“When God wants to make a mushroom, he does it overnight, but when He wants to make a giant oak, He takes a hundred years. Great souls are grown through struggles and storms and seasons of suffering. Be patient with the process.”

“Then here’s to the oak, the brave old oak,
Who stands in his pride alone!
And still flourish he, a hale green tree,
When a hundred years are gone!”

“Fear of suffering is a great obstacle to being a happy person in life. God wants us to be happy. Asceticism is not supposed to make us sad. It’s supposed to free us to be able to understand and do what God wants. He wants our happiness. He wants us to bring happiness to others.”

“Storms make oaks take deeper root.”

“When we wrong God, he does not let us go, he makes us pay for our wrongs but through the death of his own son Jesus Christ. When God's people (Jews) wronged him, he weakened them in battle and caused them to be captives in Babylon for 70 years.”

“When another person makes you suffer, it is because he suffers deeply within himself, and his suffering is spilling over. He does not need punishment; he needs help. That's the message he is sending.”

“When the devil wants to destroy talented writers, he makes them journalists. Thus he makes sure he has killed their creativity.”

“He's a highly talented guy. He does very good movies and he's not the sort of person who always talks bullshit. He does many, many things right. But he's also sick. Obsessed. He wants to make history, not movies. Anyone who wants to make history is stupid.”

“Let no one be slow to seek wisdom when he is young nor weary in search thereof when he is grown old. For no age is too early or too late for the health of the soul. And to say that the season for studying philosophy has not yet come, or that it is past and gone, is like saying that the season for happiness is not yet or that it is now no more.”

“Man finds it hard to get what he wants, because he does not want the best; God finds it hard to give, because He would give the best, and man will not take it.”