Jackie Hall > Jackie's Quotes

“Chocolate is God's apology for brocolli”
― Richard Paul Evans, The Sunflower

“The most important story we'll ever write in life is our own—not with ink, but with our daily choices.”
― Richard Paul Evans

“Books are the most tolerant of friends.”
― Richard Paul Evans, The Gift

“I am not a believer in love at first sight. For love, in its truest form, is not the thing
of starry-eyed or star-crossed lovers, it is far more organic, requiring nurturing and time
to fully bloom, and, as such, seen best not in its callow youth but in its wrinkled maturity.
Like all living things, love, too, struggles against hardship, and in the process sheds
its fatuous skin to expose one composed of more than just a storm of emotion–one of loyalty
and divine friendship. Agape. And though it may be temporarily blinded by adversity,
it never gives in or up, holding tight to lofty ideals that transcend this earth and
time–while its counterfeit simply concludes it was mistaken and quickly runs off to
find the next real thing.”
― Richard Paul Evans, The Letter

“Feelings can be like wild animals-we underrate how fierce they are until we've opened their cage”
― Richard Paul Evans, The Sunflower

“We are chained to that which we do not forgive”
― Richard Paul Evans, The Locket

“Life's greatest philosophy is not handed down in stoic texts and dusty tomes, but lived, in each breath and act of human compassion. For love has always demanded sacrifice, and no greater love is there than that for which our lives are traded. And in this great cause of spiritual evolution we are all called to be martyrs, to die each of us, in the quest of a higher realm and loftier ideals, that we may know God. And what if there is nothing else? What if all life ends in the silent void of death? Then is it all in vain? I think not, for love, for the sake of love, will always be enough. And if our lives are but a single flash in the dark hollow of eternity, then if, but for the briefest of moments, we shine - then how brilliantly our light has burned. And as starlight knows no boundary of space or time, so too, our illumination will shine forth throughout all eternity, for darkness has no power to quell such light. And this is a lesson we must all learn and take to heart - that all light is eternal and all love is light. And it must forever be so.”
― Richard Paul Evans, The Letter

“Love is never convenient-and rarely painless”
― Richard Paul Evans, The Sunflower

“I have learned a great truth of life. We do not succeed in spite of our challenges and
difficulties, but rather, precisely because of them.”
― Richard Paul Evans, The Looking Glass

“That which we expect of life is indeed all that it ever can be.”
― Richard Paul Evans, The Locket

“...even the most horribl e of nightmares is laced with the promise of dawn.”
― Richard Paul Evans

“Sunsets, like childhood, are viewed with wonder not just because they are beautiful but because they are fleeting.”
― Richard Paul Evans, The Gift

“We carry around in our heads these pictures of what our lives are supposed to look like, painted by the brush of out intentions. It's the great, deep secret of humanity that in the end none of our lives look the way we thought they would. As much as we wish to believe otherwise, most of life is a reaction to circumstances.”
― Richard Paul Evans, The Sunflower

“Nothing heals the soul like chocolate ... It's God's apology for broccoli.”
― Richard Paul Evans

“I have come to believe that we do not walk alone in this life. There are others, fellow sojourners, whose journeys are interwoven with ours in seemingly random patterns, yet, in the end, have been carefully placed to reveal a remarkable tapestry. I believe God is the weaver at that loom.”
― Richard Paul Evans

“Absence is to love what wind is to fire; it extinguishes the small, it inflames the great.”
― Roger de Bussy-Rabutin

“Could it be that to truly love a thing is not to desire it, but to desire happiness for it?”
― Richard Paul Evans, The Letter

“We spend our life building higher fences and stronger locks, when the gravest dangers are already inside”
― Richard Paul Evans, The Sunflower

“We all arrive on Earth with a round-trip ticket.”
― Richard Paul Evans, The Gift

“such fickle days of love when pain and ecstasy share the same hour”
― Richard Paul Evans, The Sunflower

“You want to know what hell is? What brimstone and burining really is?"
Yes"
Hell is the perfect recollection of every evil thing you've done in your life, every thoughtless word, every cruel, evil thought or action. It's knowing that you could have helped your brother and didn't. Hell is clarity, Bob. It's nothing more than clarity." He leaned forward as if to confide in me, his gaze intense. "Do you want to know what heaven is?"
I was locked into his gaze. "Yes."
His voice was barely above a whisper, "It's the same thing.”
― Richard Paul Evans, A Perfect Day

“The smells of Christmas are the smells of childhood”
― Richard Paul Evans, The Christmas Box

“Denial, perhaps, is a necessary human mechanism to cope with the heartaches of life. ”
― Richard Paul Evans, The Christmas Box

“It is often during the worst of times that we see the best of humanity–awakening
within the most ordinary of us that which is most sublime. I do not believe that it is circumstance
that produces such greatness any more than it is the canvas that makes the
artist. Adversity merely presents the surface on which we render our souls’ most exacting
likeness. It is in the darkest skies that stars are best seen.”
― Richard Paul Evans, The Letter

“I've come to know that what we want in life is the greatest indication of who we really are.”
― Richard Paul Evans, The Gift

“From our first babblings to our last word,
we make but one statement, and that is our life.

”
― Richard Paul Evans, The Letter

“Usually life’s greatest gifts come wrapped in adversity.”
― Richard Paul Evans, Finding Noel

“So often the pain of our life is no more than a reminder to take our hand off the stove.”
― Richard Paul Evans, The Carousel

“Dance. Dance for the joy and breath of childhood. Dance for all children, including that child who is still somewhere entombed beneath the responsibility and skepticism of adulthood. Embrace the moment before it escapes from our grasp. For the only promise of childhood, of any childhood, is that it will someday end. And in the end, we must ask ourselves what we have given our children to take its place. And is it enough?”
― Richard Paul Evans, The Christmas Box Miracle: My Spiritual Journey of Destiny, Healing and Hope

“sometimes it's the fight that makes a thing worth having”
― Richard Paul Evans, Finding Noel