Unsorted Quotes, Devotional Bits, "Good 'uns," and Beloved Bible Passages

And who's to say which is more incredible — a man who raises the dead ... or a God who weeps (Ken Gire)

Every evening I turn my worries over to God. He's going to be up all night anyway. (Mary C. Crowley)

Coincidences are spiritual puns. (G.K. Chesterton)

If you have integrity, nothing else matters. If you don't have integrity, nothing else matters. (Alan Simpson)

We would often be ashamed of our finest actions if the world understood all the motives which produced them. (Duc de La Rochefoucauld)

Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind. (Dr. Seuss)

It takes 8,460 bolts to assemble an automobile, and one nut to scatter it all over the road. (Bumper sticker)

The decent moderation of today will be the least of human things tomorrow. At the time of the Spanish Inquisition, the opinion of good sense and of the good medium was certainly that people ought not to burn too large a number of heretics; extreme and unreasonable opinion obviously demanded that they should burn none at all. (Maurice Maeterlinck)

Most conversations are simply monologues delivered in the presence of a witness. (Margaret Millar)

Two monologues do not make a dialogue. (Jeff Daly)

The business of a cathedral is to offer praise to God day in and day out, seven days a week. "Some people say it's best when there's nobody here at all," he said, "just the choir, the angels, and the snow outside." He smiled, "I'm not quite so other-worldly as that. I like to have a few people come. (Tim Stafford, interviewing N.T. Wright)

Theology is marginal for the church today because it can't offer spiritual nurture to people. If it could reclaim spiritual nurture as one of its tasks, theology might be able to help the church instead of having to be warded off by the church. (Ellen Charry)

Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition, when infinite joy is offered to us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in the slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased. (CS Lewis)

A free society is a place where it's safe to be unpopular. (Adlai Stevenson)

One can be instructed in society, one is inspired only in solitude. (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)

But man, proud man,
Dressed in a little brief authority,
... Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven
As make the angels weep. (William Shakespeare)

Humility like darkness reveals the heavenly lights. (Henry David Thoreau)

Government is, abstractedly taken, an evil, a usurpation upon the private judgment and individual conscience of mankind. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness. (Jefferson)

Whoever lays his hand on me to govern me is a usurper and tyrant, and I declare him my enemy. (Proudhon)

It is the duty of nations, as well as of men, to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God and to recognize the sublime truth announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord. (Abraham Lincoln)

Error, indeed, is never set forth in its naked deformity, lest, being thus exposed, it should at once be detected. But it is craftily decked out in an attractive dress, so as, by its outward form, to make it appear to the inexperienced (ridiculous as the expression may seem) more true than truth itself. (Irenaes)

Justice of the Peace (to bride who teaches linguistics): Do you take this man to be your lawful wedded husband in good times or in bad? Bride (after brief pause): In good times.

Food peppers everyday speech to such an extent that it's practically unavoidable. We fish for compliments, beef about injustice, butter up the powers that be, and ham it up to get a laugh. A pretty woman's a hot tomato, a brainy student's an egghead, a muscled he-man is beefcake, and a coward is just plain chicken. We table discussions, tap sources, cook up new ideas, pull down menus on our computer screens, and offer recipes for success. We toast the bride and groom, roast our fellows at honorific dinners, cajole people who are slow as molasses to wake up and smell the coffee, act cool as a cucumber when we get caught with our hands in the cookie jar, and turn beet red when we are obliged to eat our words. (Edythe Preet)

It must be felt that there is no national security but in the nation's humble acknowledged dependence upon God and His overruling providence. (John Adams)

God has no religion. (Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi)

It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions, but on the gospel of Jesus Christ. For this very reason peoples of other faiths have been afforded asylum, prosperity, and freedom of worship here. (Patrick Henry)

More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice rise like a fountain for me night and day. For what are men better than sheep or goats that nourish a blind life within the brain, If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer both for themselves and those who call them friend? For so the whole round earth is every way bound by gold chains about the feet of God. (Alfred, Lord Tennyson)

A schedule defends from chaos and whim. (Annie Dillard)

I read an article that said the way to achieve inner peace is to finish things I have started. Today I finished two bags of potato chips, a chocolate pie, a bottle of wine and a small box of chocolate candy. I feel better already! (Anonymous)

Smile when picking up the phone. The caller will hear it in your voice. (Chinese proverb)

When you lose, don't lose the lesson. (Chinese proverb)

For we must consider that we shall be as a City upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw his present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword throughout the world. (John Winthrop, Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony)

All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher. (Ambrose Bierce)

The heights by great men reached and kept
     Were not attained by sudden flight,
But they, while their companions slept,
     Were toiling upward in the night.
(Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)

Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate. (Albert Schweitzer)

So act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world. (Immanuel Kant)

The only difference between me and a madman is that I'm not mad. (Salvador Dali)

If we would pray aright, the first thing we should do is to see to it that we really get an audience with God, that we really get into His very presence. Before a word of petition is offered, we should have the definite consciousness that we are talking to God, and should believe that He is listening and is going to grant the thing that we ask of Him. (Dr. R.A. Torrey)

I now make it my earnest prayer that God would have you, and the State over which you preside, in his holy protection; that he would incline the hearts of the citizens to cultivate a spirit of subordination and obedience to government, to entertain a brotherly affection and love for one another, for their fellow-citizens of the United States at large, and particularly for brethren who have served in the field; and finally that he would most graciously be pleased to dispose us all to do justice, to love mercy, and to demean ourselves with that charity, humility, and pacific temper of mind, which were the characteristics of the Divine Author of our blessed religion, and without an humble imitation of whose example in these things, we can never hope to be a happy nation. (George Washington)

The beginnings and endings of all human undertakings are untidy. (John Galsworthy)

As soon as man does not take his existence for granted, but beholds it as something unfathomably mysterious, thought begins. (Albert Schweitzer)

I believe the Bible is the best gift God has ever given to man. All the good from the Savior of the world is communicated to us through this book. (Abraham Lincoln)

May the strength of God pilot us, may the power of God preserve us.
May the wisdom of God instruct us, may the hand of God protect us.
May the way of God direct us, may the shield of God defend us.
May the host of God guard us against the snares of the evil one, against the temptations of the world. (St. Patrick)

Pray the largest prayers. You cannot think a prayer so large that God in answering it, will not wish you had made it larger. Pray not for crutches but wings. (Phillips Brooks)

I shall need, too, the favor of that Being in whose hands we are, who led our fathers, as Israel of old, from their native land and planted them in a country flowing with all the necessaries and comforts of life; who has covered our infancy with His providence and our riper years with His wisdom and power, and to whose goodness I ask you to join in supplications with me that He will so enlighten the minds of your servants, guide their councils, and prosper their measures that whatsoever they do shall result in your good, and shall secure to you the peace, friendship, and approbation of all nations. (Thomas Jefferson)

Prayer is not the mystical experience of a few special people, but an aggressive act.... an act that may be performed by anyone who will accept the challenge to learn to pray. (Jack Hayford)

Paul Harvey RIDDLE:
When asked this riddle, 80% of kindergarten kids got the answer, compared to 17% of Stanford University seniors.
What is greater than God, More evil than the devil, The poor have it, The rich need it, And if you eat it, you'll die?

Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children. (Kahlil Gibran)

People who take time to be alone usually have depth, originality, and quiet reserve. (John Miller)

Education: That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding. (Ambrose Bierce)

If we have not quiet in our minds, outward comfort will do no more for us than a golden slipper on a gouty foot. (John Bunyan)

Human misery must somewhere have a stop; there is no wind that always blows a storm. (Euripides)

The men who have guided the destiny of the United States have found the strength for their tasks by going to their knees. (Lyndon B. Johnson)

Prayer does not need proof, it needs practice. (William Evans)

Grandchildren are God's reward for not killing your children. (Anonymous)

In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit. (Albert Schweitzer)

All the world's a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed. (Sean O'Casey)

Lord, take me where You want me to go;
Let me meet who you want me to meet;
Tell me what You want me to say, and
Keep me out of Your way.
(Found in the pocket of the Fire Department chaplain who died inteh World Trade Center attack.)

