I am not a believer in love at first sight. For love, in its truest form, is not the thingof starry-eyed or star-crossed lovers, it is far more organic, requiring nurturing and timeto fully bloom, and, as such, seen best not in its callow youth but in its wrinkled maturity.Like all living things, love, too, struggles against hardship, and in the process shedsits fatuous skin to expose one composed of more than just a storm of emotion–one of loyaltyand divine friendship. Agape. And though it may be temporarily blinded by adversity,it never gives in or up, holding tight to lofty ideals that transcend this earth andtime–while its counterfeit simply concludes it was mistaken and quickly runs off tofind the next real thing.

I've come to know that what we want in life is the greatest indication of who we really are.

Chocolate is God's apology for brocolli

Feelings can be like wild animals-we underrate how fierce they are until we've opened their cage

Believe. Believe in your destiny and the star from which it shines. Believe you have been sent from God as an arrow shot from His own bow. It is the single universal trait that the great of this earth have all shared, while the shadows are fraught with ghosts who roam the winds with mournful wails of regret on their lips.Believe as if your life depended on it... for indeed it does.

Everyone who got to where they are had to begin where they were.

There's a problem with marrying up. You always worry that someday they'll see through you and leave. Or, worse yet, someone better will come along and take her. In my case, it wasn't someone. And it wasn't something better.

It has been said that sometimes the greatest hope in our lives is just a second chance to do what we should have done right in the first place.

The pages continue to turn, and every day I'm a little older, hopefully a little wiser and a lot more grateful. Do I have regrets? I have a few - but not as many as you might think. If it hadn't been for the darkness, I never would have known the light. In life we all take different paths, some more difficult than others, but in the end, all that matters is whether or not they lead us home.

In the end, we all lose it. Remember that. In the end, we own nothing.

Mr. Vey, you cannot be stuffed into a locker without your consent." Dallstrom said, which may be the dumbest thing ever said in a school. "You should have resisted. That's like blaming someone who was struck by lightning for getting in the way.

I love when I can reboot people when they are being mean to others...

Books are the most tolerant of friends.

Actually, all fear is born of the imagination, which means the danger we fear doesn't need to be rational or even real to be potent. Like my fear of snakes. When I was eighteen I drove my car off the highway into a ditch because there was a snake on the road. It didn't matter that the snake couldn't have bitten me through the car. It didn't matter that the snake probably wasn't even poisonous or might have even already been dead. It didn't even matter than swerving off the road at fifty miles per hour posed a much greater danger than the snake I was frightened of. Fear doesn't listen to reason. It takes its own counsel.

Sometimes its not the strength but gentleness that cracks the hardest shells.

It is in the dark times that the light of friendship shines brightest. (The Walk - Chapter 19, Page 122

There are people who come into our lives as welcome as a cool breeze in summer- and last about as long.

Without dreams, life is a desert.

There are dreams that are meant to be shared and dreams to be kept hidden in our hearts. It's sometimes difficult to know which is which.

The changing seasons of circumstance can melt away stretches of our lives like frost in the warmth of spring.

I don't get that, I mean, what's power? Let's say he suddenly becomes king of the world. What is he going to do with it that he can't do now? Is his food going to taste better? Is the weather going to be nicer? Will love feel better? I just don't understand that mentality.

Dance. Dance for the joy and breath of childhood. Dance for all children, including that child who is still somewhere entombed beneath the responsibility and skepticism of adulthood. Embrace the moment before it escapes from our grasp. For the only promise of childhood, of any childhood, is that it will someday end. And in the end, we must ask ourselves what we have given our children to take its place. And is it enough?

It's been said that parents should give their children roots and wings. That was a perfect description of my parents. Even in a wheelchair, my father was a dreamer with his head in the clouds and my mother was the roots with both feet planted firmly on terra quaking firma.

I am lonely, I am lonely, I am lonely, I am lonely, I am lonely. How appropriate that I write this to myself.

As one who would rather light a candle than curse the darkness.

