Favorite Quotes


	Moral Perfection “The Lord has told what is good. What he requires of us is this: to do what is just, to show constant love, and to live in humble fellowship with our God.” — Micah 6 “Find out what God wants, and when you know, try to carry it out cheerfully or at least courageously; not only that, but we must love this will of God and the obligations it entails, even if it means herding swine the rest of our lives and performing the most menial tasks in the world, because whatever sauce God choose for us, it should all be the same to us. Therein lies the very bull’s eye of perfection, at which we must all aim, and whoever comes nearest to it wins the prize.” — Francis de Sales “I still believe that standing up for the truth of God is the greatest thing in the world. This is the end of life. The end of life is not to be happy. The end of life is not to achieve pleasure and avoid pain. The end of life is to do the will of God, come what may.” — Martin Luther King “There are three reasons why men refraining from sinning: fear of punishment, hope of reward, and love of virtue. Although they aim at the same goal, namely to avoid sin, they are as different as a servant, a knight, and a king’s son. Yet he who fears punishment has the beginning of virtue, he who hopes for reward has still more, and he who truly loves it has it all. But if fear should develop into hope, and hope into love, the servant will be transformed into a knight, and the knight into a king’s son.” — Fulbert of Chartres “This is the sort of person a truly wise man has to be. He will never do anything he might regret—or anything he does not want to do. Every action he performs will always be dignified, consistent, serious, upright....Whatever comes up, he will continue to apply his own standards; and when he has made a decision, he will abide by it. A happier condition than that I am unable to conceive.” — Cicero “One life on this earth is all that we get, whether it is enough or not enough, and the obvious conclusion would seem to be that at the very least we are fools if we do not live it as fully and bravely and beautifully as we can.” — Frederick Buechner “True charity consists in putting up with one’s neighbor’s faults, never being surprised by his weaknesses, and being inspired by the least of his virtues.” — St. Therese of Lisieux “If a man has reported to you that a certain person speaks ill of you, do not make any defense to what has been told you: but reply, the man did not know the rest of my faults, of he would not have mentioned these only.” — Epictetus, Enchiridion “If any man can convince me and bring home to me that I do not think or act rightly, gladly will I change; for I search after truth, by which man never yet was harmed.” —Marcus Aurelius “Life is a place of service. Joy can be real only if people look upon their life as a service and have a definite object in life outside themselves and their personal happiness.” — Leo Tolstoy “To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden, or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson “Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those spoor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the grey twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.” — Theodore Roosevelt "Surely to think your own the only wisdom, and yours the only word, the only will, betrays a shallow spirit, and empty heart. It is no weakness for the wisest man to learn when he is wrong, to know when to yield. So, on the margin of a flooded river trees bending to the torrent live unbroken, while those that strain against it are snapped off." — Sophocles, Antigone "You are mistaken, my friend, if you think a man who is worth anything ought to spend his time weighing up the prospects of life and death. He has only one thing to consider in performing any action, whether he is acting justly or unjustly, like a good man or a bad one." — Plato, Apology "It is said that 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 with the words: "And this, too, shall pass away." — Abraham Lincoln




	Striving “What we do is very little, but it is like the little boy with a few loaves and fishes. Christ took that little and increased it. He will do the rest. What we do is so little, we may seem to be constantly failing. But so did he fail. He met with apparent failure on the cross. But unless the seed fall to earth and die, there is no harvest. And why must we see results? Our work is to sow. Another generation will be reaping the harvest.” — Dorothy Day “What I really need is to become clearer in my own mind what I must do, not what I must know—except in so far as knowing must precede every action. The important thing is to understand what I am destined for, to perceive what the deity wants me to do; the point is to find the truth which is truth for me, to find that idea for which I am ready to live and die.” — Kierkegaard “Not to venture is prudent. And yet precisely by not venturing it is so terribly easy to lose what would have been hard to lose, however much one lost by risking, and in any case never this way, so easily, so completely, as if it were nothing at all--namely oneself.” — Kierkegaard “What progress have I made? I am beginning to be my own friend. That is progress indeed. Such a person will never be alone, and you may be sure he is a friend of all.” — Seneca “Therefore let us press on and persevere. There remains much more of the road than we have put behind us; but the greater part of progress is the desire to progress.” — Seneca “I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed.” — Booker T. Washington “Video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor.” [The better path I gaze at and approve, the worse I follow.] — Ovid, Metamorphosis “Conversion consists in doing the next thing you have to do, doing it with your whole heart and finding delight in doing it.” — Meister Eckhardt “Our doubts are traitors / And make us lose the good we oft might win / By fearing to attempt.” — Shakespeare, Measure for Measure "Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the grey twilight that knows not victory nor defeat." — Theodore Roosevelt "Impossible is a word whose meaning is purely relative; every man has his own impossible according to whether he is able to do more or less. Impossibility is the phantom of the fearful and the refuge of cowards." — Napoleon