Be patient and wait for the Lord to act. (Psalms 37:7 Good News)

I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies, for the hardest victory is over self. (Aristotle)

heteronym (HET-uhr-uh-nim) noun
A word that has the same spelling as another word but with a different pronunciation and meaning.
     Listen, readers, toward me bow.
     Be friendly; do not draw the bow.
     Please don't try to start a row.
     Sit peacefully, all in a row.
     Don't act like a big, fat sow.
     Do not the seeds of discord sow.

capitonym (KAP-i-toh-NIM) noun
A word that changes pronunciation and meaning when it is capitalized.
     Job's Job
          In August, an august patriarch
          Was reading an ad in Reading, Mass.
          Long-suffering Job secured a job
          To polish piles of Polish brass.
     Herb's Herbs
          An herb store owner, name of Herb,
          Moved to a rainier Mount Rainier.
          It would have been so nice in Nice,
          And even tangier in Tangier.

Getting people to like you is merely the other side of liking them. (Norman Vincent Peale)

A full cup must be carried steadily. (English proverb)

America was founded by people who believed that God was their rock of safety. I recognize we must be cautious in claiming that God is on our side, but I think it's all right to keep asking if we're on His side. (Ronald Reagan)

I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her commodious harbors and her ample rivers, and it was not there; in her fertile fields and boundless prairies, and it was not there; in her rich mines and her vast world commerce, and it was not there. Not until I went to the churches of America and heard her pulpits aflame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because she is good and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great. (Alexis de Tocqueville)

A godly man is a praying man. As soon as grace is poured in, prayer is poured out. Prayer is the soul's traffic with Heaven; God comes down to us by His Spirit, and we go up to Him by prayer. (T. Watson)

We do not stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing. (Anonymous)

The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. (Benjamin Franklin)

Every thinking man, when he thinks, realizes that the teachings of the Bible are so interwoven and entwined with our whole civic and social life that it would be literally-I do not mean figuratively, but literally impossible for us to figure what that loss would be if these teachings were removed. We would lose all the standards by which we now judge both public and private morals; all the standards towards which we, with more or less resolution, strive to raise ourselves. (President Theodore Roosevelt)

The next best thing to winning is losing! At least you've been in the race. (Nellie Hershey Smith)

Nothing so soon the drooping spirits can raise
     As praises from the men,
whom all men praise. (Abraham Cowley)

Simplicity doesn't mean to live in misery and poverty. You have what you need, and you don't want to have what you don't need. (Charan Singh)

Against criticism a man can neither protest nor defend himself; he must act in spite of it, and then it will gradually yield to him. (Goethe)

There is nothing that so much gratifies an ill tongue as when it finds an angry heart. (Thomas Fuller)

He is a hard man who is only just, and a sad one who is only wise. (Voltaire)

As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life — so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls. (Matt Cartmill)

Solvency is entirely a matter of temperament and not of income. (Logan Pearsall Smith)

We cannot do everything at once, but we can do something at once. (Calvin Coolidge)

God works in mysterious ways,
His wonders to perform.
He plants his footsteps on the sea
And rides upon the storm.

America seeks no earthly empire built on blood and force. No ambition, no temptation, lures her to thought of foreign dominions. The legions which she sends forth are armed, not with the sword, but with the cross. The higher state to which she seeks the allegiance of all mankind is not of human, but of divine origin. She cherishes no purpose save to merit the favor of Almighty God. (Calvin Coolidge)

Self-pity is one of the most dangerous forms of self-centeredness. It fogs our vision. (Anonymous)

I'm a great believer in luck and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it. (Thomas Jefferson)

Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men. (John F. Kennedy)

I question myself more than anyone I know. Some might consider this a weakness, but I believe it is one of my greatest strengths. (Marilyn vos Savant)

What is more mortifying than to feel that you have missed the plum for want of courage to shake the tree? (Logan Pearsall Smith)

Every difficulty slurred over will be a ghost to disturb your repose later on. (Frederic Chopin)

The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable. (James A. Garfield)

Blessed are they who heal you of self-despisings. Of all services which can be done to man, I know of none more precious. (William Hale White)

To resist the frigidity of old age one must combine the body, the mind and the heart — and to keep them in parallel vigor one must exercise, study and love. (Karl Viktor von Bonstetten)

To find a friend one must close one eye. To keep him ... two. (Norman Douglas)

Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it's the only one you've got. (Alain — Emile August Chartier)

To be absolutely certain about something, one must know everything, or nothing, about it. (Olin Miller)

We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand. (Eric Hoffer)

A wise man may look ridiculous in the company of fools. (Thomas Fuller)

You always pass failure on the way to success. (Mickey Rooney)

What's money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do. (Bob Dylan)

The finest amusements are the most pointless ones. (Jacques Chardonnes)

Nature has made us frivolous to console us for our miseries. (Voltaire)

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls, and looks like work. (Thomas Edison)

I've never known a person to live to be one hundred and be remarkable for anything else. (Josh Billings)

Personally, I would sooner have written Alice in Wonderland than the whole Encyclopedia Britannica. (Stephen Leacock)

Never lend books — nobody ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are those which people have lent me. (Anatole France)

In times like these, it helps to recall that there have always been times like these. (Paul Harvey)

It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words: "And this, too, shall pass away." How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction! (Abraham Lincoln)

A problem is a chance for you to do your best. (Duke Ellington)

To fulfill a dream, to be allowed to seat over lonely labor, to be given the chance to create, is the meat and potatoes of life. The money is the gravy. As everyone else, I love to dunk my crust in it. But alone, it is not a diet designed to keep body and soul together. (Bette Davis)

You can never solve a problem at the level at which it was created. You have to go to at least one level beyond." (Albert Einstein)

The awareness of dying for something great and noble, strips death of its absurd character. Not only for those who die, but those who survive (Ignance Lepp)

I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant, and fill him with a terrible resolve. (Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto)

An eye for an eye and the whole world ends up blind. (Mahatma Gandhi)

...I am moved by notions that are curled around this image and cling to the notion of some infinitely gentle, infinitely suffering thing... (T.S. Eliot)

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. (Benjamin Franklin)

You can't turn back the clock. But you can wind it up again. (Bonnie Prudden)

We are so vain that we even care for the opinion of those we don't care for. (Marie Ebner von Eschenbach)

A professional is someone who can do his best work when he doesn't feel like it. (Alistair Cooke)

Men are all alike in their promises. It is only in their deeds that they differ. (Moliere)

The successful person is the individual who forms the habit of doing what the failing person doesn't like to do. (Donald Riggs)

Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears. (Marcus Aurelius)

Minds, like bodies, will often fall into a pimpled, ill-conditioned state from mere excess of comfort. (Charles Dickens)

It is only an error in judgment to make a mistake, but it shows infirmity of character to adhere to it when discovered. (Christian Bovee)

If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction. (Dietrich Bonhoeffer)

One of the best temporary cures for pride and affectation is seasickness; a man who wants to vomit never puts on airs. (Josh Billings)

Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be. (Abraham Lincoln)

To disbelieve is easy; to scoff is simple; to have faith is harder. (Louis L'Amour)

A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs — jolted by every pebble in the road. (Henry Ward Beecher)

Many of our fears are tissuepaper-thin, and a single courageous step would carry us through them. (Brendan Francis)

Do not be deceived, Wormwood, our cause is never in greater danger than when a human being, no longer desiring, but still intending to do our enemy's will, looks out on a world from which every trace of him has vanished, asks why he bas been forsaken, but still obeys. (CS Lewis)

The Chinese use two brush strokes to write the word 'crisis.' One brush stroke stands for danger; the other for opportunity. In a crisis, be aware of the danger '— but recognize the opportunity. (Richard M. Nixon)

Worry is as useless as a handle on a snowball. (Mitzi Chandler)

Literature is mostly about having sex and not much about having children. Life is the other way around. (David Lodge)

Never have children, only grandchildren. (Gore Vidal)

I have discovered that all human evil comes from this, man's being unable to sit still in a room. (Blaise Pascal)

Oftentimes excusing of a fault / Doth make the fault the worse by th' excuse. (William Shakespeare)

Learn to use ten minutes intelligently. It will pay you huge dividends. (William A. Irwin)

Shall I tell you the secret of the true scholar? It is this: every man I meet is my master in some point, and in that I learn of him. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

It is easy to fly into a passion — anybody can do that
     But to be angry with the right person
          to the right extent
          and at the right time
          and with the right object
          and in the right way
     that is not easy, and it is not everyone who can do it. (Aristotle)

When we begin to take our failures non-seriously, it means we are ceasing to be afraid of them. It is of immense importance to learn to laugh at ourselves. (Katherine Mansfield)

There is no defense against adverse fortune which is so effectual as an habitual sense of humor. (Thomas W. Higginson)

In the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make. (Paul McCartney)

The Bell Labs team, whose scientific results appear in today's issue of the British journal Nature, determined that it is theoretically possible to send approximately 100 terabits of information, or roughly 20 billion one-page e-mails, simultaneously per strand of fiber.

The truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering the more you suffer because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you in proportion to your fear of being hurt. (Thomas Merton)

Whether it's the best of times or the worst of times, it's the only time we've got. (Art Buchwald)

The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent upon it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as it if had nothing else in the universe to do. (Galileo Galilei)

You desire to know the art of living, my friend? It is contained in one phrase: make use of suffering. (Henri Frederic Amiel)

Courage is as often the outcome of despair as of hope; in the one case we have nothing to lose, in the other, everything to gain. (Diane De Pottiers)

I've never been poor, only broke. Being poor is a frame of mind. Being broke is a temporary situation. (Mike Todd)

It's good to have activities in which you become totally immersed. The fact that you have to focus your mind completely on the task at hand is enormously relaxing, because it doesn't allow you to think about any of your problems while you're doing it. (Dr. Al Aho, Bell Labs)

We should manage our fortunes as we do our health — enjoy it when good, be patient when it is bad, and never apply violent remedies except in an extreme necessity. (Francois de La Rochefoucauld)

When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come close to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge. (Albert Einstein)

Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those whom we cannot resemble. (Samuel Johnson)

A bird in the hand is a certainty, but a bird in the bush may sing. (Bret Harte)

I have offended God and mankind because my work didn't reach the quality it should have. (Leonardo da Vinci)

Doubt is not a pleasant mental state but certainty is a ridiculous one. (Voltaire)

Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so. (John Stuart Mill)

Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk or discourse, but to weigh and consider. (Francis Bacon)

My one regret in life is that I'm not someone else. (Woody Allen)

There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it. (Edith Wharton)

Early to rise and early to bed makes a male healthy, wealthy and dead. (James Thurber)

No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new heaven to the human spirit. (Helen Keller)

Nature arms each man with some faculty which enables him to do easily some feat impossible to any other. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

I always find that statistics are hard to follow and impossible to digest. The only one I can ever remember is that if all the people who go to sleep in church were laid end to end they would be a lot more comfortable. (Mrs. Robert A. Taft)

To conclude — you must translate every bit of your Theology into the vernacular. This is very troublesome and means that you can say very little in half an hour, but it is essential. It is also of the greatest service to your own thought. I have come to the conviction that if you cannot translate your thoughts into uneducated language, then your thoughts are confused. (CS Lewis)

Pleasure is very seldom found where it is sought; our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks. (Samuel Johnson)

I might repeat to myself slowly and soothingly, a list of quotations beautiful from minds profound — if I can remember any of the damn things. (Dorothy Parker)

Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought. (Albert von Szent-Gyorgyi)

He that but looketh on a plate of ham and eggs to lust after it hath already committed breakfast with it in his heart. (CS Lewis)

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. (Blaise Pascal)

To have doubted one's own first principles is the mark of a civilized man. (Oliver Wendell Holmes)

Much Madness is divinest Sense
To a discerning Eye
Much Sense — the starkest Madness. (Emily Dickinson)

Treat the other man's faith gently; it is all he has to believe with. His mind was created for his own thoughts, not yours or mine. (Henry S. Haskins)

When you re-read a classic, you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in yourself than there was before. (Cliff Fadiman)

This morning I threw up at a board meeting. I was sure the cat was out of the bag, but no one seemed to think anything about it; apparently it's quite common for people to throw up at board meetings. (Jane Wagner)

You can't, in most things, get what you want if you want it too desperately; anyway, you can't get the best out of it. (CS Lewis)

Men who never get carried away should be. (Malcolm Forbes)

The unknown is what it is. And to be frightened of it is what sends everybody scurrying around chasing dreams, illusions, wars, peace, love, hate, all that. Unknown is what it is. Accept that it's unknown, and it's plain sailing. (John Lennin)

A divorce is like an amputation: you survive it, but there's less of you. (Margaret Atwood)

As I grow to understand life less and less, I learn to live it more and more. (Jules Renard)

Change your thoughts and you change your world. (Norman Vincent Peale)

Remember that there is nothing stable in human affairs; therefore avoid undue elation in prosperity, or undue depression in adversity. (Socrates)

It's not that some people have willpower and some don't. It's that some people are ready to change and others are not. (James Gordon, M.D.)

Write down the advice of him who loves you, though you like it not at present. (English Proverb)

To avoid criticism do nothing, say nothing, be nothing. (Elbert Hubbard)

They say of some temporal suffering, "No future bliss can make up for it," not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. And of some sinful pleasure they say "Let me but have this and I'll take the consequences" little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of the sin. (CS Lewis)

I am not sincere, even when I say I am not. (Jules Renard)

Pride, the never failing vice of fools. (Alexander Pope)

A confessional passage has probably never been written that didn't stink a little bit of the writer's pride in having given up his pride. (J. D. Salinger)

I quote others only the better to express myself. (Michel de Montaigne)

To measure up to all that is demanded of him, a man must overestimate his capacities. (Goethe)

Trouble is a sieve through which we sift our acquaintances. Those too big to pass through are our friends. (Arlene Francis)

I know some good marriages — marriages where both people are just trying to get through their days by helping each other, being good to each other. (Erica Jong)

A good scare is worth more to a man than good advice. (Edgar Watson Howe)

Life is like a game of cards. The hand that is dealt you represents determinism; the way you play it is free will. (Jawaharlal Nehru)

There is very little difference between people, but that little difference makes a big difference. (Anonymous)

Love is like quicksilver in the hand. Leave the fingers open and it stays. Clutch it, and it darts away. (Dorothy Parker)

Old age and sickness bring out the essential characteristics of a man. (Felix Frankfurter)

I'm the foe of moderation, the champion of excess. If I may lift a line from a die-hard whose identity is lost in the shuffle, 'Id rather be strongly wrong than weakly right.' (Tallulah Bankhead)

No change in circumstance can repair a defect in character. (Emerson)

Without discipline, there's no life at all. (Katharine Hepburn)

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

Nothing makes you feel better than a really sad song. (Garrison Keeler)

Dwelling on the negative simply contributes to its power. (Shirley MacLaine)

If you're having trouble starting a conversation talk about movies. Everyone you meet either likes or dislikes or has never seen everything! (Pam Hansen)

You saw how the LORD your God carried you, as a father carries his son.... (Deut. 1:31)

It is necessary to try to surpass oneself always; this occupation ought to last as long as life. (Queen Christina, of Sweden)

Our plans miscarry because they have no aim. When a man does not know what harbor he is making for, no wind is the right wind. (Seneca)

Circumstances are the rulers of the weak; they are but the instruments of the wise. (Samuel Lover)

The difficulties of life are intended to make us better, not bitter. (Anonymous)

She not only expects the worst, but makes the worst of it when it happens. (Michael Arlen)

It is not enough to posses wit. One must have enough of it to avoid having too much. (Andre Maurois)

It isn't our position, but our disposition, that makes us happy. (Anon)

Children begin by loving their parents. After a time they judge them. Rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.(Oscar Wilde)

There are times when parenthood seems nothing but feeding the mouth that bites you. (Peter de Vries)

1 Chronicles 4:9 Now Jabez was more honorable than his brothers, and his mother called his name Jabez, saying, "Because I bore him in pain." 10 And Jabez called on the God of Israel saying, "Oh, that You would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory, that Your hand would be with me, and that You would keep me from evil, that I may not cause pain!" So God granted him what he requested.

When things go wrong, don't go with them. (Anon.)

