"...a man who is good for anything ought not to calculate the chance of living or dying; he ought only to consider whether in doing anything he is doing right or wrong – acting the part of a good man or of a bad."

– Socrates

"You must know that it is no easy thing for a principle to become a man's own, unless each day he maintain it and hear it maintained, as well as work it out in life"

– Epictetus

"Sometimes our "prayers of faith" are actually marks of presumption. We hope to force God's hand. But you can't put God in a box – trying to position your life or voice your prayers in such a way that God must act to keep His promises. God always keeps His promises. He just never lets you redefine them."

– Stephen Felts

"...my reason can only judge by what I know, and I do not know everything."

– Louis L'Amour

"Only two things are infinite, the universe and stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."

– Albert Einstein

"There is no use trying to discipline yourself until you surrender yourself. The central discipline is self–surrender"

– E. Stanley Jones

"Human felicity is produc'd not so much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen, as by little advantages that occur every day."

Benjamin Franklin

"If all our misfortunes were laid in one common heap, whence everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be contented to take their own and depart."

– Socrates

"It is a very common, yet very serious misunderstanding that we have little or no control over our feelings."

– Dr. Frans M. J. Brandt

"We are made by history only to the extent that we allow this to be so, particularly in the area of our spiritual and emotional happiness."

– Dr. Frans M. J. Brandt

"We are the only ones who directly deal with and are responsible for our minds. We are the ones who direct our brains. We may listen to others, totally or in part; we may follow their suggestions and advice; we may do a variety of other things. But when all is said and done, the final truth is that we change ourselves."

– Dr. Frans M. J. Brandt

"...I don't think this is what God planned when He formed the world. Something has gone terribly wrong, and now God comes to us with bleeding hands... We can trust a God who bleeds, even when we can't trust anything else."

– Lonni Collins Pratt

"No man in the world ever attempted to wrong another without being injured in return – someway, somehow, sometime. The only weapon of offense that Nature seems to recognize is the boomerang.

– William George Jordan

"Mushrooms attain their full power in a night; oaks require decades."

– William George Jordan

"You cannot by trying discover truth; truth is revealed."

– Henry Blackaby

"The will of God is not something God wants to do but what God is in the midst of doing"

– Henry Blackaby

"God reveals truth to help us become holy saints, not smarter sinners."

– Walter Henrichsen

"The humble person is not one who thinks meanly of himself; he simply does not think of himself at all."

– Andrew Murray

 Only the soul that knows the mighty grief
Can know the mighty rapture. Sorrows come
To stretch out spaces in the heart for joy. 

– Edwin Markham

"God never intended to meet all our needs – that is why God created more than one person."

– Nancy Hardesty

" Even if you feel as if you have gotten to where you are by botching up your life, God specializes in making beautiful mosaics from broken pieces."

– Nancy Hardesty

"There are two types of philosophical writer: those of whose understanding we are ignorant, and those whose ignorance we understand all too well."

– Samuel Coleridge

"None of us will keep up a life of prayer unless we are prepared to change. We will either give it up or turn it into a little system that maintains the form of godliness but denies the power of it – which is the same thing as giving it up."

– Richard J. Foster

"The question is not whether we fail again and again – that is a given; the question is whether over a period of time we are developing a practiced habit of divine fellowship."

– Richard J. Foster

"... the very media we have mentioned [radio and television] are so designed as to make thinking seem unnecessary (though this is only an appearance). The packaging of intellectual positions and views is one of the most active enterprises of some of the best minds of our day. The viewer of television, the listener to radio, the reader of magazines is presented with a whole complex of elements – all the way from ingenious rhetoric to carefully selected data and statistics – to make it easy for him to "make up his own mind" with the minimum of difficulty and effort. But the packaging is often done so effectively that the viewer, listener or reader does not make up his own mind at all. Instead, he inserts a packaged opinion into his mind, somewhat like inserting a cassette into a cassette player. He then pushes a button and "plays back" the opinion whenever it seems appropriate to do so. He has performed acceptably without having had to think."

– Mortimer J. Adler

"For here we are so blind and foolish that we never seek God until he, of his goodness, shows himself to us. It is when we do see something of him by his grace that we are stirred by that same grace to seek him, and with earnest longing to see still more of his blessedness. So I saw him and sought him; I had him and wanted him. It seems to me that this is and should be an experience common to us all."

