Don't give up on your dreams, or your dreams will give up on you.

So what if people disagree about values? People also disagree about facts... In my view, the great intellectual challenge facing conservatives is to make the case for morality at a time when many in the West have ceased to believe in an external moral order. The decline of belief in such an order is the most important political development of the past two centuries. Indeed, this decline has created the crisis of the West.

I no longer believe love works like a fairy tale but like farming. Most of it is just getting up early and tilling the soil and then praying for rain. But if we do the work, we just might wake up one day to find an endless field of crops rolling into the horizon. In my opinion, that's even better than a miracle. I'd rather earn the money than win the lottery because there's no joy in a reward unless it comes at the end of a story.

Here are two things I found taking the long road, though: Applause is a quick fix. And love is an acquired taste.

I told her how frustrating it is to be a Christian in America, and how frustrated I am with not only the church's failures concerning human rights, but also my personal failure to contribute to the solution.

It is when people do not allow God to show up through them, she realized, that the world collapses in on itself.

Life is a game of statistics. There are no guarantees, but the more positive effort you put in, the more likely you will be to win.

I've learned there are givers and takers in this life. I've slowly let the takers go and I've had it for the better. God bless them, when they learn to play by the rules they are welcomed back, but my heart is worth protecting.

Following your convictions means you must be willing to face criticism from those who lack the same courage to do what is right. It's called the road less traveled.

Nothing worth doing ever, ever, ever came easy.

There are no spiritual games without pains. I would soon expect farmer just prosper in business who contended himself with sowing fields and never looking at them till harvest as expect a believer to attain much holiness who is not diligent in his Bible reading, his prayers, and his use of Sundays.

Anything is better than apathy, stagnation, deadness, and indifference.