It never cost a disciple anything to follow Jesus: to talk about cost when you are in love with someone is an insult. (Oswald Chambers)

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts. (Bertrand Russell)

I seldom think about my limitations, and they never make me sad. Perhaps there is just a touch of yearning at times; but it is vague, like a breeze among flowers. (Helen Keller)

Never does the human soul appear so strong as when it foregoes revenge, and dares forgive an injury. (E. H. Chapin)

Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there. (Will Rogers)

The Greatest Commandment: Everything in your Christian life, everything about knowing Him and experiencing Him, everything about knowing His will, depends on the quality of your love relationship to God. (Henry T. Blackaby)

The most savage controversies are about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way. (Bertrand Russell)

How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world. (Anne Frank)

No one person can possibly combine all the elements supposed to make up what everyone means by friendship. (Francis Marion Crawford)

I cannot concentrate all my friendship on any single one of my friends because no one is complete enough in himself. (Anais Nin)

Applause is the spur of noble minds, the end and aim of weak ones. (Charles Caleb Colton)

The only way to entertain some folks is to listen to them (Kim Hubbard)

My philosophy is that not only are you responsible for your life, but doing the best at this moment puts you in the best place for the next moment. (Oprah Winfrey)

Chance is perhaps the pseudonym of God when he does not wish to sign his work. (Anatole France)

Don't tell your problems to people: eighty percent don't care; and the other twenty percent are glad you have them. (Lou Holtz)

Of all the self-fulfilling prophecies in our culture, the assumption that aging means decline and poor health is probably the deadliest. (Marilyn Ferguson)

The most exhausting thing in life is being insincere. (Anne Morrow Lindbergh)

The past always looks better than it was. It's only pleasant because it isn't here. (Finley Peter Dunne)

I have learned through bitter experience the one supreme lesson to conserve my anger, and as heat conserved is transmitted into energy, even so our anger controlled can be transmitted into a power that can move the world. Mahatma Gandhi)

This is what the LORD Almighty says: "The fasts of the fourth, fifth, seventh and tenth months will become joyful and glad occasions and happy festivals for Judah. Therefore love truth and peace" (Zechariah 8:19).

By showing Christ's love to homosexuals and abortionists we will enact more moral change than a thousand social agendas will. (Jonathan M. Fritz, St. Louis, MO. CT letter)

All that is made seems planless to the darkened mind, because there are more plans than he looked for. (CS Lewis)

How are you going to keep them down on the farm, after they've seen the farm? (Anonymous)

Open wide your mouth and I will fill it. (Ps. 81:10)

A sense of duty is useful in work but offensive in personal relations. (Bertrand Russell)

In conditions of great uncertainty people tend to predict the events that they want to happen actually will happen. (Roberta Wohlstetter)

Heaven from all creatures hides the book of Fate. (Alexander Pope)

You can only predict things after they have happened. (Eugene Ionesco)

The time is always right to do what is right. (Martin Luther King, Jr.)

To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life. (Robert Louis Stevenson)

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams. (Eleanor Roosevelt)

If you can talk brilliantly about a problem, it can create the consoling illusion that it has been mastered. (Stanley Kubrick)

When the water reaches the upper level, follow the rats. (Claude Swanson)

What you are must always displease you, if you would attain to that which you are not. (St Augustine)

There is only one real sin and that is to persuade oneself that the second best is anything but second best. (Doris Lessing)

When a train goes through a tunnel and it gets dark, you don't throw away the ticket and jump off. You sit still and trust the engineer. (Corrie Ten Boom)

There is no inner pain or conflict in heaven. But I think that neither could there be a total separation from the infinite reality of which life on earth is a part, necessarily transmuted into joy. Maybe that moment of relief from earthly pain is drawn out into one eternal laugh. (Peter Newcombe)

Could we change our attitude, we should not only see life differently, but life itself would come to be different. Life would undergo a change of appearance because we ourselves had undergone a change of attitude. (Katherine Mansfield)

Good luck is often with the man who doesn't include it in his plans. (Anonymous)

Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh. (W. H. Auden)

It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it. (John Steinbeck)

One should count each day a separate life. (Seneca)

Perhaps the greatest social service that can be rendered by anybody to the country and to mankind is to bring up a family. (George Bernard Shaw)

What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence. (Samuel Johnson)

Putting off an easy thing makes it hard. Putting off a hard thing makes it impossible. (George C. Lorimer)

Death? Why this fuss about death? Use your imagination, try to visualize a world without death...! Death is the essential condition of life, not an evil. (Charlotte Perkins Gilman)

People who fight fire with fire usually end up with ashes. (Abigail Van Buren)

Some leaders are born women. (United Nations conference slogan)

It doesn't matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was. (Anne Sexton)

Don't hit at all if it is honorably possible to avoid hitting, but never hit soft. (Theodore Roosevelt)

A friend is someone who knows all about you and likes you just the same (Anonymous small boy)

Never eat more than you can lift. (Miss Piggy)

It is awfully important to know what is and what is not your business. (Gertrude Stein)

We find it hard to apply the knowledge of ourselves to our judgment of others. The fact that we are never of one kind, that we never love without reservations and never hate with all our being cannot prevent us from seeing others as wholly black or white. (Eric Hoffer)

A man of science doesn't discover in order to know, he wants to know in order to discover. (Alfred North Whitehead)

Retirement at sixty-five is ridiculous. When I was sixty-five I still had pimples. (George Burns)

Nothing is so good for an ignorant man as silence; and if he was sensible of this he would not be ignorant. (Saadi)

The secret of success is constancy of purpose. (Benjamen Disraili)

An offense against your neighbor builds a fence between you and God. (ODB)

Men may not get all they pay for in this world, but they certainly pay for all they get. (Frederick Douglass)

Natives who beat drums to drive off evil spirits are objects of scorn to smart Americans who blow horns to break up traffic jams. (Mary Ellen Kelly)

I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me. (Abraham Lincoln)

One road leads home and a thousand roads lead into the wilderness. (CS Lewis)

There is no cry so good as that which comes from the bottom of the mountains; no prayer half so hearty as that which comes up from the depths of the soul, through deep trials and afflictions. Hence they bring us to God, and we are happier; for nearness to God is happiness. Come, troubled believer, fret not over your heavy troubles, for they are the heralds of weighty mercies. (Spurgeon)

Revolutions are brought about by men who think as men of action and act as men of thought. (Kwame Nkrumah)

You may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing that we call "Failure" is not the falling down, but the staying down. (Mary Pickford)

Get happiness out of your work or you may never know what happiness is. (Elbert Hubbard)

You better live your best and act your best and think your best today, for today is the sure preparation for tomorrow and all the other tomorrows that follow. (Harriet Martineau)

The real test of spiritual focus is being able to bring your mind and thoughts under control. Is your mind focused on the face of an idol? Is the idol yourself? Is it your work? Is it your idea of what a servant should be, or maybe your experience of salvation and sanctification? If so, then your ability to see God is blinded. (Oswald Chambers, 2/10)

I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins: return unto Me; for I have redeemed thee. (Isaiah 44:22)

Oh, what leanness of soul and neglect of spiritual things have been brought on through the very mercies and bounties of God! Yet this is not a matter of necessity, for the apostle tells us that he knew how to abound. When he had much he knew how to use it. Abundant grace enabled him to bear abundant prosperity. When he had a full sail he was loaded with much ballast, and so floated safely. It needs more than human skill to carry the brimming cup of mortal joy with a steady hand, yet Paul had learned that skill, for he declares, "In all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry." (Spurgeon, 2/10)

The riches of life, the love and joy and exhilaration of life can be found only with an upward look. This is an exciting world. It crams-packed with opportunity. Great moments wait around every corner. (Richard M. Devos)

It is by acts and not by ideas that people live. (Anatole France)

Nothing is work unless you would rather be doing something else. (William James)

Prevention is better than cure: it is better to be so well armed that the devil will not attack you, than to endure the perils of the fight, even though you come off a conqueror. Pray this evening first that you may not be tempted, and next that if temptation be permitted, you may be delivered from the evil one. (Spurgeon)

What you are afraid to do is a clear indicator of the next thing you need to do. (Anon)

I wanted to be scared again.... I wanted to feel unsure again. That's the only way I learn, the only way I feel challenged. (Connie Chung)

Constant exposure to dangers will breed contempt for them. (Seneca)

