“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

“When you haven't forgiven those who've hurt you, you turn back against your future. When you do forgive, you start walking forward.” — Tyler Perry

"A happy family is but an earlier heaven." - John Bowring

“Human life would seem to consist in that in which each man most delights, that for which he especially strives, and that which he particularly wishes to share with his friends.”

~ Thomas Aquinas

"If you don't risk anything, you risk even more." 

~ Erica Jong

"Going home means getting comfortable being who you are and who your soul really wants to be. There is no strain with that. The strain and tension come when we're not being who our soul wants to be and we're someplace where our soul doesn't feel at home."

~ Melody Beattie

Seen on a church marquis:

"If you don't have time to pray, you become easy prey."

"Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive."

~ Howard Thurman

So, maybe God does have a wise purpose in letting us grow old and weak:

"I think God has planned the strength and beauty of youth to be physical. But the strength and beauty of age is spiritual. We gradually lose the strength and beauty that is temporary so we'll be sure to concentrate on the strength and beauty which is forever. And so we'll be eager to leave the temporary, deteriorating part of us and be truly homesick for our eternal home. If we stayed young and strong and beautiful, we might never want to leave."

~ J. Robertson McQuilkin

former president of Columbia Bible College in SC

(seen in Our Daily Bread, June 10, 2009)

"Whoever ceases to be a student has never been a student."

~ George Iles

"To avoid situations in which you might make mistakes may be the biggest mistake of all."

~ Peter McWilliams

A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel.

~ Robert Frost

A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.

~ Oscar Wilde

The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them. 

~ Ernest Hemingway

"In the end, everything will be OK.  If it's not OK, it's not the end."

(unknown)

"If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail."

Abraham Maslow

“The person who loves their dream of community will destroy community, but the person who loves those around them will create community.”

~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"I believe in Christianity as I believe the sun has risen, not because I see it,  but because by it,  I see everything else."

~ C.S. Lewis

Jay Leno: "Soup is just a way of screwing you out of a meal."

"Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions." 

~ G.K. Chesterton

"The gift of friendship is so holy, sweet and timeless it will last a lifetime. . as long as you don't ask to borrow money." 

~ Mark Twain

Kung Fu Panda wisdom

"One often meets his destiny on the road he takes to avoid it."

~ Master Oogway (Turtle)

It is not my strong grip on the doctrines that makes me closer to Him; it is His affection for me that allows me to let down my guard and take a small glimpse of His love for me.

~ Andrew Harshman

The man who says he'll meet you half way usually thinks he's standing on the dividing line.

Haiku

Here's an original haiku poem that I wrote to explain the haiku form of poetry:

Haiku three-line poem

Five beats, seven beats, five beats

Rhymes are optional

You can't tell which way the train was going by looking at the tracks.

~ Dr. Phil

"There is no dignity quite so impressive, and no independence quite so important, as living within your means."

~ Calvin Coolidge

"A person will worship something, have no doubt about that. We may think our tribute is paid in secret in the dark recesses of our hearts, but it will out. That which dominates our imaginations and our thoughts will determine our lives, and our character. Therefore, it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming."

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time."

~Mark Twain

"We cannot banish dangers, but we can banish fears. We must not demean life by standing in awe of death."

~David Sarnoff

We write frankly and fearlessly but then we "modify" before we print.

~ Mark Twain in Life on the Mississippi

"What others think of us would be of little moment did it not, when known, so deeply tinge what we think of ourselves."

~ Paul Valery

"Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards."

Soren Kierkegaard

"The test of courage comes when we are in the minority. The test of tolerance comes when we are in the majority."

~ Ralph W. Sockman

"The keenest sorrow is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities."

~ Sophocles

"Tolerance is a virtue of men with no conviction."

~ G.K. Chesterton

"Men show their characters in nothing more clearly than what they think laughable."

~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The main dangers in this life are the people who want to change everything - or nothing.

~Nancy Astor

In certain trying circumstances, urgent circumstances, desperate circumstances, profanity furnishes a relief denied even to prayer.

~Mark Twain

"A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word 'darkness' on the walls of his cell."

~ C. S. Lewis

Things alter for the worse spontaneously, if they be not altered for the better designedly.

~Francis Bacon

"I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life. The problem is that I can't find anybody who can tell me what they want."

~ Mark Twain

The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears, or the sea.

~ Isak Dinesen

"So Small" by Carrie Underwood

What you got if you ain't got love?
The kind that you just want to give away
It's ok to open up
Go ahead and let the light shine through
I know it's hard on a rainy day
You wanna shut the world out and just be left alone
But don't run out on your faith

Cause sometimes that mountain you've been climbing
Is just a grain of sand
And what you've been out there searching for forever
Is in your hands
And when you figure out love is all that matters after all
It sure makes everything else seem
So small

It's so easy to get lost inside
A problem that seems so big at the time
It's like a river that's so wide it swallows you whole
While you're sitting around thinking about what you can't change
And worrying about all the wrong things
Time's flying by, moving so fast
You better make it count cause you can't get it back

Sometimes that mountain you've been climbing
Is just a grain of sand
And what you've been out there searching for forever
Is in your hands
Oh, and when you figure out love is all that matters after all
It sure makes everything else seem
So small, yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah

Sometimes that mountain you've been climbing
Is just a grain of sand
And what you've out there searching for forever
Is in your hands
And then you figure out love is all that matters after all
It sure makes everything else
Oh, it sure makes everything else seem
So small

quotation tattoo

"The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future."

~Oscar Wilde

A Woman of No Importance, 1893

spoken by the character Lord Illingworth

"We all have strength enough to endure the misfortunes of others."

