A lake that is noisy cannot reflect anything
. . . he who always hopes for the best becomes old, deceived by life, and he who is always prepared for the worst becomes old prematurely; but he who has faith, retains eternal youth.
Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.
There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn't true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.
Take a chance and you may lose. Take not a chance and you have lost already.
Above all, do not lose your desire to walk. Everyday, I walk myself into a state of well-being & walk away from every illness. I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it. But by sitting still, & the more one sits still, the closer one comes to feeling ill. Thus if one just keeps on walking, everything will be all right.
The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.
When I was younger, I would mess about and have a laugh with everyone. I was doing Atonement when I was about 12, and as we went to do this very serious scene, the director Joe [Wright] came up to me. . . I'd been giggling right up to the beginning of the take. And he came up to me and said, "Okay, you need to be serious now. " I completely idolized him.
The key to Christian living is a thirst and hunger for God. And one of the main reasons people do not understand or experience the sovereignty of grace and the way it works through the awakening of sovereign joy is that their hunger and thirst for God is so small.
I cannot think of a more personally rewarding and appropriate use of wealth than to give while one is living. . . . Interventions have greater value and impact today than if they are delayed.
We are all citizens of one world, we are all of one blood. To hate people because they were born in another country, because they speak a different language, or because they take a different view on this subject or that, is a great folly. Desist, I implore you, for we are all equally human. . . . Let us have but one end in view: the welfare of humanity.