“The secret of growing younger is counting blessings, not birthdays.”

Kids can be a pain in the neck when they’re not a lump in your throat.

A balanced diet is a cookie in each hand.

Violets are God’s apology for February.

We can never untangle all the woes in other people’s lives. We can’t produce miracles overnight. But we can bring a cup of cool water to a thirsty soul, or a scoop of laughter to a lonely heart.

A lot of kneeling keeps one in good standing.

Teaching literature is teaching how to read. How to notice things in a text that a speed-reading culture is trained to disregard, overcome, edit out, or explain away; how to read what the language is doing, not guess what the author was thinking; how to take evidence from a page, not seek a reality to substitute for it.

My karma just ran over my dogma.

Old florists never die. They just make other arrangements.

Patience is the ability to idle your motor when you feel like stripping your gears.

Pain is inevitable. Misery is optional

I don’t have to figure out why or how or when. God has a plan, and I’m committed to it. That commitment frees me from having to worry about the details.

If we give someone a piece of bread and butter, that’s kindness, but if we put jelly or peanut butter on it, then it’s Loving Kindness.

Grudges are like hand grenades: it is wise to release them before they destroy you.

We can choose to gather to our hearts the thorns of disappointment, failure, loneliness, and dismay in our present situation. Or we can gather the flowers of God’s grace, boundless love, abiding presence, and unmatched joy. I choose to gather the flowers.

Forgiveness is a stunning principle, your ticket out of hate and fear and chaos.

Your face is a billboard advertising your philosophy of life!

My favorite action movie growing up was ‘Supergirl.’

I wasn’t really a big comic book guy, growing up. I watched cartoons, but the choices were a whole heck of a lot slimmer.

No matter your position or place in life.

Young people are often asked, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ and given advice about how to lead meaningful adult lives.

Growing up as a kid my father was British and a soccer player.

The kids that are different and out there and expressive and are bold with those choices, those are the people that grow up to be people we all want to hang out with,

And yet the world we live in-its divisions and conflicts, its widening gap between rich and poor

Growing inequality is a huge problem, and of course is intimately connected to xenophobia and racism.