The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.

There is a blessed necessity by which the interest of men is always driving them to the right; and, again, making all crime mean and ugly.

I’m an atheist, and the concept of god for me is all part of what I call ‚the last illusion.‘ The last illusion is someone knows what is going on. Nearly everyone has that illusion somewhere, and it manifests not only in the terms of the idea that there is a god but that it knows what’s going on but that the planets know what’s going on.

The courage we desire and prize is not the courage to die decently, but to live manfully.

It is written on the arched sky; it looks out from every star. It is the poetry of Nature; it is that which uplifts the spirit within us.

Prayer is simply a two-way conversation between you and God.

The one badge of Christian discipleship is not orthodoxy but love.

Sin cannot be conceived in a natural state, but only in a civil state, where it is decreed by common consent what is good or bad.

If anyone offers conjectures about the truth of things from the mere possibility of hypotheses, I do not see by what stipulation anything certain can be determined in any science, since one or another set of hypotheses may always be devised which will appear to supply new difficulties.

Almost everything that is great has been done by youth.

In golf, the player, coach and official are rolled into one, and they overlap completely. Golf really is the best microcosm of life – or at least the way life should be.

If in prayer I come before a throne of grace, the faults of my prayer will be overlooked.

And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.

I think a big test we all face in life on a regular basis is that discouragement test. Life’s not always fair, but I believe if you keep doing the right thing, God will get you to where you are.

If I inspire you, pay for it, period.

I believe many people feel like God is mad at them. One day I put a post on Facebook that said, ‚God is not mad at you.‘ Within a few hours, we literally had thousands of positive responses from people saying things like, ‚That is exactly what I needed to hear today.‘ Obviously, this is a message we need to hear.

The world forgetting, by the world forgot.

I suppose for me as an artist it wasn’t always just about expressing my work; I really wanted, more than anything else, to contribute in some way to the culture that I was living in. It just seemed like a challenge to move it a little bit towards the way I thought it might be interesting to go.

Christ managed to boil down an awful lot of commandments to a few very simple rules for living. It’s when you go backwards through the ‚begats‘ and the Garden of Eden, and you start thinking, ‚Hang on, that’s a big punishment for eating one lousy apple… There’s a human-rights issue.‘

I have always believed, and I still believe, that whatever good or bad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value.

You have to dream intentionally. Most people dream a dream when they are asleep. But to be a writer, you have to dream while you are awake, intentionally.

I’m honest enough to say I don’t know everything. You know, I don’t. I don’t understand all of God. I don’t understand, you know, some kind of why bad things happen.

I’m grateful for the evangelical resurgence we’ve seen across the world in the last half-century or so. It truly has been God’s doing.

If you don’t know where you are going, every road will get you nowhere.

He who is brave is free.

Couples are wholes and not wholes, what agrees disagrees, the concordant is discordant. From all things one and from one all things.

In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.

Where there is reverence there is fear, but there is not reverence everywhere that there is fear, because fear presumably has a wider extension than reverence.

Wisdom begins in wonder.

What do you want a meaning for? Life is a desire, not a meaning.

I think you can judge from somebody’s actions a kind of a stability and sense of purpose perhaps created by strong religious roots. I mean, there’s a certain patience, a certain discipline, I think, that religion helps you achieve.

It is well known that the Soviet Union closely regulates all organizations and movements, including religion.

Love of God is not always the same as love of good.

The Bible says that as Christians we don’t grieve the same way people do who have no hope of eternity and of Heaven – but we still grieve.

There are many levels of Christianity. There are many notions about God. To believe that God is a person is just one of the notions of God that you can find in Christianity. So, we should not say that there is one Christianity. There are many Christianities.

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

The question of whether or not there is a God or truth or reality or whatever you like to call it, can never be answered by books, by priests, philosopher’s or saviours. Nobody and nothing can answer the question but you yourself, and that is why you must know yourself – Immaturity lies only in total ignorance of self.

I don’t think a Jewish or Christian or Islamic state is a proper concept. I would object to the United States as a Christian state.

Fate is nothing but the deeds committed in a prior state of existence.

When I checked into SEAL Team One many years ago, one of the things that I noticed was there was this old guy, who was younger than I am today, who I decided that I was going to be like. I wanted to emulate what he was doing, and one of those things was he got to work before anybody else.

God tries you in certain, certain ways. Some people are rich, and they believe in God. They lose the money, things get hard, they get weak and quit going to church. Quit serving God like they did.

If God treats you well by teaching you a disastrous lesson, you never forget it.

It is in life as it is in ways, the shortest way is commonly the foulest, and surely the fairer way is not much about.

A weak man is just by accident. A strong but non-violent man is unjust by accident.

Asking is the beginning of receiving. Make sure you don’t go to the ocean with a teaspoon. At least take a bucket so the kids won’t laugh at you.

I am prepared to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.

Art raises its head where creeds relax.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.

Worshipping the Lord means giving Him the place that he must have; worshipping the Lord means stating, believing – not only by our words – that He alone truly guides our lives; worshipping the Lord means that we are convinced before Him that He is the only God, the God of our lives, the God of our history.

I know that when I pray, something wonderful happens. Not just to the person or persons for whom I’m praying, but also something wonderful happens to me. I’m grateful that I’m heard.

We occasionally stumble over the truth but most of us pick ourselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.

We hand folks over to God’s mercy, and show none ourselves.

You say it is the good cause that hallows even war? I say unto you: it is the good war that hallows any cause.

All generalizations are false, including this one.

Faith certainly tells us what the senses do not, but not the contrary of what they see; it is above, not against them.

I never really had the classic struggle. I had faith.

Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: ‚I’m with you kid. Let’s go.‘

Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of readiness to die.

It is vain for the coward to flee; death follows close behind; it is only by defying it that the brave escape.

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.

Everything in excess is opposed to nature.