	Adversity and Suffering “Without the coldness and bleakness of winter the warmth and splendor of spring could never be. Misfortunes have steeled and tempered me, and further strengthened my resolve.” — Ho Chi Mihn “Let nothing disturb you. Let nothing frighten you. Everything passes away except God.” — Teresa of Avila “To choose the road to discipleship is to dispose oneself for a share in the cross. It is not enough to believe with one’s mind; a Christian must also be a doer of the word, a wayfarer with a witness to Jesus. This means we must never expect complete success within history. It also means that we must regard as normal the path of persecution and the possibility of martyrdom.” — The Challenge of Peace “If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain; If I can ease one life the aching or cool one pain, or help one fainting robin into his nest again, I shall not live in vain.” — Emily Dickinson “Time flows, life is a stream, people say, and so on. I do not notice it. Time stands still, and I with it. All the plans I make fly right back upon myself; when I would spit, I even spit into my own face.” — Kierkegaard “Anyone can carry his or her burden however hard until nightfall. Anyone can do his work, however hard, for one day. Anyone can live sweetly, patiently, lovingly, purely till the sun goes down. And this is all that life really means.” — R.L. Stevenson “Vain is the word of a philosopher which does not heal any suffering of man. For just as there is no profit in medicine if it does not expel the diseases of the body, so there is no profit in philosophy either if it does not expel the suffering of the mind.” — Epicurus “Marcet sine adversario virtus.” [Virtue withers without adversity] — Seneca “If you would know for certain whether your suffering is your own or God’s then you can know by this: if you suffer for yourself, in whatever way, that suffering hurts and is hard to bear. But if you suffer for God and God alone, your suffering does not hurt and is not hard to bear, for God bears the load.” — Meister Eckhardt “Some men and women, indeed, there are who can live on smiles and the word ‘yes’ forever. But for others (indeed for most), this is too tepid and relaxed a moral climate. Passive happiness is slack and insipid, and soon grows mawkish and intolerable. Some austerity and wintery negativity, some roughness, danger, stringency, and effort, some 'no! no!’ must be mixed in to produce the sense of an existence with character and texture and power.” — William James, Varieties of the Religious Experience “Suffering is the substance of life and the root of personality, and suffering is universal. Suffering is that which unites all us living beings together; it is the universal or divine blood that flows through us all.” — Unamuno “Life is, in fact, a battle. Evil is insolent and strong; beauty enchanting but rare; goodness apt to be weak; folly very apt to be defiant; wickedness to carry the day; imbeciles to be in great places, people of sense in small, and mankind generally unhappy. But the world as it stands is no narrow illusion, no phantasm, no evil dream of the night; we wake up to it again forever and ever; and we can neither forget it nor deny it nor dispense with it.” — Henry James "All life is short for the fortunate. But when men are unfortunate one night-time is infinite." — Lucian




