Every few months or so I like to share quotes that I have encountered in my reading and research that have been meaningful to me. I call them “Nuggets of Wisdom.”

After twenty years of listening to the yearnings of people’s hearts, I am convinced that human beings have an inborn desire for God. Whether we are consciously religious or not, this desire is our deepest longing and most precious treasure.     – Dr. Gerald C. May

The smallest good act today is the strategic point from which, months later, you may be able to go on to victories you never dreamed of.     – C.S. Lewis

A comfortable old age is the reward of a well-spent youth.     – Ray Palmer

A general dissolution of principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy. While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when they lose their virtue they will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader … If virtue and knowledge are diffused among the people, they will never be enslaved. This will be their great security.     – Samuel Adams

Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you plant.     – Robert Louis Stevenson

I believe in luck and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.     – Thomas Jefferson

In surrendering, one wins. In dying, one lives. That is what Jesus means when He asks us to deny ourselves. It is the willingness to accept God’s claim upon one’s life before pursuing one’s own ideals.     – Vince Vitale

When Vice becomes a society’s custom or accepted convention, it is almost impossible to remove.     – Seneca

In short, I conceive that a great part of the miseries of mankind are brought upon them by the false estimates they have made of the value of things.     – Benjamin Franklin

The lesson to be learned … is the virtue and the advantage and the enlargement of life that comes with having high purpose. That focuses your life. That’s what makes you want to get out of bed in the morning and get back to work.     – David McCullough

We are the most in-debt, obese, addicted, and medicated adult cohort in U.S. history.     – Brene Brown

Watch your thoughts, for they will become actions. Watch your actions, for they’ll become …. habits. Watch your habits for they will forge your character. Watch your character, for it will make your destiny.     – Margaret Thatcher

If I cannot do great things, I can do small things in a great way.     – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

What draws people to be friends is that they see the same truth. They share it.     – C.S. Lewis

Bad companies are destroyed by crisis. Good companies survive them. Great companies are improved by them.     – Andy Grove, former CEO of Intel

We must all either wear out or rust out, every one of us. My choice is to wear out.     – Theodore Roosevelt

Failure shows us the way – by showing us what isn’t the way.     – Ryan Holiday, author

God alone is man’s true good, and since man has abandoned Him it is a strange fact that nothing in nature has been found to take His place.  Since losing his true good, man is capable of looking for it in anything, even if it is his own destruction.     – Blaise Pascal

Moral character is to success as the safety is to a gun, it keeps you from shooting yourself with it.     – Tim Keller

Richard E Simmons III is the founder and Executive Director of The Center for Executive Leadership and a best-selling author.

(Photo by Vance Osterhout on Unsplash)