Letting Someone Else Say It For Me (in other words, a few favorite quotes)

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary.
-- Henry David Thoreau

When we honestly ask which persons in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving much advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a gentle and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not-knowing, not-curing, not-healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness... makes it clear that whatever happens in the external world, being present to each other is what really matters.
--Henri Nouwen

He who knows God knows also very well remoteness from God, and the barrenness in the tormented heart; but he does not know the absence of God: it is we only who are not always there.
-- Martin Buber

To truly laugh, you must be able to take your pain and play with it!
-- Charlie Chaplin