"Agape doesn't love somebody because they're worthy.

Agape makes them worthy by the strength and power of its love.

Agape doesn't love somebody because they're beautiful.

Agape loves in such a way that it makes them beautiful."
— Rob Bell (Sex God: Exploring the Endless Connections Between Sexuality And Spirituality)

"Whether we are reading the Bible for the first time or standing in a field in Israel next to a historian and an archaeologist and a scholar, the Bible meets us where we are. That is what truth does"
— Rob Bell (Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith)

"If the gospel isn't good news for everybody, then it isn't good news for anybody."
— Rob Bell (Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith)

"What we do comes out of who we believe we are."
— Rob Bell (Sex God: Exploring the Endless Connections Between Sexuality And Spirituality)

"Salvation is the entire universe being brought back into harmony with its maker."
— Rob Bell (Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith)

"Why blame the dark for being dark? It is far more helpful to ask why the light isn’t as bright as it could be."
— Rob Bell (Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith)

"Because with every action, comment, conversation, we have the choice to invite Heaven or Hell to Earth."
— Rob Bell

"If the gospel isn't good news for everybody, then it isn't good news for anybody. And this is because the most powerful things happen when the church surrenders its desire to convert people and convince them to join. It is when the church gives itself away in radical acts of service and compassion, expecting nothing in return, that the way of Jesus is most vividly put on display. To do this, the church must stop thinking about everybody primarily in categories of in or out, saved or not, believer or nonbeliever. Besides the fact that these terms are offensive to those who are the "un" and "non", they work against Jesus' teachings about how we are to treat each other. Jesus commanded us to love our neighbor, and our neighbor can be anybody. We are all created in the image of God, and we are all sacred, valuable creations of God. Everybody matters. To treat people differently based on who believes what is to fail to respect the image of God in everyone. As the book of James says, "God shows no favoritism." So we don't either."
— Rob Bell

"Missions then is less about the transportation of God from one place to another and more about the identification of a God who is already there [...] You see God where others don't. And then you point him out. So the issue isn't so much taking Jesus to people who don't have him, but going to a place and pointing out to the people the creative, life-giving God who is already present in their midst. "
— Rob Bell

"The moment God is figured out with nice neat lines and definitions, we are no longer dealing with God."
— Rob Bell (Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith)

"We all have the potential to fall in love a thousand times in our lifetime. It's easy. The first girl I ever loved was someone I knew in sixth grade. Her name was Missy; we talked about horses. The last girl I love will be someone I haven't even met yet, probably. They all count. But there are certain people you love who do something else; they define how you classify what love is supposed to feel like. These are the most important people in your life, and you’ll meet maybe four or five of these people over the span of 80 years. But there’s still one more tier to all this; there is always one person you love who becomes that definition. It usually happens retrospectively, but it happens eventually. This is the person who unknowingly sets the template for what you will always love about other people, even if some of these loveable qualities are self-destructive and unreasonable. The person who defines your understanding of love is not inherently different than anyone else, and they’re often just the person you happen to meet the first time you really, really, want to love someone. But that person still wins. They win, and you lose. Because for the rest of your life, they will control how you feel about everyone else."
— Chuck Klosterman (Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story)

""There are two ways to look at life. The first view is that nothing stays the same and that nothing is inherently connected, and that the only driving force in anyone's life is entropy. The second is that everything pretty much stays the same (more or less) and that everything is completely connected, even if we don't realize it." "
— Chuck Klosterman (Sex, Drugs, And Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto)

"But whenever I meet dynamic, nonretarded Americans, I notice that they all seem to share a single unifying characteristic: the inability to experience the kind of mind-blowing, transcendent romantic relationship they perceive to be a normal part of living. And someone needs to take the fall for this. So instead of blaming no one for this (which is kind of cowardly) or blaming everyone (which is kind of meaningless), I'm going to blame John Cusack."
— Chuck Klosterman (Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto)

"Everybody is wrong about everything, just about all the time."
— Chuck Klosterman (Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto)