– Julian of Norwich

"So the only way on earth to influence the other fellow is to talk about what he wants and show him how to get it."

– Dale Carnegie

"Every act you ever performed since the day you were born is because you wanted something. "

– Dale Carnegie

"The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do."

– Thomas Jefferson

"Read something every day that no one else is reading. Think something no one else is thinking. It is bad for the mind to be always a part of unanimity."

– Christopher Morley

"A first rate soup is more creative than a second rate painting."

– Abraham Maslow

"If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of potential, for the eye which sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never.

– Søren Kierkegaard

"I ponder on myself, indifferently honest,"

– Max Ehrmann

"Swing as hard as you can just in case you hit the ball."

– Seen on T–shirt

"The summer's flower is to the summer sweet
Though to itself it only live and die;
But if that flower with base infection meet,
the basest weed outbraves his dignity:
For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds."

– William Shakespeare

"A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic – on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg – or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. You can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."

– C.S. Lewis

"When you're allowed the indulgence of being anything you want to be and have someone tell you 'That's okay', it's very scary."

– A member of Pink Floyd. I didn't catch his name.

"I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untraveled world whose margin fades
Forever and forever when I move."

– Alfred, Lord Tennyson

"When relativities are changed into absolutes, absolutes are more easily perceived as relativities."

– Carl F.H. Henry

"Ideally, when Christians meet, as Christians do, to take counsel together, their purpose is not ( or should not be) to ascertain what is the mind of the majority but what is the mind of the Holy Spirit – something which may be quite different."

– Margaret Thatcher

"One thing has always been true: That book or that person who can give me an idea or a new slant on an old idea is my friend."

– Louis L'Amour

"A great book begins with an idea; a great life, with a determination."

– Louis L'Amour

"If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself but to your own estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment."

– Marcus Aurelius

"As a thinking being the modern Christian has succumbed to secularization. He accepts religion – its morality, its worship; but he rejects the religious view of life, the view which sets all earthly issues within the context of the eternal."

– Harry Blamires

"Moderation in temper is always a virtue. Moderation in principle is always a vice."

– Thomas Paine

"If we submit everything to reason, our religion will have nothing in it mysterious or supernatural. If we violate the principles of reason, our religion will be absurd and ridiculous."

– Blaise Pascal

"All the miseries of mankind come from one thing, not knowing how to remain alone."

– Blaise Pascal

"Forge thy tongue on an anvil of truth
And what flies up, though it be but a spark,
Shall have weight."

– Pindar (Attributed)

"I believe in men who take the next step not those who theorize about the 200^th step."

– Theodore Roosevelt

"There is a difficulty about disagreeing with God. He is the source from which all your reasoning power comes: you could not be right and he wrong any more than a stream can rise higher than its own source."

– C.S. Lewis

"Nothing important is completely explicable."

– Madeleine L'Engle

"The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible"

– Albert Einstein

"Men stumble over the truth from time to time, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing happened."

– Winston Churchill

"Nothing in the world is more dangerous than a sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity."

– Martin Luther King, Jr.

"...I tend to have more sympathy with complete opting out than with the search for security and fringe benefits. I have more hope that someone who has shouted, 'Stop the world, I want to get off!' can get back on and enjoy the ride, than someone who wants more cushions."

– Madeleine L'Engle

"I hate the idea of causes, and if I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country."

– E.M. Forster

"Stronger people cannot help the weaker unless the weaker are willing to be helped, and even then the weaker must become strong of themselves; they must, by their own efforts, develop the strength that they admire in others. Only we ourselves can alter our conditions."

– James Allen

"Pilate was merciful till it became risky."

– C.S. Lewis

"...if you redefine excellence recklessly enough, there will be no shortage of excellence."

– George F. Will

"Ancient political philosophy demanded subtle statesmanship, but held out the promise of nobility. Modern political philosophy demands less of statesmen–indeed, it insists on modest, even banal aims–but it promises clarity and certainty."

– George F. Will

"When the sword is once drawn, the passions of men observe no bounds of moderation."