	Death “We must all expect an end to life in this world; let him who can win fame before death, because that is a dead man’s best memorial.” — Beowulf “The man has shown himself great who has never grieved in evil days and never bewails his destiny; he has given a clear conception of himself to many men; he has shown forth like a light in the darkness and he has turned towards himself the thoughts of all men, because he was gentle and calm and equally compliant with the orders of man and God. He possessed perfection of soul, developed to its highest capabilities, inferior only to the mind of God—from whom a part flows down even into this heart of a mortal. But this heart is never more divine than when it reflects upon its own mortality, and understands that man was born for the purpose of fulfilling his life, and that the body is not a permanent dwelling, but a sort of inn (with a brief sojourn at that) which is to be left behind when it becomes evident that one is a burden to the host.” — Seneca “The ship is sinking! What then have I to do? I do the only thing that I can, not to be drowned full of fear, nor screaming, nor blaming God, but knowing what has been produced must also perish, for I am not an immortal being.” — Epictetus “When Buddha was on his death bed he noticed his young disciple Anan was weeping. ‘Why are you weeping, Anan?” he asked. ‘Because the light of the world is about to be extinguished and we will be in darkness.’ The Buddha summoned up all his remaining energy and spoke what were to be his final words on earth. ‘Anan, Anan, be a light unto yourself.’” — Buddhist Scriptures “If you want to endure life, prepare yourself for death.” — Freud “No matter what a man’s faculties otherwise might be, if he be willing to risk death, and still more, if he suffers it heroically, in the service he has chosen, that fact consecrates him forever.” — William James “An expedition will be incomplete is one stops half-way, or anywhere on this side of one’s destination; but life is not incomplete if it is honorable. At whatever point you leave off living, provided you leave off nobly, your life is a whole.” — Seneca “In a little while you will have forgotten everything, in a little while everything will have forgotten you.” — Marcus Aurelius “The difficulty, my friends, is not in avoiding death, but in avoiding unrighteousness; for that runs faster than death.” —Plato, Apology “Ordinary people seem not to realize that those who really apply themselves in the right way to philosophy are directly and in their own accord preparing themselves for dying and death.” — Plato, Phaedo "Consider it the greatest of crimes to prefer survival to honor and, out of love for physical life, to lose the very reason for living." — Juvenal, Satirae




	Justice and Peace “I will show love to those who were called unloved, and to those who were called not- my-people. I will say ‘You are my people,’ and they will answer, ‘You are our God.’” — Hosea 2:25 “It is a terrible, and inexorable law, that one cannot deny the humanity of another without diminishing one’s own: in the face of one’s victim, one sees oneself.” — James Baldwin “Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you’re a man, you take it.” — Malcolm X “While you are proclaiming peace with your lips, be careful to have it even more fully in your heart.” — St. Francis of Assisi “In all of his suffering, as in all of his life and ministry, Jesus refused to defend himself with force or with violence. He endured violence and cruelty so that God’s love might be fully manifest and the world might be reconciled to the One from whom it had become estranged. Even at his death Jesus cried out forgiveness for those who were his executioners: ‘Father, forgive them.’” — The Challenge of Peace “If you oppress poor people, you insult the God who makes them; but kindness shown to the poor is an act of worship.” — Proverbs 14:31 “We will go before God to be judged, and God will ask us, ‘Where are your wounds?’ And we will say, ‘We have no wounds.’ And God will ask, ‘Was nothing worth fighting for?’” — Rev. Allan Boesak “Christ our Lord did not come to bring peace to the world as a kind of spiritual tranquilizer. He brought to his disciples a vocation and a task—to struggle in the world of violence to establish his peace not only in their own hearts but in society itself.” — Thomas Merton “It is good enough to talk of God whilst we are sitting here after a nice breakfast and looking forward to a nice luncheon, but how am I to talk of God to the millions who have to go without two meals a day. To them God can only appear as bread and butter.” — Gandhi “Lead me from death to life, from falsehood to truth. Lead me from despair to hope, from fear to trust. Lead me from hate to love, from war to peace. Let peace fill my heart, my world, my universe.” — Universal Peace Prayer “My optimism rests on my belief in the infinite possibilities of the individual to develop nonviolence. The more you develop it in your own being, the more infectious it become till is overwhelms your surroundings and by and by might oversweep the world.” — Gandhi “There are only two powers in the world— the power of the sword and the power of the spirit. In the long run, the sword will always be conquered by the spirit.” — Napoleon “I am opposed to a nation carrying the weapons of murder about it as well as an individual. I am resolutely opposed to the whole damned infernal arming business and the whole diabolical program of human butchery. To hell with war and to hell with the system that breeds war and with the government that prepares for war. Like you I yearn to see one nation have the moral courage, the common decency to be a coward nation, the first nation in history too cowardly to commit murder and to thrive in the fruit of murder.” — Eugene V. Debbs “The Church is persecuted because it wants to be truly the Church of Christ. As long as the Church preaches an eternal salvation without involving itself in the real problems of our world, the Church is respected and praised and is even given privileges. But if it is faithful to its mission of pointing out the sin that puts many in misery, and if it proclaims the hope of a more just and humane world, then it is persecuted and landered and called subversive and communist.” — Oscar Romero “War will only be annihilated when people cease to have any share in violence, and to prepare to suffer all the persecutions they will bring upon themselves for doing so. This is the only way to annihilate war.” — Anatole France “When it shall be said in any country in the world, my people are happy; neither ignorance nor distress is to be found among them; my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars; the aged are not in want, the taxes are not oppressive..., when these things can be said, then may that country boast os its constitution and its government.” — Thomas Paine




