renewed, and the Holy Spirit must continue to breathe on my soul from moment to moment in order that I may continue to enjoy Him and to work the works He has assigned me.”

“The only ultimate disaster that can befall us, I have come to realize, is to feel ourselves at home here on earth.”

“There is no avoiding, and no substitute for, the sometimes long, arduous experience of discovering the will of God in our own lives.”

“Life is what we are alive to. It is not length but breadth…Be alive to…goodness, kindness, purity, love, history, poetry, music, flowers, stars, God, and eternal hope.”

“Art is partly communication, but only partly. The rest is discovery.”

“Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not.”

“It is difficult to get the news from poems yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there.”

“He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life.”

“Good books tell the truth, even when they’re about things that never have been and never will be. They’re truthful in a different way.”

“Opportunity has power over all things.”

“The closer we are to God, the closer we are to those who are close to him.”

“The best reason to pray is that God is really there. In praying our unbelief starts to melt. God moves smack into the middle of even an ordinary day.”

“Find out what your temptations are and you will find out largely what you are yourself.”

“If a rabbit defined intelligence the way man does, then the most intelligent animal would be a rabbit, followed by the animal most willing to obey the commands of a rabbit.”

“Somehow, somewhere, I know that God loves me, even though I do not feel that love as I can feel a human embrace, even though I do not hear a voice as I hear human words…God is greater than my senses, greater than my thoughts, greater than my heart. I do believe that He touches me in places that are unknown even to myself.”

“You may not be able to change the world, but at least you can embarrass the guilty.”

“The battles that count aren’t the ones for gold medals. The struggles within yourself — the invisible, inevitable battles inside all of us — that’s where it’s at.”

“I am always content with what happens, for I know that what God chooses is better than what I choose.”

“God is bigger than all of us, beyond all of us. When I pray, I don’t really pray for anything, I just try to understand God’s will and do the best I can.”

“If ever you are tempted to say, ‘I wish someone were to die and leave me something in his will,’ allow me to tell you, ‘Someone has!'”

“Tears are part of existence on this earth. They have flowed from Eden right down through history to the present day.”

“Every burned book or house enlightens the world; every suppressed or expunged word reverberates through the earth from side to side.”

“The actions of men are the best interpreters of their thoughts.”

“Creative minds are uneven, and the best of fabrics have their dull spots.”

“Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day.”

“Nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion.”

“The life I touch for good or ill will touch another life, and in turn another, until who knows where the trembling stops or in what far place my touch will be felt.”

“No matter that patriotism is too often the refuge of scoundrels. Dissent, rebellion, and all-around hell-raising remain the true duty of patriots.”

“We are all healers who can reach out and offer health, and we are all patients in constant need of help.”

“It is one thing for sin to live in us; it is another for us to live in sin.”

“For many years, I thought a poem was a whisper overheard, not an aria heard.”

“Prayer is striking the winning blow at the concealed enemy. Service is gathering up the results of that blow among the men we see and touch.”

“Pray the largest prayers. You cannot think a prayer so large that God, in answering it, will not wish that you had made it larger.”

“Most people think that shadows follow, precede, or surround beings or objects. The truth is that they also surround words, ideas, desires, deeds, impulses and memories.”

“But whatever you do, find the God-centered, Christ-exalting, Bible-saturated passion of your life, and find your way to say it and live for it and die for it. And you will make a difference that lasts. You will not waste your life.”

“Too many times we miss so much because we live on the low level of the natural, the ordinary, the explainable.”

“It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry.”

“The great thing about getting older is that you don’t lose all the other ages you’ve been.”

“Reflect upon your present blessings, of which every man has many; not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.”

“Jesus, please teach me to appreciate what I have before time forces me to appreciate what I had.”

“I have learnt silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers.”

“Best of all is it to preserve everything in a pure, still heart, and let there be for every pulse a thanksgiving, and for every breath a song.”

“Every little blessing is far too precious to ever forget to say ‘thank you!'”

“The cruelest lies are often told in silence.”

“I was always complaining about the ruts in the road until I realized the ruts are the road.”

“If you are a stranger to prayer, you are a stranger to the greatest source of power known to human beings.”

“There are wounds of the spirit which never close and are intended in God’s mercy to bring us nearer to Him, and to prevent us leaving Him by their very perpetuity. Such wounds then may almost be taken as a pledge, or at least as a ground for a humble trust, that God will give us the great gift of perseverance to the end. This is how I comfort myself in my own great bereavements.”

“I suddenly saw that all the time it was not I who had been seeking God, but God who had been seeking me. I had made myself the centre of my own existence and had my back turned to God. All the beauty and truth which I had discovered had come to me as a reflection of his beauty, but I had kept my eyes fixed on the reflection and was always looking at myself. But God had brought me to the point at which I was compelled to turn away from the reflection, both of myself and of the world which could only mirror my own image. During that night the mirror had been broken, and I had felt abandoned because I could no longer gaze upon the image of my own reason and the finite world which it knew. God had brought me to my knees and made me acknowledge my own nothingness, and out of that knowledge I had been reborn. I was no longer the centre of my life and therefore I could see God in everything.”

