Private victories precede public victories. You can't invert that process any more than you can harvest a crop before you plant it. It's inside-out.

Private victories precede public victories, that making and keeping promises to ourselves precedes making and keeping promises to others.

It is said that wars are won in the general's tent. Sharpening the saw in the first three dimensions—the physical, the spiritual, and the mental—is a practice I call the "Daily Private Victory." And I commend to you the simple practice of spending one hour a day every day doing it—one hour a day for the rest of your life.

The inside-out approach says that private victories precede public victories, that making and keeping promises to ourselves precedes making and keeping promises to others.

There is no effectiveness without discipline and there is no discipline without character. And there is no character without first starting and asking questions.

It also requires independent will, the power to do something when you don't want to do it, to be a function of your values rather than a function of the impulse or desire of any given moment.

Some people are painters, and some are ballet dancers, and I'm a writer.

I want to dedicate the rest of my life to spreading the love of Christ. Because God has done so much for me and has given me this platform to speak into millions of lives, I feel it is my duty...

Your fruit will outlast your life. You can't always see the effects, because they are eternal, but one day you will. One day you will see that you couldn't have been more significant if you'd tried.

None of us can do a thousand things to the glory of God, but we can do several. When you're on your deathbed, which ones will you want to have chosen?

But you don't have to change the world to earn the applause of heaven.

Here is an important distinction with far-reaching implications for Christian behavior. The deeds of Christians in this present time — however insignificant they may seem, however "vain" they may appear to those who value worldly success — are already being built into God's advancing kingdom.