Hope

Hope is faith that won't give up even in the dark.

Duffin

People are good

In spite of everything, I still believe that people are truly good at heart.

Anne Frank

Solitude

One must pass through solitude and dwell in it to receive God's grace. It is there that one empties oneself, that one drives before oneself all that is not God, and that one completely empties this little house of our soul to leave room for God alone. In doing this, do not fear being unfaithful toward creatures. On the contrary, that is the only way for you to serve them effectively.

Charles de Foucald

Sorrow and Joy

Joy and sorrow are inseparable ... together they come, and when one sits alone with you ... remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.

Kahlil Gibran

Silence

If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all.

A chance to start over

Each day is a new beginning. A day to have wounds healed. A day to believe. A day to welcome home parts of ourselves that we have refused to embrace.

From: Ask a Franciscan

The joy of suffering

It is difficult to find a saint or a mystic whose life has not been touched significantly by disability or illness.

From: Good Words

Potential tragedies

There are only two potential tragedies in life: if we go through life and we do not love fully, and if we go through life and do not tell those we love that we love them.

John Powell

A response

Faith always involves a response - not to impress God but to allow God's grace to bear fruit, to effect our decisions radically.

From: Ask a Franciscan

Heart

Have a heart that never hardens,
a temper that never tires,
and a touch that never hurts.

Charles Dickens

Sorrow is worth the price

In times of sorrow, I can be thankful for the fact that I have loved and been loved, thankful, in fact, for the ability to grieve because grief witnesses to love.

From St. Anthony Messenger magazine

The path to wisdom

There is no short cut, no patent tram-road, to wisdom. After all the centuries of invention, the soul's path lies through the thorny wilderness which must be still trodden in solitude, with bleeding feet, with sobs for help, as it was trodden by them of old time.

George Eliot