Tony Cooke Ministries - Tony Cooke Ministries' Free Resource Area

DECEPTION
“The devil knows better than to appear ugly and black. He prefers to carry on his nefarious activities in the name of God. Hence the German proverb: ‘All mischief begins in the name of God.’”
- Martin Luther

DECISIONS

“When you’re 100% certain, you’re too late.”
- Charles W. Robinson

"Life is the sum of all your choices."
- Albert Camus

"You make decisions and decisions will make you."
- Lester Summrall

“It’s not hard to make decisions when you know what your values are.”
- Roy Disney

“The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously.”
- Henry Kissinger

DEEDS
"Some people dream of worthy accomplishments, while others stay awake and do them."
- Unknown

DELEGATION
"If you don't know what to do with many of the papers piled on your desk, stick a dozen colleagues' initials on 'em, and pass them along. When in doubt, route."
- Malcolm Forbes

DENIAL
"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored."
Aldous Huxley

DEPENDABILITY
‘The greatest ability is dependability’.
- Curt Bergwall

DESIRE
“Ignore what a man desires and you ignore the very source of his power.”
- Walter Lippman

“As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.”
- George Bernard Shaw

The author Rudyard Kipling wrote, “If you don’t get what you want, it is a sign either that you did not seriously want it, or that you tried to bargain over the price.”

"When we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures fooling about with drink and sex and ambition, when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased."
- C.S. Lewis

DESTINY
"Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice. It is not something to be wished for, it is something to be attained."
- William Jennings Bryan

“Sow a thought, reap an act.
Sow an act, reap a habit.
Sow a habit, reap a character.
Sow a character, reap a destiny.”
- Samuel Smiles

DETAILS
"For the want of a nail, the shoe was lost; for the want of a shoe the horse was lost; and for the want of a horse the rider was lost, being overtaken and slain by the enemy, all for the want of care about a horseshoe nail."
- Benjamin Franklin

DETERMINATION
"We know how rough the road will be, how heavy here the road will be, we know about the barricades that wait along the track, but we have set our soul upon a certain goal ahead, and nothing left from hell to sky shall ever turn us back."
- Vince Lombardi

DEVOTION
“For however devoted you are to God, you may be sure that he is immeasurably more devoted to you.”
- Meister Eckhart

"What matters is not the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog."
- Coach Paul Bear Bryant

DIFFICULT PEOPLE
"Every small group has at least one 'difficult' person in it. If you don't immediately recognize who that person is -- it's probably you! "
- Rick Warren

DIFFICULTIES
"These are the times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed. The habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties. Great necessities call out great virtues. When a mind is raised, and animated by scenes that engage the heart, then those qualities which would otherwise lay dormant, wake into life and form the character of the hero and the statesman."
- Abigail Adams, (1744-1818), wife of John Adams, 2nd president of the U.S., and mother of John Quincy Adams, 6th president.

DILIGENCE
“A professional is someone who does his best work when he doesn’t feel like it.”
- Alistair Cooke

"Every day in Africa a gazelle wakes up. It knows that it must run faster than the fastest lion, or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa a lion wakes up. It knows that it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve to death. It doesn't matter if you are a lion or a gazelle. When the sun comes up in the morning, you had better be running."
- Unknown

“You can map out a fight plan or a life plan. But when the action starts, you’re down to your reflexes. That’s where your roadwork shows. If you cheated on that in the dark of the morning, you’re getting found out now under the bright lights.”
- Joe Frazier

DIPLOMACY
“Never cut what you can untie.”
- Joseph Joubert

DISAGREEMENT
"I have never in my life learned anything from any man who agreed with me."
- Dudley Field Malone

"One of the marks of maturity is the ability to disagree without becoming disagreeable."
- Charles R. Swindoll

"God reserves the right to use people who disagree with me.”
- Dr. Bob Cook

DISAPPOINTMENT
“We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope.”
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

DISCERNMENT
“Every believer must test all teachers today for himself, by the Word of God and their attitude toward the atoning work of Christ, and other fundamental truths of the Gospel, and not be misled into testing “teaching” by the character of the teacher. Good men can be deceived, and Satan needs good men to float his lies under the guise of truth.”
- Jessie Penn-Lewis

DISCIPLINE
"A dream without the discipline to achieve that dream only makes us a daydreamer."
- John Maxwell

"Discipline is the refining fire by which talent becomes ability."
- Roy L Smith

"We must face the fact that many today are notoriously careless in their living. This attitude finds its way into the church. We have liberty, we have money, we live in comparative luxury. As a result, discipline has disappeared. What would a violin solo sound like if the strings on the musician’s instrument were all hanging loose, not stretched tight, not ‘disciplined?’"
- AW Tozer

“Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not; it is the first lesson that ought to be learned, and however early a man’s training begins, it is probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly.”
- Thomas Huxley

DISCONTENTMENT
"From the discontent of man, the world’s best progress springs."
- Ella Wheeler Wilcox

DOCTRINE
“The most important part of doctrine is the first two letters.”
- David C. Egner

DREAMS
“When you stop having dream and ideals—well, you might as well stop altogether.”
- Marian Anderson

