"Those who judge people on the outside prove how shallow they are within."
---Jordan Taub

"What a cruel thing is war...to fill our hearts with hatred instead of love for our neighbors, and to devastate the fair face of this beautiful world."
---Robert E. Lee

"In war all suffer defeat; even the victors."
---Swedish proverb

"Words can destroy. What we call each other ultimately becomes what we think of each other, and it matters."
---Jeane Kirkpatrick

"I try my best these days to tell people just what I think. You never know when they walk out of a room if it's going to be the last time you see them."
---Reach For Tomorrow by Lurlene McDaniel

"Choose your battles carefully because they reflect your values. Is it just vanity or anger prompting your ambitions, or is it some genuine, heartfelt belief that you cannot ignore?"
---Unknown

"When you're a little kid, you're a little bit of everything. Artist, scientist, athlete, scholar. Sometimes it seems like growing up is the process of giving these things up one by one. I guess we all have one thing we regret giving up. One thing we really miss. That we gave up because we were too lazy or we couldn't stick it out or because we were afraid."
---Kevin Arnold (Fred Savage), The Wonder Years

"There are no scripts and parts in life."
---Beth Gier (my 8-year-old sister)

"Folks keep growing from one person into another all their lives."
---Caddie Woodlawn by Carol Ryrie Brink

"Knowing what you have to lose, but risking the loss anyway. That's what life is all about."
---Say Goodnight, Gracie by Julie Reece Deaver

"Life is like the baseball season, where even the best team loses at least a third of its games, and even the worst team has its days of brilliance. The goal is not to win every game but to win more than you lose, and if you do that often enough, in the end you may find you have won it all."
---Harold Kushner

"Life is an unbearable gift sometimes. Unbearably beautiful and unbearably painful, but always a gift."
---A Very Personal Computer by Justine Randal

"To let a sad thought or a bad one get into your mind is as dangerous as letting a scarlet-fever germ get into your body. If you let it stay there after it has got in, you may never get over it as long as you live."
---The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

"War is hard....Sometimes we do a lot of things we don't want to do. A lot of very good men have been killed in this [American Revolutionary] war, and all we can do is hope that it's been worth it."
---My Brother Sam Is Dead by James and Christopher Collier

"Even a sunny day can have a rain cloud or two."
---Jason Vargo

"To stay young always is also not to change. And that is what life's all about--changes going on every minute, and you never know when something begins where it's going to take you."
---A Gathering of Days by Joan Blos

"Let the little children come to me...for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these."
---Bible, Matthew 19: 14 (NIV)

"The world is a wonderful place when you're young."
---Charlotte's Web by E.B. White

"Laughter is the best way to release tensions and fears."
---Dick Gregory

"Life's got to be lived, no matter how long or short. You got to take what comes. We just go along, like everybody else, one day at a time."
---Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt

"It take a while to realize that we can lean on those we love when we are learning to cope with tough times. We learn that leaning doesn't mean that we aren't strong and responsible."
---Jennifer Leigh Youngs

"When we forgive, we free ourselves from the bitter ties that bind us to the one who hurt us."
---Claire Frazier-Yzaguirre

"It takes a lot of courage to show your dream to someone else."
---Erma Bombeck

"For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul."
---Mark 8: 38 (King James Version)

"It's funny how you can be mad at someone one moment and want to hug them the next."
---Anne Lindbergh

"It's better to be hated for who you are than loved for who you are not."
---Unknown

"Sometimes it's better to be alone. No one can hurt you that way."
---Diamond McZeal

"To be nobody but yourself when the world is trying its best night and day to make you somebody else is to fight the hardest battle any human being will fight."
---e.e. cummings

"Do not hesitate to tell somebody you love them, for tomorrow may never come."
---Unknown

"The protected place in space and time that we once called childhood has grown shorter."
---Mary Pipher

"Teens are thoughtful, helpful, and loving."
---Jennifer Leigh Youngs

"Growing up sometimes forces us to confront the distance between our childhood hope and the truth."
---Sara Shandler

