The two lasting things we give our children are roots and wings.

~ Unknown

Do not sit down to write until you are ready to stand up and live.

~ Henry David Thoreau

You will never be called upon to give anyone more grace than God has already given you.

~ Max Lucado

Give It All To Him

What you are is God's gift to you; what you make of yourself is your gift to God.

~ Unknown

The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, nor the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when he discovers that someone else believes in him and is willing to trust him with his friendship.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Speak when you're angry, and you'll make the best speech you'll ever regret.

~ Lawrence J. Peter

When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.

~ Helen Keller

They are ill discoverers who think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.

~ Francis Bacon

commitment

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way.

Whatever you do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.

~ W. H. Murray

Leader of the Scottish Himalaya Expedition

No man is so worthless that he can't be used as a bad example.

We come into this world crying while all around us are smiling. May we so live that we go out of this world smiling while everybody around us is weeping.

~ Persian proverb

Problems don't go away by themselves, but opportunities do.

A woman is like a tea bag: you never know how strong she is until she gets in hot water.

~ Nancy Reagan

Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies within us while we live.

~Norman Cousins

If you throw a rock into a pack of dogs, you always know which one you hit.

Life's journey is not to arrive at the grave safely in a well-preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, totally worn out, shouting, "...Holy shit! ...What a ride!"

~ unknown

"What people in the world think of you is really none of your business."

~ Martha Graham

If you haven't learned by now that God is a rule-breaker, then you don't know Him very well.

~ Michael Card

To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children...to leave the world a better place...to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Any idiot can face a crisis; it's the day-to-day living that wears you out.

~ Chekov

"Is it not clear to you that to go back to that old rule-keeping, peer-pleasing religion would be an abandonment of everything personal and free in my relationship with God?"

~ Galatians 2:21

(The Message)

In America today, we worship our work, work at our play, and play at our worship.

~ Chuck Swindoll

In the beginning the church was a fellowship of men and women centering on the living Christ. Then the church moved to Greece where it became a philosophy. Then it moved to Rome where it became an institution. Next, it moved to Europe, where it became a culture. And, finally, it moved to America where it became an enterprise.

~ Richard Halverson, former chaplain of the United States Senate

Quoted in The Awesome Power of Shared Beliefs,

E. Glenn Wagner, Ph.D (Dallas: Word Publishing, 1995)

The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting.
It has been found difficult and left untried.

~ G.K. Chesterson

The footsteps a child follows are most likely to be the ones his parents thought they covered up.

~ Unknown

Colossians 2:8 (NIV)
See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.

If God exists to please us, then shouldn't we always be pleased?

~ Max Lucado

It's Not About Me

What can this incessant craving mean, unless there was once a happiness belonging to man, of which only the faintest traces remain?

~ Blaise Pascal,

scientist & philosopher

We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

~ C.S. Lewis

Thought is the blossom; language the bud; action the fruit behind it.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

In life, you begin to get where you're going even before you know where you are.

~ Anonymous

The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.

~ Albert Einstein

To be vested with enormous authority is a fine thing; but to have the on-looking world consent to it is a finer.

~ Mark Twain

(A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court)

Suffering

Pope John Paul II, who has ruled the Roman Catholic church for more than 26 years—knows that in his public experience of suffering lies enormous power. More than 20 years ago, after recovering from the pistol shot that almost took his life in front of St. Peter's in 1981, John Paul declared that suffering, as such, is one of the most powerful messages in Christianity. "Human suffering evokes compassion," he wrote in 1984, "it also evokes respect, and in its own way it intimidates."

In 1994, as age and infirmity began to incapacitate John Paul publicly, he told his followers he had heard God and was about to change the way he led the church. "I must lead her with suffering," he said. "The pope must suffer so that every family and the world should see that there is, I would say, a higher gospel: the gospel of suffering, with which one must prepare the future."

"'Tis mad idolatry to make the service greater than the god . . . "

~ William Shakespeare

(Troilus and Cressida)

Our vision is so limited we can hardly imagine a love that does not show itself in protection from suffering...The love of God did not protect His own Son...He will not necessarily protect us--not from anything it takes to make us like His Son. A lot of hammering and chiseling and purifying by fire will have to go into the process.

~ Elisabeth Elliot

Evil is charming and beautiful. It makes you doubt yourself. It asks for one small compromise after another while it whittles you down. And it functions best when no one believes in it.

~ Joan of Arcadia

Then the time came when the risk it took
To remain tight in a bud was more painful
Than the risk it took to blossom.

~ Anais Nin

No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.

~ Nathaniel Hawthorne
(The Scarlet Letter)

Often, the less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it.

~ Mark Twain

(The Adventures of Tom Sawyer)

Old habit of mind is one of the toughest things to get away from in the world.

~ Mark Twain

(A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court)

There is in every true woman's heart a spark of heavenly fire, which lies dormant in the broad daylight of prosperity; but which kindles up, and beams and blazes in the dark hour of adversity.

~ Washington Irving

"The richest man is not the one who has the most, but the one who needs the least."

~ Unknown

"There are two ways to be rich: one is to have great wealth, the other is to have few wants."

~ Dr. David Meyers

"We can often do more for other men by trying to correct our own faults than by trying to correct theirs."

~ Francois Fenelon