*“I will place no value on anything I have or may possess except in relation to the Kingdom of God. If anything I have will advance that kingdom, it shall be given away or kept only as by giving or keeping it I may advance the kingdom of Him I love.”
— David Livingstone (1813-1873), Scottish medical missionary to Africa
*“More men fail through lack of purpose than lack of talent.”
— Billy Sunday (1862-1935), evangelist and former major league baseball star
“Only in growth, reform and change, paradoxically enough, is true security to be found.”
— Anne Morrow Lindbergh, (1906-2001) wife of aviator Charles Lindbergh
“When I was younger, I felt life was about acquiring things. But as I get older, I know life is totally about losing everything.”
— Mike Tyson, former world boxing champion (6/13/05 South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 10C)
“Your heart, my friend, is the size of a stadium. If you try to fill it with small things – a new car, a vacation, a promotion at work, a bigger home, a stock portfolio – a mournful echo will fill your life. But if you fill your stadium with all of humanity and search for ways to make their lives better each day, you will find yourself in the right place at the right time, doing the right thing in the right way.”
— Roy H. Williams, “The Wizard,” advertising guru
*“Let every student well consider…that the main end of his life and studies is to know God and Jesus Christ.”
— Harvard College Laws (1642)
“He who lives for himself runs a very small business.”
— Otto Derkson, WorldTeam missionary
“A wise person does at once, what a fool does at last. Both do the same thing; only at different times.”
— Lord Acton (1834-1902), British scholar and historian
“For most of my life I have believed that success is found in the running of the race. How you run the race – your planning, preparation, practice, and performance – counts for everything. Winning or losing is a by-product, an aftereffect, of that effort. For me, it’s the quality of your effort that counts most and offers the greatest and most long-lasting satisfaction.”
— John Wooden, former UCLA basketball coach in Wooden on Leadership, (p. 8).
*“They can cut my body in a thousand pieces, and every single one will cry out ‘Jesus’.”
— Unnamed evangelist working among Muslims in a south Asian country
“Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.”
— John Wooden, former UCLA basketball coach
“If you would not be forgotten, as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth the writing.”
— Ben Franklin (1706-1790), Founding Father
“Ironically, those who seek their ultimate value in the next world are the only ones able to do much good in this one.”
— Herbert Schlossberg, Idols for Destruction (1983), p. 333
“Faith is the great motive power, and no man realizes his full possibilities unless he has a deep conviction that life is eternally important, and that his work, well done, is part of an unending plan.”
— President Calvin Coolidge, July 25, 1924
“If you are not doing what you should be doing by the time you graduate from high school, the odds are strongly stacked against you that you won’t start doing them in college. Since this is indisputable, that means right now you, as a high school student, are as close to Christ in fellowship and obedience as you will ever be. Question: how close is that?”
— Bill Perry, international student missionary and pastor
“We have three kinds of guys on our team. We have guys that get it; they play good; they understand how to play winning football. We have some guys that are trying to get it, and they are working hard every day? We are supporting them, and we want the guys that have it to support them. Then we have some guys that don’t get it and don’t know that they don’t get it. We are trying to replace them. We only have a couple left.”
— Nick Saban, former Miami Dolphins head coach, on 9/11/06 (Sun-Sentinel, 9/12/06, D-1)
“Blessed is he that expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.”
— Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), in Poor Richard’s Almanac, 1739
“I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.”
— Helen Keller (1880-1968)
“Enthusiasm is one of the most powerful engines of success. When you do a thing, do it with all your might. Put your whole soul into it. Stamp it with your own personality. Be active, be energetic, be enthusiastic and faithful, and you will accomplish your objective. Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Emerson (1803-1882), American essayist, poet and Transcendentalist leader
“The greater danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we hit it.”
— Michelangelo (1475-1564), Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, poet and architect
“Everyone thinks of changing the world. No one thinks of changing himself.”
— Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910), Russian novelist, pacifist/anarchist, educational reformer and philosopher
“Planning your path is easier when you have an eye on the horizon. Don’t be an ostrich.”
— Roy Williams, advertising guru (Monday Morning Memo, 1/28/08)
“I’d like to end up sort of unforgettable.”
— Ringo Starr, former Beattle and rock icon (by J. Rentilly “Verbatim” column, US Airways magazine, January, 08, p. 90)
“I am the King’s good servant, but God’s first.”
— Sir Thomas More (1478-1535), British lawyer, author, statesman, scholar and Roman Catholic saint, dissenting to the divorce of the Henry VIII
“If all you ever do is all you’ve ever done, then all you’ll ever get is all you ever got.”
— Texas saying
“I would rather lose in a cause that will some day win, than win in a cause that will some day lose.”
— President Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924)
“Alas for those who never sing, but die with all their music still in them.”
–- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809-1894), American writer, poet and doctor
“I have noticed that there is no dissatisfaction like that of the rich. Feed a man, clothe him, put him in a good house, and he will die of despair.”
— John Steinbeck (1902-1968), American author
“Sociologist Anthony Campolo once did a study in which 50 people older than 95 were asked, “If you could live your life over again, what would you do differently?” An array of responses came from these eldest of senior citizens. However, three answers surfaced far more often than others. 1) If I had it to do over again, I would reflect more. 2) If I had it to do over again, I would risk more. 3) If I had it to do over again, I would do more things that would live on after I am dead.”
— Michael, McMahon, in “Farrah and You” by Chuck Norris 06/30/2009, www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=32513