"Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs. Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Faith is walking face-first and full-speed into the dark. If we truly knew all the answers in advance as to the meaning of life and the nature of God and the destiny of our souls, our belief would not be a leap of faith and it would not be a courageous act of humanity; it would just be... a prudent insurance policy."
— Elizabeth Gilbert

"I don't think anybody's necessarily ready for death. You can only hope that when it approaches, you feel like you've said what you wanted to say. Nobody wants to go out in mid-sentence."
— Johnny Depp

"There is neither happiness nor unhappiness in this world; there is only the comparison of one state with another. Only a man who has felt ultimate despair is capable of feeling ultimate bliss. It is necessary to have wished for death in order to know how good it is to live.....the sum of all human wisdom will be contained in these two words: Wait and Hope."
— Alexandre Dumas (The Count of Monte Cristo)

"The world is indeed full of peril and in it there are many dark places.
But still there is much that is fair. And though in all lands, love is now
mingled with grief, it still grows, perhaps, the greater."
— J.R.R. Tolkien (The Lord of the Rings)

"Turn around and believe that the good news that we are loved is better than we ever dared hope, and that to believe in that good news, to live out of it and toward it, to be in love with that good news, is of all glad things in this world the gladdest thing of all. Amen, and come Lord Jesus."
— Frederick Buechner

"If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of it all. And so today I still have a dream."
— Martin Luther King Jr.

"The nature of the enemy's warfare in your life is to cause you to become discouraged and to cast away your confidence. Not that you would necessarily discard your salvation, but you could give up your hope of God's deliverance. The enemy wants to numb you into a coping kind of Christianity that has given up hope of seeing God's resurrection power."
— Bob Sorge (Glory: When Heaven Invades Earth)

"If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame it yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for to the creator there is no poverty and no poor indifferent place"
— Rainer Maria Rilke

"Do not assume that he who seeks to comfort you now, lives untroubled among the simple and quiet words that sometimes do you good. His life may also have much sadness and difficulty, that remains far beyond yours. Were it otherwise, he would never have been able to find these words"
— Rainer Maria Rilke

"You must give birth to your images. They are the future waiting to be born. Fear not the strangeness you feel. The future must enter you long before it happens. Just wait for the birth, for the the hour of the new clarity."
— Rainer Maria Rilke

"No experience has been too unimportant, and the smallest event unfolds like a fate, and fate itself is like a wonderful, wide fabric in which every thread is guided by an infinitely tender hand and laid alongside another thread and is held and supported by a hundred others"
— Rainer Maria Rilke

"Happiness is like a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you."
— Nathaniel Hawthorne

"I am an excitable person who only understands life lyrically, musically, in whom feelings are much stronger as reason. I am so thirsty for the marvelous that only the marvelous has power over me. Anything I can not transform into something marvelous, I let go. Reality doesn't impress me. I only believe in intoxication, in ecstasy, and when ordinary life shackles me, I escape, one way or another. No more walls."
— Anaïs Nin

"The role of a writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say."
— Anaïs Nin

"We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations."
— Anaïs Nin

"I am lonely, yet not everybody will do. I don't know why, some people fill the gaps and others emphasize my loneliness. In reality those who satisfy me are those who simply allow me to live with my ''idea of them."
— Anaïs Nin

"When we walk to the edge of all the light we have and take the step into the darkness of the unknown, we must believe that one of two things will happen. There will be something solid for us to stand on or we will be taught to fly."
— Patrick Overton

"Then I knew that the sign I had asked for was not a little thing, not a passing nod of recognition, and a phrase came back to me from my childhood of the veil of the temple being rent from top to bottom."
— Evelyn Waugh (Brideshead Revisited)

"But I must submit all my Hopes and Fears, to an overruling Providence, in which, unfashionable as the Faith may be, I firmly believe."
— John Adams (My Dearest Friend: Letters of Abigail and John Adams)

"To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don't grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float.
"
— Alan Wilson Watts

"Displayed in the Lobby of the Shreveport, LA Veterans Hospital

I asked God for strength, that I might achieve.
I was made weak, that I might learn humbly to obey.

I asked for health, that I might do great things.
I was given infirmity, that I might do better things.

I asked for riches, that I might be happy.
I was given poverty, that I might become wise.

I asked for power, that I might have the praise of men.
I was given weakness, that I might feel the need for God.

I asked for all things, that I might enjoy life.
I was given Life, that I might enjoy all things.

I got nothing that I asked for, but everything I had hoped for.
Almost despite myself, my unspoken prayers and true needs were fulfilled.

