“I wonder if pain comes from surrendering or resisting?”

“Bravery is the ability to endure, even unto death, all types of terrible, terrifying and painful situations and we live in a time when people do all that they can to avoid hardship and pain, never ...”

“The empath helps others by absorbing some of their pain, but who helps the empath?”

“Affliction equips the suffering to empathize with others in anguish and not only does it strengthen them, it enables them to be consoling comforters in a world full of hurt.”

“How much pain a person detains may be proportionate to the pain they spare others when they'd rather hurt than hurt another.”

“There is the purity of love, harmonious in every way, but not meant for a lifetime, and then there is the steady love of commitment - no less real but completely different. She had both.”

“Ma was heavy, but not fat; thick with child-bearing and work. She wore a loose Mother Hubbard of gray cloth in which there had once been colored flowers, but the color was washed out now, so that t...”

“As Romeo and Juliet found to their cost, marriage is never just about two people falling in love, it is about families.”

“Families share relationships based not only blood, but also the unique affiliation of a terribly long cord when measured in comparison with any other undertaking in a persons life, from cradle to t...”

“work at our responsibility as parents as if everything in life counted on it, because in fact everything in life does count on it.”

“Happiness [is] only real when shared”

“That's what people do who love you. They put their arms around you and love you when you're not so lovable.”

“A coldly rationalist individualist can deny that he has any obligation to make sacrifices for the future.”