	The Simple Life “One ought, each day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture and, if possible, speak a few reasonable words.” — Goethe “The Sufis advise us to speak only after our words have managed to pass through three gates: At the first gate we ask ourselves, ‘Are these words true?’ If so we let them pass on, if not, back they go. At the second gate we ask, ‘Are they necessary?’ At the last gate we ask, ‘Are they kind?’” — Eknath Easwasan, Meditation “Nothing, to my way of thinking, is a better proof of a well ordered mind than a man’s ability to stop just where he is and pass some time in his own company.” — Seneca “Philosophy calls for simple living, not for doing penance, and the simple way of life need not be a crude one.” — Seneca “No man is born rich. Every man, when he sees first light, is commanded to be content with milk and rags. Such is our beginning, and yet kingdoms are all too small for us.” — Seneca “Once while Diogenes was sunning himself in the Kraneus, Alexander stood over him and said: ‘Ask of me whatever you wish.’ And Diogenes replied: ‘Leave me to my sun.’” — Diogenes Laertius “Nothing is sufficient to someone for whom a little is not enough.” — Epicurus “If you want inner peace, find it in solitude, not speed. And, if you would find yourself, look to the land from which you come and to which you go.” — Henry David Thoreau "There is an old story about a famous rabbi living in Europe who was visited one day by a man who had traveled by ship from New York to see him. The man came to the great rabbi's dwelling, a large home on a street in a European city, and was directed to the rabbi's room, which was in the attic. He entered to find the master living in a room with a bed, a chair, and a few books. The man expected much more. After greetings, he asked, "Rabbi, where are your things?" The rabbi asked in return, "Well, where are yours?" His visitor replied, "But, rabbi, I'm only passing though," and the master answered, "So am I, so am I." — Jack Kornfield, Path With a Heart




	Love, Human and Divine “For I am certain that nothing can separate us from his love: neither death nor life, neither angels nor other heavenly rulers nor powers, neither the present nor the future, neither the world above nor the world below—there is nothing in all creation that will ever be able to separate us from the love of God.” — Romans 8:38 “At some ideas you stand perplexed, especially at the sight of human sins, uncertain whether to combat it by force or by humble love. Always decide, ‘I will combat it with humble love,’ If you make up your mind about that once and for all, you can conquer the whole world. Loving humility is a terrible force; it is the strongest of all things and there is nothing like it.” — Dostoyevski, The Brother’s Karamazov “In the twilight of life, God will not judge us on our earthly possession and human success, but rather on how much we have loved.” — St. John of the Cross “If you want to see the brave, look for those who can forgive. If you want to see the heroic, look at those who can love in return for hatred.” —Bhagavad Gita “Fathers and teacher, I am thinking, what is hell? And I am reasoning thus: The suffering that comes from the consciousness that one is no longer able to love.” — Dostoyevski, The Brothers Karamazov “We have come to know and to believe in the love God has for us. God is love and he who abides in love abides in God and God in him.” — 1 John 4:16 “Love will come to its perfection in us when we can face the day of judgment without fear; because even in this world we have to become as he is. In love there can be no fear, but fear is driven out by perfect love: because to fear is to expect punishment, and anyone who is afraid is still imperfect in love.” — 1 John 4:17 “Love, and do what you will; whether you hold your peace, of love hold your peace; whether you cry out, of love cry out; whether you correct, of love correct; whether you spare, through love do you spare; let the root of love be within, of this root nothing can spring but what is good.” — Augustine “It is not the greatness of the work which matters to God but the love with which it is done.” — Brother Lawrence “Every love has a force of its own. Love cannot be inactive in a lover; it cannot but lead in some direction. If you want to see the character of a man’s love, see where it is leading.” — Augustine “Nothing is more practical than finding God, that is, than falling in love in a quite absolute, final way. What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination will affect everything. It will decide what will get you out of the bed in the morning, what you will do with your evenings, how you will spend your weekends, what you read, who you know, what breaks your heart, and what amazes you with joy and gratitude. Fall in love, stay in love, and it will decide everything.” — Pedro Arrupe “Man cannot live without love. He remains a being that is incomprehensible for himself, his life is senseless, if love is not revealed to him, If he does not encounter love, if he does not experience it and make it his own, if he does not participate intimately in it.” — John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis "In this life we cannot do great things. We can only do small things with great love." — Mother Teresa




