Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.

There are two things parents should give their children: roots and wings. Roots to give them bearing and a sense of belonging, but also wings to help free them from constraints and prejudices and give them other ways to travel (or rather, to fly).

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

One may choose to call that god even if one does not know the precise nature of the first cause.

Christopher Hitchens

The first step towards getting somewhere is to decide that you are not going to stay where you are.

John Pierpont Morgan

You wouldn't have won if we'd beaten you.

Yogi Berra

Nowadays, a penny saved is ridiculous!

Shelby Friedman

My life so common it disappears and sometimes even music cannot substitute for tears.

Paul Simon

Grief for a dead Wife, and a troublesome Guest, Continues to the threshold, and there is at rest; But I mean such wives as are none of the best

Benjamin Franklin

Education commences at the mother's knee, and every word spoken within hearsay of little children tends toward the formation of character.

Hosea Ballou

Just as the Russians and the Soviets didn't manage to wipe out languages in Lithuania, neither have they managed to wipe out religion to the extent that we had feared.

Jeane Kirkpatrick

My own early crusade for same-sex marriage, for example, is now mainstream gay politics. It wasn't when I started.

Andrew Sullivan

I really enjoy being single again. I spent a lot of time in a relationship and the nearer we came to the end, the more difficult it got. You don't see things clearly as long as you're still involved.

Dido Armstrong

Mediocrity is self-inflicted and genius is self-bestowed.

Walter Russell