In choosing to exchange precious principles for worthless impulses, I have far too often bankrupted my soul in order to bankroll my ego.

We are notorious for ‘running’ around self-righteously declaring our rights to this and to that. But if we were to reflect upon the millions who ‘ran’ across bloodied battlefields so that we would have rights to declare, I think we’d do a whole lot less declaring and a whole more appreciating.

Outwardly we might say we believe that liberty is a gift. But our belief that we have a ‘right’ to that ‘gift’ is the thing that’s certain to kill it.

At the very point that I’ve taken something for granted, I have at that same moment taken it to its grave. And if I look around, I realize I’ve cultivated quite a cemetery.

I spend my life constantly calling in ‘imaginary’ debts that aren’t owed to me in order to avoid the ‘real’ debts that I owe to others, and so everybody ends up bankrupt.

If I’m living without being thankful, I’m not living. It may be that I’m not even existing. In fact, it may be that all I’m doing is waiting for death to show up without even realizing it. Therefore, I’d welcome anything that would drive me to being thankful for it is that which would drive me to living.

Peace is achieved when our conscience rests in the fact that we’ve engaged in ‘right’ living, verses believing that living is a ‘right.

Rights’ are ‘privileges,’ and if I am arrogant enough to demand the former without respecting the latter I will lose both.

Most of our losses began the day that we began neglecting what we have now lost.