When we want to be something other than the thing that God wants us to be, we must be wanting what, in fact, will not make us happy...whether we like it or not, God intends to give us what we need, not what we now think we want. Once more, we are embarrassed by the intolerable compliment, by too much love, not too little.

There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations--these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat.

And so take away his work, which was his life [. . .] and all his glory and his great deeds? Make a child and a dotard of him? Keep him to myself at that cost? Make him so mine that he was no longer his?

And all the time - such is the tragic comedy of our situation - we continue to clamor for those very qualities we are rendering impossible. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.

Remember He is the artist and you are the picture. You can’t see it, you can't see your true self. So quietly submit to be painted.

When we lose one blessing, another is often most unexpectedly given in its place.

Nothing is wonderful except in the abnormal, and nothing is abnormal until we have grasped the norm.