“One cannot be prepared for something while secretly believing it will not happen.”

“Maybe the critics are right. Maybe there's no escaping our great political divide, an endless clash of armies, and any attempts to alter the rules of engagement are futile. Or maybe the trivialization of politics has reached a point of no return, so that most people see it as just one more diversion, a sport, with politicians our paunch-bellied gladiators and those who bother to pay attention just fans on the sidelines: We paint our faces red or blue and cheer our side and boo their side, and if it takes a late hit or cheap shot to beat the other team, so be it, for winning is all that matters. But I don't think so. They are out there, I think to myself, those ordinary citizens who have grown up in the midst of all the political and cultural battles, but who have found a way-in their own lives, at least- to make peace with their neighbors, and themselves. ...I imagine they are waiting for a politics with the maturity to balance idealism and realism, to distinguish between what can and cannot be compromised, to admit the possibility that the other side might sometimes have a point. They don't always understand the arguments between right and left, conservative and liberal, but they recognize the difference between dogma and common sense, responsibility and irresponsibility, between those things that last and those that are fleeting. They are out there, waiting for Republicans and Democrats to catch up with them.”

“with every action theres an equal opposite reaction,with every problem theres a solution just a matter of taking action”

“People keep on struggling when it comes to prayer and faith because they don’t actually believe what the Word says.”

“Be courteous to all, but intimate with few; and let those be well-tried before you give them your confidence.”

ought me here, and I'd better have been drowned or never born. Do you hear what I say? This is where dreams — dreams, do you understand — come to life, come real. Not daydreams: dreams.”

“Peter preached about [the blood]. Paul wrote about it, and the redeemed in heaven sing about it. In a sense, the New Testament is the Book of the Blood.”

“I wrote everything into Anna Karenina, and nothing was left over.”

“The eye that looks ahead to the safe course is closed forever.”

“It’s not what you do, but how much love you put into it that matters.”

“I think each village was meant to feel pity for its own sick and poor whom it can help and I doubt if it is the duty of any private person to fix his mind on ills which he cannot help. This may even become an escape from the works of charity we really can do to those we know. God may call any one of us to respond to some far away problem or support those who have been so called. But we are finite and he will not call us everywhere or to support every worthy cause. And real needs are not far from us.”

“True forgiveness is when you can say, 'Thank you for that experience.”

“I have sworn upon the altar of god, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”

“If you want to keep a problem you have, then just keep talking about it. But if you want to get rid of it, then talk about the answer as if you expect it to manifest at any moment.”

“Hold fast to dreams for when dreams go, Life is a barren field frozen with snow.”