My mom used to say that faith and fear can't exist simultaneously in the mind any more than light and dark can exist simultaneously in the same room.

The truest grace is not to forgive, but to have never found fault.

I hope you can someday forgive me.''I forgive you now.

Forgiveness is the key to the heart's shackles.

I don't think it is as much a human foible as it is a human curse that we cannot understand the beauty of a thing until it is gone.

We can only lose what we have first claimed.

To forgive is to unlock the cage of another's folly to set ourselves free.

I think the secret to a hoppy life is a selective memory. Remember what you are most grateful for and quickly forget what your not.

So I've been thinking. Do you believe there's a hell?""Sure. Doesn't everybody?""Well, what if this is hell, but we just don't know it?""That's crazy. Hell is like lakes of fire, and there are devils with horns and pitchforks. here's none of those around here.""But what if hell's not really like that?" Grace asked. "Everyone says it's that way," I said. "I don't think Jesus every talked about fire and brimstone.""Then why do they teach us that at church?""To scare us.""Why would they want to scare us?""I don't know. I just don't think God wants us to do good things because we're scared. I think he wants us to do good things because we're good.

The human life cycle no less than evolves around the box; from the open-topped box called a bassinet, to the pine box we call a coffin, the box is our past and, just as assuredly, our future. It should not surprise us then that the lowly box plays such a significant role in the first Christmas story. For Christmas began in a humble, hay-filled box of splintered wood. The Magi, wise men who had traveled far to see the infant king, laid treasure-filled boxes at the feet of that holy child. And in the end, when He had ransomed our sins with His blood, the Lord of Christmas was laid down in a box of stone. How fitting that each Christmas season brightly wrapped boxes skirt the pine boughs of Christmas trees around the world.

I don't want to go to Peru."How do you know? You've never been there."I've never been to hell either and I'm pretty sure I don't want to go there.

The study showed that chronic loneliness impacts out bodies as negatively as smoking two packs of cigarettes a day. Not the same way, of course, just the life risk part. And there's more bad news. The article went on to say that lonely people had worse reactions to flu shots that non-lonelies (I think I just made up that word; my computer put a red squiggly line under it) and that loneliness depresses the immune system. On other words, if you're lonely, not even your body wants to be around you, so it tries to off itself.

What a difference having a friend makes.

The thing is, the only real sign of life is growth. And growth requires pain. So to choose life is to accept pain. Some people go to such lengths to avoid pain that they give up on life. They bury their hearts, or they drug or drink themselves numb until they don’t’ feel anything anymore. The irony is, in the end their escape becomes more painful than what they’re avoiding.

Suffering ceases to be suffering when we form a clear picture of it.

I am facing the most difficult thing of my life, my own greatest failure.

You are thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn't at all. You can be discouraged by failure-or you can learn from it. So go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because, remember, that's where you will find success.

My Dear Son,I am so very proud of you. Now, as you embark on a new journey, I'd like to share this one piece of advice. Always, always remember that - adversity is not a detour. It is part of the path.You will encounter obstacles. You will make mistakes. Be grateful for both. Your obstacles and mistakes will be your greatest teachers. And the only way to not make mistakes in this life is to do nothing, which is the biggest mistake of all. Your challenges, if you let them, will become your greatest allies. Mountains can crush or raise you, depending on which side of the mountain you choose to stand on. All history bears out that the great, those who have changed the world, have all suffered great challenges. And, more times than not it's precisely those challenges that, in God's time, lead to triumph.Abhor victimhood. Denounce entitlement. Neither are gifts, rather cages to damn the soul. Everyone who has walked this earth is a victim of injustice. Everyone.Most of all, do not be too quick to denounce your sufferings. The difficult road you are called to walk may, in fact be your only path to success.

There's no hurt so great that love can't heal it.

