‎"Do more than belong: participate. Do more than care: help. Do more than believe: practice. Do more than be fair: be kind. Do more than forgive: forget. Do more than dream: work." 

~ William Arthur Ward

(via TOMS Shoes)

"Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it." 

~ William Arthur Ward.

"We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures."

~ Thornton Wilder

‎"Wherever you are, it is your friends who make your world." 

~ William James

‎"Our human relationships are the actual conditions in which the ideal life of God is to be exhibited." 

~ Oswald Chambers

"The smallest deed is better than the greatest intention."

~ John Burroughs

‎"Only the guy who isn't rowing has time to rock the boat." 

~ Jean-Paul Sartre

"Eyes that look are common. Eyes that see are rare." 

~ J. Oswald Sanders

"The more you are motivated by love, the more fearless and free your actions will be.” 

—Katherine Mansfield

"We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be." 

— C.S. Lewis

‎"I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves." 

~ Anna Quindlen

 "Is prayer your steering wheel or your spare tire?" 

~ Corrie ten Boom

"If you can forgive the person you were, accept the person you are, and believe in the person you will become, you are headed for joy. So celebrate your life!" 

~Barbara Johnson

 “The miracle is not to fly in the air, or to walk on the water, but to walk on the earth.” 

~ Chinese Proverb

"I do not wish to treat friendships daintily, but with the roughest courage. When they are real, they are not glass threads or frost-work, but the solidest thing we know." 

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Our greatest fear as individuals and as a church should not be of failure but of succeeding at things in life that don't really matter."

~ Tim Kizziar

Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid. 

~ Albert Einstein

"The difference between school and life? In school, you're taught a lesson and then given a test. In life, you're given a test that teaches you a lesson."

~ Tom Bodett

"The truth is, everyone is going to hurt you... you just gotta find the ones worth suffering for."

~ Bob Marley

“You don’t think your way into a new kind of living. You live your way into a new kind of thinking.”

~ Henri Nouwen

“As long as we continue to live as if we are what we do, what we have, and what other people think about us, we will remain filled with judgments, opinions, evaluations, and condemnations. We will remain addicted to putting people and things in their 'right' place.”

~ Henri Nouwen

"We are spiritual beings having a physical experience and not physical beings having a spiritual experience. "

~ Pierre Theilard de Chardin

“I hated every minute of training, but I said, 'Don't quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.'”

~ Muhammad Ali

There is a way in which a fish swimming around in a fishbowl knows nothing at all about water. Because water is so much a part of the fish's life. If you want the fish to really understand water, you have to take the fish out of the fishbowl and say, "Look, that's water."

~ Unknown

"Love is the only reality."

(family motto heard on "The Bachelorette" on ABC - 7/12/10)

Laugh a lot, 
And when you’re older,
All your wrinkles
Will be in the right place.

(seen on someone's Facebook photo)

‎'Challenges are what make life interesting; overcoming them is what makes life meaningful.'

~ Joshua Marine

"The man who fears no truths has nothing to fear from lies." 

~ Thomas Jefferson

“I think of life as a good book. The further you get into it, the more it begins to make sense.”

~ Harold Kushner

"Find out how much God has given you and from it take what you need; the remainder is needed by others."

~ St. Augustine

"The most effective way to do it, is to do it." 

~ Amelia Earhart

"What if your greatest dream happened? Would it make the world a better place?" 

 ~ Erwin McManus

"Between the wish and the thing life lies waiting" 

~ unknown

"A possibility was born the day you were born, and it will live as long as you live." 

~ Marcus Solero

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be."

~ Douglas Adams

"Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point."

~ C.S. Lewis

"It's not only children who grow. Parents do too. As much as we watch to see what our children do with their lives, they are watching us to see what we do with ours." 

~ Joyce Maynard

"Much of what God allows in your life is not for you to simply accept, but to get you to rise up! God wants you to know how to wield the weapons of warfare, how to take a stand, and how to fight."

~Stasi Eldridge in Captivating

We all die. The goal isn't to live forever, the goal is to create something that will.

~ Chuck Palahniuk