As I got older, I guess I became more mellow and more forgiving and more loving.

It’s like a jar of salad dressing sitting on a shelf… most of the seasoning settles to the bottom of the bottle. But when you shake that bottle up, all the ingredients mix together and then the dressing can add flavor to a salad. In the same way, we can stir ourselves up and regain the reverence, respect and awe we once had for the Lord.

It is a common enough case, that of a man being suddenly captivated by a woman nearly the opposite of his ideal.

Maturity is the ability to reap without apology and not complain when things don’t go well.

When you stop caring what people think, you lose your capacity for connection. When you’re defined by it, you lose our capacity for vulnerability.

I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.

Love is blind; friendship closes its eyes.

Every great person is always being helped by everybody; for their gift is to get good out of all things and all persons.

No one loves the man whom he fears.

College isn’t in everyone’s hearts. I am living proof, though, that school doesn’t mess up your plans. It gives you more experiences to write about.

Vanity is the healthiest thing in life.

The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists.

We should every night call ourselves to an account: what infirmity have I mastered today? what passions opposed? what temptation resisted? what virtue acquired? Our vices will abate of themselves if they be brought every day to the shrift.

I was set free because my greatest fear had been realized, and I still had a daughter who I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became a solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

How can one preach goodness and love to men without at the same time offering them an interpretation of the World that justifies this goodness and this love?

I’m a romantic; a sentimental person thinks things will last, a romantic person hopes against hope that they won’t.

I really want to love somebody. I do. I just don’t know if it’s possible forever and ever.

When I was in college I did a lot of stupid things and I don’t want to make an excuse for that. Some of the things that people accuse me of are true, some of them aren’t. There are pranks, IMs.

I want to work; then, as my kids get older, I want to have adventures. I want to visit all their countries: learn and live inside all their cultures.

Individuals need to be willing to face truth about their attitudes, behaviors, even what we want out of life.

Wisdom allows nothing to be good that will not be so forever; no man to be happy but he that needs no other happiness than what he has within himself; no man to be great or powerful that is not master of himself.

Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter could be said to remedy anything.

There’s definitely going to be things that I’m not very good at, things I can improve.

As for accomplishments, I just did what I had to do as things came along.

Whatever is done for love always occurs beyond good and evil.

I’m not afraid to look like an idiot.

Do not think of your faults, still less of other’s faults; look for what is good and strong, and try to imitate it. Your faults will drop off, like dead leaves, when their time comes.

I used to get into a lot of fights.

Love is an adventure and a conquest. It survives and develops, like the universe itself, only by perpetual discovery.

We are each made for goodness, love and compassion. Our lives are transformed as much as the world is when we live with these truths.

Some people spend their lives building ultimate dream homes so they can enjoy their twilight years… Others spend their last days in nursing homes.

It didn’t even occur to me that I’m the last person in the world who should play salsa or Brazilian music.

The key to winning is choosing to do God’s will and loving others with all you’ve got.

I didn’t try to copy my dad or fit into the pressure or the mold that everybody tried to make me fit into.

I think that I am better than the people who are trying to reform me.

Love can consign us to hell or to paradise, but it always takes us somewhere.

Friendship with ones self is all important, because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world.

My understanding of the Scriptures has been made simple by the person of Christ. Christ teaches that God is love.

To err is human; to forgive, divine.

Ordinary readers, forgive my paradoxes: one must make them when one reflects; and whatever you may say, I prefer being a man with paradoxes than a man with prejudices.

I was in a terrible mess in my childhood.

The love of heaven makes one heavenly.

Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you.

When you realize who you live for, and who’s important to please, a lot of people will actually start living. I am never going to get caught up in that. I’m gonna look back on my life and say that I enjoyed it – and I lived it for me.

Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.

First of all, you ask me if the God of Christians forgives one who doesn’t believe and doesn’t seek the faith. Premise that – and it’s the fundamental thing – the mercy of God has no limits if one turns to him with a sincere and contrite heart; the question for one who doesn’t believe in God lies in obeying one’s conscience.

My one regret in life is that I am not someone else.

A great secret of success is to go through life as a man who never gets used up.

When we quarrel, how we wish we had been blameless.

To every soul that knows how to pray, to every soul that by faith comes to Jesus, the true mercy seat, divine sovereignty wears no dark and terrible aspect but is full of love.

When I walk with you I feel as if I had a flower in my buttonhole.

The person who doesn’t scatter the morning dew will not comb gray hairs.

For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and everyone who humbles himself will be exalted.

I think it’s a very good thing to leave your country and look at it from afar.

I think it would be interesting if old people got anti-Alzheimer’s disease where they slowly began to recover other people’s lost memories.

I’m just like you – I want to be a good human being. I’m doing my best, and I’m working at it. And I’m trying to be a Christian. I’m always amazed when people walk up to me and say, ‚I’m a Christian.‘ I always think, ‚Already? You’ve already got it?‘ I’m working at it. And at my age, I’ll still be working at it at 96.

I carry a small sheet of paper in my wallet that has written on it the names of people whose opinions of me matter. To be on that list, you have to love me for my strengths and struggles.

A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find that after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.

A youth, when at home, should be filial and, abroad, respectful to his elders. He should be earnest and truthful. He should overflow in love to all and cultivate the friendship of the good. When he has time and opportunity, after the performance of these things, he should employ them in polite studies.

You have to develop ways so that you can take up for yourself, and then you take up for someone else. And so sooner or later, you have enough courage to really stand up for the human race and say, ‚I’m a representative.‘

For a man to conquer himself is the first and noblest of all victories.