The grateful person knows that God is good, not by hearsay but by experience. And that is what makes all the difference.

Thomas Merton
Thoughts in Solitude

A friend is one to whom one may pour out all the contents of one’s heart,

chaff and grain together, knowing that the gentlest of hands will take and sift it,

keep what is worth keeping and with a breath of kindness blow the rest away.

George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans)
Middlemarch

All the flowers of all the tomorrows are in the seeds of today.

Indian Proverb

The purpose of art is the gradual, lifelong construction of a state of wonder and serenity.

Glenn Gould, pianist

Everyone needs beauty as well as bread, places to play and pray, where nature heals and gives strength to body and soul alike.

John Muir

One can live magnificently in this world if one knows how to work and how to love.

Leo Tolstoy

Freedom is not given to us by anyone; we have to cultivate it ourselves. It is a daily practice.

Thich Nhat Hanh

Ultimately, we have just one moral duty: to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves, more and more peace, and to reflect it towards others.
And the more peace there is in us, the more peace there will also be in our troubled world.

Etty Hillesum
An Interrupted Life

People, even more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone.

Audrey Hepburn