There is only one quality worse than hardness of heart and that is softness of head. (Teddy Roosevelt)

Forgiveness is the fragrance the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it. (Mark Twain)

Death is a friend of ours; and he that is not ready to entertain him is not at home. (Sir Francis Bacon)

I don't like the sound of all those lists he's making — it's like taking too many notes at school; you feel you've achieved something when you haven't. (Dodie Smith)

Some people think they can imagine a creature which was free but had no possibility of going wrong; I cannot. If a thing is free to be good it is also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. (CS Lewis)

What do you want most to do? That's what I have to keep asking myself, in the face of difficulties. (Katherine Mansfield)

How can you come to know yourself? Never by thinking, always by doing. Try to do your duty, and you'll know right away what you amount to. (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)

If you are miserable or bored in your work ... or dread going to it ... then God is speaking to you. He either wants you to change the job you are in or — more likely — he wants to change you. (Bruce Larson)

One of the most amazing revelations of God comes to us when we learn that it is in the everyday things of life that we realize the magnificent deity of Jesus Christ. (Oswald Chambers)

Whenever we insist that God should give us an answer to prayer we are off track. The purpose of prayer is that we get ahold of God, not of the answer. (Oswald Chambers)

Unhappiness is not knowing what we want and killing ourselves to get it. (Don Herold)

Don't marry the person you think you can live with; marry only the individual you think you can't live without. (Dr. James C. Dobson)

Anything I've ever done that ultimately was worthwhile.... initially scared me to death. (Betty Bender)

To have and not to give is often worse than to steal. (Marie Von Ebner-Eschenbach)

Don't flatter yourself that friendship authorizes you to say disagreeable things to your intimates. The nearer you come into relation with a person, the more necessary do tact and courtesy become. Except in cases of necessity, which are rare, leave your friend to learn unpleasant things from his enemies; they are ready enough to tell them. (Oliver Wendell Holmes)

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he doesn't become a monster. (Friedrich Nietzsche)

Heal me of this lust of mine to always vindicate myself. (Augustine)

It will not bother me in the hour of death that I have been 'had for a sucker' by any number of imposters; but it would be a torment to know that one had refused even one person in need. (CS Lewis)

You live longer once you realize that any time spent being unhappy is wasted. (Ruth E. Renkl)

Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything. (George Bernard Shaw)

If you don't like something change it; if you can't change it, change the way you think about it. (Mary Engelbreit)

Ideas won't keep; something must be done about them. (Alfred North Whitehead)

Adults are obsolete children. (Dr. Seuss)

They say that God is everywhere, and yet we always think of Him as somewhat of a recluse. (Emily Dickinson)

The true secret of giving advice is, after you have honestly given it, to be perfectly indifferent whether it is taken or not, and never persist in trying to set people right. (Hannah Whitall Smith)

One man may be so placed that his anger sheds the blood of thousands, and another so placed that however angry he gets he will only be laughed at. But the little mark on the soul may be much the same in both. (CS Lewis)

The LORD appeared to us in the past, saying: "I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with loving-kindness. I will build you up again and you will be rebuilt, O Virgin Israel. Again you will take up your tambourines and go out to dance with the joyful." (Jeremiah 31:3-4)

Cheese — milk's leap toward immortality. (Clifton Fadiman)

I believe in getting into hot water, it keeps you clean. (G. K. Chesterton)

Somehow I can't believe that there are any heights that can't be scaled by a person who knows the secret of making his dreams come true. This special secret, it seems to me, can be summarized in four C's. They are Curiosity, Confidence, Courage and Constancy, and the greatest of these is confidence. When you believe in a thing, believe in it all the way. (Walt Disney)

We shall be true and everlasting and really divine persons only in Heaven, just as we are, even now, coloured bodies only in the light. (CS Lewis)

There is nothing more tragic in life than the utter impossibility of changing what you have done. (John Galsworthy)

Live a balanced life — Learn some and think some, and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some. (Robert Fulghum)

No animal ever invented anything as bad as drunkenness — or so good as drink. (G. K. Chesterton)

People who drink to drown their sorrow should be told that sorrow knows how to swim. (Ann Landers)

When you are not physically starving, you have the luxury to realize psychic and emotional starvation. (Cherrie Moraga)

The first thing for our soul's health, the first thing for His glory, and the first thing for our own usefulness, is to keep ourselves in perpetual communion with the Lord Jesus, and to see that the vital spirituality of our religion is maintained over and above everything else in the world. (Spurgeon)

If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility. (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)

Life's under no obligation to give us what we expect. We take what we get and are thankful it's no worse than it is. (Margaret Mitchell)

Emotion has taught mankind to reason. (Marquis de Vauvenargues)

Christianity is unquestionably a personal experience. It is also unquestionably not a private experience. (William Barclay)

The greatest difficulty spiritually is to concentrate on God, and His blessings are what make it so difficult. Troubles almost always make us look to God, but His blessings tend to divert our attention elsewhere. (Oswald Chambers)

O believer, learn to reject pride, seeing that thou hast no ground for it. Whatever thou art, thou hast nothing to make thee proud. The more thou hast, the more thou art in debt to God; and thou shouldst not be proud of that which renders thee a debtor. (Spurgeon)

Being born again from above is an enduring, perpetual, and eternal beginning. It provides a freshness all the time in thinking, talking, and living — a continual surprise of the life of God. (Oswald Chambers)

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

There's nothing like eavesdropping to show you that the world outside your head is different from the world inside your head. (Thornton Wilder)

No one really listens to anyone else, and if you try it for a while you'll see why. (Mignon McLaughlin)

Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is delay, not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead end. Failure is something we can avoid only by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing. (Denis Waitley)

No other technique for the conduct of life attaches the individual so firmly to reality as laying emphasis on work; for his work at least gives him a secure place in a portion of reality, in the human community. (Sigmund Freud)

If money be not thy servant, it will be thy master. The covetous man cannot so properly be said to possess wealth, as that may be said to possess him. (Francis Bacon)

The reason why worry kills more people than work is that more people worry than work. (Frost)

Don't ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up. (Frost)

Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down. (Frost)

You don't have to deserve your mother's love. You have to deserve your father s. He's more particular. The father is always a Republican towards his son, and his mother's always a Democrat. (Frost)

A liberal man is too broad-minded to take his own side in a quarrel. (Frost)

I hold it to be the inalienable right of anybody to go to hell in his own way. (Frost)

I'm not confused, I'm just well mixed. (Frost)

By working faithfully eight hours a day, you may eventually get to be a boss and work twelve hours a day. (Frost)

Always fall in with what you're asked to accept. Take what is given, and make it over your way. My aim in life has always been to hold my own with whatever's going. Not against: with. (Frost)

No man should desire to be happy who is not at the same time holy. He should spend his efforts in seeking to know and do the will of God, leaving to Christ the matter of how happy he should be. (Tozer)

The man or woman who is wholly or joyously surrendered to Christ can't make a wrong choice — any choice will be the right one. (Tozer)

What I believe about God is the most important thing about me. (Tozer)

The devil is a better theologian than any of us and is a devil still. (Tozer)

Life is not a static thing. The only people who do not change their minds are incompetents in asylums, and those in cemeteries. (Everett McKinley Dirksen)

She offered her honor, he honored her offer and all night long it was honor and offer. (Anonymous)

The great thing, and the hard thing, is to stick to things when you have outlived the first interest, and not yet got the second, which comes with a sort of mastery. (Janet Erskine Stuart)

Profound truths, by their very nature cannot be 'comprehended' and only unexpectedly do they 'aprehend' us. We strike them glancing blows from left and right and so approximate their position. Like the elephant examined by the blind fakirs, exactly opposite propositions may be the best we ever come up with. (Peter Newcombe)

When you blame others you give up your power to change. (Anon)

A multitude of laws in a country is like a great number of physicians, a sign of weakness and malady. (Voltaire)

God loved the world so much that he sent his only son that whoever would believe in him would not perish but have eternal life.
(Pocket Transfer translation)
The person that he trusted him as for God did not die everybody and sent a son of his only one that there was not life of eternity and very liked the world.