"How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in your life you will have been all of these."
---George Washington Carver

"Suicide sometimes proceeds from cowardice, but not always; for cowardice sometimes prevents it; since as many live because they are afraid to die, as die because they are afraid to live."
---Charles Caleb Colton

"When you're playing for kids, you're playing for the toughest audience in the world. The grown people look at it just to be entertained, but the kids look at it to believe it!"
---Jack Haley (Tinman, The Wizard of Oz)

"A child does not have to be taught how to be happy or the ways of love. It is fear, hatred, and prejudice that have to be taught. And from the condition of the world we can see that unfortunately there are some very good teachers."
---Javan

"The human spirit can endure sickness; but a broken spirit--who can bear?"
---Proverbs 18: 14

"We meet ourselves time and again in a thousand disguises on the path of life."
---Carl Jung

"Death ends a life, but it does not end a relationship which struggles on in the survivors mind toward some final resolution...which it perhaps never finds."
---I Never Sang for My Father by Robert Anderson

"Bitter are the tears of a child: Sweeten them. Deep are the thoughts of a child: Quiet them. Sharp is the grief of a child: Take it from him. Soft is the heart of a child: Do not harden it."
---Pamela Glenconner

"Although no words of sympathy can ease the loss you bear, still may you find some comfort in the thought that others care."
---Wishing Well© sympathy card

"It's amazing how much even little things, like basic kindness and gestures of caring, can help someone--most especially if they are going through a tough time in life."
---Paige Williams

"Depression may be an exaggerated form of a response to loss that in less extreme form is adaptive. A depressed mood slows us down, makes us think realistically rather than optimistically, makes us turn away from goals that we can no longer hope to achieve, and signals to others that this is a time in life when we need some help."
---Peter Gray

"For every minute you are angry, you lose sixty seconds of happiness."
---Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Courage, sacrifice, determination, commitment, toughness, heart, talent, guts. That's what little girls are made of; the hell with sugar and spice."
---Unknown

"Do not enter the path of the wicked, and do not walk in the way of evildoers. Avoid it; do not go on it; turn away from it and pass on."
---Proverbs 4: 14-15

"To keep the feelings trapped inside is a torturous experience, one that empties your soul."
---Charlotte Levy

"The craziest, most selfish act is to commit suicide. When you kill yourself, you kill others."
---Jenny Joseph

"Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you see the whole world."
---George Bernard Shaw

"If you cry because the sun has gone out of your life, your tears will prevent you from seeing the stars."
---Unknown

"A gossip goes about telling secrets, but one who is trustworthy in spirit keeps a confidence."
---Proverbs 11: 13

"The only way to live fully is with pain and understanding, with truth."
---Charlotte Levy

"Never apologize for showing feelings. When you do so, you apologize for truth."
---Benjamin Disraeli

"Death during adolescence feels unfair. We're young. We're invincible. Death is supposed to come with old age. When death breaks into our lives and steals our innocence, its finality leaves us unnaturally older. There are too many elderly young people."
---Sara Shandler

"He who commits adultery has no sense; he who does it destroys himself. He will get wounds and dishonor, and his disgrace will not be wiped away."
---Proverbs 6: 32-33

"I do swear that I'll always be there. I'd give anything and everything, and I will always care. Through weakness and strength, happiness and sorrow, for better, for worse, I will love you with every beat of my heart."
---Shania Twain, "From This Moment On"

"It took a long time not to judge myself through other people's eyes."
---Unknown

"Growing up sometimes forces us to confront the distance between our childhood hope and the truth."
---Sara Shandler

"Whoever belittles another lacks sense, but an intelligent person remains silent."
---Proverbs 11: 12

"What is the point of running from or burying hurtful feelings when you can deal with them?"
---Joshua Woolen

"All attempts at truth are fictional...all fiction is truthfully imaginary."
---Jamal A. Smith