The manner in which an author chooses to quote others can be intriguing. Why did he choose this particular quote? Did he agree with the quote or was he using it to make a comparison? Why quote this person instead of someone else? The answers to all of these questions, and many others, can be fascinating.

The quotes below come from Wayne Cordeiro’s book Leading on Empty: Refilling Your Tank and Renewing Your Passion. Cordeiro pastors the largest church in Hawaii. That might seem like the perfect place to relax and enjoy ministry, but after thirty years at the helm he was burned out and ready to quit. In Leading on Empty he shares what he learned on the path back to a focused, balanced, joyous life.

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I know God will not give me anything I can’t handle. I just wish He didn’t trust me so much.
~ Mother Teresa

I am told that God loves me—and yet the reality of darkness and coldness and emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul.
~ Mother Teresa

Succeeding in business and failing at home is a cop-out. For no success in the workplace will ever make up for failure at home.
~ Howard Hendricks

To do great work a man must be very idle as well as very industrious.
~ Samuel Butler

It is the space between the notes that makes the music.
~ Noah Benshea

Quietude, which some men cannot abide because it reveals their inward poverty, is as a palace of cedar to the wise, for along its hallowed courts the King in His beauty deigns to walk.
~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Wisdom is the right use of knowledge. To know is not to be wise. Many men know a great deal, and are all the greater fools for it. There is no fool so great a fool as a knowing fool. But to know how to use knowledge is to have wisdom.
~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Nobody ever outgrows Scripture; the Book widens and deepens with our years.
~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

The ministry is a matter which wears the brain and strains the heart, and drains out the life of a man if he attends to it as he should.
~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Anxiety does not empty tomorrow of its sorrows, but only empties today of its strength.
~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

As sure as God puts His children in the furnace He will be in the furnace with them.
~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Fiery trials make golden Christians.
~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

I wonder how much more effective our churches would be if we made the pastor’s spiritual health—not the pastor’s efficiency—our number one priority.
~ Philip Yancey

I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times, I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.
~ Michael Jordan

The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.
~ John Powell

Prosperity is a great teacher; adversity a greater.
~ William Hazlitt

When a man is pushed, tormented, defeated, he has a chance to learn something.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is the richness of self.
~ May Sarton

Worry is a cycle of inefficient thoughts whirling around a center of fear.
~ Corrie Ten Boom

When you’re finished changing, you’re finished.
~ Benjamin Franklin

Write you injuries in dust, your benefits in marble.
~ Benjamin Franklin

Energy and persistence conquer all things.
~ Benjamin Franklin

How few there are who have courage enough to own their faults, or resolution enough to mend them.
~ Benjamin Franklin

The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason.
~ Benjamin Franklin

Those things that hurt, instruct.
~ Benjamin Franklin

Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.
~ William James

We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.
~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Kites rise highest against the wind—not with it.
~ Winston Churchill

We shall draw from the heart of suffering itself the means of inspiration and survival.
~ Winston Churchill

Never, never, never give up! And never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense.
~ Winston Churchill

Continuous effort—not strength or intelligence—is the key to unlocking our potential.
~ Winston Churchill

There is no doubt that it is around the family and the home that all the greatest virtues, the most dominating virtues of human society, are created, strengthened, and maintained.
~ Winston Churchill

The pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
~ Winston Churchill

We turn to God for help when our foundations are shaking, only to learn that it is God who is shaking them.
~ Charles C. West

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experiences of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.
~ Helen Keller

I thank God for my handicaps, for through them, I have found myself, my work, and my God.
~ Helen Keller

To overcome difficulties is to experience the full delight of existence.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer

Good timber does not grow with ease; the stronger the wind, the stronger the trees.
~ j. Willard Marriott

What is the difference between an obstacle and an opportunity? Our attitude toward it. Every opportunity has a difficulty, and every difficulty has an opportunity.
~ J. Sidlow Baxter

Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: You don’t give up.
~ Anne Lamott

The greater the difficulty, the more glory in surmounting it. Skillful pilots gain their reputation from storms and tempests.
~ Epicurus

The greater the obstacle, the more glory in overcoming it.
~ Moliere

The grand essentials of happiness are: something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.
~ Allan K. Chalmers

Through humor, you can soften some of the worst blows that life delivers. And once you find laughter, no matter how painful your situation might be, you can survive it.
~ Bill Cosby

It is important to become aware that at every moment of our life we have an opportunity to choose joy . . . . It is in the choice that our true freedom lies, and that freedom is, in the final analysis, the freedom to love.
~ Henri Nouwen

The happiest people I know are the ones who have learned how to hold everything loosely and have given the worrisome, stress-filled, fearful details of their lives into God’s keeping.
~ Charles Swindoll

God gave burdens, also shoulder.
~ Yiddish saying

I seem forsaken and alone, I hear the lion roar; and every door is shut but one, and that is Mercy’s door.
~ William Cowper

Sorrow comes to all . . . . Perfect relief is not possible, except with time. You cannot now realize that you will ever feel better and yet you are sure to be happy again.
~ Abraham Lincoln

I am the most miserable man living . . . . Whether I shall ever be better, I cannot tell. I awfully forebode I shall not.
~ Abraham Lincoln, in a letter to John T. Stuart, January 23, 1841

The most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love, and to be greater than our suffering.
~ Ben Okri

It is in the quiet crucible of your personal, private sufferings that your noblest dreams are born and God’s greatest gifts are given in compensation for what you have been through.
~ Wintley Phipps

Adrenaline arousal can be compared to revving up a car engine, then leaving it to idle at high speed.
~ Archibald D. Hart, in The Hidden Link Between Adrenaline and Stress

Be aware of wonder. Live a balanced life—learn some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
~ Robert Fulghum

God will one day hold us accountable for all the things He created for us to enjoy, but we refused to do so.
~ rabbinic saying

I find that doing the will of God leaves me no time for disputing about His plans.
~ George MacDonald

Every tomorrow has two handles. We can take hold of it with the handle of anxiety or the handle of faith.
~ Henry Ward Beecher

Whatever the struggle, continue the climb. It may be only one step to the summit.
~ Diane Westlake

Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.
~ Thomas Edison

Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seem to be no hope at all.
~ Dale Carnegie

There is no failure except in no longer trying.
~ Elbert Hubbard

To be right with God has often meant to be in trouble with men.
~ A. W. Tozer

When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.
~ Alexander Graham Bell.

You are now at a crossroads. This is your opportunity to make the most important decision you will ever make. Forget your past. Where are you now?… Who have you decided to become? Make this decision consciously. Make it carefully. Make it powerfully.
~ Anthony Robbins