"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