Can you imagine a life with no fear? What if faith, not fear, was your default reaction to threats?

Without courage we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can't be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.

I've learned that even when I have pains, I don't have to be one.

The Black female is assaulted in her tender years by all those common forces of nature at the same time she is caught in the tripartite crossfire of masculine prejudice, white illogical hate and Black lack of power. The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerence. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors and deserves respect if not enthusiastic admiration.

Courage is the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you can't practice any other virtue consistently.

I'll never be lonely Even if I am alone For I've a precious Savior Who'll come to take me home. But while I'm here His servant I will be With one foot on earth And one in eternity. And I'll gather His crops To populate His land And if I feel weary I'll cling tighter to his hand.

being a teenager these days is not for the faint of heart.

Mostly I think I've learned to trust God more. I mean, if I start getting worried or freaked, I just try to put it in God's hands. Sometimes I imagine God cradling the globe in his hands, and I tell myself that as long as I'm with God, the Creator of the universe, I can be comfortable and at home anyplace on the planet.

Salesmen, whose primary characteristic and main asset is their ability to keep selling, constantly recast the world in positive terms. Discouragement for everyone else is merely the need to improve reality for them.

Our spiritual health and maturity depend upon knowing that God enjoys us, for it addresses the fear of rejection within our hearts. The fear of rejection and the trauma of shame are the most powerful emotions in the human spirit.

It represented a world I didn't know, the opposite of where I was—and I hated where I was. I hated the poverty, the cigarette smoke, the drug use, the embarrassment, the loneliness. And Diana Ross was promising me that there was a world that wasn't stained with sadness and resignation. Somewhere there was a world that was sensual and robotic and hypnotic. And clean.

A few days after I left UConn my mom took me to a psychiatrist in Stamford. After talking with me for an hour, smiling kindly and calmly asking me questions, he diagnosed me. "You have an anxiety disorder," he said. "It's a rare and very unpleasant type called 'plateau panic disorder.' Basically you're having panic attacks that don't ever end.