"most of us act as if it is more important to make a living than to live." - michael yaconelli dangerous wonder

"you may never feel like giving your circumstance, hurt, or loss to Him; but you can choose to submit to His authority out of belief and obedience rather than emotion" - beth moore

"the beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them." - thomas merton

"ah - i patiently close my eyes on all the grins and smirks, on all the twisted smiles and hoarse laughs - and glimpse then, inside me, one beautiful white butterfly fluttering toward tomorrow." - kuroda saburo

"if you have a fearful thought, do not share it with someone who is weak; whisper it to your saddlebow, and ride on singing." - alfred, king of wessex

"I have found the paradox that if I love until it hurts, then there is no hurt, but only more love." -Mother Teresa

"sooner or later we all discover that the important moments in life are not the advertised ones, not the birthdays, graduations, weddings, not the great goals achieved. the real milestones are less prepossessing. they come to the door of memory unannounced and simply never leave. our lives are measured by these." -susan b. anthony

I associate honesty with loss of love. The only people I had known who were honest, beligerent, assertive, undisguised had lost love. I was not going to risk that. There was the fear of the world. I had seen destructive relationships, destructive journalism, destructive critics, destructive wars. I felt the world to be a rather dangerous place. I did not feel ready to confront this. I needed a shelter for my work. The diary was a fine one. A shelter from misunderstanding, from satire, from attack, from judgement.
—Anais Nin, Novel of the Future

C.S. Lewis - this guy is unbelievable. this is some great stuff from mere christianity:
"a man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line."

"real things are not simple. they look simple, but they are not...besides being complicated, reality, in my experience, is usually odd. it is not neat, not obvious, not what you expect."

"God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from himself, because it is not there. there is no such thing."

"we love and reason because he loves and reasons and holds our hand while we do it."

"we have to take reality as it comes to us: there is no good jabbering about what it ought to be like or what we should have expected it to be like"

"sometimes our pride also hinders our charity; we are tempted to spend more than we ought on the showy forms of generosity (tipping, hospitality) and less than we ought on those who really need our help."

"i would much rather say that every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before."

"it is wonderful what you can do when you have to."

"the real test of being in the presence of God is that you either forget about yourself altogether, or see yourself as a small, dirty object."

about a christian"...probably all you will think about him is that he seemed a cheerful, intelligent chap who took a real interest in what you said to him. if you do dislike him it will be because you feel a little envious of anyone who seems to enjoy life so easily."

you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless till they rest in you. who will grant me to rest content in you? to whom shall i turn for the gift of your coming into my heart, so that i may forget all the wrong i have done? -augustine confessions