Every dawn renews the Beginning, and to behold the earth struggling out of the formless void, out of the night, is to witness the act of creation.

Not the power to remember, but its very opposite, the power to forget, is a necessary condition for our existence.

The lash may force men to physical labor, it cannot force them to spiritual creativity.

Youth has the resilience to absorb disaster and weave it into the pattern of its life, no mater how anguishing the thorn that penetrates its flesh.

Writing comes more easily if you have something to say.

If my only tool is a hammer, then every problem is a nail.

The best security for old age: respect your children.

Without a love of humankind there is no love of God.

The heathen spirit is wingless. It cannot lift itself to heights from which the totality of being is visible, and it therefore loses itself in details.

Humankind's ladder to God is a ladder of deeds.

An illness is like a journey into a far country; it sifts all one's experience and removes it to a point so remote that it appears like a vision.

If your wife locks you out of the house, you don't have a problem with your door.

My best ideas come in the shower, where I’m showered with water, but also ideas.

We bear the world and we make it.... There was never a great man who had not a great mother-it is hardly an exaggeration.

The best effort of a fine person is felt after we have left their presence.

There have definitely been more than a few moments in my life where I'm wondering where the next paycheck will come from and how I'm gonna pay rent.

The desolation and terror of, for the first time, realizing that the mother can lose you, or you her, and your own abysmal loneliness and helplessness without her.

I discovered an astonishing truth: God is attracted to weakness. He cannot resist those who humbly and honestly admit how desperately they need him.

A lot of people pretty much only listen to the chorus.

From time to time historians need to be shocked.

Our emotions are often beautiful, but they can also be dangerous. They represent our spontaneity, and seem to speak to us of our freedom.