Michael R. Phillips > Quotes

“The best things are never arrived at in haste. God is in no hurry; His plans are never rushed.”
― Michael Phillips

“alone doesn’t usually do much to help folks wake up on the inside. What wakes people up the quickest is some kind of tragedy or grief.”
― Michael Phillips, Angels Watching Over Me

“How were you supposed to hear God's voice anyway? Maybe you had to get so still yourself that His voice kind of stole inside you, in the midst of the quiet.”
― Michael R. Phillips, Angels Watching Over Me

“It was so different to be two free black young people, free to think, free to love, free to decide things for ourselves, free to become what we wanted, free to be the people we wanted to make ourselves, not what somebody else wanted us to be.”
― Michael Phillips, A Perilous Proposal

“Maybe we all need to forgive our mamas and papas for the things they did that hurt us or confused us ... I came to realize that I needed to forgive Mr. Daniels for the resentment I'd allowed myself to feel toward him. If he was my father, then maybe God wanted that word to mean something in my life. And maybe the first thing it meant was forgiveness. I realized that I could never altogether be the person God wanted me to be without it. I realized that lots of times wholeness as a person starts with forgiving others, and usually somebody close to you like a mother or father.”
― Michael R. Phillips, The Color of Your Skin Ain't the Color of Your Heart

“But a good knife. Cutting out bad things from inside you’s a good and necessary thing, and if it sometimes takes a little pain to get it done, I reckon that’s the price a person has to pay to grow up and become the kind of person God wants him to be—or who God wants her to be.”
― Michael Phillips, The Color of Your Skin Ain't the Color of Your Heart

“I sat for a long time in silence. I didn’t get any more feelings that God was saying anything. Maybe He’d said all He had to say. If that was true, then I reckoned it was time I did what He’d told me to do—ask Him. God had had His say. Now it was my turn. I don’t suppose God keeps talking to someone who’s not paying attention to what He says. If you want Him to keep talking to you, I guess you’ve got to keep your half of the conversation going, and right now I figured that my half of the conversation was to do what He’d told me.”
― Michael R. Phillips, Angels Watching Over Me

“There’s a lot of angry people in the world, Jake—lots and lots of angry people. Some are angry down inside where nobody sees. Others you can tell just from looking at them. I’ve seen a lot of folks with anger inside them, Jake. It’s not pleasant to see. Anger’s not a pretty thing. It makes people miserable inside. Then there’s other folks that get sad and discouraged at all the hardships that come in their lives. Maybe they don’t get angry, but they go around being sad and miserable and letting people know it. They want people to feel sorry for them, and that’s not too pretty to see either.” “So”
― Michael R. Phillips, A Perilous Proposal

“Seems we were all trying so hard to protect ourselves from facing any more hurt, that we just couldn’t let ourselves be honest with each other.”
― Michael R. Phillips, My Father's World

“Maybe thinking about God does that to you—quiets you down inside and makes you less fretful. I was”
― Michael Phillips, Angels Watching Over Me

“You must be honest with yourself. In your deepest heart, you knew. My Father places the truth of knowing in every human heart. It is imbedded into humanity as surely as is instinct in the animal kingdom. It is why all peoples in all times have sought the Almighty. It is my Father’s way of calling his sons and daughters home. You”
― Michael R. Phillips, Hell and Beyond

“I wondered if there might be a difference between what you wanted to do yourself, even if you thought it was right, and what God wanted you to do. And how else could you find out what He wanted except by asking Him?”
― Michael Phillips, Angels Watching Over Me

“Look here, Duff, I said, you think your life is hard, well, lots of other folks’ lives are hard too. Some of them are even harder than yours! So you quit feeling so sorry for yourself like you’ve got it so bad. You’re alive, aren’t you? You’re healthy and strong, aren’t you? You don’t have it nearly so bad as you think. No matter what you’ve been through, life can be a pretty good thing if you’ll let it.”
― Michael R. Phillips, A Perilous Proposal

“That’s the trouble with people of all colors—they judge folks by what they think they see, which is usually only on the outside. But it’s what’s inside that counts. That’s what makes a person who he or she really is. And”
― Michael R. Phillips, The Color of Your Skin Ain't the Color of Your Heart

“You must see not only what is wrong, but what needs to be done about it—what change must we make in order to set things right.”
― Michael R. Phillips, Wild Grows the Heather in Devon

“Once people’s minds are made up about a lie, it doesn’t matter what you say—you can’t make them stop believing it. Most folks’ll be convinced of a lie easier than they’ll believe the truth.”
― Michael Phillips, A Perilous Proposal