– Alexander Hamilton

"All politics takes place on a slippery slope. The most important four words in politics are "up to a point". Are we in favor of free speech? Of course – up to a point. Are we for liberty, equality, military strength, industrial vigor, environmental protection, traffic safety? Up to a point. (Want a significant reduction of traffic deaths? Then ban left turns. You say that would be going too far? Then you are for improving traffic safety – but only up to a point.) Those four words may seem to lack intellectual rigor or heroic commitment...But "Up to a point" is one answer to many political questions. Political argument often, perhaps usually, is about degree. It is about the point up to which we want to go in pursuit of a good that may, at some point, conflict with other goods...There is only one political good that we should not speak of wanting only "up to a point". It is the central political value, justice. But then, justice consists of pursuing other political values – such as freedom and virtue – only up to appropriate points."

– George F. Will

"Someone's boring me. I think it's me."

–Dylan Thomas

"I just read a book on how to get control of my time and therefore of my life. My time has always had a tendency to slip away from me and do as it pleases. My life follows it, like a puppy after an untrained bird dog. Come night, my life shows up, usually covered with mud and full of stickers, exhausted but grinning happily. My time never returns."

– Patrick F. McManus

"One of my more profound theories is that it's unwise to think too long or too hard about anything you enjoy doing. Otherwise, you will discover that the thing is totally absurd, and the fun will go out of it."

– Patrick F. McManus

" We are a republic, not a democracy. And in a republic the people do not decide issues. They decide who will decide."

– George F. Will

"There is a flow to history and culture. This flow is rooted and has its wellspring in the thoughts of people. People are unique in the inner life of the mind – what they are in their thought world determines how they act. This is true of their value systems and it is true of their creativity. It is true of their corporate actions, such as political decisions, and it is true of their personal lives. The results of their thought world flow through their fingers or from their tongues into the external world. This is true of Michelangelo's chisel and it is true of a dictator's sword."

– Francis A. Schaeffer

"There are so many Christians who have practically no idea of the immense love of God for them, and of the power of that Love to do them good, to bring them happiness."

– Thomas Merton

"The authorities' silence is as eloquent a proof of the resurrection as the apostles' witness."

– John R.W. Stott

"For forms of government let fools contest;
Whate'er is best administer'd is best." *

– Alexander Pope

* – Called political heresy by Alexander Hamilton

"In terms of volume, this is surely an information age. But in terms of understanding, wisdom, spiritual clarity, and civility, we have entered a darker age. We are committing what C.S. Lewis once called "verbicide." The volume of words is inversely related to our capacity to use them well, and to think clearly about what they mean."

– David Orr

"No person who has learned that to exist as the individual is the most terrifying thing of all will be afraid of saying it is the greatest"

– Søren Kierkegaard

"...to contend with the whole world is a comfort, but to contend with oneself dreadful."

– Søren Kierkegaard

"You don't need to worry about what might be if you're trusting in what will be."

– Charles Roberts

"It is indicative that the common question posed by journalists to the person–on–the–street after an event (a notable presidential speech or action, or an important congressional vote) is not "What do you think about it?" but rather "How do you feel about it?" The latter question – "How do you feel?" – is one of the telltale locutions of the age. Feelings can be quick and easy. Feelings are not necessarily produced by reflection, any more than is a skin rash. Feelings can be produced as easily as a head of foam is produced on a stein of beer. And feelings can be just as insubstantial as foam. So feelings are more "democratic" than thoughts. Thoughts are not as universally distributed. Our society considers feelings to be morally complete and self–legitimizing...If there is no appeal to any standard higher than how people "feel," it is impertinent to advocate institutions and forms that will improve upon feelings. If feelings are all we aspire to, there is no point in trying to transmute them into anything higher, such as considered judgments."

– George F. Will

"Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one."

– Marcus Aurelius

"The medieval philosopher Moses Maimonides wrote that conflicts between science and the Bible arise from either a lack of scientific knowledge or a defective understanding of the Bible. This is a continuing problem. Acknowledged experts in science may assume that although scientific research requires diligent intellectual effort, biblical wisdom can be attained through a simple reading of the Bible. Conversely, theologians who have devoted decades to plumbing the depths of biblical wisdom often satisfy their scientific curiosity through articles in the popular press and then assume they can evaluate the validity of scientific discoveries. The "opposition" is viewed with a level of knowledge frozen at a high school or pre–high school level. No wonder the "other side" seems superficial, even naive. To relate these two fields in a meaningful way requires an in–depth understanding of both."

– Gerald L. Schroeder

"Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?"

– Abraham Lincoln

"If the person who states the theory is saying something to which nobody can really take exception, he cannot be uttering any more than a triviality."

– F.C. Copleston

"...what is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself."

