John Calvin

“I do not so strictly demand evangelical perfection that I would not acknowledge as a Christian one who has not yet attained it. For thus all would be excluded from the church, since no one is found who is not far removed from it, while many have advanced a little toward it whom it would be nevertheless be unjust to cast away. What then? Let that target be set before our eyes at which we are earnestly to aim….Let each one of us, then, proceed according to the measure of his puny capacity and set out upon the journey we have begun. No one shall set out so inauspiciously as not daily to make some headway, though it be slight. Therefore, let us not cease so to act that we may unceasingly make some progress in the way of the Lord. And let us not despair at the slightness of our success; for even though attainment may not correspond to desire, when today outstrips yesterday the effort is not lost.”

-John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 3, Chapter 6, Paragraph 5

Ann Voskmp

Compassion is birthed out of the Latin “pati” and “cum” and means “to suffer with.” Compassion chooses to suffer with the sick, to weep with the weak, to pray with the powerless, to cry with the castoffs. Compassion is the condition of being fully human and fully Christ-like and being fully with. 

Jane Austen

It isn’t what we say or think that defines us, but what we do.

Sense and Sensibility 

Dorothy Sayers

For the sole true end of education is simply this: to teach men how to learn for themselves, and whatever instruction fails to this is effort spent in vain.

St. Patrick

Christ be with me, Christ within me,

Christ behind me, Christ before me,

Christ beside me, Christ to win me,

Christ to comfort and restore me,

Christ beneath me, Christ above me,

Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,

Christ in hearts of all that love me,

Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

Oscar Wilde

All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator; and not life, that art really mirrors...We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.

All art is quite useless.

Pablo Casals

Each second we live is a new and unique moment of the universe, a moment that will never be again And what do we teach our children? We teach them that two and two make four, and that Paris is the capital of France. When will we also teach them what they are? We should say to each of them: Do you know what you are? You are a marvel. You are unique. In all the years that have passed, there has never been another child like you. Your legs, your arms, your clever fingers, the way you move. You may become a Shakespeare, a Michaelangelo, a Beethoven. You have the capacity for anything. Yes, you are a marvel. And when you grow up, can you then harm another who is, like you, a marvel? You must work, we must all work, to make the world worthy of its children.

C. Northcote Parkinson

Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.

Hyman Rickover

It is necessary for us to learn from others' mistakes. You will not live long enough to make them all yourself.

John Owen

Oh to behold the glory of Christ! Herein would I live, herein would I die, here on would I dwell in my thoughts and affections until all things below become to me a dead and deformed thing, no longer calling out for my affectionate embraces.

Martin Luther

Oh I wish to devote my mouth and heart to you. Do not forsake me for on my own I would easily wreck it all.

Charles Spurgeon

Every day I find it most healthy to my own soul to try and walk as a saint, but in order to do so, I must continually come to Christ as a sinner. I would seek to be perfect. I would strain after every virtue, and forsake every false way. But still, as to my standing before God, I find it happiest to sit where I sat when first I looked to Jesus, on the rock of His works, having nothing to do with my own righteousness, but only with His.

Depend on it, dear Friends, the happiest way of living is to live as a poor sinner, and as nothing at all—having Jesus Christ as All in All. You may have all your growths in sanctification, all your progress in graces, all the development of your virtues that you will. But still I do earnestly pray you never to put any of these where Christ should be. If you have begun in Christ, then finish in Christ. If you have begun in the flesh, and then go on in the flesh, we know what the sure result will be. But if you have begun with Jesus Christ as your Alpha, let Him be your Omega.

-Charles Spurgeon, The Blessing of Full Assurance: Sermons on 1 John

Irving Stone

There are no faster or firmer friendships than those formed between people who love the same books."

Julia Ward Howe

"I shall stick to my resolution of writing always what I think no matter whom it offends."

Mark Barnes

A five-minute teacher understands that peers’ words can carry a lot more weight than his or her own, and there is nothing wrong with students doing the teaching.

Bill Sterrett

As a school leader, you have the profound opportunity to reach new goals—but it won’t happen by accident. Use your calendar wisely, and make the time to keep learning and growing as a leader. Your school depends on it.

Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe

By framing one’s work around priority questions, we make it far more likely that learning remains focused, coherent, and less stressful when the unexpected happens.

James H. Stronge, Xianxuan Xu, Lauri M. Leeper, and Virginia C. Tonneson

If there is one lesson we can take away from international comparisons of top-performing education systems, it is that human capital—that is, people—matter.

