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This is not to say that joy is a compensation for loss, but that each of them, joy and loss, exists in its own right and must be recognized for what i...more

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There are a thousand reasons to live this life, every one of them sufficient.

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Say that we are a puff of warm breath in a very cold universe. By this kind of reckoning we are either immeasurably insignificant or we are incalculab...more

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Over my life as a teacher, women have been too quiet. I'm quiet myself. I don't think I said three words the whole of graduate school.

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Scatter the names of all those who have ever lived over the surface of the knowable cosmos, and it would remain, for all purposes, as unnamed as it wa...more

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I believe there are visions that come to us only in memory, in retrospect.

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Theologians talk about a prevenient grace that precedes grace itself and allows us to accept it. I think there must also be a prevenient courage that ...more

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His lovely wife tends her zinnias in the mild morning light and his find young man comes fondly mishandling that perpetually lost sheep of a cat, Soap...more

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it's hard to find time to think about Kansas.

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I'll pray that you grow up a brave man in a brave country. I will pray you find a way to be useful.I'll pray, and then I'll sleep.

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It is worth living long enough to outlast whatever sense of grievance you may acquire.

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How I wish you could have known me in my strength.

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That's the strangest thing about this life, about being in the ministry. People change the subject when they see you coming. And then sometimes those ...more

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There is more beauty than our eyes can bear, precious things have been put into our hands and to do nothing to honor them is to do great harm.

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I wish I could leave you certain of the images in my mind, because they are so beautiful that I hate to think they will be extinguished when I am. Wel...more