I sometimes wonder if life isn’t a giant mirror that reflects back at me everything I hold up to it.

Teach me to sing and recite,To whistle and jingle and strum.Teach me to color and paint,To sculpt and weave and create.Teach me to sway and dance,To tap and leap and twirl.Teach me to laugh and giggle,To tickle and play and pretend.Teach me that life is beautiful.

There are in this world ample reasons to be sad and disheartened, discouraged and fearful. But there are as many reasons not to be.

People will insist on building high and wide barriers directly in your path, often with the intent of closing you in. If you treat these obstacles like fencing walls, they will prove mightily so. I choose to see them as grand towers meant to be scaled and conquered, providing an added victory as well as a great view of the journey ahead.

Closing your eyes won't make the awfulness go away. It may be that nothing will. But dwelling on it, dreading the evil, playing out the misery in your head - doesn't this feed the monster? You can't close your eyes to life, but you can choose where your gaze lingers.

One of the most troubling facts I have had to accept is that people are not all angel or all devil. They are both good and awful to varying degrees and in varying circumstances. On any given day, dependent upon the situation, you will be confronted by either the devil of a person or the angel of the same person or a curious mix of both. This means you can, and most likely will, love and hate the same individual alternately throughout your life. This truth I find painfully heartrending.

We live that we might have experience; that through it we might gain wisdom, compassion, faith, and inner strength.

No one can convince a man of his erring ways as persuasively as experience.

Life's greatest lessons were not shown to me, read to me, illustrated or explained to me; they happened to me.