Robyn R. Jackson

Real leadership doesn’t require a choice between doing your job and honoring the human beings you serve: You can do both.

George Burns

Look to the future because that's where you'll spend the rest of your life.

Voltaire

Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.

Eleanor Roosevelt

"It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan."

Lucille Ball

"One of the things I learned the hard way was that it doesn't pay to get discouraged."

Kevin Durant

"Hard work beats talent when talent fails to work hard."

William James

"The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitude of mind."

Zig Ziglar

"Success is the maximum utilization of the ability that you have."

James Monroe

"It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment upon our liberties."

Larry Eisenberg

"For peace of mind, we need to resign as general manager of the universe."

Haim Ginott

“I’ve come to a frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It’s my personal approach that creates the climate. It’s my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher, I possess a tremendous power to make a child’s life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a child humanized or dehumanized.”

Benjamin Bloom

After forty years of intensive research on school learning in the United States as well as abroad, my major conclusion is: What any person in the world can learn, almost all persons can learn if provided with appropriate prior and current conditions of learning.

Karen Lamb

A year from now, you may wish you had started today.

Benjamin Franklin

Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn.

Benjamin Franklin

Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man.

Benjamin Franklin

I am for doing good to the poor, but...I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. I observed...that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.

Benjamin Franklin

An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.

Benjamin Franklin

If everyone is thinking alike, then no one is thinking.

Benjamin Franklin

If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed.

Benjamin Franklin

By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.

Benjamin Franklin

Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are.

Benjamin Franklin

Never ruin an apology with an excuse.

Benjamin Franklin

How many observe Christ's birthday! How few, His precepts!

Frederick Douglass

Without a struggle there can be no progress. 

Benjamin Franklin

I didn't fail the test, I just found 100 ways to do it wrong.

Benjamin Franklin

“Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.”

Benjamin Franklin

Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.

C.S. Lewis

“In friendship...we think we have chosen our peers. In reality a few years' difference in the dates of our births, a few more miles between certain houses, the choice of one university instead of another...the accident of a topic being raised or not raised at a first meeting--any of these chances might have kept us apart. But, for a Christian, there are, strictly speaking no chances. A secret master of ceremonies has been at work. Christ, who said to the disciples, "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you," can truly say to every group of Christian friends, "Ye have not chosen one another but I have chosen you for one another." The friendship is not a reward for our discriminating and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each of us the beauties of others.” 
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

Wilkes

You will never become a servant leader until you first become servant to the leader.

Charles Dubois

The important things is this: to be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become.

Anne Frank

How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.

Jerry Bridges

Holiness is not a series of do's and don'ts, but conformity to the character of God and obedience to the will of God.

Sharwood Smith

The strong argument for literary education is that provinciality [sic] is counteracted by classical literature, whether it be Homer, Sophocles, and Virgil or Shakespeare, Milton, and Keats. Classical authors are of another age as well as transcending all ages. But if they are to counteract provincialism, they must be felt, not merely encountered; and deeply enough to be taken into the pupils' mythological miscellany in competition with the seductive offerings of the modern media of communication.

Dealing as he does with pupils who are subject to a bombardment of the perceptions, a classical schoolmaster must nowadays be patient, sensitive and resourceful if the reading of classical authors in class is to prove more than a series of casual encounters.

Anonymous

In literature, evil often triumphs, but never conquers.

Jim Elliot

“Surely those who know the great passionate heart of Jehovah must deny their own loves to share in the expression of His. Consider the call from the Throne above, ‘Go ye,’ and from round about, ‘Come over and help us,’ and even the call from the damned souls below, ‘Send Lazarus to my brothers, that they come not to this place.’ Impelled, then, by these voices, I dare not stay home while Quichuas perish. So what if the well-fed church in the homeland needs stirring? They have the Scriptures, Moses, and the Prophets, and a whole lot more. Their condemnation is written on their bank books and in the dust on their Bible covers. American believers have sold their lives to the service of Mammon, and God has His rightful way of dealing with those who succumb to the spirit of Laodicea.”

Adoniram Judson

I have now to ask, whether you can consent to part with your daughter early next spring, to see her no more in this world; whether you can consent to her departure, and her subjection to the hardships and sufferings of missionary life; whether you can consent to her exposure to the dangers of the ocean, to the fatal influence of the southern climate of India; to every kind of want and distress; to degradation, insult, persecution, and perhaps a violent death. Can you consent to all this, for the sake of him who left is heavenly home, and died for her and for you; for the sake of perishing, immortal souls; for the sake of Zion, and the glory of God? Can you consent to all this, in hope of soon meeting your daughter in the world of glory, with the crown of righteous, brightened with the acclamations of praise which shall redound to her Savior from heathens saved, through her means, from eternal woe and despair?

