To live only for some future goals is shallow. It's the sides of the mountain which sustain life, not the top. Here's where things grow. But of course, without the top you can't have the sides. It's the top that defines the sides.

For we're newcomers at this, with a lot to learn, and not too long to learn it.

My time is short—what's left of my life races off too fast for me to even glimpse the good. My life is going fast, like a ship under full sail, like an eagle plummeting to its prey.

Story is the most adequate way we have of accounting for our lives, noticing the obscure details that turn out to be pivotal, appreciating the subtle accents of color and form and scent that give texture to our actions and feelings, giving coherence to our meetings and relationships in work and family, finding our precise place in the neighborhood and in history.

The terrible threat against life, he said in his book God Is Not Yet Dead, is not death, nor pain, nor any variation on the disasters that we so obsessively try to protect ourselves against with our social systems and personal stratagems. The terrible threat is "that we might die earlier than we really do die, before death has become a natural necessity. The real horror lies in just such a premature death, a death after which we go on living for many years."

Account no man happy till he dies.

People have always searched for answers. That's why we have religion; people have always been seeking some relief from their own mortality.

Remember that lost time does not return.

Circumstances give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing color and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind.

Look," she said, smiling out at the trees, the sky, and the birds flying by. "That's life out there. See how it's movin'? Even the leaves on the trees is movin'. Life don't wait for nobody, and even as special as you are, it ain't gonna wait for you, neither. So it's time to make up your mind that you're gonna join it.

Special days, special moments don't last forever. Anyone knows that. Breezes of change blow hard and fast.

It keeps us ever mindful of life, how it streams by in an awful rush if one is not careful to stop and listen...and honestly see. (Main character Annie Zook)