	Rebellion “There is a time when the operation of the machine become so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part; you can’t even tacitly take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies on the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all.” — Mario Savio “To do what is forbidden always has its charm, because we have an indistinct apprehension of something arbitrary and tyrannical in the prohibition.” — William Godwin “Every modern state is totalitarian. It recognizes no limit either factual or legal. That is why I maintain no state in the modern world is legitimate. No present day authority can claim to be instituted by God, for all authority is set in the framework of the totalitarian state. That is why I decide for anarchy.” — Jacques Ellul, The Ethics of Freedom “The surest way to corrupt a young man is to teach him to esteem more highly those who think alike than those who think differently.” — Frederich Nietzsche “There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.” — Albert Camus “The whole purpose of man surely consists in proving to himself that he is a man and not a cog in a machine.” — Dostoyevski, Notes From the Underground “Let your life be a friction against the machine.” — Henry David Thoreau “I don’t want everyone to like me. I should think less of myself if some people did.” — Henry James “Let them call me rebel and welcome, I feel no concern for it; but I should suffer the misery of devils were I to make a whore of my soul.” — Thomas Paine “Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reforms. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of struggle. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” — Frederick Douglas “If they cannot bear with you, let them slay you. For it were better so than to live their life.” — Marcus Aurelius




	Thoughts on Leadership “As to being prepared for defeat, I certainly am not. A man who is prepared for defeat would be half defeated before he commenced. I hope for success, shall do all in my power to secure it, and trust to God for the rest.” — David Glasgow Farragut “We are now in a period of crisis. Every man who is acutely alive is acutely wrestling with his own soul. The people that can bring forth the new passion, the new idea, this people will endure. The others, that fix themselves in the old idea, will perish with the new life strangled unborn within them.” — D.H. Lawrence “Man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated.” — Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea “There are only two creatures of value on the face of this earth: those with a commitment and those who acquire the commitment of others.” — John Adams “It is not the critic who counts. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, who at best knows in the end the triumphs of high achievements and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place will never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.” — Theodore Roosevelt “Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored. It seeks no distinction in adding story to story, upon the monuments of fame, erected to the memory of others. It denies that it is glory enough to serve under any chief. It scorns to tread in the footsteps of any predecessors, however illustrious. It thirsts and burns for distinctions....” — Abraham Lincoln “All great events hang by a single thread. The clever man takes advantage of everything, neglects nothing that may give him some added opportunity.” — Napoleon Bonaparte “L’audace, l’audace, tout jour l’audace.” [Boldness, boldness, always boldness] — Frederick the Great “Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action has arrived, stop thinking and go in.” — Napoleon Bonaparte “A leader is a man who can adapt principles to circumstances.” — Patton “Battle is not a terrifying ordeal to be endured. It is a magnificent experience wherein all the elements that have made man superior to the beasts are present: courage, self- sacrifice, loyalty, help to others, devotion to duty.” — Patton “Leaders should lead as far as they can and then vanish. Their ashes should not choke the fire they have lit.” — H. G. Wells “There is no need to suppose that human beings differ very much one from another; but it is true that the ones who come out on top are the ones who have been trained in the hardest school.” — Thucydides