Robert Murray McCheyne

Never see the face of man till you have seen His face who is our life, our all.

Robert Murray McCheyne

The greatest need of my people is my own holiness.

Floyd McClung

Only those who long to broadcast His glory to the nations have the right to stay.

Floyd McClung

There are too many over-fed, under-motivated Christians hiding behind the excuse that God has not spoken to them. They are waiting to hear voices or see dreams--all the while living to make money, to provide for their future, to dress well and have fun.

Floyd McClung

The apostolic passion, therefore, is a deliberate, intentional choice to live for the worship of Jesus in the nations. It has to do with being committed to the point of death to spreading His glory."

David Platt

May missions in the world be more important than maintenance in our church.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

-- The Great Gatsby

John G Paton

If it be to glorify my God, I will not grudge to spend many nights alone in such a tree, to feel again my Savior's spiritual presence, to enjoy His consoling fellowship. If thus thrown back upon your own soul, alone, all alone, in the midnight, in the bush, in the very embrace of death itself, have you a Friend that will not fail you then?

Charles Simeon

My dear brother, we must not mind a little suffering for Christ's sake. Let us follow Him patiently; we shall soon be partakers of His victory.

C.T. Studd

Some men die by shrapnel.
Some men die by flames.
Most men die inch by inch,
playing silly little games.

John Gardner

Much education today is monumentally ineffective. All too often we are giving your people cut flowers when we should be teaching them to grown their own plants. We are stuffing their heads with the products of earlier innovation rather than teaching them how to innovate. We think of the mind as a storehouse to be filled rather than an instrument to be used.

Leo Tolstoy

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.

John Wesley

Though I am always in haste, I am never in a hurry.

Lin Yutang

Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.

Emily Dickinson

To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.

Sophocles

One who knows how to show and to accept kindness will be a friend better than any possession.

Lyndon B. Johnson

Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or lose.

Georges-Louis Leclerc

Hold on; hold fast; hold out. Patience is genius.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

If children grew up according to early indications, we should have nothing but geniuses.

Josiah Gilbert Holland

That which grows fast, withers as rapidly. That which grows slowly, endures.

Bobby Knight

"The will to succeed is important, but what's more important is the will to prepare."

Amelia Earhart

Adventure is worthwhile in itself.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession. . . . Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.

Bill Gates

Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can't lose.

John Wooden

“Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best you are capable of becoming.”

Florence Foster Jenkins

People may say I can't sing, but no one can ever say I didn't sing.

Anna Lappé

Every time you spend money, you're casting a vote for the kind of world you want.

Isaac Asimov

The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.

Joseph Joubert

Kindness is loving people more than they deserve.

Anna Masterton Buchan

It is wonderful how much news there is when people write every other day; if they wait for a month, there is nothing that seems worth telling.

Bob McNabb

Do not disqualify yourself in your mind from a work for which Jesus died to qualify you.

Maria Montessori

Never help a child with a task at which he feels he can succeed.

Katherine Hepburn

If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun.

Alfred Perlman

After you've done a thing the same way for two years, look it over carefully. After five years, look at it with suspicion. And after ten years, throw it away and start all over.

Jules Renard

I am never bored anywhere: being bored is an insult to oneself.

John Doe

I love you SG!

Unknown

"For some writers, research is like dating and writing is like marriage: With research, you hope that if you keep looking, you hope that if you keep looking, you'll find the perfect match right around the next corner. With writing, you just have to take what you have and try to work it out."

Albert Einstein

It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression.

Thomas Jefferson

The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.

Barbara Kingsolver

Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth, but not its twin.

E. Joseph Cossman

If you want to test your memory, try to recall what you were worrying about one year ago today.

Francis Bacon

If money be not they servant, it will be thy master. The covetous man cannot so properly be said to possess wealth, as that may be said to possess him.

Mahatma Ghandi

Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.

Georges-Louis Leclerc Comte de Buffon

Genius is nothing but a great aptitude for patience.

Magdalen Nabb

Never get so fascinated by the extraordinary that you forget the ordinary.

Socrates

If all misfortunes were laid in one common heap whence everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be contented to take their own and depart.

Cicero

No one has the right to be sorry for himself for a misfortune that strikes everyone.

Benjamin Franklin

Well done is better than well said.