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