"To live by grace means to acknowledge my whole life story, the light side and the dark. In admitting my shadow side I learn who I am and what God's grace means."
— Brennan Manning

"When a man or woman is truly honest, it is virtually impossible to insult them personally. "
— Brennan Manning

"Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened."
— Dr. Seuss

"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind."
— Dr. Seuss

"I will have nothing to do with a God who cares only occasionally. I need a God who is with us always, everywhere, in the deepest depths as well as the highest heights. It is when things go wrong, when good things do not happen, when our prayers seem to have been lost, that God is most present. We do not need the sheltering wings when things go smoothly. We are closest to God in the darkness, stumbling along blindly."
— Madeleine L'Engle

"It's a good thing to have all the props pulled out from under us occasionally. It gives us some sense of what is rock under our feet, and what is sand."
— Madeleine L'Engle

"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

"I do not know everything; still many things I understand."
— Madeleine L'Engle (A Wrinkle in Time)

"Some things have to be believed to be seen."
— Madeleine L'Engle (Many Waters)

"Inspiration usually comes during work rather than before it."
— Madeleine L'Engle

"God understands that part of us which is more than what we think we are."
— Madeleine L'Engle

"You have to write whatever book it is that wants to be written. And then, if it's going to be too difficult for grown-ups, you write it for children."
— Madeleine L'Engle

"When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, "I used everything you gave me"."
— Erma Bombeck

"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

"It might be a good idea if, like the White Queen, we practiced believing six impossible things every morning before breakfast, for we are called on to believe what to many people is impossible. Instead of rejoicing in this glorious "impossible" which gives meaning and dignity to our lives, we try to domesticate God, to make his might actions comprehensible to our finite minds."
— Madeleine L'Engle

"For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart."
— Various

""The Lord is close to the brokenhearted; which means that if the rest of us want to get close to God, we seek them out-not because of what we could possible offer them, as if we're the spiritual first responders on the scene to save the day, but because we recognize how much they have to teach us about who God really is." -Quoted by Sarah Arthur, Author of The One Year Daily Grind. "
— Sarah Arthur (The One Year Daily Grind)

"Every day people are straying away from the church and going back to God."
— Lenny Bruce

"Safe?" said Mr. Beaver."Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you."
— C.S. Lewis (The Chronicles of Narnia)

"God whispers in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain: it is His mega phone to rouse a deaf world."
— C.S. Lewis (The Problem of Pain)

"He who has God and everything else has no more than he who has God only."
— C.S. Lewis (The Weight of Glory)

"I am unaware of his plans but I shall never stop believing in them because I cannot fathom them and I prefer to mistrust my own intellectual capacities than his justice."
— Alexis de Tocqueville (Democracy in America)

"Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself."
— C.S. Lewis (Mere Christianity)

"Joy is the infallible sign of the presence of God."
— Madeleine L'Engle

"We are all strangers in a strange land, longing for home, but not quite knowing what or where home is. We glimpse it sometimes in our dreams, or as we turn a corner, and suddenly there is a strange, sweet familiarity that vanishes almost as soon as it comes."
— Madeleine L'Engle

"And there's no getting around the fact that all life lives at the expense of another life."
— Madeleine L'Engle (A Ring of Endless Light)

""Friends do everything they can to protect each other."

--Polly"
— Madeleine L'Engle

"A good laugh heals a lot of hurts."
— Madeleine L'Engle (A Ring of Endless Light)

"It's hard to let go anything we love. We live in a world which teaches us to clutch. But when we clutch we're left with a fistful of ashes."
— Madeleine L'Engle (A Ring of Endless Light)

"Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: "What! You too? I thought I was the only one."
— C.S. Lewis

"When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares."
— Henri J.M. Nouwen (The Road to Daybreak: A Spiritual Journey)