If you're facing a problem, don't tell yourself that you can't do it. Convince yourself that you have the strength to deal with almost anything because of the way you were raised. And you do! Recognizing your core strengths is an important step toward having joie de vivre. You can count on better days to come because of the good days that came before. And you can find joy in the moment because you have the resiliency to overcome the problems that may be hanging over you.

Indeed, no one can thwart the purposes of your mind—for they can't be touched by fire, steel, tyranny, slander, or anything.

It's time you realized that you have something in you more powerful and miraculous than the things that affect you and make you dance like a puppet

A man of faith is also full of courage

But my dreaming self refuses to be consoled. It continues to wander, aimless, homeless, alone. It cannot be convinced of its safety by any evidence drawn from my waking life.

We're stretched thin, all of us; we vibrate; we quiver, we're always on the alert. Reign of terror, they used to say, but terror does not exactly reign. Instead it paralyzes. Hence the unnatural quiet.

The cemetery has ... an inscription: 'Though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death I will Fear No Evil, For Thou Art With Me.' Yes, it does feel deceptively safer with two; but Thou is a slippery character. Every Thou I've known has had a way of going missing.

In reduced circumstances the desire to live attaches itself to strange objects. I would like a pet: a bird, say, or a cat. A familiar. Anything at all familiar.

If there were no emptiness, there would be no life.

From this distance it does resemble fun. Fun is not knowing how it will end.

You need to be strong. They were trying to make things better. But it can put a lot of pressure on a person to be told they need to be strong.

I am not a saint or a cripple, I am not a wound; now I will see whether I am a coward.