Donald Miller Quotes

When you stop expecting people to be perfect, you can like them for who they are.

I have sometimes wondered if the greatest desire of man is to be known and loved anyway.

And so I have come to understand that strength, inner strength, comes from receiving love as much as it comes from giving it.

What I believe is not what I say I believe; what I believe is what I do.

You can't tell a good story without conflict - the story can't be beautiful or meaningful. We're taught to run from conflict, and it's robbing us of some really good stories.

If we knew how much God loved us and was for us, we’d talk to Him all day long.

How disappointing would it be get to heaven and find out God created life to be enjoyed while all we did was worry?

There is something beautiful about a billion stars held steady by a God who knows what He is doing.

I can no more understand the totality of God than the pancake I made for breakfast understands the complexity of me

People love to have lived a great story, but few people like the work it takes to make it happen.

The most difficult lie I have ever contended with is this: life is a story about me.

All the trees are losing their leaves, and not one of them is worried.

Truth grew in my mind like a fungus, and though I tried to sleep it out, there was no resisting the epiphanies.

Believing in God is as much like falling in love as it is making a decision. Love is both something that happens to you and something you decide upon.

Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself.

I want to keep walking away from the person I was a moment ago, because a mind was made fo figure things out, not to read the same page recurrently.

Fear isn’t only a guide to keep us safe; it’s also a manipulative emotion that can trick us into living a boring life … the great stories go to those who don’t give in to fear.

We shouldn’t be afraid to embrace whimsy, that nagging idea that life could be magical; it could be special if we were only willing to take a few risks.

Every creative person, and I think probably every other person, faces resistance when they are trying to create something good...The harder the resistance, the more important the task must be.

When something happens to you, you have two choices in how to deal with it. You can either get bitter, or get better.

Our lives have a countdown clock that we can't see. Mine reminds me to only do work that matters.

He said to me I was a tree in a story about a forest, and that it was arrogant of me to believe any differently. And he told me the story of the forest is better than the story of the tree.

I loved the fact that it wasn't my responsibility to change somebody, that it was God's, that my part was just to communicate love and approval.

Imagine, a Being with a mind as great as God's, with feet like trees and a voice like rushing wind, telling you that you are His cherished creation.

Too much of our time is spent trying to chart God on a grid, and too little is spent allowing our hearts to feel awe. By reducing Christian spirituality to formula, we deprive our hearts of wonder.

The human body essentially recreates itself every six months. Nearly every cell of hair and skin and bone dies and another is directed to its former place. You are not who you were last November.

Fear is a manipulative emotion that can trick us into living a boring life.

...I want my spirituality to rid me of hate, not give me reason for it.

If you want to bond with your friends, do something very hard with them, something that you won't be able to do alone.

We have to have positive male role models.

If what you are doing is important, you will encounter resistance. If what you are doing isn't important it will be easy.

We don't think of our flaws as the glue that binds us to the people we love, but they are. Grace only sticks to your imperfections.

There are two types of men in this world--one is looking for a woman to make his life complete and the other is looking for a woman to join his complete life.

The more I try to impress people, the more I separate myself from them. Vulnerability attracts love.

It is no coincidence that Jesus talks endlessly about love. Free love. Unconditional love.

There's a genius part of you that wants to create. That part of you wants to talk to God. Get out of the way.

Lets choose to do something really difficult, something that saves lives, and let's do that thing with people we love.

When I was in love there was somebody in the world who was more important than me, and that, given all that happened at the fall of man, is a miracle, like something God forgot to curse.

The mountains themselves call us into greater stories.

Self-discipline will never make us feel righteous or clean; accepting God's love will.

If we are not willing to wake up in the morning and die to ourselves, perhaps we should ask ourselves whether or not we are really following Jesus.

I want to start replacing my “fix” response with an “enjoy” response and just let people be themselves.

I often learn more about myself from listening to the life story of a friend than I do reflecting on my own story.

Christian spirituality was not a children's story. It wasn't cute or neat. It was mystical and odd and clean, and it was reaching into dirty. There was wonder in it and enchantment.

I am something of a recluse by nature. I am that cordless screwdriver that has to charge for twenty hours to earn ten minutes use. I need that much downtime.

I love writing books - I really do. If I could just quit everything and work on a book every day, I would love that most.

It occurs to me it is not so much the aim of the devil to lure me with evil as it is to preoccupy me with the meaningless.

God made a whole beautiful earth and decided to put you in it, to experience all of this beauty. You can't do that watching television all the time.

Be encouraged. Your heart is writing a poem on the world and it's being turned into a thousand songs.

Everybody has to leave, everybody has to leave their home and come back so they can love it again for all new reasons.