One burst of 'I think, therefore I am' reduces to silence a whole volume of 'I think I'll have the Swiss melt and fries,' and permanently props up a man's reputation as a Serious Thinker. (Peter Newcombe)

Presented with a mirror, baboons attack with the intent of eliminating what they perceive to be a perfect threat. For that reason I hope I never meet my mirror if such exists. It's far less unnerving to see others as my 'upline' or 'downline' to borrow a little Amway geshtalt. (Peter Newcombe)

Life is not a quiet pond but a whitewater expedition. Sometimes I almost think I love it. (Peter Newcombe)

When nobody around you measures up, it's time to check your yardstick. (Bill Lemly)

Because you're not what I would have you be, I blind myself to who, in truth, you are. (Madeline L'Engle)

If you expect perfection from other people, your whole life is a series of disappointments, grumbling and complaints. If, on the contrary, you pitch your expectations low, taking folks as the inefficient creatures which they are, you are frequently surprised by having them perform better than you had hoped. (Bruce Barton)

The secret of happiness is not in doing what one likes, but in liking what one has to do. (James Barrie)

I know God will not give me anything I can't handle. I just wish that He didn't trust me so much. (Mother Teresa)

A ship in port is safe, but that's not what ships are built for. (Grace Murray Hopper)

Gloomy seasons of religious indifference and social sin are not exempted from the divine purpose. When the altars of truth are defiled, and the ways of God forsaken, the Lord's servants weep with bitter sorrow, but they may not despair, for the darkest eras are governed by the Lord, and shall come to their end at His bidding. What may seem defeat to us may be victory to Him. (Spurgeon)

Life gives a man a true friend and then the true friend gives the man life. (Peter Newcombe)

A great obstacle to happiness is to expect too much happiness. (Bernard de Fontenelle)

Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it. (Henry David Thoreau)

Some people claim to be seeking "tolerance," but what they are really looking for is affirmation. Anything less, they call "intolerance." (David Block)

Our very business in life is not to get ahead of others, but to get ahead of ourselves. (Thomas L. Monson)

A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle. (Gloria Steinem)

As a parent you just hang on for the ride. (Robert Wagner)

Hell is not other people. Hell is no other people. (Fay Weldon)

Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people. (Carl Sagan)

A loving person lives in a loving world. A hostile person lives in a hostile world: everyone you meet is your mirror. (Ken Keyes, Jr.)

All growth depends upon activity. There is no development physically or intellectually without effort, and effort means work. Work is not a curse; it is the prerogative of intelligence, the only means to manhood, and the measure of civilization. (Calvin Coolidge)

Always do more than is required of you. (George Patton)

I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish humble tasks as though they were great and noble. The world is moved along not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker. (Helen Keller)

Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not understand, but the passages that bother me are those I do understand. (Mark Twain)

Expecting the world to treat you fairly because you are a good person is a little like expecting the bull not to attack you because you are a vegetarian. (Dennis Wholey)

In any moment of decision the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing. (Theodore Roosevelt)

If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven played music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well. (Martin Luther King Jr.)

One must judge men not by their opinions, but by what their opinions have made of them. (Georg Lichtenberg)

The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good. (Ann Landers)

The majority is always wrong; the minority is rarely right. (Henrik Ibsen)

In Genesis it says that it is not good for a man to be alone, but sometimes it is a great relief. (John Barrymore)

Gentlemen, I have lived a long time and am convinced that God governs in the affairs of men. If a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid? I move that prayer imploring the assistance of Heaven be held every morning before we proceed to business. (Benjamin Franklin)

A Liberal is a man who will give away everything he doesn't own. (Frank Dane)

He who despairs of the human condition is a coward, but he who has hope for it is a fool. (Albert Camus)

To the small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify we give the name knowledge. (Ambrose Bierce)

A Jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer. (Robert Frost)

Show me a thoroughly satisfied man and I will show you a failure. (Thomas Edison)

Poetry should please by a fine excess and not by singularity. It should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost as a remembrance. (John Keats)

Opinions founded on prejudice are always sustained with the greatest violence. (Hebrew proverb)

A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person. (Mignon McLaughlin)

The human mind can bear plenty of reality, but not too much intermittent gloom. (Margaret Drabble)

To give and not to feel that one has given is the very best of all ways of giving. (Max Beerbohm)

Appreciation is a wonderful thing; it makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well. (Voltaire)

There's no labor a man can do that's undignified, if he does it right. (Bill Cosby)

No matter how far you have gone on a wrong road, turn back. (Turkish proverb)

[Experience is] how life catches up with us and teaches us to love and forgive each other. (Judy Collins)

A proverb is a short sentence based on long experience. (Miguel de Cervantes)

If we could sell our experiences for what they cost us, we would all be millionaires. (Abigail Van Buren)

The first human who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization. (Sigmund Freud)

The greatest wisdom often consists in ignorance. (Baltasar Gracian)

Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity. (Charles Mingus)

I should be glad if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion in two hours as you did in two minutes. (Edward Everett to Abraham Lincoln)

A man there was, tho' some did count him mad / The more he cast away, the more he had. (John Bunyan)

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties. (Francis Bacon)

Blaming God is evidence that we are refusing to let go of some disobedience somewhere in our lives. But as soon as we let go, everything becomes as clear as daylight to us. As long as we try to serve two masters, ourselves and God, there will be difficulties combined with doubt and confusion. Our attitude must be one of complete reliance on God. Once we get to that point, there is nothing easier than living the life of a saint. We encounter difficulties when we try to usurp the authority of the Holy Spirit for our own purposes. (Oswald Chambers, 12/14)

When Goliath came against the Israelites, the soldiers all thought, "He's so big we can never kill him." But David looked at the same giant and thought, "He's so big, I can't miss."

Why not go out on a limb? Isn't that where the fruit is? (Frank Scully)

Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional. (Anonymous)

It is always safe to learn, even from our enemies; seldom safe to venture to instruct, even our friends. (Charles Caleb Colton)

I simple cannot understand the passion that some people have for making themselves thoroughly uncomfortable and then boasting about it afterwards. (Patricia Moyes)

The safest road to Hell is the gradual one — the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts. (CS Lewis)

It is a sweet sign of a humble and broken heart, when the child of God is willing to obey a command which is not essential to his salvation, which is not forced upon him by a selfish fear of condemnation, but is a simple act of obedience and of communion with his Master. (Spurgeon)

Quotes are like cactus spines — while otherwise absorbed in the business of living, some small point you make is sure to startle someone. (Peter Newcombe)

I am like a pebble being pushed to the sky by a great mountain rushing up beneath me. (Peter Newcombe)

What a strange and frightening beauty has this life. (Peter Newcombe)

Hay is more acceptable to an ass than gold. (Latin proverb)

Success seems to be connected with action. Successful men keep moving. They make mistakes, but they don't quit. (Conrad Hilton)

Try to understand exactly what loving your neighbor as yourself means. I have to love him as I love myself. Well, how exactly do I love myself? Now that I come to think of it, I have not exactly got a feeling of fondness or affection for myself, and I do not even always enjoy my own society. So apparently "Love your neighbour" does not mean "feel fond of him" or "find him attractive...." That is an enormous relief. (CS Lewis)

The Son of God suffered unto death, not that men might not suffer, but that their sufferings might be like His. (George MacDonald)

Every Christian can have his body under absolute control for God. God has given us the responsibility to rule over all "the temple of the Holy Spirit," including our thoughts and desires (1 Corinthians 6:19). We are responsible for these, and we must never give way to improper ones. (Oswald Chambers)

People who are always making allowances for themselves soon go bankrupt.(Mary Pettibone Poole)

Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads. (Henry David Thoreau)

Who knows what he is told, must know a lot of things that are not so. (Arthur Guiterman)

In the midst of great joy, do not promise anyone anything. In the midst of great anger, do not answer anyone's letter. (Chinese proverb)

What worries you, masters you. (Haddon W. Robinson)

Nothing can be done except little by little. (Charles Baudelaire)

The world belongs to the energetic. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

I'm not happy. I'm cheerful. There's a difference. A happy woman has no cares at all. A cheerful woman has cares but has learned how to deal with them. (Beverly Sills)

Life is like a blanket too short. You pull it up and your toes rebel, you yank it down and shivers meander about your shoulder; but cheerful folks manage to draw their knees up and pass a very comfortable night. (Marion Howard)