DUTY
“All men are afraid in battle. The coward is the one who lets his fear overcome his sense of duty. Duty is the essence of manhood.”
- General George S. Patton

EDIFICATION
"Do not keep the alabaster boxes of your love and tenderness sealed up until your friends are dead. Fill their lives with sweetness. Speak approving, cheering words while their ears can hear then and while their hearts can be thrilled by them."
- Henry Ward Beecher

EDUCATION
“Most people are willing to pay more to be amused than to be educated.”
- Robert C. Savage

"The man who graduates today and stops learning tomorrow is uneducated the day after."
- Newton D. Baker

"Get over the idea that only children should spend their time in study. Be a student so long as you still have something to learn, and this will mean all your life."
- Henry L. Doherty

"I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday."
- Abraham Lincoln

"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance."
- Derek Bok

"An education isn’t how much you have committed to memory. It’s knowing where to go to find out what you need to know, and it’s knowing how to use the information you get."
- William Feather

“The man who graduates today and stops learning tomorrow is uneducated the day after.”
- Newton D. Baker

EFFICIENCY
“Big wind, lotta dust, no rain.”
- American Indian chief after attending church

EFFORT
“Always do more than is required of you.”
- General George S. Patton

“I see no virtue where I smell no sweat.”
- Francis Quarles

“He who finds diamonds must grapple in mud and mire because diamonds are not found in polished stones. They are made.”
- Henry B. Wilson

“You’ll miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”
- Wayne Gretzky

"Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration."
- Thomas Edison

“Nobody who ever gave his best regretted it.”
- George Halas

“There are no traffic jams on the second mile.”
- Zig Ziglar

EGOTISM
Every man needs a blind eye and a deaf ear, so when people applaud, you’ll only hear half of it, and when people salute, you’ll only see part of it. Believe only half the praise and half the criticism.”
- Charles H. Spurgeon

"He that falls in love with himself will have no rivals."
- Benjamin Franklin

ELOQUENCE
"True eloquence consists of saying all that should be said, and that only."
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld

EMOTION
“Don’t come to me with your rubbish that there is no emotion in religion. You cannot have real religion without emotion.”
- Donald Gee

ENABLEMENT
"What God expects us to attempt, He also enables us to achieve."
- Stephen Olford

ENCOURAGEMENT
“One of the highest of human duties is the duty of encouragement… It is easy to pour cold water on their enthusiasm; it is easy to discourage others. The world is full of discouragers. We have a Christian duty to encourage one another. Many a time a word of praise or thanks or appreciation or cheer has kept a man on his feet.”
- Donald Bubna

"There are high spots in all of our lives and most of them have come through encouragement from someone else. I don’t care how great, how famous or how successful a man or woman may be, each hungers for applause."
– George M. Adams

"One compliment can keep me going for a whole month."
- Mark Twain

"When a person is down in the world, an ounce of help is better than a pound of preaching."
- Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

“If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.”
- Booker T. Washington

"Sometimes our light goes out but is blown into a flame by another human being. Each of us owes deepest thanks to those who have rekindled this light."
- Albert Schweitzer

ENERGY
“The real difference between men is energy. A strong will, a settled purpose, an invincible determination, can accomplish almost anything; and in this lies the distinction between great men and little men.”
- Thomas Fuller

"I never remember feeling tired by work, though idleness exhausts me completely."
- Sherlock Holmes

"Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men. Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for powers equal to your tasks."
- Phillips Brooks

ENDURANCE
"Endurance is not just the ability to bear a hard thing, but to turn it into glory."
- William Barclay

"Champions aren’t made in a gym; champions are made from something they have deep inside them, a desire; a dream; a vision. They have to have last minute stamina. They have to be a little faster. They have to have the skill and the will, but the will must be stronger than the skill."
- Mohammed Ali

"When you get into a tight place and it seems you can’t go on, hold on, for that’s just the place and the time that the tide will turn."
- Harriet Beecher Stowe

“When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems as though you could not hold on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.”
- Harriet Beecher Stowe

ENTHUSIASM
“Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Man is made so that whenever anything fires his soul, impossibilities vanish.”
- Jean La Fontaine

“Every man is enthusiastic at times. One man has enthusiasm for thirty minutes, another man has it for thirty days, but it is the man who has it for thirty years who makes a success in life.”
- Edward B. Butler

"Fires can’t be made with dead embers, nor can enthusiasm be stirred by spiritless men. Enthusiasm in our daily work lightens effort and turns even labor into pleasant tasks."
- Stanley Baldwin

Enthusiasm is the greatest asset in the world. It beats money and power and influence. It is no more or less than faith in action.
- Henry Chester

"Enthusiasm is the mother of effort, and without it nothing great was ever achieved."
Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Men are nothing until they are excited."
- Michel de Montaigne

"The world belongs to the energetic."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

ENVY
"As rust corrupts iron, so envy corrupts man."
- Antisthenes

“There is a strong disposition in youth, from which some individuals never escape, to suppose that everyone else is having a more enjoyable time than we are ourselves.”
- Anthony Powell

