Faith and prayer are the vitamins of the soul; man cannot live in health without them.

Gospel music rhythms are not African in origin, although I know that's what the jazz experts say.

When you sing gospel you have a feeling there is a cure for what's wrong.

It is easy to be independent when you've got money. But to be independent when you haven't got a thing, that's the Lord's test.

Man has no nobler function than to defend the truth.

God can make you anything you want to be, but you have to put everything in his hands.

Baby, black promoters oppressed me before white promoters ever got hold of me. Don't talk skin to me.

Gospel songs are the songs of hope. When you sing gospel you have the feeling there is a cure for what's wrong, but when you are through with the blues, you've got nothing to rest on.

I sing God's music because it makes me feel free. It gives me hope. With the blues, when you finish, you still have the blues.

Without a song, each day would be a century.

Someday the sun is going to shine down on me in some faraway place.

She couldn't turn away from the eyes that held her. Eyes as deep, as Dark as the night, yet there was something that sparked with warmth, that kept those eyes from being cold.

I wish I had more time to visit schools.

The magnitude of the atomic weight determines the character of the element, just as the magnitude of the molecule determines the character of a compound body.

Necessity is an evil; but there is no necessity for continuing to live subject to necessity.

Spectacles are deaths Harquebuze. [Spectacles are death's arquebuse.]

We know that happiness is short-lived, that we fail to cherish it when it is within our grasp and value it only when it has vanished forever.

You always have to prepare for the obstacles that are going to come. Consequently, when they do come, it doesn't affect you mentally near as much as when you're unprepared for them.

If you spend a thing you can not have it. [Lat., Non tibi illud apparere si sumas potest.]

My blood will only buy you that fool's regard. I will pay a high price for you to be respected by a churl. Nothing bought with blood is worth having, young man.

Life is such a precious gift. Whatever life throws at us, if we could just learn to get through that day and hang on to the next, you never know what may come. It may get worse, but you never know.