Pain doesn't tell you when you ought to stop. Pain is the little voice in your head that tries to hold you back because it knows if you continue, you will change. Don't let it stop you from being who you can be. Exhaustion tells you when you ought to stop. You only reach your limit when you can go no further.

"Growing up is all about getting hurt. And then getting over it. You hurt. You recover. You move on. Odds are pretty good you're just going to get hurt again. But each time, you learn something.

Each time, you come out of it a little stronger, and at some point you realize that there are more flavors of pain than coffee. There's the little empty pain of leaving something behind - graduating, taking the next step forward, walking out of something familiar and safe into the unknown. There's the big, whirling pain of life upending all of your plans and expectations. There's the sharp little pains of failure, and the more obscure aches of successes that didn't give you what you thought they would. There are the vicious, stabbing pains of hopes being torn up. The sweet little pains of finding others, giving them your love, and taking joy in their life as they grow and learn. There's the steady pain of empathy that you shrug off so you can stand beside a wounded friend and help them bear their burdens.

And if you're very, very lucky, there are a very few blazing hot little pains you feel when you realize that you are standing in a moment of utter perfection, an instant of triumph, or happiness, or mirth which at the same time cannot possibly last - and yet will remain with you for life.

Everyone is down on pain, because they forget something important about it: Pain is for the living. Only the dead don't feel it.

Pain is a part of life. Sometimes it's a big part, and sometimes it isn't, but either way, it's part of the big puzzle, the deep music, the big game. Pain does two things: It teaches you, tells you that you're alive. Then it passes away and leaves you changed. It leaves you wiser, sometimes. Sometimes it leaves you stronger. Either way, pain leaves it marks, and everything important that will ever happen to you in life is going to involve it in one degree or another." - White Night by Jim Butcher

"What He opens no one can shut, and what He shuts no one can open. I know your deeds. See, I have placed before you an open door that no one can shut. I know that you have little strength, yet you have kept my word and ave not denied my name" - Revelations 3:7-8

"Nothing was fated. Every incident, every event involving people, was the result of actions by themselves or others. Luck was not a random phenomenon. Destiny was predetermined by the destined." - Man on Fire by A.J. Quinnell

"The future, despite what these people said, was not predestined, that Januc truly believed. It was a sheet of parchment awaiting the imprint of the scribe's quill." - The French Executioner by C.C. Humphreys


"What's the first thing frightened people try to do when they've made a huge mistake that no one's caught as yet? They cover it up. They try to pretend it didn't happen. Make it go away. Sometimes repairing a problem and then pretending there never was any damage to begin with is part of the syndrome, but the tendency is always to pretend it didn't exist." - Skyhook by John J. Nance

"The saddest people of all are those who refuse to take risks to pursue their dreams" - Skyhook by John J. Nance

Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.- Colossians 3:13

"An ignorant woman who keeps her mouth shut will be thought wise" - A Crown of Swords by Robert Jordan

"Keeping the first secret always means keeping ten more" - A Crown of Swords by Robert Jordan

"Stop thinking that everything can be learned easily and immediately. All difficult things require willpower, and learning to use this bow is certainly an easy task. It's not muscles that are lacking, it's your faith in yourself." - Spartan by Valerio Massimo Manfredi

"Do not go about spreading slander among your people. Do not do anything that endangers your neighbor's life. I am the Lord. Do not hate your brother in your heart. Rebuke your neighbor frankly so you will not share in his guilt. Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord." - Leviticus 19:16-18

"Do not pay attention to every word people say, or you may hear your servant cursing you - for you know in your heart that many times you yourself have cursed others." - Ecclesiastes 7:21

"My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends." - John 15:12-13

"Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you." - Luke 6:37-38

"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres." - 1 Corinthians 14:4-7

"Wounds to the pride are remembered long after wounds to the flesh." - A Crown of Swords by Robert Jordan

"A clean wound heals quickest and pains shortest" - The Fires of Heaven by Robert Jordan

"The best way to keep a secret is to tell no one" - The Fires of Heaven by Robert Jordan

"A confident person knows their own talents and doesn't need to have them reinforced by being assured that they are there" - The Thief Of Time by John Boyne

"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. it is the Lord Christ that you are serving." - Colossians 3:23-24

"As long as you think (the individual could make much difference), you are the enemy. The individual is the only one who can make a difference." - Booked To Die by John Dunning

"You can get straight As but still flunk life." - Walker Percy, Psychiatrist/Novelist

"Courage is not the absence of fear but the recognition that something else is more important than fear" - Princess Diaries

May I deal with honour.
May I act with courage.
May I achieve with humility.
- Straight by Dick Francis

"A man could be judged only by his deeds. Nothing else mattered. There were influences brought to bear, from the past and the present, but those deeds were ultimately his choice, his responsibility." - Crime Zero by Michael Cordy

"The sin is not in having the longings but in demanding that our longings be met here and now. Not until we are united with the Lord Jesus in heaven will all our longings be fulfilled and all the empty spaces of our hearts be filled." - Singled out for Him by Nancy Leigh DeMoss

