“A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.” -G.K. Chesterton

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery
French writer (1900 - 1944)

The world is rated R, and no one is checking IDs. Do not try to make it G by imagining the shadows away. Do not try to hide your children from the world forever, but do not try to pretend there is no danger. Train them. Give them sharp eyes and bellies full of laughter. 

- N.D. Wilson

"Maybe you cannot thrive where you are untouchable… Soul growth only happens in the soil of vulnerability. Maybe it’s time to let yourself be touched." 

~ Ann Voskamp (www.aholyexperience.com)

“To fall in love with God is the greatest romance; to seek him the greatest adventure; to find him, the greatest human achievement.” 

~ Augustine of Hippo

"Everyone can change tomorrow. Everyone solves problems tomorrow. But the only changes that matter are the ones I make today. Tomorrow is the easiest day I'll ever live. Today is the scary one, which is probably why I've spent so much time avoiding it."

~ Josh Riebock

"Your success is never final, your failure is never fatal, it is courage to continue that counts." 

~ Winston Churchill

"People are usually more convinced by reasons they discovered themselves than by those found by others."

~ Blaise Pascal

"Remember that a pail with a pinhole loses as much as the pail pushed right over. A whole life can be lost in minutes wasted… in the small moments missed."

~ Ann Voskamp

www.aholyexperience.com

"Sometimes, if you stand on the bottom rail of a bridge and lean over to watch the river slipping slowly away beneath you, you will suddenly know everything there is to be known." 

- A. A. Milne, Pooh's Little Instruction Book.

"My theory on housework is, if the item doesn't multiply, smell, catch fire, or block the refrigerator door, let it be. No one else cares. Why should you?" ~Erma Bombeck

"You can't reach for the sky if you're under the ceiling."
"But the ceiling keeps you out of the rain."

~Scott Bakula and Mary Elizabeth McGlynn Quantum Leap

"Never condemn each other. We condemn others only because we shun knowing ourselves. When we gaze at our own failings, we see such a swamp that nothing in another can equal it. That is why we turn away, and make much of the faults of others. Instead of condemning others, strive to reach inner peace. Keep silent, refrain from judgement." 

~ St. Seraphim of Sarov

"Just remember, there's a right way and a wrong way to do everything and the wrong way is to keep trying to make everybody else do it the right way."  

~M*A*S*H, Colonel Potter

"One should examine oneself for a very long time before thinking of condemning others."

~ Moliere

‎"You see only with your eyes, so you are easy to fool." 

~ Jackie Chan in Karate Kid

"Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome."

~ Isaac Asimov

"The biggest problem with hell is not just the hypocrisy of the church, but the notion that God is both all glorious and yet an incredible failure at having won the world over. If the vast majority will die and go to hell, then does this not bring into question the foresight of God, the effectiveness of His effort to communicate redemptive love and the flawed design He used for human beings?  Adam in his falling was more powerful than Christ in His rising." 

~ Bob Greaves

         "Life isn't found in the destination you're headed to. It's found all around you in the journey you're on to get there. If you spend all your moments watching your feet, being careful not to step in the mud, not to trip over a root, not to stub your toe on a rock... if all you do is make sure you're walking right, then you are completely missing the scenery all around you that is called LIFE!
         "You can arrive at your destination filled with pride that you got there in pristine condition, or you can arrive a little muddy and bruised but filled with the life you experienced along the way!" 

~ Robert Cook

When you find a redemptive explanation for your suffering, you move from victim to wounded healer.

~ Donald Miller

‎"Love feels no burden, thinks nothing of trouble, attempts what is above its strength, pleads no excuse of impossibility; for it thinks all things lawful for itself, and all things possible." 

~ Thomas Kempis

"Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up."

~ Unknown

“Perfectionism is not a pursuit for the best. It is a pursuit of the worst in ourselves, the part that tells us that nothing we do will ever be good enough - that we should try again.” 

~ Julia Cameron

"You don't have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body."

~ C. S. Lewis

‎"I never teach my pupils; I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn." --Albert Einstein

“The past is our definition. we may strive, with good reason, to escape it, or to escape what is bad in it, but we will escape it only by adding something better to it.” --Wendell Berry

‎"There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are messengers of overwhelming grief...and unspeakable love." --Washington Irving

“Prove yourself brave, truthful, and unselfish, and someday, you will be a real boy.” - Blue Fairy from Pinocchio

"Nobody trips over mountains. It is the small pebble that causes you to stumble. Pass all the pebbles in your path and you will find you have crossed the mountain."

~ Anonymous

‎"You block your dream when you allow your fear to grow bigger than your faith." 

~ Mary Manim Morrissey

When you allow fear to overtake your life the main person you are letting down is yourself. Take a close look at your life and ask yourself - what would you do if you knew you couldn't fail? Now go do that.

"The pace of our lives has a profound impact on the depth of our lives. "

- Keri Wyatt Kent, "Breathe"

"At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us."

~ Albert Schweitzer

"A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song." 

~ Maya Angelou

"Some people dream of success... while others wake up and work hard at it."

~Author Unknown

"It's not the load that breaks you down, it's the way you carry it."

~ Lena Horne

"Gratefulness is an experience of the great fullness of life."

~ Lynne Twist

“No one heals himself by wounding another.” 

~ St. Ambrose of Milan

‎"The trouble with most of us is that we would rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism." 

~ Norman Vincent Peale

‎"If you don't have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?" ~John Wooden.

‎"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

“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