For most of my life I have thought of grace as a hope of a bright tomorrow in spite of the darkness of today--and this is true. In this way we are all like Pamela, walking a road to grace--hoping for mercy. What we fail to realize is that grace is more than our destination, it is the journey itself, manifested in each breath and with each step we take. Grace surrounds us, whirls about us like the wind, falls on us like rain. Grace sustains us on our journeys, no matter how perilous they may be and, make no mistake, they are all perilous. We need not hope for grace, we merely need to open our eyes to its abundance. Grace is all around us, not just in the hopeful future but in the miracle of now.

Fate is an excuse for people who are too stupid or too weak to make their own future," he said.

Fate does not bend for us-we must bend to it.

Why is it that good always has to fight an uphill battle?"I thought for a moment, then said, "I don't know. Maybe that's the point. Good things are higher up.

All that's required for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.

Often times, the greatest peace comes of surrender.

Why is it that we so easily confide secrets to strangers that we so carefully hide from ourselves?

What a culture we live in, we are swimming in an ocean of information, and drowning in ignorance.

Our culture's quest to hide death behind a facade of denial has made fools and pretended immortals of us all. Perhaps it would be more helpful and liberating to begin each day by repeating the words of Crazy Horse, "Today is a good day to die.

The smells of Christmas are the smells of childhood

Truth is patient. It can afford to be for eventually it will have its way.

Only those who never step, never stumble.

The truist indication of gratitude is to return what you are grateful for.

. . .and every native has a story of winter – stories that usually begin, You call this a storm? And grow in the telling like battle tales shared by graying war veterans. It’s a peculiar character flaw to those of us from cold climates that we feel superior to those who have the sense to live elsewhere.

Just like our story, the original Christmas tales were stories of searching, not so much for the lost, as for the familiar. Mary and Joseph sought in Bethlehem- the home of their familial ancestry- a place to start their own family; the three kings from the East journeyed beneath the sentinel star to find the King of Kings; and the shepherds sought a child in a place most familiar to them: a manger.

The sweetness of reunion is the joy of heaven.

The warrior who goes off to battle should not boast as the one who returns from it.

fear doesn't listen to reason it takes it own counsel

Sunsets, like childhood, are viewed with wonder not just because they are beautiful but because they are fleeting.

Simply stated, earth is a school-a divine educational process custom-fit to each of us.

We love those whom we serve (p. 26)

The sound of a kiss is not as strong as that of a cannon, but its echo endures much longer.

There is one day that has brought me unspeakable pain, & the effects of that day continue to cover & erode my world like rust. I suspect that someday the rust will eat through the joists & posts of my life & I will topple, literally as well as figuratively.

I have wondered why it is that our greatest triumphs spring from our greatest extremity and adversity. Perhaps it is because we are so resistant to change, we only move when our seat becomes too hot to occupy.

Under the right circumstances, a tiny spark can grow into an inferno that can overcome an entire city. So can an idea.

A man's worth isn't measured by a bank register or diploma... It's about integrity

Knowing your self-worth isn't something others can validate. You either believe it or you don't.

I have learned that real angels don't have gossamer white robes and Cherubic skin, they have calloused hands and smell of the days' sweat.

The universe is a trillion, trillion threads moving in seemingly unrelated directions. Yet when you look at them together, they create a remarkable tapestry.

Oftentimes it's the smallest, seemingly inconsequential acts that make the biggest differences in our lives.

I have found that the most significant experiences of our lives rarely come when we're expecting them and oftentimes when we're not even paying attention.

I sighed. "Now what do I do?" He leaned against my wall. "What do you want to do?" "Since when has that mattered?" "It's always mattered. It doesn't mean you'll get what you want, but what you want always matters. That's what defines you.

Where is the best place to hide a penny? It is in a jar of pennies.

In college I took a social psychology course, something I thought useful for a career in advertising. Psychologists tested the story of the Good Samaritan. What they learned gives us reason to pause. The greatest determinant of who stopped to help the stranger in need was not compassion, morality, or religious creed. It was those who had the time. Makes me wonder if I have time to do good. Apparently, Angel does.

Helping others carries its own rewards, the first of which is a return to humanity.