“Growth is one of those things you can't see up close. You have to stand back to see how something or someone has changed as time has passed.”
― Michael R. Phillips, Together Is All We Need

“And while nothing is as bad as slavery, we weren’t really “free,” because hatred and prejudice creates an invisible bondage of its own, just as sure as had the chains of the white masters.”
― Michael Phillips, A Perilous Proposal

“The companionship their heavenly Father had seen fit to deprive them of during their middle years of life had been amply restored, and a vitality and strength of body gave them back at the end of their lives the friendship and love each had stored away for so long. Always”
― Michael R. Phillips, Stranger at Stonewycke

“Do you know those kinds of looks white people give you?' ... 'What do you do?' 'Ignore them...'
'But how can you - it makes you feel so worthless...'
'You have to ignore it and just be who you are.'
'But how can you feel good about yourself when your skin is brown, when the whole world is looking at you...'
'The whole world isn't looking at you that way.' said Micah, 'only ignorant, foolish people. What should you care what they think?'
'But it still sometimes hurts to be black.'
'Yeah, maybe,' Micah nodded. 'I know the feeling, but a long time ago I had to decide what it meant to be me, not white, black, not what anyone else says or thinks I should be ... but just me. Who I thought I was, who I really was, who God wanted me to be -- that was all that mattered. Once I came to terms and made my peace with that, then I was able to live with my self no matter what anyone thought."
'But doing that's not so easy.'
'No, not easy at all,' nodded Micah. 'But if you're black, or brown like you say, or different in any way, you've got no choice. You've got to ignore the looks and just be who you are. Otherwise you'll get angry and bitter yourself and then you're no better than they are. An angry black person is just as bad as an arrogant white person. I wouldn't want to be either.”
― Michael R. Phillips, The Soldier's Lady

“If more of those who had set themselves to explain God’s ways through the years had devoted a greater portion of their energies to obey what He has told them to do rather than theorize concerning His work, the world would doubtless be much further along toward its ultimate salvation than it presently is.”
― Michael R. Phillips, Jesus, an Obedient Son

“Conquering something new . . . bold . . . adventurous—it’s part of the way God made men.”
― Michael R. Phillips, My Father's World

“God brings new winds to our lives to keep us from being too attached to this world, and to make us trust Him. He brings the rains, he brings the snows, then He brings back the sun. Always life is changing. No matter what happens, He will sustain us through it.” She”
― Michael R. Phillips, The Crown and the Crucible

“If that was it, I thought, it was a whole new way of looking at things, a whole new way of looking at life. I’d always done whatever I figured I ought to do. That was the kind of person I was. I just did what I thought was best. Maybe that wasn’t how it was supposed to be after you’d opened up your heart to God. Maybe you were supposed to ask somebody else, and who else would that be but God?”
― Michael Phillips, Angels Watching Over Me

“Legacies, however, were God’s business. His own duty was to live every day as God’s man and leave the rest to his heavenly Father. The only legacy he needed be concerned with was that God remembered his name, even if no one else did. Ernest’s”
― Michael R. Phillips, The Inheritance

“But sometimes life gets in the way of love. And sometimes being black gets in the way of how you wish life could be.”
― Michael Phillips, A Perilous Proposal

“Eureka,”
― Michael Phillips, A Day to Pick Your Own Cotton

“We’re supposed to think about it. Whenever we look around us, we’re supposed to find out the meaning God put into the things we see.”
― Michael R. Phillips, A Perilous Proposal

“Our network can trace anyone almost instantly, from a single banking transaction, use of a credit card, a passport, from almost anything involving money or electronics. We can follow checks and telephone calls more thoroughly and rapidly than anyone has any idea. I knew Bowles was in Egypt an hour after he had crossed the border.”
― Michael R. Phillips, Rift in Time

“Again Yates smiled at the memory. “I was in the market in Devonshire where I had been staying. It was late in the day and the aisles were crowded. I was distracted, standing looking at the cans of soup on the shelf. A man bumped me from behind, pretty hard. I nearly lost my balance. As I recovered myself, I was shocked when he spoke rudely to me. ‘Why don’t you watch what you’re doing!’ he snapped. Then just as quickly the words I had read that morning rose in my mind, Return evil with good. Though my natural reaction might have been to scowl at the man to make sure he received a full dose of my annoyance, I turned and smiled and said, ‘I’m so sorry.”
― Michael R. Phillips, The Cottage