Those who wish to sing always find a song. (Swedish proverb)

You will have many opportunities in life to keep your mouth shut: You should take advantage of every one of them. (Thomas Edison)

How far you go in life depends on you being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and the strong. Because someday in life you will have been all of these. (George Washington Carver)

Why comes temptation, but for man to meet and master and crouch beneath his foot, and so be pedestaled in triumph? (Robert Browning)

God never coerces us. Sometimes we wish He would make us be obedient, and at other times we wish He would leave us alone. Whenever God's will is in complete control, He removes all pressure. (Oswald Chambers, 12/7)

The moral law, ordained by God, does not make itself weak to the weak by excusing our shortcomings. It remains absolute for all time and eternity. If we are not aware of this, it is because we are less than alive. Once we do realize it, our life immediately becomes a fatal tragedy. (Oswald Chambers, 12/7)

He casteth forth His ice like morsels freezing the streams of our delight. He does it all, He is the great Winter King, and rules in the realms of frost, and therefore thou canst not murmur. Losses, crosses, heaviness, sickness, poverty, and a thousand other ills, are of the Lord's sending, and come to us with wise design. Frosts kill noxious insects, and put a bound to raging diseases; they break up the clods, and sweeten the soul. O that such good results would always follow our winters of affliction! (Spurgeon)

Amaziah asked the man of God, "But what about the hundred talents I paid for these Israelite troops?" The man of God replied, "The LORD can give you much more than that." (2 Chr 25:9)

He who wraps a threadbare coat about a good conscience has gained a spiritual wealth far more desirable than any he has lost. God's smile and a dungeon are enough for a true heart; His frown and a palace would be hell to a gracious spirit. (Spurgeon)

You cannot believe on a half-Christ. We take him for what he is — the anointed Savior and Lord who is King of kings and Lord of all lords! He would not be who he is if he saved us and called us and chose us without the understanding that he can also guide and control our lives. (Tozer)

Vigorous writing is concise. (William Strunk)

As he saw now, one might as well have thought one could buy a sunset by buying the field from which one had seen it. (CS Lewis)

Other people's interruptions of your work are relatively insignificant compared with the countless times you interrupt yourself. (Brendan Francis)

Absolute freedom mocks at justice. Absolute justice denies freedom. (Albert Camus)

Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (I Thessalonians)

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and godesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship.... There are no ordinary people. (CS Lewis)

The proverb warns that, "You should not bite the hand that feeds you." But maybe you should, if it prevents you from feeding yourself. (Thomas Szasz)

There are two things to aim at in life: first, to get what you want; and after that, to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second (Logan Pearsall Smith)

To acquire knowledge, one must study; but to acquire wisdom, one must observe. (Marilyn vos Savant)

A successful marriage is not a gift; it is an achievement. (Ann Landers)

Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts. (Charles Dickens)

If you hug to yourself any resentment against anybody else, you destroy the bridge by which God would come to you. (Peter Marshall)

We tend to set up success in Christian work as our purpose, but our purpose should be to display the glory of God in human life, to live a life "hidden with Christ in God" in our everyday human conditions (Colossians 3:3). Our human relationships are the very conditions in which the ideal life of God should be exhibited. (Oswald Chambers, 11/16)

The best and safest thing is to keep a balance in your life, acknowledge the great powers around us and in us. If you can do that, and live that way, you are really a wise man. (Euripides)

Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get — only with what you are expecting to give — which is everything. (Katharine Hepburn)

Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure. (William Saroyan)

Repay evil with good and you deprive the evildoer of all the pleasure of his wickedness. (Leo Tolstoy)

For instance, many men desire the beautiful and well-favoured Rachel of joy and peace in believing, but they must first be wedded to the tender-eyed Leah of repentance. Every one falls in love with happiness, and many would cheerfully serve twice seven years to enjoy it, but according to the rule of the Lord's kingdom, the Leah of real holiness must be beloved of our soul before the Rachel of true happiness can be attained. (Spurgeon)

How can anyone who is identified with Jesus Christ suffer from doubt or fear! Our lives should be an absolute hymn of praise resulting from perfect, irrepressible, triumphant belief. (Chambers)

Never assume that you "know" human nature: Man is always worse than most people suspect, but also generally better than most people dream. (Reinhold Niebuhr)

Death is not extinguishing the light; it is putting out the lamp because the dawn has come. (Rabindranath Tagore)

Be careful that victories do not carry the seed of future defeats. (Ralph W. Sockman)

It's always helpful to learn from your mistakes because then your mistakes seem worthwhile. (Garry Marshall)

Be what you are. This is the first step toward becoming better than you are. (Julius Charles Hare)

Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper. (Francis Bacon)

You need not say, "I am true:" be true. Boast not of integrity, but be upright. (Spurgeon)

Can a mother forget her little child and not have love for her own son? Yet even if that should be, I will not forget you. See, I have tattooed your name upon my palm, and ever before me is a picture of Jerusalem's walls in ruins. (Isa 49:15-16)

I was gratified to be able to answer promptly. I said I don't know. (Mark Twain)

It is easier to stay out than get out. (Mark Twain)

In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards. (Mark Twain)

There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact. (Mark Twain)

Just the omission of Jane Austen's books alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn't a book in it. (Mark Twain)

A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it. (Rabindranath Tagore)

The need for change bulldozed a road down the center of my mind. (Maya Angelou)

Changes are not only possible and predictable, but to deny them is to be an accomplice to one's own necessary vegetation. (Gail Sheehy)

Though I am always in haste, I am never in a hurry. (John Wesley)

Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule — and both commonly succeed, and are right. (H.L. Mencken)

First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do. (Epictetus)

Pride is spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense. (CS Lewis)

The optimist proclaims we live in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist fears this is true. (James Branch Cabell)

The 'C' students run the world. (Harry Truman)

More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones. (Saint Teresa of Avila)

I know now, Lord, why you utter no answer. You are yourself the answer. Before your face questions die away. What other answer would suffice? (CS Lewis)

Dear God: I know you will provide, but why don't you provide until you provide? (Jewish saying)

My personal life may be crowded with small, petty happenings, altogether insignificant. But if I obey Jesus Christ in the seemingly random circumstances of life, they become pinholes through which I see the face of God. (Chambers)

The main dangers in this life are the people who want to change everything — or nothing. (Nancy Astor)

Humility is the embarrassment you feel when you tell people how wonderful you are. (Laurence Peter)

I make the most of all that comes and the least of all that goes. (Sara Teasdale)

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Do not scold, like a kitchen-girl. No warrior scolds. Courteous words or else hard knocks are his only language. (CS Lewis)

The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts. The right defense against false sentiments is to inculcate just sentiments. By starving the sensibility of our pupils we only make them easier prey to the propagandist when he comes. For famished nature will be avenged and a hard heart is no infallible protection against a soft head. (CS Lewis)

God is very good to those who trust in Him, and often surprises them with unlooked for blessings. Little do we know what may happen to us to-morrow, but this sweet fact may cheer us, that no good thing shall be withheld. (Spurgeon)

Never in this world can hatred be stilled by hatred; it will be stilled only by non-hatred — this is the law Eternal. (Buddha)

Every new adjustment is a crisis in self-esteem. (Eric Hoffer)

Experience is what enables you to recognize a mistake when you see it again. (Earl Wilson)

There are few women who will admit their age. There are fewer men who will act theirs. (Anonymous)

When a soldier is wounded in battle it is of little use for him to know that there are those at the hospital who can bind up his wounds, and medicines there to ease all the pains which he now suffers: what he needs is to be carried thither, and to have the remedies applied. It is thus with our souls, and to meet this need there is one, even the Spirit of truth, who takes of the things of Jesus, and applies them to us. (Spurgeon)

This thing which I have called for convenience the 'Tao' and which others may call Natural Law, or Traditional Morality, or the First Principles of Practical Reason, or the First Platitudes, is not one among a series of possible systems of value. It is the sole source of all value judgments...If the pursuit of scientific knowledge is a real value, then so is conjugal fidelity. The rebellion of new ideologies against the 'Tao' is a rebellion of the branches against the tree; if the rebels could succeed, they would find that they destroyed themselves. The human mind has no more power of inventing a new value than of imagining a new primary color, or, indeed, of creating a new sun and a new sky for it to move in. (CS Lewis)