"You used to be able to tell the difference between hipsters and homeless people. Now, it's between hipsters and retards. I mean, either that guy in the corner in orange safety pants holding a protest sign and wearing a top hat is mentally disabled or he is the coolest fucking guy you will ever know."
— Chuck Klosterman

"People who talk about their dreams are actually trying to tell you things about themselves they’d never admit in normal conversation."
— Chuck Klosterman

"Pundits are always blaming TV for making people stupid, movies for desensitizing the world to violence, and rock music for making kids take drugs and kill themselves. These things should be the least of our worries. The main problem with mass media is that it makes it impossible to fall in love with any acumen of normalcy. There is no 'normal,' because everybody is being twisted by the same sources simultaneously. "
— Chuck Klosterman (Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto)

"Art and love are the same thing: It’s the process of seeing yourself in things that are not you."
— Chuck Klosterman (Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story)

"The only people who can ever put ideas into context are people who don't care; the unbiased and apathetic are usually the wisest dudes in the room. If you want to totally misunderstand why something is supposedly important, find the biggest fan of that particular thing and ask him for an explanation. He will tell you everything that doesn't matter to anyone who isn't him. He will describe paradoxical details and share deeply personal anecdotes, and it will all be autobiography; he will simply be explaining who he is by discussing something completely unrelated to his life."
— Chuck Klosterman

"It was the kind of love you can only feel toward someone you don't actually know."
— Chuck Klosterman (Downtown Owl: A Novel)

"Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world."
— Paulo Freire (Pedagogy of the Oppressed)

"[T]he more radical the person is, the more fully he or she enters into reality so that, knowing it better, he or she can transform it. This individual is not afraid to confront, to listen, to see the world unveiled. This person is not afraid to meet the people or to enter into a dialogue with them. This person does not consider himself or herself the proprietor of history or of all people, or the liberator of the oppressed; but he or she does commit himself or herself, within history, to fight at their side."
— Paulo Freire (Pedagogy of the Oppressed)

"There is something beautiful about a billion stars held steady by a God who knows what He is doing. (They hang there, the stars, like notes on a page of music, free-form verse, silent mysteries swirling in the blue like jazz.) And as I lay there, it occurred to me that God is up there somewhere. Of course, I had always known He was, but this time I felt it, I realized it, the way a person realizes they are hungry or thirsty. The knowledge of God seeped out of my brain and into my heart. I imagined Him looking down on this earth, half angry because His beloved mankind had cheated on Him, had committed adultery, and yet hopelessly in love with her, drunk with love for her."
— Donald Miller

"...sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself..."
— Donald Miller (Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality)

"It is always the simple things that change our lives. And these things never happen when you are looking for them to happen. Life will reveal answers at the pace life wishes to do so. You feel like running, but life is on a stroll. This is how God does things"
— Donald Miller

"Believing in God is as much like falling in love as it is making a decision. Love is both something that happens to you and something you decide upon."
— Donald Miller (Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality)

""No, life cannot be understood flat on a page. It has to be lived; a person has to get out of his head, has to fall in love, has to memorize poems, has to jump off bridges into rivers, has to stand in an empty desert and whisper sonnets under his breath... We get one story, you and I, and one story alone. God has established the elements, the setting and the climax and resolution. It would be a crime not to venture out, wouldn't it?" -Donald Miller,Through Painted Deserts"
— Donald Miller

"For Attractive lips, speak words of kindness, For lovely eyes, seek out the good in people, For a slim figure, share your food with the hungry, For Beautiful hair, let a child run their fingers through it once a day, For poise, walk with the knowledge that you never walk alone. People, more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed. Remember, if you ever need a helping hand, you will find one at the end of each of your arms. As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands, one for helping yourself and the other for helping others."
— Audrey Hepburn

