“Joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day.”

The great illusion of leadership is to think that man can be led out of the desert by someone who has never been there.

Those who keep speaking about the sun while walking under a cloudy sky are messengers of hope, the true saints of our day.

Hospitality is not to change people, but to offer them space where change can take place.

Be surprised by joy, be surprised by the little flower that shows its beauty in the midst of a barren desert, and be surprised by the immense healing power that keeps bursting forth like springs of fresh water from the depth of our pain.

The church is not an institution forcing us to follow rules but a community inviting us to still our hunger and thirst at its table.

Joy is the experience of knowing that you are unconditionally loved.

We need to be angels for each other, to give each other strength and consolation. Because only when we fully realize that the cup of life is not only a cup of sorrow but also a cup of joy will we be able to drink it.

The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing that is a friend who cares.

Those we most love cause us not only great joy but also great pain. LOVE is stronger than fear, life stronger than death, hope stronger than despair. We have to trust that the risk of loving is always worth taking.

Our humanity comes to its fullest bloom in giving. We become beautiful people when we give whatever we can give: a smile, a handshake, a kiss, an embrace, a word of love, a present, a part of our life…all of our life.

We are all healers who can reach out and offer health, and we are all patients in constant need of help.

Let’s not be afraid to look at everything that has brought us to where we are now and trust that we will soon see in it the guiding hand of a loving God.

Hope means to keep living amid desperation and to keep humming in the darkness.

The greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity or power, but self-rejection.

Once we deeply trust that we ourselves are precious in God’s eyes, we are able to recognize the preciousness of others and their unique places in God’s heart.

Our greatest fulfillment lies in giving ourselves to others.

There is nothing in the world of art like the songs mother used to sing.

Today is a brand new day. A day of change, of promise, of creativity, of kindness, and of love. I’m going back to bed.

Every day, the front page of The Drudge Report is littered with stories of government assaults on our civil liberties – from local government officials all the way up to the Oval Office.

Throughout your life there may be times when you have gone places you never should have gone and done things you never should have done.

I used to sing on the school bus everyday.

On wedding day you should look like yourself at your most beautiful

Every Day Is for the Thief is a vivid, episodic evocation of the truism that you can’t go home again; but that doesn’t mean you’re not free to try.

The groundhog is like most other prophets; it delivers its prediction and then disappears.