I am, among all men, most richly blessed.
"
— Unknown Civil War Veteran

"Hold on to what is good
even if it is a handful of earth.
Hold on to what you believe
even if it is a tree which stands by itself.
Hold on to what you must do
even it is a long way from here.
Hold on to life
even when it is easier letting go.
Hold on to my hand
even when I have gone away from you."
— Native American Prayer

"We have to pray as the ancients prayed. We are women now, not children, and are expected to pray with maturity. The words most often used to describe urgent, prayerful labor are wrestle, plead, cry, and hunger...In some sense, prayer may be the hardest work we will ever be engaged in, and perhaps it should be."
— Patricia T. Holland (A Quiet Heart)

"There are three ways that men get what they want by planning by working and by praying. Any great military operation takes careful planning or thinking. Then you must have well trained troops to carry it out that s working. But between the plan and the operation there is always an unknown. That unknown spells defeat or victory success or failure. It is the reaction of the actors to the ordeal when it actually comes. Some people call that getting the breaks I call it God. God has His part or margin in everything That s where prayer comes in."
— George S. Patton Jr.

"Eventually all things fall into place. Until then, laugh at the confusion, live for the moments, and know EVERYTHING HAPPENS FOR A REASON."
— Albert Schweitzer

"I don't know what your destiny will be, but one thing I know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve."
— Albert Schweitzer

"Seek always to do some good, somewhere... Even if it's a little thing, so something for those that need help, something for which you get no pay but the privilege of doing it."
— Albert Schweitzer

"Hope is a state of mind independent of the state of the world. If your heart's full of hope, you can be persistent when you can't be optimistic. You can keep the faith despite the evidence, knowing that only in so doing has the evidence any chance of changing. So while I'm not optimistic, I'm always very hopeful."
— William Sloane Coffin

"The real tragedy is the tragedy of the man who never in his life braces himself for his one supreme effort-- he never stretches to his full capacity, never stands up to his full stature."
— Arnold Bennett

"The makers of literature are those who have seen and felt the miraculous interestingness of the universe. If you have formed literary taste, your life will be one long ecstasy of denying that the world is a dull place"
— Arnold Bennett

"And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice cold in the snow, stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so? It came without ribbons. It came without tags. It came without packages, boxes or bags. And he puzzled and puzzled 'till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before. What if Christmas, he thought, doesn't come from a store. What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more. "
— Dr. Seuss

"I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. "
— Charles Dickens

"I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!


"
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"Don't say you don't have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein."
— H. Jackson Brown Jr.

"In some cases...we learn more by looking for the answer to a question and not finding it than we do from learning the answer itself."
— Lloyd Alexander

"Long ago I yearned to be a hero without knowing, in truth, what a hero was. Now, perhaps, I understand it a little better. A grower of turnips or a shaper of clay, a Commot farmer or a king--every man is a hero if he strives more for others than for himself alone.
Once you told me that the seeking counts more than the finding. So, too, must the striving count more than the gain."
— Lloyd Alexander (The High King)

"In a very real sense not one of us is qualified, but it seems that God continually chooses the most unqualified to do his work, to bear his glory. If we are qualified, we tend to think that we have done the job ourselves. If we are forced to accept our evident lack of qualification, then there's no danger that we will confuse God's work with our own, or God's glory with our own."
— Madeleine L'Engle

"All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn't hurt."
— Charles M. Schulz

"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."
— Douglas Adams

"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."
— Mark Twain

"People are often unreasonable and self-centered. Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives. Be kind anyway.

If you are honest, people may cheat you. Be honest anyway.

If you find happiness, people may be jealous. Be happy anyway.

The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway.

Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough. Give your best anyway.

For you see, in the end, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway."
— Mother Teresa

"Be good and you will be lonesome."
— Mark Twain

"The moon is friend for the lonesome to talk to."
— Carl Sandburg

"She wished there was some place where she could go to hum it out loud. Some kind of music was too private to sing in a house cram fall of people. It was funny, too, how lonesome a person could be in a crowded house."
— Carson McCullers (The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter)

"Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.""
— Charles Dickens

". . .suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but - I hope - into a better shape"
— Charles Dickens (Great Expectations)

"Family not only need to consist of merely those whom we share blood, but also for those whom we'd give blood."
— Charles Dickens

""I must do something or I shall wear my heart away..."
"
— Charles Dickens

"It is no small thing, when they, who are so fresh from God, love us. "
— Charles Dickens