“When a flower rises from the earth, it is overcoming its greatest opponent: fear.”

“Wealth wont make you happy. Power wont make you remarkable. Fame wont make you honorable. Education wont make you wise.”

“Bless the world with your mind, heal the world with your heart, lift the world with your soul; elevate the world with your life.”

“Dont mourn over the past; it has no pity for you. Dont cry over the present; it has no sympathy for you; and dont weep over the future, it has no mercy on you.”

“In thoughts, be wise. In speech, be cautious. In sentiment, be positive. In actions, be prudent.”

“The darkest storms color the brightest rainbows.”

“Maybe, it is easier to forget the past,than to overcome the pain caused by it.Maybe, it is one of some other reasons,why men forget their prehuman ancestor.”

“He did not know that the Old One was his father, for such a relationship was utterly beyond his understanding, but as he looked at the emaciated body he felt a dim disquiet that was the ancestor of...”

“Civilization is always threatened from below, by patterns of belief and emotion that may once have been useful to our ancestors, but that are useful no longer.”

“Daddy once told me there's a rage passed down to every black man from his ancestors, born the moment they couldn't stop the slave masters from hurting their families. Daddy also said there's nothin...”

“When I opened the box, I had to remove myself from whose handwriting it was that I was reading and whose story I was hearing. I had to, or I never would have made it past the first letter. If I sto...”

“After all, what is every man? A horde of ghosts like a Chinese nest of boxes oaks that were acorns that were oaks. Death lies behind us, not in front in our ancestors, back and back until...”