When the congregation becomes the norm by which sermons are measured, a minister has put a mortgage on his soul.

Christmas renews our youth by stirring our wonder. The capacity for wonder has been called our most pregnant human faculty, for in it are born our art, our science, our religion.

The roads of life are strewn with the wreckage of run-down and half-finished loves.

A true lover always feels in debt to the one he loves.

Let us not bankrupt our todays by paying interest on the regrets of yesterday and by borrowing in advance the troubles of tomorrow.

Whatever the right hand findeth to do, the left hand carries a watch on its wrist to show how long it takes to do it.

Nothing is so strong as gentleness and nothing is so gentle as real strength.

Good habits, which bring our lower passions and appetites under automatic control, leave our natures free to explore the larger experiences of life. Too many of us divide and dissipate our energies in debating actions which should be taken for granted.

A man has no more character than he can command in a time of crisis.

When the congregation becomes the norm by which sermons are measured, a minister has put a mortgage on his soul.

The larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder.

When the dictators and the opportunists are gone, the cross will still stand before us and something in us will say, 'That is the real thing.'

Love is the outreach of self toward completion.

The test of courage comes when we are in the minority. The test of tolerance comes when we are in the majority.

True humility is intelligent self respect which keeps us from thinking too highly or too meanly of ourselves. It makes us modest by reminding us how far we have come short of what we can be.

A service of worship is primarily a service to God. When we realize this and act upon it, we make it a service to men.

In overcoming prejudice, working together is even more effective than talking together.

When I read great literature, great drama, speeches, or sermons, I feel that the human mind has not achieved anything greater than the ability to share feelings and thoughts through language.

Sermons remain one of the last forms of public discourse where it is culturally forbidden to talk back.

This fanaticism is what feeds terrorism. And this is precisely why Muslims must play an active role in opposing hate sermons and incitement to terrorism and extremism in their mosques.

The whole Bible is the story of men and women trying to get back to God, to overcome that sin with sacrifices, good works, sermons, prophesy, witnessing, giving all kinds of things. It never worked.

Most sermons sound to me like commercials - but I can't make out whether God is the Sponsor or the Product.

When the congregation becomes the norm by which sermons are measured, a minister has put a mortgage on his soul.

Judas heard all Christ's sermons.

And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.

So the bodhisattva saves all beings, not by preaching sermons to them, but by showing them that they are delivered, they are liberated, by the act of not being able to stop changing.

Nature teaches more than she preaches. There are no sermons in stones. It is easier to get a spark out of a stone than a moral.

One act of obedience is better than one hundred sermons.

After the advent of the written word, the masses who could not - or were not permitted to - read, were given sermons by the few who could.

Don't you know, priests, why our sermons do not touch the people's heart? Because we do not preach to the eyes, only to the ears.

With the requests of some he complied, and has published a discourse, delivered before the Society for recovering drowned persons, which may be justly pronounced one of the most beautiful and interesting sermons in the English language.

I feel that I communicate best when I am not deliberately being linear. Along this same line, I feel some of the best sermons I've ever heard were in the theatre rather than the pulpit - as, for example, in the Theatre of the Absurd.

Agnosticism has nothing to impart. Its sermons are the exhortations of one who convinces you he stands on nothing and urges you to stand there too.

Had I become a priest, the sermons would've been electric!

I write all my sermons.

Cancer can take away all of my physical abilities. It cannot touch my mind, it cannot touch my heart, and it cannot touch my soul.

Death comes not to the living soul, nor age to the loving heart.

Style is as much under the words as in the words. It is as much the soul as it is the flesh of a work.

Hope is the struggle of the soul, breaking loose from what is perishable, and attesting her eternity.

Every true prayer is a prayer of the Church; by means of that prayer the Church prays, since it is the Holy Spirit living in the Church, Who in every single soul 'prays in us with unspeakable groanings'.

Into every soul, however purged and fenced, evil appears to have as much freedom of entrance as God Himself.

I suppose, in a way, this has become part of my soul. It is a symbol of my life. Whatever I have done that really matters, I've done wearing it. When the time comes, it will be in this that I journey forth. What greater honor could come to an American, and a soldier?

People think how a sugar basin has no physiognomy, no soul. But it changes every day.

It's better to have a rich soul than to be rich.

Rude contact with facts chased my visions and dreams quickly away, and in their stead I beheld the horrors, the corruption, the evils and hypocrisy of society, and as I stood among them, a young wife, a great wail of agony went out from my soul.

Drugs will get you out of your own way, but we lived it, and that's dangerous. It can actually turn around on itself and steal your soul, and that's what happened.

Friendship! Mysterious cement of the soul, Sweet'ner of life, and solder of society.

Happiness, contentment, the health and growth of the soul, depend, as men have proved over and over again, upon some simple issue, some single turning of the soul.

When I sing, I don't want them to see that my face is black. I don't want them to see that my face is white. I want them to see my soul. And that is colorless.