~ Francois de La Rochefoucauld

"A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people."

~ Thomas Mann

"An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered."

~ G. K. Chesterton

"The thing that impresses me the most about America is the way parents obey their children."

~ King Edward VIII

"Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish."

~ Albert Einstein

"The first time I see a jogger smiling, I'll consider it."

~ Joan Rivers

"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work."

~ Thomas Edison

"A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author."

~ G.K. Chesterson

“The perfect church service would be one we were almost unaware of. Our attention would have been on God.”

~ C.S. Lewis

“If evolution really works, how come mothers only have two hands?”

~Milton Berle

"Everytime someone tells a story well, the gospel is served.”

~ Eugene Peterson

seen at Rock City, near Chattanooga, TN

God be in my head and in my understanding:
God be in my eyes and in my looking:
God be in my mouth and in my speaking:
God be in my heart and in my thinking:
God be at mine end and at my departing. (Sarum Primer)

Christ with me,
Christ before me,
Christ behind me,
Christ within me,
Christ beneath me,
Christ above me,
Christ on my right,
Christ on my left…
Christ in the heart of everyone who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks to me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me.
(St. Patrick, ca. 377)

"Every happening, great or small, is a parable by which God speaks to us. The art of life is to get the message."

~ Malcolm Muggeridge

"But we cannot learn to trust God by our interpretations of past experiences. More often than not we were looking out for our interests, and not God's; thus we misinterpret or misunderstand his actions toward us. There are many reasons why God may not have dealt with a specific situation as we thought he should, but the Bible makes it clear that he never responds to us with less than absolute love and faithfulness. That's his nature, and he can never be untrue to it. Learning dependence doesn't begin in our experience, but in his character."

~ Wayne Jacobsen
The Naked Church

"A spiritual person is not one who can memorize theological facts, conduct his life with flawless ethics, or busy himself with church programs. A spiritual person is one who has learned how to walk in the Spirit, following his voice and being a vessel of God's character and power.

~ Wayne Jacobsen

The Naked Church

What I fear, I create.

~ unknown

"There was never yet an uninteresting life. Inside of the dullest exterior there is a drama, a comedy and a tragedy."

~ Mark Twain

Look in the rearview mirror long enough and you’ll see that God has purposely positioned you everywhere you’ve been—even when it seemed you’d taken a wrong turn.”

~ Mark Batterson

“I was seized by the power of a great affection!”

~ Brennan Manning
The Ragamuffin Gospel

“A rut is grave with both ends kicked out”

~ Unknown

eragon

Toward the end of this movie, Eragon's dragon, Sapphira is wounded in battle with an evil dragon. Eragon thinks she is dying, and he says...

Eragon: "Whatever life I have left in me, take it!"

Sapphira: "Eragon, not even you have a heart strong enough for both of us."

October Road

My grandmother always used to say, "It is the fool who fails to return to the place of his last happiness."

"Trust is grown primarily through repair of its violation."

~ Dan B. Allender & Tremper Longman III

Intimate Mystery

Be kinder than necessary, for everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle.

~ Unknown

"Humility doesn’t mean you think less of yourself, but that you think of yourself less."

~ Max Lucado
Facing Your Giants

“Everybody has to change or they expire. Everybody has to leave, everybody has to leave their home and come back so they can love it again for all new reasons. I want to keep my soul fertile for the changes, so things keep getting born in me, so things keep dying when it is time for things to die. I want to keep walking away from the person I was a moment ago, because a mind was made to figure out things out, not to read the same page recurrently."

~ Donald Miller
Through the Painted Desert

"I'll tell you a secret: When your number comes up, you're going to go. Well, every morning I get up, I change my number."

~ Edward Chun

Pearl Harbor survivor

Why blame the dark for being dark? It is far more helpful to ask why the light isn't as bright as it could be.

~ Rob Bell

Velvet Elvis

'Tis God who lifts our comforts high,
Or sinks them in the grave:
He gives, and blessed be His name,
He takes but what He gave.

~ by Issac Watts

Maybe all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets.

~ Arthur Miller

We can't treat every difference as being sin.

~ Frank Turk

There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as if everything is a miracle.

~Albert Einstein

He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare.

~ unknown

Glossary for Siblings

Home: a place where you can say what you think, but no one listens.
Argument: when two people are trying to get in the last word first.
Cooperation: doing what I tell you and doing it quickly.
Peace: the period of confusion and unrests between two wars.
Diplomacy: the art of letting someone else get your way.

"Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing."

~Ben Franklin

"If the God who revealed life to us, and whose only desire is to bring us to life, loved us so much that he wanted to experience with us total absurdity of death, then-yes, then there must be hope; then there must be something more than death; there must be a promise that is not fulfilled in our short existence in this world; then leaving behind the ones you love, the flowers and the trees, the mountains and the oceans, the beauty of art and music, and all the exuberant gifts of life cannot be just the destruction and cruel end of all things; then indeed we have to wait for the third day."

~ Henri Nouwen - A Letter of Consolation

Seen at Moe's Southwestern Grill in Hiram, GA:

"A burrito is like life - a well-hidden mess."

"If you don't think it's fun to say 'guacamole,' you're probably not pronouncing it right."

"A soft taco is like a hard taco, but more emotional."

"It is the Soldier, not the Reporter who has given us the freedom of press. It is the Soldier, not the Poet who has given us the freedom of speech. It is the Soldier, not the Campus Organizer who has given us the freedom to demonstrate. It is the Soldier who salutes the Flag, who serves beneath the Flag, and whose coffin is draped by the Flag, who allows the Protester to burn the Flag."

Character is made by what you stand for; reputation by what you fall for.

~ Unknown