Our best successes often come after our greatest disappointments.

The best revenge is to always survive yourself.

Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically.

And many evils and troubles shall befall them, so that they will say in that day, 'Have not these evils come upon us because our God is not among us?' " — DEUTERONOMY 31:17

Despair itself can be hopeful if it is honest.

every troubled time and every troubled person.

Failure is an event not a person.

Make failure your teacher, not your undertaker.

Disappointment leads to clarity, which leads to conviction and true originality.

If the Gospels were truly the pattern of God's activity, then defeat was only the beginning.

Love is the strongest force in the world, and when it is blocked that means pain. "There are two things we can do when this happens. We can kill the love so that it stops hurting. But then of course part of us dies, too. Or, Corrie, we can ask God to open up another route for that love to travel...

At last she pointed to a second tier in the center of a large block. To reach it we had to stand on the bottom level, haul ourselves up, and then crawl across three other straw-covered platforms to reach the one that we would share with—how many?