Blessings Amidst Struggles Quotes & Sayings

Most Americans do not own passports. They're not a naturally curious people. If you were to lock an American for sixty years in an empty underground bunker which contained nothing but a woolly tea cosy, the American would not even be curious enough to be tempted to see if the tea cosy would make a serviceable hat. They're far more likely to arrest the tea cosy, intern it illegally in Guantanamo Bay, and then repeatedly anally rape it until such time that it admits that it was actually a member of an al-Qaeda training cell. Even though at the time of the alleged offence the tea cosy was actually working as a shop assistant in a branch of Currys in Wolverhampton. — Stewart Lee

Love is the greatest act of faith. — Amber Kizer

If intelligence were a television set, it would be an early black-and-white model with poor reception, so that much of the picture was gray and the figures on the screen were snowy and indistinct. You could fiddle wiht the knobs all you wanted, but unless you were careful, what you would see often depended more on what you expacted or hoped to see than on what was really there. — Madeleine K. Albright

If you have the guts to follow the risk ... if one follows what I call one's "bliss" - the thing that really gets you deep in the gut and that you feel is your life - doors will open up ... if you follow your bliss, you'll have your bliss, whether you have money or not. — Joseph Campbell

Your talent sets you apart: if you were a toad or a tarantula, even then, people would respect you, for to talent all things are forgiven. — Anton Chekhov

We want to hear, we long to hear, "I screwed up. I will do my best to ensure that it will not happen again." Most of us are not impressed when a leader offers the form of Kennedy's admission without its essence, as in Ronald Reagan's response to the Iran-Contra scandal, which may be summarized as "I didn't do anything wrong myself, but it happened on my watch, so, well, I guess I'll take responsibility."3 That doesn't cut it. — Carol Tavris

The process of discovery (or innovation, or technological progress) itself depends on antifragile tinkering, aggressive risk bearing rather than formal education. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Put Your Spouse First: When the children are grown and move out of the home, who will be left but your spouse? Nurture that relationship first and foremost. It is your role, together, to be the best parents you can be and what better way to do that than by parenting together and teaching your children (by what you say and do) that the bond of marriage is stronger than any other earthly commitment — Miriam

No harm," he said as he danced on, cutting the air. Only now, the snowflakes began to bleed as he cut them. Battle of white and scarlet...
"Oto-san, what can I do?" I wept in the dream, my tears freezing to my cheeks.
"Dance," he said, his face still and calm, his blade whistling through the air. Blood flew from the tip of the sword, painting characters of death and disaster across the white ground.
Dancing. — David Kudler

Where there are no changes there is no life. A plant has to change to bloom. — Debasish Mridha

At first it was a bit daunting, but once I started to do it, the more I got into it, the more I started enjoying it and being able to say things lyrically that I would normally have to say musically. — Jimmy Chamberlin

The Marshall Plan was the ultimate weapon deployed on this economic front. After the war, the German economy was in crisis, threatening to bring down the rest of Western Europe. Meanwhile, so many Germans were drawn to socialism that the U.S. government opted to split Germany into two parts rather than risk losing it all, either to collapse or to the left. In West Germany, the U.S. government used the Marshall Plan to build a capitalist system that was not meant to create fast and easy new markets for Ford and Sears but, rather, to be so successful on its own terms that Europe's market economy would thrive and socialism would be drained of its appeal. — Naomi Klein