"Hold dear to your parents for it is a scary and confusing world without them."
— Emily Dickinson

"At this moment, somewhere in the world, children died of starvation, bombs exploded to maim and kill the innocent, hurricanes destroyed everything in their path, but the loveliness of this moment was as real as wars and plagues and heartbreak. Pleasure and beauty are as valid as pain and ugliness and when I am fortunate enough to enjoy the former, I do so."
— Carolyn Hart (Set Sail for Murder)

"At four that morning my son, Peter Williams Chambliss, slid into the world tiny and red and roaring with life and the awful love that caught and whirled me away when they laid him on my stomach was as strong and old as the earth and would, I knew dimly, abide as long."
— Anne Rivers Siddons (Colony)

"I cannot emphasize enough how wrongheaded this is. Withholding criticism and ignoring differences are racism in its purest form. Yet these cultural experts fail to notice that, through their anxious avoidance of criticizing non-Western countries, they trap the people who represent these cultures in a state of backwardness. The experts may have the best of intentions, but as we all know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions."
— Ayaan Hirsi Ali (The Caged Virgin: An Emancipation Proclamation for Women and Islam)

"There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature."
— Jane Austen (Northanger Abbey)

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

"The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page."
— Augustine of Hippo

"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured or far away."
— Henry David Thoreau

"I was not designed to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest."
— Henry David Thoreau (On the Duty of Civil Disobedience)

"It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish."
— Mother Teresa

"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

"Fairy tales, are more than true. Not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be defeated."
— G.K. Chesterton

"Just going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in your garage makes you a car."
— G.K. Chesterton

"The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost."
— G.K. Chesterton

"Without education, we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously."
— G.K. Chesterton

"Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we."
— G.K. Chesterton

"There are no uninteresting things, only uninterested people."
— G.K. Chesterton

"I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean."
— G.K. Chesterton

"The world will never starve for want of wonders, but for want of wonder."
— G.K. Chesterton

"There are those who hate Christianity and call their hatred an all-embracing love for all religions."
— G.K. Chesterton

"There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds."
— G.K. Chesterton