Top 301 Quotes & Sayings by Donald Miller

The most important thing that happens within Christian spirituality is when a person falls in love with Jesus.

I think it's very hard for us, for Christians, to understand that it's okay to read a book, for instance, on how to manage your time. There's nothing wrong with that.

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.

Sunday morning church service is not an enormous priority; spending time with other believers is.

I tend to write first drafts that are incredibly cognitive, very rational, very boring. They come off as justification. Like, 'This is my idea and here's all the reasons that it's right.' It doesn't make for very compelling reading.

I think, in the grand epic, Jesus is the hero of our stories. And our stories, as they were, are subplots in a grand epic and our job is not to be the hero of any story. Our job is to be a saint in a story that he is telling.

I used to write when I was in the mood or felt inspired. Anymore, I write whether I feel inspired or not. It's a discipline. So that's definitely different. It's part of maturing as a person and as a professional.

Most of us are waiting. We're waiting for something interesting to happen. And I think we're going to wait forever if we don't do something more interesting with our lives.

I'm not a pastor; I've never been on staff at a church.

I think that's the true litmus test for someone who has become closer to Jesus: their heart is more loving, accepting, childlike, less believing that they have all the answers and more believing in Him.

There's no authoritarian structure at Reed College, but the education is conservative. So what you have is a lot of students who are very authentically looking for truth.

Life is a story. You and I are telling stories; they may suck, but we are telling stories. And we tell stories about the things that we want. So you go through your bank account, and those are things you have told stories about.

If you have a beautiful story, it has to have conflict. If you don't have conflict, it can't be a good story.

I think understanding your life as a story is a really terrific way of kind of knowing where you are and knowing who you are.

Christians might say that you can't live a more meaningful life without Jesus. Well, that's absolutely not true. You can. You can enjoy a sunrise whether you know Jesus or not.

People are lonely. They want company and your book can provide them company and a little bit of hope. And there's nothing wrong with that.

One of the things I love about our source text as Christians, the Bible, is that it teaches us not to avoid conflict. And it teaches us that before the fall of man, in Paradise, there was conflict. God wants conflict to be a part of your life.

It confuses me that Christian living is not simpler. The gospel, the very good news, is simple.

The reason I like writing a memoir is because it isn't preachy.

Without a positive male role model in your life, it is extremely difficult to become a man who benefits his family and benefits society.

One of the things I associate with God is a sunrise. How many sunrises have you missed over the years, and God created that?

We don't naturally want to take responsibility for our lives. We want to give the responsibility to someone else. We blame them when our lives aren't good.

I started 'Storyline' after I'd accomplished all my goals and still wasn't happy. I'd become a 'New York Times' bestselling author, which was my goal from high school, and yet I was less happy after accomplishing my goals than I was before.

Meaning is something we experience more than we attain. It's like finding a nice, easy current in a river that carries you through life.

Every human being is searching for a deep sense of meaning, and yet we're all chasing success. We've confused one for the other.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Let's show up to life. Let's prove how beautiful it can really be. Let's face the conflict, redeem it, conquer it, and allow it to mold our character. Let's participate in what God is doing in the world.

In an age in which we can project an image and score that image based on immediate Facebook and Twitter feedback, thus making a video game of life and a false-reality composed of lies, what gets lost is a joyful obsession with the work we create from the purest of motives, a sheer joy in the act of creation itself that causes us to lose ourselves in something else, and in a way die to ourselves over the absolute love of a thing we are breathing into life.

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

No love is conditional. If love is conditional, it’s just some sort of manipulation masquerading as love.

And once you live a good story, you get a taste for a kind of meaning in life, and you can't go back to being normal; you can't go back to meaningless scenes stitched together by the forgettable thread of wasted time.

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

A story is based on what people think is important, so when we live a story, we are telling people around us what we think is important.

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

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

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

The most often repeated commandment in the Bible is 'Do not fear.' It's in there over two hundred times. That means a couple of things, if you think about it. It means we are going to be afraid, and it means we shouldn't let fear boss us around. Before I realized we were supposed to fight fear, I thought of fear as a subtle suggestion in our subconscious designed to keep us safe, or more important, keep us from getting humiliated. And I guess it serves that purpose. But 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.

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

I heard once that real love doesn't ask what is in it for me; it just gives unconditionally. It just tries to take the weight out of somebody else's pack, lessen his load, and if it gets reciprocated, that's great, but that isn't what you did it for.

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

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

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.

It is always the simple things that change our lives. And these things never happen when you are looking for them to happen. Life will reveal answers at the pace life wishes to do so. You feel like running, but life is on a stroll. This is how God does things.

To be in a relationship with God is to be loved purely and furiously. And a person who thinks himself unlovable cannot be in a relationship with God because he can't accept who God is; a Being that is love. We learn that we are lovable or unlovable from other people. That is why God tells us so many times to love each other.

At the time, I didn't know what forgiveness meant. I wouldn't really know what forgiveness meant for another year, until my pastor, Rick McKinley, happened to spell it out in a sermon. He said that when you forgive, you bear the burden somebody has given you without holding them accountable.

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

If I have a hope, it's that God sat over the dark nothing and wrote you and me, specifically, into the story and put us in with the sunset and the rainstorm as though to say, “Enjoy your place in my story. The beauty of it means you matter, and you can create within it even as I have created you.”

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

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.

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.

What I’m saying is I think life is staggering and we’re just used to it. We all are like spoiled children no longer impressed with the gifts we’re given—it’s just another sunset, just another rainstorm moving in over the mountain, just another child being born, just another funeral.

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.

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.

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

Sometimes I wish I could go back in time, sit down with myself and explain that things were going to be okay, that everybody loses ground sometimes and it doesn’t mean anything. It’s the way life works. This is hard to understand in the moment. You get to thinking about the girl who rejected you, the job you got fired from, the test you failed, and you lose sight of the big picture — the fact that life has a beautiful way of remaking itself every few weeks.

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