"No long-term marriage is made easily, and there have been times when I've been so angry or so hurt that I thought my love would never recover. And then, in the midst of near despair, something has happened beneath the surface. A bright little flashing fish of hope has flicked silver fins and the water is bright and suddenly I am returned to a state of love again — till next time. I've learned that there will always be a next time, and that I will submerge in darkness and misery, but that I won't stay submerged. And each time something has been learned under the waters; something has been gained; and a new kind of love has grown. The best I can ask for is that this love, which has been built on countless failures, will continue to grow. I can say no more than that this is mystery, and gift, and that somehow or other, through grace, our failures can be redeemed and blessed."
— Madeleine L'Engle

"Love the Lord your God, and love one another. Love one another as He loves. Love with strength and purpose and passion and no matter what comes against you. Don't weaken. Stand against the darkness, and love. That's the way back into Eden. That's the way back to life."
— Francine Rivers - Redeeming Love

"Beloved, surrender wholeheartedly to Jesus Christ, who loves you. As you drink from the deep well of Scripture, the Lord will refresh you and cleanse you, mold you and re-create you through His Living Word. For the Bible is the very breath of God, giving life eternal to those who seek Him."
— Francine Rivers

"...for some of us, one mile can be more to walk than thirty."
— Francine Rivers (Redeeming Love)

"Women are like teabags; you never know how strong they are until they're put in hot water."
— Eleanor Roosevelt

"Do what you feel in your heart to be right – for you’ll be criticized anyway."
— Eleanor Roosevelt

"The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other form of literature, to those who really like to study people, is that in fiction the author can really tell the truth without humiliating himself."
— Eleanor Roosevelt

"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams."
— Eleanor Roosevelt

"Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art. "
— Eleanor Roosevelt

"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 a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"The more I know of the world, the more I am convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love. I require so much!"
— Jane Austen (Sense and Sensibility)

"In vain have I struggled but it will not do, my feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you, how much I love and admire you."
— Jane Austen

"do you really think he likes me lizzi?"
"jane, he danced with you most of the night and stared at you the rest of it."
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"I always deserve the best treatment because I never put up with any other."
— Jane Austen (Emma)

"I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath. For you alone, I think and plan. Have you not seen this? Can you fail to have understood my wishes? I had not waited even these ten days, could I have read your feelings, as I think you must have penetrated mine. I can hardly write. I am every instant hearing something which overpowers me. You sink your voice, but I can distinguish the tones of that voice when they would be lost on others. Too good, too excellent creature! You do us justice, indeed. You do believe that there is true attachment and constancy among men. Believe it to be most fervent, most undeviating, in F. W.

I must go, uncertain of my fate; but I shall return hither, or follow your party, as soon as possible. A word, a look, will be enough to decide whether I enter your father's house this evening or never.

Captain Wentworth to Anne Elliot"
— Jane Austen (Persuasion)

"We have advantages. We have a cushion to fall back on. This is abundance. A luxury of place and time. Something rare and wonderful. It's almost historically unprecedented. We must do extraordinary things. We have to. It would be absurd not to."
— Dave Eggers (A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius)

"It is no way to live, to wait to love."
— Dave Eggers

""We are the bright new stars born of a screaming black hole, the nascent suns burst from the darkness, from the grasping void of space that folds and swallows--a darkness that would devour anyone not as strong as we. We are oddities, sideshows, talk show subjects. We capture everyone's imagination." "
— Dave Eggers (A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius)

"My deepest awareness of myself is that I am deeply loved by Jesus Christ and I have done nothing to earn it or deserve it."
— Brennan Manning (The Ragamuffin Gospel)

"If we maintain the open-mindedness of children, we challenge fixed ideas and established structures, including our own. We listen to people in other denominations and religions. We don't find demons in those with whom we disagree. We don't cozy up to people who mouth our jargon. If we are open, we rarely resort to either-or: either creation or evolution, liberty or law, sacred or secular, Beethoven or Madonna. We focus on both-and, fully aware that God's truth cannot be imprisoned in a small definition. "
— Brennan Manning

""How glorious the splendor of a human heart that trusts that it is loved!”
"
— by Brennan Manning