I think we’ve taken the meaning of Christmas out. People don’t stop and think about Jesus or the birth of Jesus. When they think of Christmas, they think of Santa Claus and – for the children, and they think of giving gifts and out-giving the next person of spending their time looking for the right thing for somebody who has everything.

Why should we think upon things that are lovely? Because thinking determines life. It is a common habit to blame life upon the environment. Environment modifies life but does not govern life. The soul is stronger than its surroundings.

We moralize among ruins.

Death most resembles a prophet who is without honor in his own land or a poet who is a stranger among his people.

I really haven’t liked the commercialization of mountaineering, particularly of Mt. Everest. By paying $65,000, you can be conducted to the summit by a couple of good guides.

I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.

Yesterday is but today’s memory, and tomorrow is today’s dream.

Throughout my years in business, I discovered something. I would always ask why you do things. The answers that I would invariably get are: ‚Oh, that’s just the way things are done around here.‘ Nobody knows why they do what they do. Nobody thinks very deeply about things in business.

Lot’s wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human.

We are masters of the unsaid words, but slaves of those we let slip out.

All who think cannot but see there is a sanction like that of religion which binds us in partnership in the serious work of the world.

I love those who can smile in trouble, who can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. ‚Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but they whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves their conduct, will pursue their principles unto death.

I still live, I still think: I still have to live, for I still have to think.

A minute of thought is greater than an hour of talk.

It’s still scary every time I go back to the past. Each morning, my heart catches. When I get there, I remember how the light was, where the draft was coming from, what odors were in the air. When I write, I get all the weeping out.

As the eagle was killed by the arrow winged with his own feather, so the hand of the world is wounded by its own skill.

Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‚What are you doing for others?‘

Well, the future for me is already a thing of the past.

The measure of a life, after all, is not its duration, but its donation.

I’m living in the present, thinking about the past, hoping for the future.

I’m reflective only in the sense that I learn to move forward. I reflect with a purpose.

Each one of them is Jesus in disguise.

The book to read is not the one which thinks for you, but the one which makes you think. No book in the world equals the Bible for that.

Without deep reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people.

For time is the longest distance between two places.

I have been so great in boxing they had to create an image like Rocky, a white image on the screen, to counteract my image in the ring. America has to have its white images, no matter where it gets them. Jesus, Wonder Woman, Tarzan and Rocky.

How did it get so late so soon? Its night before its afternoon. December is here before its June. My goodness how the time has flewn. How did it get so late so soon?

Life cannot be without relationship, but we have made it so agonizing and hideous by basing it on personal and possessive love. Can one love and yet not possess? You will find the true answer not in escape, ideals, beliefs but through the understanding of the causes of dependence and possessiveness.

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.

The devil is a peace stealer, and he works hard to set us up to get upset. But we can learn how to change our approach so we don’t live upset all of the time. And Jesus gives us the best example to follow.

Their mothers had finally caught up to them and been proven right. There were consequences after all but they were the consequences to things you didn’t even know you’d done.

Anybody can observe the Sabbath, but making it holy surely takes the rest of the week.

Politeness is, you know, is a wonderful thing. Manners are in fact, really important thing. But remember, Jesus didn’t have many manners as we now know.

Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.

Joan of Arc had style. Jesus had style.

Comfort and prosperity have never enriched the world as much as adversity has.

I’ve learned that you shouldn’t go through life with a catcher’s mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back.

No one can look back on his schooldays and say with truth that they were altogether unhappy.

If Jesus were here today, he wouldn’t be riding around on a donkey. He’d be taking a plane, he’d be using the media.

What we live by we die by.

Do you know something? The minute that blood sacrifice was accepted, Jesus was the first human being that was ever born again. Now that was real – it happened when he was in Hell.

Traveling around the world and preaching for over 70 years did not give much time for reflection.

At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face.

The aim of a joke is not to degrade the human being, but to remind him that he is already degraded.

The virtues are lost in self-interest as rivers are lost in the sea.

Too often we… enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.

I still close my eyes and go home – I can always draw from that.

I always say this about my music, and music in general: Music is like a time capsule. Each album reflects what I’m going through or what’s going on in my life at that moment.

The things hardest to bear are sweetest to remember.

Our care should not be to have lived long as to have lived enough.

Dissents speak to a future age.

Once you get into this great stream of history, you can’t get out.

It is a pleasant thing to reflect upon, and furnishes a complete answer to those who contend for the gradual degeneration of the human species, that every baby born into the world is a finer one than the last.

There is nothing so terrible as activity without insight.

The empty vessel makes the loudest sound.

A tomb now suffices him for whom the whole world was not sufficient.

It is a great piece of folly to attempt to make anything out of my early life.

What is this world that is hastening me toward I know not what, viewing me with contempt?

Jesus paid a tremendous price for us so we could have abundant life. He willingly took all of our sin on Himself and gave His life on the cross so we could be forgiven and have new life in Him.

I have wondered about time all my life.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.