– James Madison

"...liberty may be endangered by the abuses of liberty as well as by the abuses of power...."

– James Madison

"The world is moving so fast these days that the man who says it can't be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it."

– Harry Emerson Fosdick

"Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously*; and some few to be read wholly and with diligence and attention."

– Francis Bacon

* – With great care

"Nothing is as easy as thinking. And nothing is as difficult as thinking well. Thinking well is always painful. There is a price tag."

– Howard Hendricks

"You cannot be, I know, nor do I wish to see you, an inactive spectator....We have too many high sounding words, and too few actions that correspond with them."

– Abigail Adams

"I never do anything that someone else does better."

– Luther Vandross

"One of the most curious characteristics of human beings – particularly westerners – is that pain and inconvenence stimulate their vitality far more than pleasure. In a very precise sense of the word, human beings are spoilt. A spoilt child is one who has come to expect certain privileges and accepts them as rights. He is not grateful for these privileges; in fact, they bore him. The only time he feels strongly about them is when they are curtailed; then he sulks. All human beings take their happiness for granted, and only question life when they are in pain."

– Colin Wilson

"What a large volume of adventures may be grasped within this little span of life by him who interests his heart in everything."

– Laurence Sterne

"Every moment you live, you learn; and as you learn, you live. Stop learning today, and you stop living tomorrow."

– Howard G. Hendricks

"My critical nature had not corrected a single one of the multitudinous things I found fault with. What it had done was to stifle my own creativity – in prayer, in relationships, perhaps even in writing – ideas that He wanted to give me."

– Catherine Marshall

"Pressure is a good word. It means you have an opportunity to do something great."

– James Blake in a tv interview

"He [Abraham] feared God so much that he feared no man at all."

– Dr. David Jeremiah

"There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, in the end, 'Thy will be done.' All that are in Hell, chose it."

– C.S. Lewis

"If one thinks that a particular position on a nuclear weapons freeze is more sure and more important than the doctrine of a final resurrection of the dead to divine judgment, one seriously confuses his priorities."

– Carl F.H. Henry

"There is, we are aware, a philosophy that denies the infinite. There is also a philosophy, classified as pathologic, that denies the Sun; this philosophy is called blindness. To set up a theory that lacks a source of truth is an excellent example of blind assurance."

– Victor Hugo

" More dangers have deceived men than forced them."

– Francis Bacon

"This will remain the land of the free only so long as it is the home of the brave."

– Elmer Davis

"Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof."

– John Galbraith

"Men show their characters in nothing more clearly than in what they think laughable."

– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it."

– Stephen Leacock

"What a man does when he is alone with his thoughts will decide what he is when he is in public with other people."

– Alan Redpath

" The greatest leader is not the one that does the greatest things, he is the one who gets the people to do the greatest things."

– Ronald Reagan

" ...he who always hopes for the best becomes old, deceived by life, and he who is always prepared for the worst becomes old prematurely; but he who has faith, retains eternal youth."

– Søren Kierkegaard

"As believers, we speak, act and write out of our spiritual gifts...The same God who used John the Baptist also used Barnabas."

– Mark Hall, of "Casting Crowns"

"Everything must attach itself so as to be a part of some movement; men are determined to lose themselves in the totality of things, in world history, facinated and deceived by a magic witchery; no one wants to be an individual human being."

– Søren Kierkegaard

"Extremism is so easy...when you go far enough to the right, you meet the same idiots coming around from the left."

– Clint Eastwood

"The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence that it is not utterly absurd; indeed, in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible."

– Bertrand Russell

"To understand in depth the starting–point of some area of knowledge is to know all that can be derived from that starting–point. But when we don't know the starting–point, or know it only superficially, then the area is known only in part."

– St. Thomas Aquinas

"History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives."

– Abba Eban

"Cynicism is ever the outward face of emptiness."

– Louis L'Amour

"Thus fell Pyrrhus from his Italian and Sicilian hopes, after he had consumed six years in these wars... only what he got by great actions he lost again by vain hopes, and by new desires of what he had not, kept nothing of what he had."

– Plutarch

"There are two ways to be rich: one in the abundance of your possessions and the other in the fewness of your wants."

– E. Stanley Jones

"The statement that the meek shall inherit the earth is very far from being a meek statement."

