Quotes about Importance

My story is important not because it is mine, God knows, but because if I tell it anything like right, the chances are you will recognize that in many ways it is also yours… it is precisely through these stories in all their particularity, as I have long believed and often said, that God makes himself known to each of us more powerfully and personally. If this is true, it means that to lose track of our stories is to be profoundly impoverished not only humanly but also spiritually.

It seems to me almost before the Bible says anything else, it is saying that—how important it is to be alive and to pay attention to being alive, pay attention to each other, pay attention to God as he moves and as he speaks. Pay attention to where life or God has tried to take you.

The family tree of earthly ancestors was really not important; what was important was the family tree of the children of God He planted on Calvary.

You can't have a value structure without a hierarchy. They're the same thing because a value structure means one thing takes precedence over another.

Good planning is important. I've also regarded a sense of humor as one of the most important things on a big expedition. When you're in a difficult or dangerous situation, or when you're depressed about the chances of success, someone who can make you laugh eases the tension.

A key point to bear in mind: The value of attentiveness varies in proportion to its object. You're better off not giving the small things more time than they deserve.

Vanity is the greatest seducer of reason: when you are most convinced your work is important, that is when you are most under its spell.

Which of us can resist the temptation of being thought indispensable?

We are containers, it's only the insides of our bodies that are important.

Reading and writing, like everything else, improve with practice. And, of course, if there are no young readers and writers, there will shortly be no older ones. Literacy will be dead, and democracy - which many believe goes hand in hand with it - will be dead as well.

I don't know why they are all so eager to be remembered. What good will it do them? There are some things that should be forgotten by everyone, and never spoken of again.

Don't spend most of your time on the voices that don't count. Tune out the shallow voices so that you will have more time to tune in the valuable ones.