“A visitor asked Lincoln what good news he could take home from an audience with the august executive. The president spun a story about a machine that baffled a chess champion by beating him thrice. The stunned champ cried while inspecting the machine, "There's a man in there!"Lincoln's good news, he confided from the heights of leadership, was that there was in fact a man in there.”
Source: The Civil War, Vol. 1: Fort Sumter to Perryville
“Oh cold, cold, rigid, dreadful Death, set up thine altar here, and dress it with such terrors as thou hast at thy command: for this is thy dominion! But of the loved, revered, and honoured head, thou canst not turn one hair to thy dread purposes, or make one feature odious. It is not that the hand is heavy and will fall down when released; it is not that the heart and pulse are still; but that the hand was open, generous, and true; the heart brave, warm, and tender; and the pulse a man's. Strike, Shadow, strike! And see his good deeds springing from the wound, to sow the world with life immortal.”
Source: A Christmas Carol
“One of the greatest lesson is humility. Humility is like oxygen to the soul. You won’t get too far without it!”
Source: Adversities & Triumphs In the Midst Of It All
“He is the kind of person I should expect to rescue one from a mad dog at any risk but then insist on a stoical indifference to the fright afterward." Jefferson Davis's future wife describing him at first meeting.”
Source: The Civil War, Vol. 1: Fort Sumter to Perryville
“The humility of wisdom is the happy consciousness that all things come from God, are sustained by God, and exist for God. This wisdom is rooted in the pride-destroying, joy-giving cross of Christ.”
Source: Think: The Life of the Mind and the Love of God
“Tim Tebow's Dad turned a screw-up into a testimony when a fire to burn weeds in a field got out of control. With his family still smelling like smoke from containing the fire, he conducted a lesson from verses where James compares danger of speech to an out-of-control spark.”
Source: Through My Eyes: A Quarterback's Journey: Young Reader's Edition
“The objection to an aristocracy is that it is a priesthood without a god.”
Source: St. Francis of Assisi
“Vanity breeds insanity; humility leads to utility.”
“No one is charismatic. Someone becomes charismatic in history, socially. The question for me is once again the problem of humility. If the leader discovers that he is becoming charismatic not because of his or her qualities but because mainly he or she is being able to express the expectations of a great mass of people, then he or she is much more of a translator of the aspirations and dreams of the people, instead of being the creator of the dreams. In expressing the dreams, he or she is recreating these dreams. If he or she is humble, I think that the danger of power would diminish.”
Source: We Make the Road by Walking: Conversations on Education and Social Change
“Knowing and thinking exist for the sake of love -- for the sake of building people up in faith. Thinking that produces pride instead of love is not true thinking.”
Source: Think: The Life of the Mind and the Love of God