“If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn’t seem so wonderful after all.”

“What the heart has once owned and had, it shall never lose.”

“Most people plot and plan themselves into mediocrity, while now and again somebody forgets himself into greatness.”

“Every man naturally desires knowledge; but what good is knowledge without fear of God? Indeed a humble rustic who serves God is better than a proud intellectual who neglects his soul to study the course of the stars.”

“That best portion of a good man’s life,
His little nameless, unremembered acts
Of kindness and of love.”

“What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence.”

“Our salvation includes more than pardon from sin, deliverance from hell and a ticket to heaven. It includes all that we shall need on our journey.”

“God always gave us light in our doubts, when we had no other design but to please Him.”

“It is kindness immediately to refuse what you intend to deny.”

“If your church cannot accept the wreckage of broken homes and shattered dreams, it is not the place where Jesus lives. Your church should be the greatest garbage dump in town—a place where the broken, oppressed, misplaced, abandoned, and unloved peoples can come and find a ‘family’ where they are accepted and loved… as is.”

“When we understand that He is Lord of our time, we realize that interruptions are of His planning. They become opportunities to serve rather than plagues to keep us from functioning.”

“Courage comes and goes. Hold on for the next supply.”

“Between here and heaven, every minute that the Christian lives will be a minute of grace.”

“Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.”

“When a man sees that his neighbour hates him, then he must love him more than he did before to fill up the gap.”

“My worth to God in public is what I am in private.”

“If you believe what you like in the gospel, and reject what you don’t like, it is not the gospel you believe, but yourself.”

“What I like in a good author isn’t what he says, but what he whispers.”

“Every saint has a past and every sinner a future.”

“The life of prayer is just love to God and the custom of being ever with Him.”

“The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.”

“The better part of one’s life consists of one’s friendships.”

“He who has learned to pray has learned the greatest secret of a holy and happy life.”

“The Lord’s goodness surrounds us at every moment. I walk through it almost with difficulty, as through thick grass and flowers.”

“It was when I was happiest that I longed most. The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing to find the place where all the beauty came from.”

“We can talk about love all we want, but loving those who are unlovely is how we learn about love.”

“Each day the first day:
Each day a life.”

“The offering of ourselves can only be the offering of our lived experience, because this alone is who we are. And who we are—not who we want to be—is the only offering we have to give.”

“No, no, you’re not thinking, you’re just being logical.”

When I despair, I remember that all through history, the way of truth and love has always won. There have been murderers and tyrants, and for a time they can seem invincible. But in the end they always fall. Think of it, always.”

“Never say there is nothing beautiful in the world anymore. There is always something to make you wonder in the shape of a tree, the trembling of a leaf.”

“If Christ lives in us, controlling our personalities, we will leave glorious marks on the lives we touch. Not because of our lovely characters, but because of his.”

“A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.”

“If you are seized with anger towards someone, try to imagine that both you and he must die; how insignificant his fault will then appear, and how unjust your anger, even if formally justified.”

“God usually answers our prayers according rather to the measure of His own magnificence, than to that of our asking; so that we often do not know His [benefits] to be those for which we besought Him.”

“Sometimes your only available transportation is a leap of faith.”

“Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy.”

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view.

“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”

Life provides losses and heartbreak. But the greatest tragedy is to have the experience and miss the meaning. I am determined not to miss that meaning.

Who has not for the sake of his reputation sacrificed himself?

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers.

“The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.”

It’s impossible to be loyal to your family, your friends, your country, and your principles, all at the same time.

“He has great tranquility of heart who cares neither for the praises nor the fault-finding of men. He will easily be content and pacified, whose conscience is pure. You are not holier if you are praised, nor the more worthless if you are found fault with.”

“How beautiful it is to do nothing, and then rest afterward.”

“Sometimes when I consider what tremendous consequences come from little things- I am tempted to think- there are no little things.”

“God’s Heart is especially tender toward the downtrodden and the defeated. He knows your name and He has seen every tear you have shed.”

“The fingers of your thoughts are molding your face ceaselessly.”

“Language can easily be a barrier rather than a bridge, whereas in every language the smile, the gentle touch, the embrace are the same – and in every century, too.”

“No man can tell whether he is rich or poor by turning to his ledger. It is the heart that makes a man rich. He is rich or poor according to what he is, not according to what he has.”

“As I grow to understand life less and less, I learn to live it more and more.”

“We must not be frightened nor cajoled into accepting evil as deliverance from evil. We must go on struggling to be human, though monsters of abstractions police and threaten us.”

