"O, do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men! Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for powers equal to your tasks! Then the doing of your work shall be no miracle. But you shall be a miracle. Every day you shall wonder at yourself, at the richness of life which has come to you by the grace of God."

"For greatness after all, in spite of its name, appears to be not so much a certain size as a certain quality in human lives. It may be present in lives whose range is very small."

"O morning stars, together Proclaim the holy birth! And praises sing to God the King, And peace to men on earth."

"O little town of Bethlehem, How still we see thee lie! Above thy deep and dreamless sleep The silent stars go by;'Yet in thy dark streets shineth The everlasting Light; The hopes and fears of all the years Are met in thee to-night."

"Fierce for the right, he bore his part In strife with many a valiant foe; But Laughter winged his polished dart, And kindness tempered every blow."

"His love was like the liberal air,— Embracing all, to cheer and bless; And every grief that mortals share Found pity in his tenderness."

"The golden time of Long Ago."

"White sail upon the ocean verge, Just crimsoned by the setting sun, Thou hast thy port beyond the surge, Thy happy homeward course to run And winged hope, with heart of fire, To gain the bliss of thy desire."

"When will the dead world cease to dream, When will the morning break?"

"Though all the bards of earth were dead, And all their music passed away, What Nature wishes should be said She’ll find the rightful voice to say."

"Ambition has but one reward for all: A little power, a little transient fame, A grave to rest in, and a fading name."

"Love is the grandest thing on God's earth, but fortunate the lover who has plenty of money."

"There is not a poor person in the United States who was not made poor by his own shortcomings, or by the shortcomings of someone else. It is all wrong to be poor, anyhow."

"A man is not really a true man until he owns his own home, and they that own their homes are made more honorable and honest and pure, true and economical and careful, by owning the home."

"To make money honestly is to preach the gospel."

"I say that you ought to get rich, and it is our duty to get rich."

"I was watching Batman, the TV show, on TV Land, on the cable. And Robin said to Batman, "Golly, Batman! Why is the Joker so evil!?" And Batman said, "Careful, Robin. The criminal mind sees the world through a prism the solid citizen dare not peer through." [yelling] BATMAN HAS A MORE NUANCED WORLDVIEW THAN THE PRESIDENT."

"Dana Gould: The amazing talking man"

"Q - If your children ever ask you, “why do bad things happen to good people?” what will you tell them?"

"It is not a disaster to discover that you are not the person you assumed you were. To the contrary, it is the beginning of the end of disaster. Experiment: How you feel if you were neither a success or failure in life? How would you feel if you were neither popular nor unwanted?"

"The need to impress others causes half the world's woes. Don't add to them. Be real, not impressive."

"God himself has made it possible for you to live without the dark place and the pains that rush out and flood out and take you over. Your choice of wanting to see and work is essential to you if you want to get rid of your feeling of emptiness, of futility. You've lied to yourself and said, 'I know what to do to get rid of the pain.' You've never gotten rid of the pain and that's evidence of self-deceit. You have to stop playing cruel tricks on yourself. So stop. Now."

"Bitterness is the outcome of a wrong mental movement - the attempt to force external events to conform to internal fantasy. The cure is to see fantasy as fantasy, which will reveal it as neither necessary nor rewarding."

"You are not really bothered by what others think of you. You are bothered by what you think of yourself."

"Trying to command life without studying one's own mind is like trying to play the piano without studying music."

"Why do you permit a mere word to stand in your way? Forget the word "difficult" and take your next step."

"Procrastination is illogical from every viewpoint. It is like the man who wanted to cross the stream, so he sat on the bank to wait for all the water to run by."

"People fight to preserve their frozen beliefs and then complain of the cold!"

"We burden ourselves with useless ideas which we carelessly take as facts. Instead of letting reality come as a new surprise, we insist that it conform to our habitual concepts, and thus, we spoil everything."

"No man is really interested in getting what he craves. He is really interested in being at peace with himself, but dosen't know how."

"If we will repeatedly suffer the humiliation of admitting that we really do not know what we're talking about, eventually we will."

"If we choose the easy way, by letting another think for us, we must eventually tread the hard way. If we select the hard way, by insisting upon our own mental integrity, we eventually come to the easy way."

"Try to see what attitudes rule your day, then ask what kind of a day you usually have."

"The power of the present moment is so immense it is capable - when lived in fully - of destroying forever every past mistake and regret."

"Constantly ask yourself, 'What level is above this one?' This makes things different. Take personal problems for example. Problems are not solved by choosing between this and that. The very need to choose indicates misunderstanding. Problems are solved by outgrowing both this and that."

"The real prize is never delivered by memory or by imagination, but by something above them."

"The most marvelous experience of life is to transform life according to reality, not imagination."

"Honestly face your inner poverty as a means of discovering your inner wealth."

"A perfect method for awakening is to examine the results of our daily actions. If they are harmful, we know we need more consciousness."

"All heartache is caused by wrong viewpoints."

"Whether a person is aware of it or not, he is assaulted constantly by misleading and hostile voices within the mind. They speak both through you and to you. Everyone is their target, but because of their extreme cunning, few people ever detect and dismiss them. So the only problem is a lack of information about these foreign voices. The curing facts are as close as your desire for them. It is extremely important for you to remember the following truth: these hurtful voices are not you, and they do not belong to you, but merely speak through your psychic system. Don't take them as being your own voices, any more than you take radio voices as being your own. They simply use unaware human beings. Your true nature has nothing to do with them. When finally dismissing these sinister speakers you make room for spiritual health and true life."

"The only way you're going to have a good relationship with anyone is to have a good relationship with yourself."

"The less life in a person, the more he will try to live off your life."

"What a dawning appears to the man or woman who earnestly inquires, 'Who is living my life for me?' Am I really thinking for myself or am I unknowingly projecting acquired ideas which may be all wrong?"

"Everyone has imaginary ideas of himself as being this or that sort of person. And you can be sure that the images are highly complimentary! But since they are purely imaginary, they are highly sensitive to assault by reality."

"Human opinions are formed by accident and hardened by repetition. We cling to acquired opinions only because they give the illusion of being wise opinions. This creates division and hostility between people."

"The only activities of true value are those which aim at inner transformation."

"Remember that an answer to a difficulty resides at a higher level than our usual thinking, so seek this loftier level."

"Astonishingly, if you will have absolutely nothing to do with suffering, suffering will have nothing to do with you."

"You are not your cluster of memorized ideas about yourself. Awareness of this dissolves both the cluster and the belief that others can control you. If you have a self-image of being a desirable person, others can control you by flattering it, but can they control if you have no such image?"