Everything that happens in life is there to aid our spiritual growth.

Often the most loving thing we can do when a friend is in pain is to share the pain-to be there even when we have nothing to offer except our presence and even when being there is painful to ourselves.

There is no act of love that is not an act of work or courage. No exceptions.

Emotional sickness is avoiding reality at any cost. Emotional health is facing reality at any cost.

It is not easy for us to change. But it is possible and it is our glory as human beings

When we teach ourselves and our children discipline, we are teaching them and ourselves how to suffer and also how to grow.

I gave examples from my clinical practice of how love was not wholly a thought or feeling. I told of how that very evening there would be some man sitting at a bar in the local village, crying into his beer and sputtering to the bartender how much he loved his wife and children while at the same time he was wasting his family's money and depriving them of his attention. We recounted how this man was thinking love and feeling love--were they not real tears in his eyes?--but he was not in truth behaving with love.