Quotes on Ifs

I'm not a man who constantly thinks up jokes. But I think it's very important to be able to see the funny side of life and its joyful dimension and not to take everything too tragically. I'd also say it's necessary for my ministry. A writer once said that angels can fly because they don't take themselves too seriously. Maybe we could also fly a bit if we didn't think we were so important.

Who said that time heals all wounds? It would be better to say that time heals everything - except wounds. With time, the hurt of separation loses its real limits. With time, the desired body will soon disappear, and if the desiring body has already ceased to exist for the other, then what remains is a wound, disembodied.

If you wish to learn swimming you have to go into the water and if you wish to become a problem solver you have to solve problems.

If all of this, all the life of a stream of water, can be nothing but a pile of atoms, how much more is possible?

If you facilitate your subordinates' steady progress in meaningful work, make that progress salient to them, and treat them well, they will experience the emotions, motivations, and perceptions necessary for great performance.

One theory says that if you treat people well, you're more likely to encourage them to do what you want, making all the effort pay off. Do this, get that. Another one, which I prefer, is that you might consider treating people with kindness merely because you can. _x000D_ _x000D_ Regardless of what they choose to do in response, this is what you choose to do. Because you can.

Uncertainty in the pressure of vivid hopes and fears is painful, but must be endured if we wish to live without the support of comforting fairy tales.

The only way the past can drag you back is if you choose to bring it with you into the present.

Reckon then that to acquire soul-winning power, you will have to go through mental torment and soul distress. You must go into the fire if you are going to pull others out of it, and you will have to dive into the floods if you are going to draw others out of the water. You cannot work a fire escape without feeling the scorch of the conflagration, nor man a lifeboat without being covered with the waves.

I am done with great things and big things, great institutions and big success, and I am for those tiny, invisible molecular moral forces that work from individual to individual, creeping through the crannies of the world like so many rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, yet which if you give them time, will rend the hardest monuments of man's pride.

Grief can be the garden of compassion. If you keep your heart open through everything, your pain can become your greatest ally in your life's search for love and wisdom.

It should not be surprising if people believe easily in a God who makes no demands, but this is not the God of the Bible. Satan has cleverly misled people by whispering that they can believe in Jesus Christ without being changed, but this is the Devil's lie. To those who say you can have Christ without giving anything up, Satan is deceiving you.

Things have changed, ofcourse. There are counsellors at the ready. Kindness and understanding. Life is harder for some, we're told. Not their fault, even if the blows are purely imgainery. Felt just as keenly by the recipient, or the non recipient, as the case may be. But good use can be made of everything, if you are willing.

If goodness were only a theory, it were a pity it should be lost to the world. There are a number of things, the idea of which is a clear gain to the mind. Let people, for instance, rail at friendship, genius, freedom, as long as they will -the very names of these despised qualities are better than anything else that could be substituted for them, and embalm even the most envenomed satire against them.

Expectations are a form of first-class truth: If people believe it, it's true.

I never waited 27 years, because 27 years ago I was just born. My parents never told me, 'If you don't win Roland Garros we take you to the orphanage.

If there's magic in boxing, it's the magic of fighting battles beyond endurance, beyond cracked ribs, ruptured kidneys and detached retinas. It's the magic of risking everything for a dream that nobody sees but you.

The forests are the lungs of the world. I’ve always believed if you breathe, you’re an environmentalist.

If you haven't met Satan recently, you are probably going his way!

If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans.

If you want to know how much darkness there is around you, you must sharpen your eyes, peering at the faint lights in the distance.