"To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to gain, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to throw away; a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace." - Ecclesiastes 3:1-10

"For it is by grace you have been saved through faith - and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God - not by words, so that no one can boast" - Ephesians 2:8-9

"The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else." - Acts 17:24-25

"Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows." - James 1:17

"Live in such a way that those who know you but don't know God will come to know God because they know you." - Anonymous

"For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart." - Jeremiah 29:11-13

"Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus" - 1 Thessalonians 5:18

"Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent." - John 17:3

“What doesn’t destroy me makes me stronger” – Martin Luther King, Jr. in Where Is God When It Hurts by Philip Yancey

“We who stand alongside, observing suffering people, expect to find anger and bitterness. We wait for them to turn on God and lash out against him for the inequities of life. Remarkably, they often find instead a solace in him that puts us to shame. It is no accident that some of the most inspiring stories of faith come from those often considered ‘loser’ by the rest of the world” - Where Is God When It Hurts? by Philip Yancey

“Christianity has always insisted that the cross we bear precedes the crown we wear. To be a Christian one must take up his cross, with all its difficulties and agonizing and tension-packed content, and carry it until that very cross leaves it marks upon us and redeems us to that more excellent way which comes only through suffering.” – Martin Luther King, Jr. in Where Is God Where It Hurts by Philip Yancey

“The one legitimate complaint you can make against pain is that it cannot be switched off. It can rage out of control, as with a terminal cancer patient, even though its warning has been heard and there is no more that can be done to treat the cause of pain. But as a physician I’m sure that less than one percent of pain is in this category that we might call out of control. Ninety-nine per cent of all the pains that people suffer are short-term pains: correctable situations that call for medication, rest, or a change in a person’s lifestyle” – Dr Brand in Where Is God When It Hurts? by Philip Yancey

“Just realize, I am 69 and have never seen a person die. I have never even been in the same house while a person died. How about birth? An obstetrician invited me to see my first birth only last year. Just think, these are the greatest events of life and they have been taken out of our experience. We somehow hope to live full emotional lives when we have carefully expunged the sources of the deepest human emotions. When you have no experience of pain, it is rather hard to experience joy." - Nobel Prize winner George Wald in Where Is God When It Hurts? by Philip Yancey

“When I am old, I hope I do not spend my days between sterile sheets, hooked up to a respirator in a germ-free environment, protected from the hazards of the world outside. I hope I’m on a tennis court, straining my heart with a septuagenarian overhead smash. Or perhaps on a final hike, huffing and puffing along a trial to Lower Yosemite falls for one more feel of the spray against my wrinkled cheek. In short, I hope I do not so insulate myself from pain that I no longer feel pleasure.” - Where Is God When It Hurts? by Philip Yancey

“Pain is a part of the seamless fabric of sensations, and often a necessary prelude to pleasure and fulfillment. The key to happiness lies not so much in avoiding pain at all costs as in understanding its role as a protective warning system and harnessing it to work on your behalf, not against you.” - Where Is God When It Hurts? by Philip Yancey

“When something bad happens – a disagreement with my wife, a painful misunderstanding with a friend, an ache of guilt over some responsibility I have let slide – I try to view that occurrence as I would view a physical pain. I accept it as a signal alerting me to attend to a matter that needs change. I strive to be grateful, not for the pain itself, but for the opportunity to respond, to form good out of what looks bad.” - Where Is God When It Hurts? by Philip Yancey

“If I spend my life searching for happiness through drugs, comfort, and luxury, it will elude me. Happiness recedes from those who pursue her. Happiness wil come upon me unexpectedly as a by-product, a surprising bonus for something I have invested myself in. and, most likely, that investment will include pain. It is hard to imagine pleasure without it.” - Where Is God When It Hurts? by Philip Yancey

“I know not who put me into the world, nor what the world is, nor what I myself am. I am in terrible ignorance of everything….all I know is that I must soon die, but what I know least is this very death which I cannot escape. As I know not whence I come, so I know not whither I go. I know only that, in leaving this world, I fall forever either into annihilation or into the hands of an angry God, without knowing to which of these two states I shall be forever assigned. Such is my state, full of weakness and uncertainty. And from all this I conclude that I ought to spend all the days of my life without caring to inquire into what must happen to me. Perhaps I might find some solution to my doubts, but I will not take the trouble, nor take a step to seek it.” – French mathematician Blaise Pascal in Where Is God When Is Hurts by Philip Yancey

“The important matter was this, that it entirely reversed the reason for optimism. And the instant the reversal was made it felt like the abrupt ease when a bone is put back in the socket. I had often called myself an optimist, to avoid the too evident blasphemy of pessimism. But all the optimism of the age has been false and disheartening for this reason, that is had always been trying to prove that we fit in to the world. The Christian optimism is based on the fact that we do not fit in to the world.” – Chesterton in Where Is God WHen It Hurts? by Philip Yancey

“Faith, like Job’s cannot be shaken because it is the result of having been shaken.” – Rabbi Abraham Heschel in Where Is God When It Hurts by Philip Yancey

“We also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because god has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.” – Romans 5:3-5 in Where Is God When It Hurts by Philip Yancey

