Duty largely consists of pretending that the trivial is critical. | John Fowles

Cherish that which is within you, and shut off that which is without. | Chuang-tzu

When we have lost everything, including hope, life becomes a disgrace, and death a duty. | Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire

There comes a time in each life like a point of fulcrum. At that time you must accept yourself. It is not anymore what you will become. It is what you are and always will be. | John Fowles

It makes no difference how deeply seated may be the trouble, how hopeless the outlook, how muddled the tangle, how great the mistake. A sufficient realization of love will dissolve it all.
-Emmet Fox

If you could only love enough, you could be the most powerful person in the world.
-Emmet Fox

"Life admits not of delays; when pleasure can be had, it is fit to catch it. Every hour takes away part of the things that please us, and perhaps part of our disposition to be pleased."

--Samuel Johnson

Dreams are renewable. No matter what our age or condition, there are still untapped possibilities within us and new beauty waiting to be born.

-Dale Turner

We all have the extraordinary coded within us, waiting to be released.
Jean Houston

It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.
Andre Gide (1869 - 1951)

Love doesn't sit there like a stone, it has to be made, like bread: remade all the time, made new.
Og Mandino (1923 - 1996)

If we cannot live so as to be happy, let us least live so as to deserve it.
Immanuel Hermann Fichte

Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure.
William Saroyan (1908 - 1981)

The pursuit of truth will set you free; even if you never catch up with it.
-Clarence Darrow

All my life I have had a choice of hate and love. I chose love and I am here.
-A.R. Rahman
Academy Award acceptance.

The greatest weakness of most humans is their hesitancy to tell others how much they love them while they're still alive.
-Orlando A. Battista

Our ultimate freedom is the right and power to decide how anybody or anything outside ourselves will affect us.
-Stephen Covey

You can protect your liberties in this world only by protecting the other man's freedom. You can be free only if I am free.
-Clarence Darrow

Love seeks no cause beyond itself and no fruit; it is its own fruit, its own enjoyment. I love because I love; I love in order that I may love.

-St. Bernard

Let no one believe that he has received the divine kiss, if he knows the truth without loving it or loves it without understanding it. But blessed is that kiss whereby not only is God recognized but also the Father is loved; for there is never full knowledge without perfect love.
-St. Bernard

We know that we have passed from death into life, because we love... 1 John 3:14

And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in real knowledge and all discernment. Philippians 1:9

Freedom consists not in refusing to recognize anything above us, but in respecting something which is above us; for by respecting it, we raise ourselves to it, and, by our very acknowledgment, prove that we bear within ourselves what is higher, and are worthy to be on a level with it
-Johann von Goethe

If I place love above everything, it is because for me it is the most desperate, the most despairing state of affairs imaginable.
-Andre Breton

Love comes when manipulation stops; when you think more about the other person than about his or her reactions to you. When you dare to reveal yourself fully. When you dare to be vulnerable.
-Joyce Brothers

Whoever approaches Me walking, I will come to him running; and he who meets Me with sins equivalent to the whole world, I will greet him with forgiveness equal to it.

-Mishkat Al-masabih

In contrast to revenge, which is the natural, automatic reaction to transgression and which, because of the irreversibility of the action process can be expected and even calculated, the act of forgiving can never be predicted; it is the only reaction that acts in an unexpected way and thus retains, though being a reaction, something of the original character of action.
-Hannah Arendt

Forgive many things in others; nothing in yourself.
-Decimus Magnus Ausonius

They who forgive most shall be most forgiven.
-Josiah Bailey

And be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you. Ephesians 4:32

What is past is past, there is a future left to all men, who have the virtue to repent and the energy to atone.
-Edward George Bulwer-Lytton


Grief and tragedy and hatred are only for a time. Goodness, remembrance and love have no end, and the Lord of life holds all who die and all who mourn.
-George W. Bush, in memorium to the tragedy of Sept. 11, September 14, 2002

Those who easily forgive invite offenses.
-Pierre Corneille

To forgive oneself? No, that doesn't work: we have to be forgiven. But we can only believe this is possible if we ourselves can forgive.
-Dag Hammarskjold

The ineffable joy of forgiving and being forgiven forms an ecstasy that might well arouse the envy of the gods.
-Elbert Hubbard The Note Book, 1927

Many people hold onto a grudge because it offers the illusion of power and a perverse feeling of security. But in fact, we are held hostage by our anger. It is never too late to forgive. But you can forgive too soon. I am especially wary of what I call saintly forgiveness. Premature forgiveness is common among people who avoid conflict. They're afraid of their own anger and the anger of others. But their forgiveness is false. Their anger goes underground. I define forgiving as letting someone back into your heart. This returns us to a loving state -- and not merely within the relationship -- we feel good about ourselves and the world. True forgiveness isn't easy, but it transforms us significantly. To forgive is to love and to feel worthy of love. In that sense, it is always worthwhile.
-Robert Karen, Phd Bottom Line Personal, November 1, 2001

Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime;
Therefore, we must be saved by hope.
Nothing which is true, or beautiful, or good, makes complete sense in any immediate context of history;
Therefore, we must be saved by faith.
Nothing we do, however virtuous, could be accomplished alone;
Therefore, we must be saved by love.
No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our own standpoint;
Therefore, we must be saved by the final form of love, which is forgiveness.
-Reinhold Niebuhr

We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.
-Plato

Humanity is never so beautiful as when praying for forgiveness, or else forgiving another.
-Jean Paul Richter

We pardon to the extent that we love.
-Francois de la Rochefoucauld

Thou must be emptied of that wherewith thou art full, that thou mayest be filled with that whereof thou art empty.
-Saint Augustine of Hippo

Only the brave know how to forgive; it is the most refined and generous pitch of virtue human nature can arrive at.
-Laurence Sterne

Engrave this Quote For a working definition of forgiveness, I think of it as restoring love.
-Charles Thomas


Joy runs deeper than despair
-Corrie Ten Boom

What power has love but forgiveness?
In other words
by its intervention
what has been done
can be undone.
What good is it otherwise?
-William Carlos Williams Pictures from Brueghel, 1962