We cannot think of being acceptable to others until we have first proven acceptable to ourselves.

So little knows Any but God alone to value right The good before him but perverts best things To worst abuse or to their meanest use.

To morrow to fresh Woods, and Pastures new.

Farewel happy Fields   Where Joy for ever dwells: Hail horrours, hail   Infernal world, and thou profoundest Hell   Receive thy new Possessor: One who brings   A mind not to be chang'd by Place or Time.   The mind is its own place, and in it self   Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n.

I am not what I ought to be, I am not what I want to be, I am not what I hope to be in another world; but still I am not what I once used to be, and by the grace of God I am what I am

ordinary becomes extraordinary when filled with

When you're in your twenties, someone once wrote, you live to please other people. When you're in your thirties, you get tired of trying to please others, so you get miffed with them for making you worry about it. When you're in your forties, you realize nobody was thinking about you anyway.

Whatever repeatedly enters the mind occupies the mind, eventually shapes the mind, and will ultimately express itself in what you do and who you become.

God's purpose in guidance is not to get us to perform the right actions. His purpose is to help us become the right kind of people.

The goal of the Christian life is not external conformity or mindless action, but a passionate love for God informed by the mind and embraced by the will.

I am crucified to them; my heart is mortified to them. I have no desire after them or affection for them or delight in them; they are crucified to me. The crowns, glories, thrones, pleasures, and profits of the world, I see nothing desirable in them. The lusts, sensual pleasures, loves, respects, and honors of men, name, and reputation among them, they are all nothing to me. I do not value or esteem them.

that shall be the truth with them, and nothing else. Unto persons whose minds are wholly vitiated with the leaven of this corrupt affection, there is not a line in the Scripture whose sense can be truly and clearly represented; all appears in the colour and figure that their prejudices frame in their minds.