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When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, “I used everything you gave me.”

—Irma Bombeck

 

Courage is not the absence of fear and pain, but the affirmation of life despite fear and pain.

—Rabbi Earl Grollman

 

If you share my tears, if you take the first merciful step toward me, if you walk bravely into what I am feeling, then we begin to bring down the power of despair.

—Safe passage, by Molly Fumia

 

If there is something great in you, it will not appear on your first call. It will not come to you easily, without any work and effort.

—R. W. Emerson

 

When I hear music, I fear no danger.  I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest.

—Henry David Thoreau

 

Life is a shipwreck, but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats.

—Voltaire

 

I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of kindness, compassion, sacrifice, and endurance.

—William Faulkner