A high station in life is earned by the gallantry with which appalling experiences are survived with grace.

America is not nearly done. We’re only in the beginning. Who knows who we will be? Who knows… what color we will be? It is all something that, maybe, our descendants – if they survive that long – will see.

I was a journeyman chef of middling abilities. Whatever authority I have as a commenter on this world comes from the sheer weight of 28 years in the business. I kicked around for 28 years and came out the other end alive and able to form a sentence.

If I should ever be captured, I want no negotiation – and if I should request a negotiation from captivity they should consider that a sign of duress.

It has actually been suggested that warfare may have been the principle evolutionary pressure that created the huge gap between the human brain and that of our closest living relatives, the anthropoid apes. Whole groups of hominids with inferior brains could not win wars and were therefore exterminated.

There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter.

Statistics show that of those who contract the habit of eating, very few survive.

To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.

When you make a mistake and the devil comes and tells you ‚You’re no good,‘ you don’t have to take on the guilt and condemnation he wants to put on you. No! You can immediately confess your mistake to God, thank Him for forgiving you and cleansing you with the blood of Jesus, and move forward in the victory of His grace and forgiveness.

My mother was a public school teacher in Virginia, and we didn’t have any money, we just survived on happiness, on being a happy family.

The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.

The world has not yet reached the point which, in my view, is an essential condition for the survival of our human species: access by all the peoples to the material resources of this planet.

Water’s never clumsy.

In this business, by the time you realize you’re in trouble, it’s too late to save yourself. Unless you’re running scared all the time, you’re gone.

And God help Bruce Springsteen when they decide he’s no longer God… They’ll turn on him, and I hope he survives it.

My mother was a full-time mother. She didn’t have much of her own career, her own life, her own experiences… everything was for her children. I will never be as good a mother as she was. She was just grace incarnate. She was the most generous, loving – she’s better than me.

Grace is not part of consciousness; it is the amount of light in our souls, not knowledge nor reason.

No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned… a man in a jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company.

Luck is a very thin wire between survival and disaster, and not many people can keep their balance on it.

I believe God gives you the grace to do what you need to do.

Our pleasures were simple – they included survival.

Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art… It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.

What the devil is the point of surviving, going on living, when it’s a drag? But you see, that’s what people do.

God’s mercy and grace give me hope – for myself, and for our world.

Not many people come through esophageal cancer and live to talk about it, or not for long.

However weak we are, however poor, however little our faith, or however small our grace may be, our names are still written on His heart; nor shall we lose our share in Jesus‘ love.

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.

The world is not imperfect or slowly evolving along a path to perfection. No, it is perfect at every moment, every sin already carries grace in it.

If Christ has died for me, ungodly as I am, without strength as I am, then I cannot live in sin any longer, but must arouse myself to love and serve Him who has redeemed me.

Salvation and Christ’s love is a gift. You don’t earn it. You’ve got to receive that gift.

It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value.

For me life is continuously being hungry. The meaning of life is not simply to exist, to survive, but to move ahead, to go up, to achieve, to conquer.

The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of circumstances.

Sacrifice, discipline and prayer are essential. We gain strength through God’s word. We receive grace from the sacrament. And when we fumble due to sin – and it’s gonna happen – confession puts us back on the field.

To survive it is often necessary to fight and to fight you have to dirty yourself.

It is not clear that intelligence has any long-term survival value.

Many people say that this is not an easy issue, we cannot just say that this is how it is, it’s not black and white. But I say that this is black and white. Either we stop the emissions or we don’t. There are no gray areas when it comes to survival.

Physical elegance, which is what I am talking about here, comes from the body. This is no superficial matter, but rather the way that man found to honour the way he places his two feet on the ground.

A divorce is like an amputation: you survive it, but there’s less of you.

It was the Law of the Sea, they said. Civilization ends at the waterline. Beyond that, we all enter the food chain, and not always right at the top.

If there was an observer on Mars, they would probably be amazed that we have survived this long.

We make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones.

When you go to war as a boy, you have a great illusion of immortality. Other people get killed, not you… Then, when you are badly wounded the first time, you lose that illusion, and you know it can happen to you.

Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive.

For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight, His can’t be wrong whose life is in the right.

Nothing can resist the person who smiles at life – I don’t mean the ironic and disillusioned smile of my grandfather, but the triumphant smile of the person who knows that he will survive, or that at least he will be saved by what seems to be destroying him.

I was taught that the human brain was the crowning glory of evolution so far, but I think it’s a very poor scheme for survival.

I certainly know that I would not be able to survive if it were not for the fact that I am being upheld by the prayers of so many people.

We need to show mercy. I mean, because as much mercy as you show people, that’s the mercy you’re going to be receiving.

Going to the woods is going home, for I suppose we came from the woods originally. But in some of nature’s forests, the adventurous traveler seems a feeble, unwelcome creature; wild beasts and the weather trying to kill him, the rank, tangled vegetation, armed with spears and stinging needles, barring his way and making life a hard struggle.

If you look at the movie ‚Belly,‘ I identify with Sincere the most. I am a gangster. I love my lady to death. I’m not in the game for the wrong reasons. I’m not in the game for the glory. I’m in the game to survive so the people that I love could be straight. I’m a highly intelligent individual.

Grow in the root of all grace, which is faith. Believe God’s promises more firmly than ever. Allow your faith to increase in its fullness, firmness, and simplicity.

When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity.

They say cats have nine lives. I’ve had 12 already and I don’t know how many more I’ll have.

There is absolutely no power in our human effort to live holy. It is only by His grace. And the result of receiving grace is we get better at living like Christ, which is something we all want, right?

In this possibly terminal phase of human existence, democracy and freedom are more than just ideals to be valued – they may be essential to survival.

Happiness is just another of the tricks that our genetic system plays on us to carry out its only role, which is the survival of the species.

We’re all caught up in circumstances, and we’re all good and evil. When you’re really hungry, for instance, you’ll do anything to survive. I think the most evil thing – well, maybe that’s too strong – but certainly a very evil thing is judgment, the sin of ignorance.

If civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships – the ability of all peoples, of all kinds, to live together, in the same world at peace.

Someone asked me, if I were stranded on a desert island what book would I bring… ‚How to Build a Boat.‘

Life on Earth is at the ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster, such as sudden global nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus or other dangers we have not yet thought of.