“When we stopped going to church and started being the church, something wonderful happened.”

“You aren’t an accident. You weren’t mass-produced. You aren’t an assembly-line product. You were deliberately planned, specifically gifted, and lovingly positioned on this earth by the Master Craftsman.”

“A friend is a gift you give yourself.”

“Forgiveness is the precondition of love.”

“When you see a man led to prison say in your heart, ‘Mayhap he is escaping from a narrower prison.’ And when you see a man drunken say in your heart, ‘Mayhap he sought escape from something still more unbeautiful.'”

“It has come to pass that man’s knowledge has surpassed his wisdom. He is afraid of what he knows.”

“We do not content ourselves with the life we have in ourselves; we desire to live an imaginary life in the minds of others, and for this purpose we endeavor to shine.”

“Children are not casual guests in our home. They have been loaned to us temporarily for the purpose of loving them and instilling a foundation of values on which their future lives will be built.”

“Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry on as if nothing happened.”

“Most institutions demand unqualified faith; but the institution of science makes skepticism a virtue.”

“There is a loftier ambition than merely to stand high in the world. It is to stoop down and lift mankind a little higher.”

“Christianity proposes not to extinguish our natural desires. It promises to bring the desires under just control and direct them to their true object.”

“Grace means more, far more than we can put into words, because it means nothing less than the infinite character of God Himself. It includes mercy for the undeserving and unmerciful, help for the helpless and hopeless, redemption for the renegade and repulsive, love for the unloving and unlovely, kindness for the unkind and unthankful. And all this in full measure and overflowing abundance, because of nothing in the object, and because of everything in the Giver, God Himself.”

“All the blessings we enjoy are Divine deposits, committed to our trust on this condition, that they should be dispensed for the benefit of our neighbors.”

“It is perilous to separate thinking rightly from acting [rightly]. He is already half false who speculates on truth, and does not do it. Truth is given, not to be contemplated, but to be done. Life is an action, not a thought. And the penalty paid by him who speculates on truth, is that by degrees the very truth he holds becomes to him a falsehood.”

“The power of goodness is found in the tiny. Since the beginning, God has chosen the tiny over the large: David over Goliath, Gideon and his three hundred soldiers over thousands of Midianites, Elijah over the prophets of Baal, one sheep over ninety-nine sheep. Spirituality is about doing the tiny work of God, little acts, small responses to God’s presence in our lives.”

“We should all like life to be free from suffering, and our love to be free from pain. But there is no true love without suffering. So the highest love of all, the love of Christ for men, showed unforgettably how deeply he must suffer in order to bring men to himself.”

An idea is not responsible for the people who believe in it.

The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.

Never dwell on the tomorrow; remember, that it’s God’s and not ours.

It’s not what you did, but what you could have done if you allowed the Lord to work His will in your life.

Here is a paradox, that no one can seek the Lord who has not already found Him. It is Thy will, O God, to be found that Thou mayest be sought, to be sought that Thou mayest the more truly be found.

To endure the cross is not a tragedy; it is the suffering which is the fruit of an exclusive allegiance to Jesus Christ. When it comes, it is not an accident, but a necessity. It is not the sort of suffering which is inseparable from this mortal life, but the suffering which is an essential part of the specifically Christian life.

Thanksgiving is the language of heaven, and we had better start to learn it if we are not to be mere dumb aliens there.

Never be afraid of the world’s censure; it’s praise is much more to be dreaded.

We are all fallen creatures and all very hard to live with.

There is so much good in the worst of us, and so much bad in the best of us, that it behooves all of us not to talk about the rest of us.

When a Christian shuns fellowship with other Christians, the devil smiles. When he stops studying the Bible, the devil laughs. When he stops praying, the devil shouts for joy.

Nowhere in the New Testament are we told to “build the Kingdom.” It is already built “from the foundation of the world,” built into the nature of reality. You “see,” “enter,” “proclaim,” “suffer for” the Kingdom, but never “build” it. For the Kingdom is not a relativism to be built, but an absolute to be accepted, submitted to, obeyed.

The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer.

A sneer is the weapon of the weak.

We are all fallen creatures and all very hard to live with.

Only God can turn a mess into a message, a test into a testimony.

It’s good to have money and the things that money can buy, but it’s good, too, to check up once in a while and make sure that you haven’t lost the things that money can’t buy.

Beware in your prayer, above everything, of limiting God – not only by unbelief, but by fancying that you know what he can do.

You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.

I am convinced that the first step towards attaining a higher standard of holiness is to realize more fully the amazing sinfulness of sin.

A man stopped every morning to set his watch by the clock on the local bank. One day the banker stepped outside to ask him why. “Well,” said the man, “I am the man who sounds the noon siren and I want to be sure it is the correct time.” “That’s strange,” said the banker, “I set this clock by that siren each day.”

There is no place for faith if we expect God to fulfill immediately what he promises.