ESCHATOLOGY
“Any theology that does not live with a sense of the immediate return of Christ is a theology that takes the edge off of the urgency of faith. But any theology that does not cause us to live as though the world will be here for thousands of years is a theology that leads us into social irresponsibility.”
- Tony Campolo

ERROR
“Error never shows itself in its naked reality, in order not to be discovered. On the contrary, it dresses elegantly, so that the unwary may be led to believe that it is more truthful than truth itself.”
- Irenaeus of Lyons

ETERNITY
"He who provides for this life, but takes no care for eternity is wise for a moment, but a fool forever."
- Tillotson

ETHICS
“The world has achieved brilliance without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.”
- General Omar Bradley

EVANGELISM
A man once testified in one of D.L. Moody's meetings that he had lived "on the Mount of Transfiguration" for five years. "How many souls did you lead to Christ last year?" Moody bluntly asked him. "Well," the man hesitated, "I don't know." "Have you saved any?" Moody persisted. "I don't know that I have," the man admitted. "Well," said Moody, "we don't want that kind of mountaintop experience. When a man gets up so high that he cannot reach down and save poor sinners, there is something wrong."
- Warren Wiersbe

“I would rather win souls than be the greatest king or emperor on earth; I would rather win souls than be the greatest general that ever commanded an army; I would rather win souls than be the greatest poet, or novelist, or literary man who ever walked the earth. My one ambition in life is to win as many as possible.”
- R. A. Torrey

EXAMPLE
“I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”
- Mohandas Ghandi

"When I saw the unwearied patience, that unflagging zeal, those enlightened sons of Africa, I became a Christian at his side, though he never spoke to me about it."
- Stanley, on observing David Livingstone

"There is just one way to bring up a child in the way he should go, and that is to travel that way yourself."
- Abraham Lincoln

"Your actions speak so loudly, that I cannot hear what you say."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing."
- Albert Schweitzer

"Don’t worry that your children never listen to you; worry that they are always watching you."
- Robert Fulghum

“Out of one hundred men, one will read the Bible, the other ninety-nine will read the Christian.”
- D.L. Moody

“What you are shouts so loudly in my ears I cannot hear what you say.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

“When you see me stop following Christ, stop following me.”
- Howard Hendricks

EXCELLENCE
"And when you discover what you will be in your life, set out to do it as if God Almighty called you at this particular moment in history to do it. Don’t just set out to do a good job."
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit."
- Aristotle

"Excellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way."
- Booker T. Washington

"If a man is called to be a street sweeper he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say 'Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.'"
- Martin Luther King Jr.

"Excellence is not a skill. It is an attitude."
- Ralph Marston

“God does not want us to do extraordinary things; he wants us to do ordinary things extraordinarily well.”
- Rabbi Bernard S. Raskas

“There is more credit and satisfaction in being a first-rate truck driver than a tenth-rate executive.”
- B.C. Forbes

“Whatever you are, be a good one.”
- Abraham Lincoln

EXCUSES
“The search for a scapegoat is the easiest of all hunting expeditions.”
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

“I attribute my success to this: I never gave or took an excuse.”
- Florence Nightengale

"Getting caught is the mother of invention."
- Robert Byrne

“Ninety-nine percent of the failures come from people who have the habit of making excuses.”
- George Washington Carver

EXHILARATION
"Exhilaration is that feeling you get just after a great idea hits you, and just before you realize what's wrong with it."
- Rex Harrison

EXPECTATION
“He who grows in grace remembers that he is but dust, and he therefore does not expect his fellow Christians to be anything more. He overlooks ten thousand of their faults, because he knows his God overlooks twenty thousand in his own case. He does not expect perfection in the creature, and, therefore, he is not disappointed when he does not find it. When our virtues become more mature, we shall not be more tolerant of evil; but we shall be more tolerant of infirmity, more hopeful for the people of God, and certainly less arrogant in our criticisms.”
-C. H. Spurgeon

“The only man who behaved sensibly was my tailor; he took my measurement anew every time he saw me, while all the rest went on with their old measurements and expected them to fit me.”
- George Bernard Shaw

"Expect great things from God, attempt great things for God."
- William Carey

"Blessed is he that expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed."
- Benjamin Franklin

EXPERIENCE
“Experience is not what happens to a man, it is what a man does with what happens to him.”
- Aldous Huxley

"In the business world, everyone is paid in two coins: cash and experience. Take the experience first; the cash will come later."
- Harold S. Geneen

"Experience is the name everyone gives to his mistakes."
- Oscar Wilde

"It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts."
- John Wooden, Hall of Fame basketball coach

"Experience is the hardest teacher. It gives you the test first and the lesson afterward."
- Unknown

"The years teach much which the days never know."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

“A little experience often upsets a lot of theory.”
- Cadman

“I knew a man who grabbed a cat by the tail and learned forty percent more about cats than the man who didn’t.”
- Mark Twain

EXPENSES
“Beware of little expenses. A small leak will sink a great ship.”
- Benjamin Franklin

EXPRESSION
“Let us break the seal which seals up holy things and give wings to Truth in order that she may win every soul that comes into the world.”
- Johannes Gutenberg (inventor of the first moveable type printing press which resulted for the first time in the mass production of Bibles)