"It would have been sad for me to spend my life just trying to superimpose stuff on people rather than trying to encourage them to look within themselves for what's of value."

"Who we are in the present includes who we were in the past."

"The world is not always a kind place. That's something all children learn for themselves, whether we want them to or not, but it's something they really need our help to understand."

"We Don't always succeed in what we try, certainly not by the world's standards, but I think you'll find it's the willingness to keep trying that matters most."

"You make each day a special day. You know how, by just your being you."

"Often, problems are knots with many strands, and looking at those strands can make a problem seem different."

"You rarely have time for everything you want in this life, so you need to make choices. And hopefully your choices can come from a deep sense of who you are."

"All of us have special ones who have loved us into being. Would you just take, along with me, ten seconds to think of the people who have helped you become who you are....Ten seconds of silence."

"We need to help people to discover the true meaning of love. Love is generally confused with dependence. Those of us who have grown in true love know that we can love only in proportion to our capacity for independence."

"Silence is so powerful, so important. There is so much to be learned from it."

"It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood, a beautiful day for a neighbor. Would you be mine; could you be mine?"

"All I know to do is to light the candle that has been given to me."

"In times of stress, the best thing we can do for each other is to listen with our ears and our "hearts "and to be assured that our questions are just as important as our answers."

"Feeling good about ourselves is essential in our being able to love others."

"The world needs a sense of worth, and it will achieve it only by its people feeling that they are worthwhile."

"The real issue in life is not how many blessings we have, but what we do with our blessings. Some people have many blessings and hoard them. Some have few and give everything away."

"Try your best to make goodness attractive. That's one of the toughest assignments you'll ever be given."

"It may take months or years for a wish to come true, but it's far more likely to happen when you care so much about a wish that you'll do all you can to make it happen."

"My hunch is that if we allow ourselves to give who we really are to the children in our care, we will in some way inspire cartwheels in their hearts."

"The connections we make in the course of a life--maybe that's what heaven is."

"You know, you don't have to look like everybody else to be acceptable and to feel acceptable."

"Solitude is different from loneliness, and it doesn't have to be a lonely kind of thing."

"Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood."

"A love of learning has a lot to do with learning that we are loved."

"It's really easy to fall into the trap of believing that what we do is more important than what we are. Of course, it's the opposite that's true: What we are ultimately determines what we do!"

"I'm fairly convinced that the Kingdom of God is for the broken-hearted. You write of 'powerlessness.' Join the club, we are not in control. God is."

"Transitions are almost always signs of growth, but they can bring feelings of loss. To get somewhere new, we may have to leave somewhere else behind."

"One of the greatest dignities of humankind is that each successive generation is invested in the welfare of each new generation."

"I feel the greatest gift we can give to anybody is the gift of our honest self."

"I feel so strongly that deep and simple is far more essential than shallow and complex."

"I think everybody longs to be loved and longs to know that he or she is lovable and, consequently, the greatest thing that we can do is to help somebody know that they are loved and capable of loving."

"As human beings, our job in life is to help people realize how rare and valuable each one of us really is, that each of us has something that no one else has-or ever will have-something inside that is unique to all time."

"How many times have you noticed that it's the little quiet moments in the midst of life that seem to give the rest extra-special meaning?"

"What matters in this life is more than winning for ourselves. What really matters is helping others win too. Even if it means slowing down and changing our course now and then."

"Our worlds needs more time to wonder and reflect but there is too much fast paced constant distraction."

"Anyone who does anything to help a child in his life is a hero to me."

"Often when you think you're at the end of something, you're at the beginning of something else."

"Imagine what our real neighborhoods would be like if each of us offered . . . just one kind word to another person."

"The greatest gift you ever give is your honest self."

"Knowing that we can be loved exactly as we are gives us all the best opportunity for growing into the healthiest of people."

"There are three ways to ultimate success: "The "first way is to be kind. The second way is to be kind. The third way is to be kind."

"If you could only sense how important you are to the lives of those you meet; how important you can be to the people you may never even dream of. There is something of yourself that you leave at every meeting with another person."

"Forgiveness is a strange thing. It can sometimes be easier to forgive our enemies than our friends. It can be hardest of all to forgive people we love. Like all of life's important coping skills, the ability to forgive and the capacity to let go of resentments most likely take root very early in our lives."

"At the center of the Universe is a loving heart that continues to beat and that wants the best for every person. Anything that we can do to help foster the intellect and spirit and emotional growth of our fellow human beings, that is our job. Those of us who have this particular vision must continue against all odds. Life is for service."

"When we choose to be parents, we accept another human being as part of ourselves, and a large part of our emotional selves will stay with that person as long as we live. From that time on, there will be another person on this earth whose orbit around us will affect us as surely as the moon affects the tides, and affect us in some ways more deeply than anyone else can. Our children are extensions of ourselves."

"When I was very young, most of my childhood heroes wore capes, flew through the air, or picked up buildings with one arm. They were spectacular and got a lot of attention. But as I grew, my heroes changed, so that now I can honestly say that anyone who does anything to help a child is a hero to me."

"How great it is when we come to know that times of disappointment can be followed by joy; that guilt over falling short of our ideals can be replaced by pride in doing all that we can; and that anger can be channeled into creative achievements... and into dreams that we can make come true."

"Confronting our feelings and giving them appropriate expression always takes strength, not weakness. It takes strength to acknowledge our anger, and sometimes more strength yet to curb the aggressive urges anger may bring and to channel them into nonviolent outlets. It takes strength to face our sadness and to grieve and to let our grief and our anger flow in tears when they need to. It takes strength to talk about our feelings and to reach out for help and comfort when we need it."

"It's not the honors and the prizes and the fancy outsides of life which ultimately nourish our souls. It's the knowing that we can be trusted, that we never have to fear the truth, that the bedrock of our very being is good stuff."

"When we love a person, we accept him or her exactly as is: the lovely with the unlovely, the strong with the fearful, the true mixed in with the façade, and of course, the only way we can do it is by accepting ourselves that way."