Everything that is done in the present affects the future in the form of consequence and affects the past in the form of redemption.

Don't aim at success - the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue...as the unintended side-effect of one's personal dedication to a course greater than oneself.

Everything you have experienced up till now is what you were born to learn about.

You can have no inner peace as long as the controls of your life are located outside yourself.

One of the highest places you can get to is to be independent of the opinions of other people.

Find happiness in the recognition of what we already have, and fully appreciating it.

Suffering happens, but it does not last forever, and every pain endured contains a lesson to be learned.

Turn your problems into lessons, and your lessons into wisdom.

We don't receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.

There seems to be a superstition among many thousands of our young who hold hands and smooch in the drive-ins that marriage is a cottage surrounded by perpetual hollyhocks, to which a perpetually young and handsome husband comes home to a perpetually young and ravishing wife. When the hollyhocks wither and boredom and bills appear, the divorce courts are jammed.

Anyone who imagines that bliss is normal is going to waste a lot of time running around shouting that he's been robbed. The fact is that most putts don't drop. Most beef is tough. Most children grow up to be just ordinary people. Most successful marriages require a high degree of mutual toleration. Most jobs are more often dull than otherwise. . . .

Life is like an old-time rail journey--delays, sidetracks, smoke, dust, cinders, and jolts, interspersed only occasionally by beautiful vistas and thrilling bursts of speed. The trick is to thank the Lord for letting you have the ride.