Every quarter 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.”

“I am convinced that life is 10 percent what happens to me and 90 percent how I react to it.”

—CHARLES SWINDOLL

“Anxiety is nothing more than living out the future before it arrives.”

—DAVID WELLS

“How we spend our days is how we spend our lives.”

—ANNIE DILLARD

“A practical atheist is a person who believes in God but lives his life as if He does not exist.”

—AUTHOR UNKNOWN

“If you don’t teach your children well, someone else will.”

—TIM KELLER

“Half the harm that is done in this world Is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm—but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.”

—T.S. ELIOT

“The future belongs to those who see possibilities before they become obvious.”

—JOHN SCULLY

“No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good.”

—C.S. LEWIS

“Show me a man’s companions and I will show you his character.”

—ROBERT COLES

“We live in a world that is doing its best, night and day, to make us just like everybody else.”

—E.E. CUMMINGS

“The thought of becoming Christ’s disciple for some can be quite daunting. We naturally desire what is safe. We need a sense of stability and predictability for our lives. But what we don’t often realize is that comfort, a sense of stability, and the desire to stay right where we are, is just a smiley face plastered over stagnation. And stagnation is one of the worst plights for a human being, for it leads to mediocrity and a wasted life.”

—THOMAS MORRIS

“You cannot moan and lead at the same time . . .”

—JOHN MAXWELL

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