Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ, and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.

Spiritual worldliness kills! It kills the soul! It kills the Church!

If any of you should ask me for an epitome of the Christian religion, I should say that it is in one word – prayer. Live and die without prayer, and you will pray long enough when you get to hell.

Being part of a community with a church at its centre and singin‘ hymns is a great thing to do.

Religion and ritual can be vehicles for entering stillness. It says in Psalm 46:10, ‚Be still, and know that I am God.‘ But they are still just vehicles. The Buddha called his teaching a raft: You don’t need to carry it around with you after you’ve crossed the river.

God writes the Gospel not in the Bible alone, but also on trees, and in the flowers and clouds and stars.

When Jesus comes to live in our hearts, the seed of holiness is planted.

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

Whether one believes in a religion or not, and whether one believes in rebirth or not, there isn’t anyone who doesn’t appreciate kindness and compassion.

God is not upset that Gandhi was not a Christian, because God is not a Christian! All of God’s children and their different faiths help us to realize the immensity of God.

The separation of church and state is a source of strength, but the conscience of our nation does not call for separation between men of state and faith in the Supreme Being.

There cannot be a God because if there were one, I could not believe that I was not He.

The Christian’s Bible is a drug store. Its contents remain the same, but the medical practice changes.

A merry heart maketh a cheerful countenance.

Nobody believes in completely unadulterated capitalism.

Every man must do two things alone; he must do his own believing and his own dying.

The hope, the hope that lives in the breast of the black American, is just so tremendous that it overwhelms me sometimes.

Courage is a kind of salvation.

Heaven gives us hope and makes our present burdens easier to bear.

If a man reaches the heart of his own religion, he has reached the heart of the others, too. There is only one God, and there are many paths to him.

Life is grim, and we don’t have to be grim all the time.

I cannot and will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand, I can do no other, so help me God. Amen.

I don’t really believe in the type of pressure that people are wanting to put on the type of music that I make.

All missionaries, younger and older, serve with the sole hope of making life better for other people.

I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality… I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.

I don’t think I’ve ever been an agnostic. I’ve always thought there’s a superior power, that this is not the real world and that there’s a world to come.

I find hope in the darkest of days, and focus in the brightest. I do not judge the universe.

Puny man can do nothing at all to help or please God Almighty, and Luck is not the hand of God.

A wise ruler ought never to keep faith when by doing so it would be against his interests.

I thank God for my failures. Maybe not at the time but after some reflection. I never feel like a failure just because something I tried has failed.

There are good and bad times, but our mood changes more often than our fortune.

We cannot have communion with Christ till we are in union with Him; and we cannot have communion with the Church till we are in vital union with it.

I can live for two months on a good compliment.

It is impossible for you to be angry and laugh at the same time. Anger and laughter are mutually exclusive and you have the power to choose either.

Let us always meet each other with smile, for the smile is the beginning of love.

I have to be seen to be believed.

I find the whole business of religion profoundly interesting. But it does mystify me that otherwise intelligent people take it seriously.

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.

Whatever your heart clings to and confides in, that is really your God.

In prayer, we stand where angels bow with veiled faces. There, even there, the cherubim and seraphim adore before that selfsame throne to which our prayers ascend. And shall we come there with stunted requests and narrow, contracted faith?

Remember, you can always stoop and pick up nothing.

There are many things that happen every day that we could murmur about if we let ourselves go there. But they really aren’t worth the effort it takes to get upset and gripe about it.

I believe in love at first sight. You want that connection, and then you want some problems.

I shall never believe that God plays dice with the world.

The experience of God, or in any case the possibility of experiencing God, is innate.

I’ve taught a lot about prayer over the years and how it is really just talking to God.

If only the people who worry about their liabilities would think about the riches they do possess, they would stop worrying.

Unless we place our religion and our treasure in the same thing, religion will always be sacrificed.

When you face a ‚performance‘ that might provoke the ‚I’m scared‘ response, choose love and approach your opportunity as a chance to dance with God. It’s more fun than ‚Dancing with the Stars!‘

The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.

We’re in the last days, man – I truly, in my heart, believe that. It’s written. I could go on with biblical situations and things my grandma told me. But it’s about being at peace with myself and making good with the people around me.

Hope is important because it can make the present moment less difficult to bear. If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today.

In my entire life, any time I’ve ever lost something, I’ve gotten something even better going around the next corner. It’s like one door closes and another door opens. As long as I can walk through the produce section in every grocery store in this country and eat the grapes that they’re going to throw away, I know I can be fine.

I always want to listen to people and receive good criticism, but I just don’t have to answer to them; I have to answer to God.

Life is essentially a cheat and its conditions are those of defeat; the redeeming things are not happiness and pleasure but the deeper satisfactions that come out of struggle.

Jesus is the God whom we can approach without pride and before whom we can humble ourselves without despair.

There is never time in the future in which we will work out our salvation. The challenge is in the moment; the time is always now.

The ‚New Testament‘, now, I quite liked. Jesus had a lot of good things to say, and as for his father, he must have been highly thought of by the community to work with wood – a material that couldn’t have been widely available in Palestine.

Yes, across Europe, this wall will fall. For it cannot withstand faith; it cannot withstand truth. The wall cannot withstand freedom.

As you read or listen to God’s Word and spend time talking to Him in prayer, your spirit will eventually become stronger than your flesh.

Every day is a gift from God. Learn to focus on the Giver and enjoy the gift!