– G.K. Chesterton

"...nor have I anything to offer my readers except my conviction that when pain is to be borne, a little courage helps more than much knowledge, a little human sympathy more than much courage, and the least tincture of the love of God more than all."

– C. S. Lewis

"Thus it is those who rejected and crucified Jesus Christ—for He was a scandal to them—who handed down the books that bear witness to Him, saying He would be rejected and cause a scandal. Their very rejection proved that it was He; His claims were proved alike by both the righteous Jews who accepted Him and the unrighteous who rejected Him, since both were foretold."

– Blaise Pascal

"I believe it can be successfully argued that every personal or behavioral problem one might wish to change (e.g., bad temper, perverted sexual desires, depression, anxiety, overeating) results ultimately from violations of the command to love."

– Dr. Larry Crabb

"God makes it quite clear in His Word that He has only one answer to every human need – His Son, Jesus Christ. In all His dealings with us He works by taking us out of the way and substituting Christ in our place. The Son of God died instead of us for our forgiveness: He lives instead of us for our deliverance. So we can speak of two substitutions – a Substitute on the Cross who secures our forgiveness and a Substitute within who secures our victory. It will help us greatly, and save us from much confusion, if we keep constantly before us this fact, that God will answer all our questions in one way only, namely, by showing us more of His Son."

– Watchman Nee

"We may be weak, but looking at our weakness will never make us strong."

– Watchman Nee

"This is the kind of faith described in Mark 11:24: "All things whatsoever ye pray and ask for, believe that ye have received them, and ye shall have them." The statement there is that, if you believe that you already have received your requests (that is, of course, in Christ), then 'you shall have them'. To believe that you may get something, or that you can get it, or even that you will get it, is not faith in the sense meant here. This is faith – to believe that you have already got it. Only that which relates to the past is faith in this sense. Those who say 'God can' or 'God may' or 'God must' or 'God will' do not necessarily believe at all. Faith always says, 'God has done it'."

– Watchman Nee

"History is full of people who thought they were right—absolutely right, completely right, without a shadow of a doubt. And because history never seems like history when you are living through it, it is tempting for us to think the same."

– John D. Barrow

"We multiply distinctions, then deem that our puny boundaries ore things that we perceive, and not that we have made."

– William Wordsworth

"To speak to God on behalf of men is probably the highest service any of us can render. The next is to speak to men in the name of God."

– A.W. Tozer

"In Romans 3:23 we read: “All have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God”. God’s purpose for man was glory, but sin thwarted that purpose by causing man to miss God’s glory. When we think of sin we instinctively think of the judgment it brings; we invariably associate it with condemnation and hell. Man’s thought is always of the punishment that will come to him if he sins, but God’s thought is always of the glory man will miss if he sins. The result of sin is that we forfeit God’s glory: the result of redemption is that we are qualified again for glory. God’s purpose in redemption is glory, glory, glory."

– Watchman Nee

" The miracles of Jesus were the ordinary works of His Father, wrought small and swift that we might take them in."

– George McDonald

"The Incarnation reveals to man the enormity of his misery through the greatness of the remedy it requires."

– Blaise Pascal

"As soon as we see the Lord Jesus on the Cross, we know our sins are forgiven; and as soon as we see the Lord Jesus on the Throne, we know the Holy Spirit has been poured out upon us... Christ has been crucified, therefore we have been forgiven: Christ has been glorified, therefore we have been endued with power from on high. It is all because of Him."

– Watchman Nee

"...we push God into the corner and use Him as an escape from hell and to help us when the baby's sick, and then we go our way and then we try to pump up faith by reading promises. It won't work, brother, it won't work!"

– A.W. Tozer

"My experience is that those who pray most in their closets generally make short prayers in public."

– D.L. Moody

"Christianity begins not with a big DO, but with a big DONE."

– Watchman Nee

"God will not give me humility or patience or holiness or love as separate gifts of His grace. He is not a retailer dispensing grace to us in doses, measuring out some patience to the impatient, some love to the unloving, some meekness to the proud, in quantities that we take and work on as kind of capital. He has given only one gift to meet all our need—His Son Christ Jesus, and as I look to Him to live out His life in me, He will be humble and patient and loving and everything else I need—in my stead."

– Watchman Nee

"One of the best aids to freedom is asking God for a lot of help—and asking often."

– Joyce Meyer

"...what lies at the heart of the gospel is not an idea or an ideal or an experience, but an action."

– Kevin J. Vanhoozer