God hates us, I said. Don't blame God for what ants have to do. We all get hungry. Congolese people are not so different from Congolese ants. They have to swarm over a village and eat other people alive? When they are pushed down long enough they will rise up. If they bite you, they are trying to fix things in the only way they know.

The way I see it, a person isn't nothing more than a scarecrow... The only difference between one that stands up good and one that blows over is what kind of a stick they're stuck up there on.

if you look hard enough you can always see reasons, but you'll go crazy if you think it's all punishment for your sins.

After the final no there comes a yes And on that yes the future world depends. —WALLACE STEVENS, "The Well Dressed Man with a Beard

Believe this: the mistakes are part of the story

For some, a lousy day's work will get you yelled at. For farmers, it's live or die.

No one can hurt you without your consent." In the words of Gandhi, "They cannot take away our self respect if we do not give it to them.

Lord, give me the courage to change the things which can and ought to be changed, the serenity to accept the things which cannot be changed, and the wisdom to know the difference.

The single most significant factor, he realized, was a sense of future vision—the impelling conviction of those who were to survive that they had a mission to perform, some important work left to do.1 Survivors of POW camps in Vietnam and elsewhere have reported similar experiences: a compelling, future-oriented vision is the primary force that kept many of them alive.

You cannot change the direction of the wind, but you can adjust your sails to always reach your destination." So it is that when disasters occur in our lives and we go within to discover our inner strength or to seek discernment, we have choices to continue in the same direction the storm of life has paved for us, or adjust our sail and get back on track to what we believe and know to be our path in life.

Lessons often come dressed up as detours and roadblocks

No matter what is happening now, events will ultimately bend toward love the way a flower bends toward sunlight.