I believe that each of us comes from the Creator trailing wisps of glory.

That is my wish, hope, instruction for all of you: Take your education seriously, okay? Always do that. Because I wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for my education.

Me don’t dip on nobody’s side. Me don’t dip on the black man’s side, not the white man’s side. Me dip on God’s side, the one who create me and cause me to come from black and white.

The first step in a person’s salvation is knowledge of their sin.

Let it be our delight to find our society in the circle of which Jesus is the center, and let us make those our friends who are the friends of Jesus.

But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever.

In the Bible, we first encounter God when he sides with a bunch of slaves against a powerful Pharaoh, an act of grace freely given.

Certain though I am – and ever more certain – that I must press on in life as though Christ awaited me at the term of the universe, at the same time I feel no special assurance of the existence of Christ. Believing is not seeing. As much as anyone, I imagine, I walk in the shadows of faith.

Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.

Life is a gamble. You can get hurt, but people die in plane crashes, lose their arms and legs in car accidents; people die every day. Same with fighters: some die, some get hurt, some go on. You just don’t let yourself believe it will happen to you.

I’ve always been – you know, my personality is motivating and encouraging. And so I’m just being who God made me to be.

I’m not the judge. You know, God didn’t tell me to go around judging everybody.

Coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous.

I believe God gives you the grace to do what you need to do.

John Kerry believes in an America where hard work is rewarded.

So I say to you, Ask and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.

Never, and I mean never, allow anyone else’s ideas of who you can or can’t become sully your dream or pollute your imagination. This is your territory, and a ‚Keep Out‘ sign is a great thing to erect at all entrances to your imagination.

All the goodness I have within me is totally from the Lord alone. When I sin, it is from me and is done on my own, but when I act righteously, it is wholly and completely of God.

The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao; the name that can be named is not the eternal name. The Nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth; the Named is the mother of all things.

The greatest story of all is Colonel Sanders. He didn’t start until he was sixty-six on a freeway bypass for his chicken shop. Anything is possible!

The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.

Miracles do not, in fact, break the laws of nature.

There’s a belief that you’re supposed to be poor, and suffering, and show your humility. I just don’t see the Bible that way. I see that God came and Jesus died so that we might live an abundant life and be a blessing to others.

If one has the answers to all the questions – that is the proof that God is not with him. It means that he is a false prophet using religion for himself. The great leaders of the people of God, like Moses, have always left room for doubt. You must leave room for the Lord, not for our certainties; we must be humble.

Christmas is the perfect time to celebrate the love of God and family and to create memories that will last forever. Jesus is God’s perfect, indescribable gift. The amazing thing is that not only are we able to receive this gift, but we are able to share it with others on Christmas and every other day of the year.

The great question of our time is, ‚Will we be motivated by materialistic philosophy or by spiritual power?‘

Every natural object is a conductor of divinity and only by coming into contact with them… may we be filled with the Holy Ghost.

Fires can’t be made with dead embers, nor can enthusiasm be stirred by spiritless men. Enthusiasm in our daily work lightens effort and turns even labor into pleasant tasks.

A man cannot become an atheist merely by wishing it.

Time was when they that feared the Lord spake often to one another; I am afraid that now they more often speak one against another.

I’m not a prophet or a stone aged man, just a mortal with potential of a superman. I’m living on.

What kind of people do they think we are? Is it possible they do not realize that we shall never cease to persevere against them until they have been taught a lesson which they and the world will never forget?

If Christ has died for me, ungodly as I am, without strength as I am, then I cannot live in sin any longer, but must arouse myself to love and serve Him who has redeemed me.

When one has a great deal to put into it a day has a hundred pockets.

Learning is the beginning of wealth. Learning is the beginning of health. Learning is the beginning of spirituality. Searching and learning is where the miracle process all begins.

Motives reveal why we do what we do, which is actually more important to God than what we’re doing.

There is no man living that can not do more than he thinks he can.

I did once seriously think of embracing the Christian faith. The gentle figure of Christ, so full of forgiveness that he taught his followers not to retaliate when abused or struck, but to turn the other cheek – I thought it was a beautiful example of the perfect man.

Fighting for one’s freedom, struggling towards being free, is like struggling to be a poet or a good Christian or a good Jew or a good Muslim or good Zen Buddhist. You work all day long and achieve some kind of level of success by nightfall, go to sleep and wake up the next morning with the job still to be done. So you start all over again.

Everything in the world exists to end up in a book.

I believe that the greatest form of prayer is praise to God.

Religions get lost as people do.

I dream of painting and then I paint my dream.

I believe that I have received Jesus Christ into my heart. I believe that he has covered all of my sins.

Faith is different from proof; the latter is human, the former is a Gift from God.

Until you pray, God cannot work.

I believe that nothing happens apart from divine determination and decree. We shall never be able to escape from the doctrine of divine predestination – the doctrine that God has foreordained certain people unto eternal life.

I understood at a very early age that in nature, I felt everything I should feel in church but never did. Walking in the woods, I felt in touch with the universe and with the spirit of the universe.

I don’t think that the total creation took place in six days as we now measure time. If we can confirm, say, the Big Bang theory, that doesn’t at all cause me to question my faith that God created the Big Bang.

Let us be shy no longer. Let us go to our strength. Let us offer hope. Let us tell the world that a new age is not only possible but probable.

The roots of the problems we face in the world, in our national life, and in our family and personal lives are spiritual.

The Lord gets his best soldiers out of the highlands of affliction.

If I err in belief that the souls of men are immortal, I gladly err, nor do I wish this error which gives me pleasure to be wrested from me while I live.

God’s Spirit moves through us and the world at a pace that can never be constricted by any one religious paradigm.

Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

Everybody has goals, aspirations or whatever, and everybody has been at a point in their life where nobody believed in them.

Why do I like to write short stories? Well, I certainly didn’t intend to. I was going to write a novel. And still! I still come up with ideas for novels. And I even start novels. But something happens to them. They break up. I look at what I really want to do with the material, and it never turns out to be a novel.

Do not quench your inspiration and your imagination; do not become the slave of your model.

People often speak of God being even-handed. God is not even-handed. God is biased, in favor of the weak, of the despised.

When people say, you know, ‚Good teacher,‘ ‚Prophet,‘ ‚Really nice guy’… this is not how Jesus thought of Himself. So you’re left with a challenge in that, which is either Jesus was who he said he was or a complete and utter nut case. You have to make a choice on that.

Our soul is cast into a body, where it finds number, time, dimension. Thereupon it reasons, and calls this nature necessity, and can believe nothing else.