Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts.

You know, there is always times where you feel discouraged and things coming against you, but I don’t know if I ever wanted to throw in the towel.

Against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand.

Every single one of us has a few months here or there that feel like dark months.

We should learn to accept that change is truly the only thing that’s going on always, and learn to ride with it and enjoy it.

Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well.

You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.

Put your leaders in stressful scenarios. Make them figure out solutions under pressure. See if you can make them frustrated, angry, and flustered, and then demand decisive leadership from them. They will be challenged at first, but they will get better over time.

What I remember as a child is that other kids didn’t care about suffering. I always did.

There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.

You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‚I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.‘

Everything in the world may be endured except continual prosperity.

We pity in others only the those evils which we ourselves have experienced.

Compassion is the basis of morality.

Because, you know, resilience – if you think of it in terms of the Gold Rush, then you’d be pretty depressed right now because the last nugget of gold would be gone. But the good thing is, with innovation, there isn’t a last nugget. Every new thing creates two new questions and two new opportunities.

My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.

You never make fun of anybody with a club foot or a withered arm, but it’s open season on anybody who stutters.

I don’t like looking back. I’m always constantly looking forward. I’m not the one to sort of sit and cry over spilt milk. I’m too busy looking for the next cow.

Pity may represent little more than the impersonal concern which prompts the mailing of a check, but true sympathy is the personal concern which demands the giving of one’s soul.

Notice that the stiffest tree is most easily cracked, while the bamboo or willow survives by bending with the wind.

There’s nothing I have to hide or defend. I’m gonna live my life. And there are times when people wanna try to attack me, and I don’t know why, but they will. And that’s okay.

Early on, I was so impressed with Charles Dickens. I grew up in the South, in a little village in Arkansas, and the whites in my town were really mean, and rude. Dickens, I could tell, wouldn’t be a man who would curse me out and talk to me rudely.

It is the heart always that sees, before the head can see.

Encouragement to others is something everyone can give. Somebody needs what you have to give. It may not be your money; it may be your time. It may be your listening ear. It may be your arms to encourage. It may be your smile to uplift. Who knows?

‚9 to 5,‘ that little song, that little story, just won’t ever end. Just like ‚I Will Always Love You,‘ it just keeps comin‘ back, popping up its head in one way or another.

Exaggeration is truth that has lost its temper.

If anything, we should feel sorry for the people who want us to feel bad about ourselves, because they are the ones struggling for approval. In middle school, bullies tortured other kids because they thought it would make people like them more.

When you sing with a group of people, you learn how to subsume yourself into a group consciousness because a capella singing is all about the immersion of the self into the community. That’s one of the great feelings – to stop being me for a little while and to become us. That way lies empathy, the great social virtue.

I have survivor’s curiosity, I guess.

True wealth is not of the pocket, but of the heart and of the mind.

When fate hands you a lemon, make lemonade.

Trials teach us what we are; they dig up the soil, and let us see what we are made of.

Do everything as in the eye of another.

Love is the ability and willingness to allow those that you care for to be what they choose for themselves without any insistence that they satisfy you.

When you’re in hell, you forget how great you really are because you’re suffering and you forget the great things you’ve done.

What is normal? Normal was yesterday. If you lose a leg, one day you’re hopping around on one leg, so you know the difference.

My mom cleaned toilets for a long time, and she’d seen a lot of terrible things, but she was still the strength of our family. And there are women like that all across the country – all around the world – who show that type of fortitude.

There is no room for military people, including our veterans, to see themselves as victims, even if so many of our countrymen are prone to relish that role.

I am certain no one sets out to be cruel, but our treatment of the elderly ill seems to have no philosophy to it. As a society, we should establish whether we have a policy of life at any cost.

The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because generally they are the same people.

One who is injured ought not to return the injury, for on no account can it be right to do an injustice; and it is not right to return an injury, or to do evil to any man, however much we have suffered from him.

When men and woman die, as poets sung, his heart’s the last part moves, her last, the tongue.

I have a great respect for incremental improvement, and I’ve done that sort of thing in my life, but I’ve always been attracted to the more revolutionary changes. I don’t know why. Because they’re harder. They’re much more stressful emotionally. And you usually go through a period where everybody tells you that you’ve completely failed.

A man will speedily sit down and sympathize with a friend’s griefs, but if he sees him honored and esteemed, he is apt to regard him as a rival and does not so readily rejoice with him. This ought not to be; without effort, we ought to be happy in our brother’s happiness.

When I was two, a dragonfly flew near me. A man knocked it to the ground and trod on it. I remember crying because I’d caused the dragonfly to be killed.

No one would remember the Good Samaritan if he’d only had good intentions; he had money as well.

No matter what happens in life, be good to people. Being good to people is a wonderful legacy to leave behind.

People want to tear me down, they were going to knife me anyway.

You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it.

Every morning I jump out of bed and step on a landmine. The landmine is me. After the explosion, I spent the rest of the day putting the pieces together.

You have to come to your closed doors before you get to your open doors… What if you knew you had to go through 32 closed doors before you got to your open door? Well, then you’d come to closed door number eight and you’d think, ‚Great, I got another one out of the way’… Keep moving forward.

I was hit by a car once on my bike, but I still rode home.

It is not until you become a mother that your judgment slowly turns to compassion and understanding.

Through our own recovered innocence we discern the innocence of our neighbors.

Real firmness is good for anything; strut is good for nothing.

He who lives in our mind is near though he may actually be far away; but he who is not in our heart is far though he may really be nearby.

Remorse sleeps during prosperity but awakes bitter consciousness during adversity.

What money is better bestowed than that of a schoolboy’s tip? How the kindness is recalled by the recipient in after days! It blesses him that gives and him that takes.

Rose Adams is a wonderful Christian woman who cared for my mother, Morrow Coffey Graham, in her last years of life.

You not supposed to feel down over whatever happen to you. I mean, you’re supposed to use whatever happen to you as some type of upper, not a downer.

Oh, you weak, beautiful people who give up with such grace. What you need is someone to take hold of you – gently, with love, and hand your life back to you.