Afflictions are light when compared with what we really deserve. They are light when compared with the sufferings of the Lord Jesus. But perhaps their real lightness is best seen by comparing them with the weight of glory which is awaiting us.

There are only new ways of making them felt —of examining what those ideas feel like being lived on Sunday morning at 7 A.M., after brunch, during wild love, making war, giving birth, mourning our dead —while we suffer the old longings, battle the old warnings and fears of being silent and impotent and alone, while we taste new possibilities and strengths.

Our dead line our dreams, their deaths becoming more and more commonplace.

I remind myself all the time now that if I were to have been born mute, or had maintained an oath of silence my whole life long for safety, I would still have suffered, and I would still die.

For the first time since her return, she felt pain, a violent pain, but it made her feel alive, because it was worth feeling.

I have had a full and satisfying life. I believe that disabled people should concentrate on things that their handicap doesn't precent them from doing and not regret those they can't do.

Before you wear a crown of gold, life sometimes makes you wear a crown of thorns.

A thorn is a rose's friend but a gardener's enemy.

There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.

The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.

In times of affliction we commonly meet with the sweetest experiences of the love of God.

Licitis perimus omnes