"The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn, but to unlearn."  --Gloria Steinem

"All you have to do is take a close look at yourself and you will understand everyone else."  --Isaac Asimov

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"  --Mary Oliver 

"Whoever seeks to set one religion against another seeks to destroy all religion." Franklin D. Roosevelt 

"No hour is ever eternity, but it has its right to weep."  --Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)

“Find the good. It’s all around you. Find it, showcase it and you’ll start believing in it.”  --Jesse Owens

"The only thing we know for sure about Jesus are that he did not kill and he opposed violence of any kind. He rejected violence of both oppressor and oppressed. He taught a third way—active nonviolent resistance to evil. He urged his followers to love God, to love one's self, to love one's neighbors, and most radical of all, to love one's enemies."  --John Dear

Free to be Compassionate

"If you would ask the Desert Fathers why solitude gives birth to compassion, they would say, “Because it makes us die to our neighbor.” At first this answer seems quite disturbing to a modern mind. But when we give it a closer look we can see that in order to be of service to others we have to die to them; that is, we have to give up measuring our meaning and value with the yardstick of others. To die to our neighbors means to stop judging them, to stop evaluating them, and thus to become free to be compassionate. Compassion can never coexist with judgment because judgment creates the distance, the distinction, that prevents us from really being with the other."  --Henri Nouwen

“Let others lead small lives, but not you. Let others argue over small things, but not you. Let others cry over small hurts, but not you. Let others leave their future in someone else's hands, but not you."  --Jim Rohn

“Dream as if you’ll live forever. Live as if you’ll die today.”  --James Dean

Compassionate Solidarity

"When we think about the people who have given us hope and have increased the strength of our soul, we might discover that they were not advice givers, warners, or moralists, but the few who were able to articulate in words and actions the human condition in which we participate and who encouraged us to face the realities of life. . . . Those who do not run away from our pains but touch them with compassion bring healing and new strength. The paradox indeed is that the beginning of healing is in the solidarity with the pain. In our solution-oriented society it is more important than ever to realize that wanting to alleviate pain without sharing it is like wanting to save a child from a burning house without the risk of being hurt. It is in solitude that this compassionate solidarity takes its shape."  --Henri Nouwen

"I remember his love for the prodigal son, I have heard his words to Mary Magdalene, to the woman taken in adultery, to the woman of Samaria. No - there is no one who could frighten me, for I know too well what to believe concerning his mercy and his love."  --St. Therese of Lisieux

“If I had to live my life again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week.”  --Charles Darwin

"Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go."  --T.S. Eliot

"Life is the input of everyone who touched your life and every experience that entered it. We are all a part of one another."  --Yuri Kochiyama, Passing It On (2004)

A Converted Heart

"Compassion born in solitude makes us very much aware of our own historicity. We are not called to respond to generalities but to the concrete facts with which we are confronted day after day. A compassionate man can no longer look at these manifestations of evil and death as disturbing interruptions of his life plan but rather has to confront them as an opportunity for the conversion of himself and his fellow human beings. Every time in history that men and women have been able to respond to the events of their world as an occasion to change their hearts, an inexhaustible source of generosity and new life has been opened, offering hope far beyond the limits of human prediction."  --Henri Nouwen

"There is no need for me to grow up. In fact, just the opposite: I must become less and less."  --St. Therese of Lisieux

"Sorrow prepares you for joy. It violently sweeps everything out of your house, so that new joy can find space to enter. It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place. It pulls up the rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow. Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things will take their place."  --Rumi

"Is this how it’s always been? / To exist in the face of suffering and death / And somehow still keep singing"  --Florence + the Machine, “Free”

"Dreams are hopeless aspirations, in hopes of coming true, believe in yourself, the rest is up to me and you."-- Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes from TLC, Waterfalls

"But where there’s hope, there’s life. It fills us with fresh courage and makes us strong again."  --Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl (1947) 

“‘Telling the truth’ . . . is not solely a matter of moral character; it is also a matter of correct appreciation of real situations and of serious reflection upon them. The more complex the actual situations of a person's life, the more responsible and the more difficult will be [their] task of ‘telling the truth.’"  --Parker J. Palmer

"Oh, and tell me, what’s a man with a rifle in his hand gonna do for a world that’s so sick and sad?"  -- Hurray for the Riff Raff, “The Body Electric”