The father who has selflessly poured himself into the life of his children may leave no other monument than that of his children. But as for a life well lived, no other monument is necessary.

An idea without sacrifice, regardless of grand it might be, will never be anything more than an idea.

Love never lives on a one-way street, for it will always come back up the road bigger than how we had sent it down the road.

Discerning the difference between a dictator and a leader is quite easy. The former cannot help but see ‘leading’ and ‘serving’ as stark contradictions that by their very nature are utterly incompatible. The latter can’t tell the difference

It's unfortunate to be bitten by political ambition. The deadly disease causes a man to want to access power by all means either by sacrificing others to its altar or by sacrificing himself when he fails.

To pretend is to do nothing more than imagine life as something wonderful so that we don’t have to incur the pain that it takes to actually make life wonderful.

In the act of selfishness, you bind demerit karma and in the act of sacrificing your own self-interest for the sake of others [selflessness], you bind merit karma. Nevertheless, they are both karma, aren’t they? The fruit of merit karma is shackles of gold and fruit of demerit karma is shackles of iron but they are both indeed shackles, aren’t they?

The difference between a ‘man’ and a ‘father’ is that the former shares his genes, but latter gives his life.

The eyes of love have 20/20 vision when focused on another, and become entirely blind when focused on ourselves.

To be ignorant of the sacrifices of others that yielded the blessings I enjoy leaves me exchanging the reality of 'blessing' for the assumption of 'entitlement.' And once that happens, I will forfeit the reality of the former which will destroy the assumption of the latter. And in what terribly dark place will that now leave me?

If I have attached anything to sacrifice other than loss, I have at some level assumed a pay-off. And if I’ve assumed a pay-off, I’m only assuming a sacrifice.

Whatever the item is that I have chosen to give you, it is nothing more than the receptacle within which I have placed the whole of myself. If it is empty, it is not a gift.

If sacrifice is not the theme of my life, there’s no sense telling the story.

I agree. I don't understand how a guy everyone is terrified of makes me feel safe. I don't understand how a guy who stayed behind to protect me when he didn't know me has been shot. I don't understand how a guy who carried me out of an alley full of shattered glass is the enemy everyone is warning me about.

To make a choice not to sacrifice is to decide that I am better off allowing a life to perish than release the resources I possess that might allow it to thrive. And because of choices such as these, the life that I am really allowing to perish is mine.

Although I’m seldom aware enough to see it, the greater cost regarding that which I possess was not what I paid for it, but what someone along the way sacrificed so that I might have the opportunity to pay for it.

If I’m asking what kind of ‘return’ I should be expecting on the sacrifices I’m making, I have in that question revealed the need to ‘return’ that question to wherever I found it and have the word ‘return’ edited out of it.

If I am not touching a life, I am not touching life.

To fill the fathomless caverns of my thirsty soul I must work entirely contrary to impulses of my own humanity, for it is in emptying myself at the very point where I am most empty that I fill myself.