We do not need the grace of God to withstand crises — human nature and pride are sufficient for us to face the stress and strain magnificently. But it does require the supernatural grace of God to live twenty-four hours of every day as a saint, going through drudgery, and living an ordinary, unnoticed, and ignored existence as a disciple of Jesus. It is ingrained in us that we have to do exceptional things for God — but we do not. We have to be exceptional in the ordinary things of life, and holy on the ordinary streets, among ordinary people — and this is not learned in five minutes. (Oswald Chambers)

He who loves praise loves temptation. (Thomas Wilson)

We must adjust ourselves to the Bible — never the Bible to ourselves. (ODB)

We cannot swing up on a rope that is attached only to our own belt. (William Ernest Hocking)

Salvation is a gift to be received — not a goal to be achieved. (ODB, 10/17/00)

Prayer does not equip us for greater works — prayer is the greater work.... Prayer is the battle, and it makes no difference where you are.... Yet we refuse to pray unless it thrills or excites us, which is the most intense form of spiritual selfishness.... It is the laboring saint who makes the ideas of his Master possible. (Chambers, Upmost, 10/17/00)

I consider being ill as one of the great pleasures of life, provided one is not too ill. (Samuel Butler)

Our deepest fear is that we are not inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us, it is in everyone. And as we let our light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our fears, our presence automatically liberates others. (Nelson Mandela — inaugural address in 1994)

We are all angels with only one wing, who can only fly when embracing each other. (Liciano De Crescenzo)

The Holy Spirit is the Physician, but Jesus is the medicine. He heals the wound, but it is by applying the holy ointment of Christ's name and grace. (Spurgeon)

You cannot always have happiness, but you can always give happiness. (Anonymous)

A penny will hide the biggest star in the universe if you hold it close enough to your eye. (Samuel Grafton)

It's useless to hold a person to anything he says while he's in love, drunk or running for office. (Shirley McLaine)

Consistency is only a paste jewel that cheap men cherish. (William Allen White)

A true friend will see you through when others see that you are through. (Laurence J. Peter)

All sunshine makes a desert. (Arabic proverb)

One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man. (Elbert Hubbard)

The bridges you cross before you come to them are over rivers that aren't there. (Gene Brown)

It is quite useless knocking at the door of heaven for earthly comfort; it's not the sort of comfort they supply there. (CS Lewis)

Happiness is a choice. Reach out for it at the moment it appears, like a balloon drifting seaward in a bright blue sky. (Adair Lara)

God gives the very best to those who leave the choice to Him. (J. Hudson Taylor)

"The Saints Among Us," is a recent poll completed by George Gallup. This survey reveals that less than 10% of Americans are deeply committed Christians. Gallup says only 6% — 10% have what he termed a "high spiritual faith." The people of this minority group are categorized as particularly influential and happy. These folks are, as Gallup says, "a breed apart." "They are more tolerant of people of diverse backgrounds. They are more involved in charitable activities. They are more involved in practical Christianity. They are absolutely committed to prayer. They are far, far happier than the rest of the population," said Mr. Gallup. (The Houston Post, July 6, 1991, p. E-3)

These small and perishable bodies we now have were given to us as ponies are given to schoolboys. We must learn to manage: not that we may some day be free of horses altogether but that some day we may ride bare-back, confident and rejoicing, those greater mounts, those winged, shining and world-shaking horses which perhaps even now expect us with impatience, pawing and snorting in the king's stables. (CS Lewis)

Experience by itself proves nothing. Experience proves this, or that, or nothing, according to the preconceptions we bring to it. (CS Lewis)

They do not love who do not show their love. (William Shakespeare)

Now I see that nothing but my Lord's own power can save such a naughty mass of wickedness as I am; ordinances fail, even the gospel has no effect upon me, till His hand is stretched out. (Spurgeon)

There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization — these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit — immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. (CS Lewis)

In answer to the question of why it happened, I offer the modest proposal that our Universe is simply one of those things which happen from time to time. (Edward P. Tryon)

When your life is filled with the desire to see the holiness in everyday life, something magical happens: ordinary life becomes extraordinary, and the very process of life begins to nourish your soul! (Rabbi Harold Kushner)

The objection to Puritans is not that they try to make us think as they do, but that they try to make us do as they think. (H. L. Mencken)

Discouragement is simply the despair of wounded self-love. (Francois de Fenelon)

If your lips would keep from slips,
Five things observe with care:
Of whom you speak, to whom you speak,
And how and when and where. — Anon.

Don't break the silence unless you can improve on it. (ODB)

A fool finds no pleasure in understanding but delights in airing his own opinions. (Proverbs 18:1)

We use the means, but the blessing does not spring from the means. We dig a well, but heaven fills it with rain. (Spurgeon)

...the trial is not so heavy as it might have been; next, the trouble is not so severe as we deserved to have borne; and our affliction is not so crushing as the burden which others have to carry. (Spurgeon)

Our heart is like a crooked fence — all the paint in the world won't straighten it out. (ODB)

Contentment comes not so much from great wealth as from few wants. (Epictetus)

If a thing be right, though you lose by it, it must be done; if it be wrong, though you would gain by it, you must scorn the sin for your Master's sake. (Spurgeon)

To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness. (Bertrand Russell)

Optimism is an intellectual choice. (Diana Schneider)

Be not deceived, Wormwood, our cause is never more in jeopardy than when a human, no longer desiring but still intending to do Our Enemy's will, looks round upon a universe in which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys. (CS Lewis)

The warfare is not against sin; we can never fight against sin — Jesus Christ conquered that in His redemption of us. The conflict is waged over turning our natural life into a spiritual life. This is never done easily, nor does God intend that it be so. It is accomplished only through a series of moral choices. God does not make us holy in the sense that He makes our character holy. He makes us holy in the sense that He has made us innocent before Him. And then we have to turn that innocence into holy character through the moral choices we make. (Oswald Chambers)

I am a little pencil in the hand of a writing God who is sending a love letter to the world. (Mother Teresa)

Work saves us from three great evils: boredom, vice and need. (Voltaire, Candide)

Habits are safer than rules; you don't have to watch them. And you don't have to keep them, either, they keep you. (Dr. Frank Crane)

The secret of discipline is motivation. When a man is sufficiently motivated, discipline will take care of itself. (Sir Alexander Paterson)

The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart. (Helen Adams Keller)

Jesus, open my eyes to the needs of Your hurting children. Stretch out my hands to touch them all.

Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back (Luke 6:27-36).

Virtue — even attempted virtue — brings light; indulgence brings fog. (CS Lewis)

You are beggars at His gate, asking for mercy, and you must needs draw up rules and regulations as to how He shall give that mercy. Think you that He will submit to this? My Master is of a generous spirit, but He has a right royal heart, He spurns all dictation, and maintains His sovereignty of action. (Spurgeon)

I am always with you; you hold me by my right hand. You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will take me into glory. Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. (Ps 73:23-26)

Always remember that poverty and every other ill, lovingly accepted, has all the spiritual value of voluntary poverty or penance. (CS Lewis)

It usually takes two people to make one of them angry. (Laurence Peter)

Men seek out retreats for themselves in the country, by the seaside, on the mountains... But all this is unphilosophical to the last degree... when thou canst at a moment's notice retire into thyself. (Marcus Aelius Aurelius)

Living a full and overflowing life does not rest in bodily health, in circumstances, nor even in seeing God's work succeed, but in the perfect understanding of God, and in the same fellowship and oneness with Him that Jesus Himself enjoyed.

Humility is perfect quietness of heart. It is for me to have no trouble; never to be fretted or vexed or irritated or sore or disappointed. It is to expect nothing, to wonder at nothing that is done to me, to feel nothing done against me. It is to be at rest when nobody praises me and when I am blamed or despised. It is to have a blessed home in the Lord where I can go in and shut the door and kneel to my Father in secret and be at peace.... (Andrew Murrey)

If we have to put one stitch into the garment of our salvation, we shall ruin the whole thing. (Spurgeon)

When a person is born again from above, the life of the Son of God is born in him, and he can either starve or nourish that life. Prayer is the way that the life of God in us is nourished. (Oswald Chambers)

It's important to count you blessings, but its more important to make