"Be great in little things." --Francis Xavier

"To be really great in little things, to be truly noble and heroic in the insipid details of everyday life, is a virtue so rare as to be worthy of canonization." --Harriet Beecher Stowe

"Don't fly like a barnyard hen when you can soar like an eagle." --Josemaria Escriva

"Don't say, 'That's the way I am -- it's my character.' It's your lack of character. Be a man!" --Josemaria Escriva

"Don't stop to think of excuses. Get rid of them and do what you should." --Josemaria Escriva

"You're bored? That's because you keep your senses awake and your soul asleep." --Josemaria Escriva

"There is a need of manliness and purity to counteract and nullify the savage work of those who think man is a beast." --Josemaria Escriva

"Conform? It is a word found only in the vocabulary of those who have no will to fight -- the lazy, the cunning, the cowardly -- because they know they are defeated before they start." --Josemaria Escriva

"The habit of reading, I make bold to tell you, is your pass to the greatest, the purest, and the most perfect pleasure that God has prepared for His creatures. It will make your hours pleasant to you as long as you live." --Anthony Trollope

"If you cannot read all your books, at any rate peer into them, let them fall open where they will, read from the first sentence that arrests the eye, set them back on the shelves with your own hands, arrange them on your own plan so you at least know where they are. Let them be your friends; let them be your acquaintances." --Winston Churchill

"The books and papers a girl reads has much to do in forming her habits and character. If she reads the poor and the trashy books, her mental life will, of necessity, partake of the character of the poor, unwholesome food with which she feeds." --Mrs. M.A. McCurdy

"How grand a thing it is to train the mind; to awaken high and noble impulses." --Lena R. Golfin