"Change, inevitably, means loss. Which means all people suffer loss in big and small ways. Yet people deal with loss differently, too, sometimes with a shrug--and forgetfulness--sometimes with a constant yearning and a continual search for replacement. The way we deal with loss--change--is perhaps one of the truly defining elements of our personalities. Too often the modern world pretends it does not, should not happen. And maybe that's the greatest loss of all."- The Color of Absence, the story of You're Not a Winner unless Your Picture's In The Paper by Avi

"When you fall in love, all the world seems to smile at you, but that's not love. Loving is an active verb, a thing you do, not just some feeling that overwhelms you today and fades tomorrow. Look at how he treated you, not what he said. When you love someone, you do for that love what you would do for yourself, or for God; you care for it, nurture it, do right by it, follow its dictates, no matter what it costs you. Love is rewarded for its own sake, with a deeper satisfaction than the flesh can know."- Bone Hunter by Sarah Andrews

"To be trusted is a greater compliment than to be loved"- George Mcdonald

"God can't fix a broken heart if you don't give him all the pieces"- Stories From a Teen's Heart by Alice Gray

"You'll all find, if you haven't found out already, that a time comes in every human human friendship when you must go down into the depths of yourself, and lay bare what is there to your friend, and wait in fear for his answer. A few moments you may do it; and it may be that you never do it but once. But done it must be, if the friendship is to be worth the name. You must find what is there, at the very root and bottom of one another's hearts; and if you are at one there, nothing on earth can, or at least ought to, sunder you."- Tom Brown's Schooldays by Thomas Hughes

"What is truly great is without beginning. like the universe. it confronts us suddenly as if it has always been there or as if it had dropped out of the sky"- Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak

"If anyone would come after me, he must first deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me..the word of the lord." - Luke 9:23

"Music is well said to be the speech of angels; in fact, nothing among the utterances allowed to man is felt to be so divine. It brings us near to the infinite."-Thomas Carlyle

"The human spirit knows, deep down, that all lives intersect. That death doesn't just take someone, it misses someone else, and in the small distance between being taken and being missed, lives are changed."- The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom

"Strangers are just family you've yet to come to know."- The Five People You Meet In Heaven by Mitch Albom

"Sacrifice is a part of life. It's supposed to be. It's not something to regret. It's something to aspire to."- The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom

"Sometimes when you sacrifice something precious, you've not really losing it. You're just passing it on to someone else."- The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom

"Holding anger is a poison. It eats you from inside. We think that hating is a weapon that attacks the person who harmed us. But hatred is a curved blade. And the harm we do, we do to ourselves."- The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom

"No one is born with anger. And when we die, the soul is freed of it."- The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom

"Love is like rain, can nourish from above, drenching couples in a soaking joy. But sometimes, under the angry heat of life, love dries on the surface and must nourish from below, tending to its roots, keeping itself alive."- The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom

"Curiosity killed the cat, and satisfaction brought it back."- Trickster's Choice by Tamora Pierce

"The hardest thing to remember is to keep your mouth closed. You'll be tempted to say what you know, or mention that you've met folk you've no right to meet. Keep your counsel, hold your tongue. Good listeners live longer. And keep in mind it's harder to keep your mouth buttoned on the things you know more about than those you're with."- Trickster's Choice by Tamora Pierce

"It's those who are overlooked by the folk around them you want to watch. They see more than they tell, and they think more than they talk. You want them for your friend. You don't want them asking questions about you."- Trickster's Choice by Tamora Pierce

"Let no one rule your mind or body. Take special care that your thoughts remain unfettered. One may be a free man and yet be bound tighter than a slave. Give men your ear, but not your heart. Show respect for those in power, but don't follow them blindly. Judge with logic and reason, but comment not."- Eragon by Christopher Paolini

"The worth is in the act. Your worth halts when you surrender the will to change and rexperience life. But options are before you; choose one and dedicate yourself to it. The deeds will give you new hope and purpose."- Eragon by Christopher Paolini

"The only true guide is your heart. Nothing less than its supreme desire can help you."- Eragon by Christopher Paolini

"Ignore all the schemes and trust in the nature of each person."- Eragon by Christopher Paolini

"The real courage is in living and suffering for what you believe."- Eragon by Christopher Paolini

"Knowing is independent of being."- Eragon by Christopher Paolini

"The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory." - John 1:14

other men's crosses are not my crosses

"how do you pick up the threads of an old life? how do you go on when in your heart you begin to understand that there's no turning back. there are some things that time cannot mend some hurts that have gone too deep and have taken hold" - Movie Lord Of The Rings

"the hardest lesson is learnt by getting hurt" - Anime Flame of Recca

He who angers you controls you.

The only constant in life is change.

I find the paradox that if we love until it hurts, then there is no hurt, but only more love

As memory may be a paradise from which we cannot be driven, it may also be a hell from which we cannot escape.- John L S

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways, acknowledge Him and He shall direct your paths."- Proverbs 3: 5,6

"In the beginning of life, when we are infants, we need others to survive, right? And at the end of lif