Jennifercruz > Jennifercruz's Quotes

“Turn to the light. Don't fear the shadow it creates.”
― Ted Dekker

“The world’s bumper sticker reads: Life sucks, and then you die. Perhaps Christian bumper stickers should read: Life sucks, but then you find hope and you can’t wait to die.”
― Ted Dekker, The Slumber of Christianity: Awakening a Passion for Heaven on Earth

“Dive deep. Drown willingly”
― Ted Dekker, White: The Great Pursuit

“The four rules of writing... 1. Write to discover. 2. There is no greater discovery than love. 3. All love comes from the Creator. 4. Write what you will.”
― Ted Dekker, Showdown

“The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness cannot understand it”
― Ted Dekker, House

“. . . your history is no less important to your survival than your ability to breathe. In the end, you can only determine whether to saturate your memories with pain or with perspective. Forgetting is not an option. I tell you the truth now: Pain was not God's plan for this life. It is a reality, but it is not a part of the plan.”
― Ted Dekker

“We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison

“The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves to its children.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“Jesus himself did not try to convert the two thieves on the cross; he waited until one of them turned to him.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison

“Judging others makes us blind, whereas love is illuminating. By judging others we blind ourselves to our own evil and to the grace which others are just as entitled to as we are.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship

“There is meaning in every journey that is unknown to the traveler.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“Discipleship is not an offer that man makes to Christ.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship

“To understand reality is not the same as to know about outward events. It is to perceive the essential nature of things. The best-informed man is not necessarily the wisest. Indeed there is a danger that precisely in the multiplicity of his knowledge he will lose sight of what is essential. But on the other hand, knowledge of an apparently trivial detail quite often makes it possible to see into the depths of things. And so the wise man will seek to acquire the best possible knowledge about events, but always without becoming dependent upon this knowledge. To recognize the significant in the factual is wisdom.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“In a word, live together in the forgiveness of your sins, for without it no human fellowship, least of all a marriage, can survive. Don’t insist on your rights, don’t blame each other, don’t judge or condemn each other, don’t find fault with each other, but accept each other as you are, and forgive each other every day from the bottom of your hearts…”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison

“time is the most valuable thing that we have, because it is the most irrevocable.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison

“Many people lose the small joys in the hope for the big happiness.”
― Pearl S. Buck

“That evening, as I watched the sunset’s pinwheels of apricot and mauve slowly explode into red ribbons, I thought: The sensory misers will inherit the earth, but first they will make it not worth living on. When you consider something like death, after which (there being no news flash to the contrary) we may well go out like a candle flame, then it probably doesn’t matter if we try too hard, are awkward sometimes, care for one another too deeply, are excessively curious about nature, are too open to experience, enjoy a nonstop expense of the senses in an effort to know life intimately and lovingly. It probably doesn’t matter if, while trying to be modest and eager watchers of life’s many spectacles, we sometimes look clumsy or get dirty or ask stupid questions or reveal our ignorance or say the wrong thing or light up with wonder like the children we all are. It probably doesn’t matter if a passerby sees us dipping a finger into the moist pouches of dozens of lady’s slippers to find out what bugs tend to fall into them, and thinks us a bit eccentric. Or a neighbor, fetching her mail, sees us standing in the cold with our own letters in one hand and a seismically red autumn leaf in the other its color hitting our sense like a blow from a stun gun, as we stand with a huge grin, too paralyzed by the intricately veined gaudiness of the leaf to move.”
― Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses

“Love seems to be as Essential as Sunlight”
― Diane Ackerman

“I'm an Earth ecstatic, and my creed is simple: All life is sacred, life loves life, and we are capable of improving our behavior toward one another. As basic as that is, for me it's also tonic and deeply spiritual, glorifying the smallest life-form and embracing the most distant stars.”
― Diane Ackerman, An Alchemy of Mind: The Marvel and Mystery of the Brain

“Metaphor isn't just decorative language. If it were, it wouldn't scare us so much. . . . Colorful language threatens some people, who associate it, I think, with a kind of eroticism (playing with language in public = playing with yourself), and with extra expense (having to sense or feel more). I don't share that opinion. Why reduce life to a monotone? Is that truer to the experience of being alive? I don't think so. It robs us of life's many textures. Language provides an abundance of words to keep us company on our travels. But we're losing words at a reckless pace, the national vocabulary is shrinking. Most Americans use only several hundred words or so. Frugality has its place, but not in the larder of language. We rely on words to help us detail how we feel, what we once felt, what we can feel. When the blood drains out of language, one's experience of life weakens and grows pale. It's not simply a dumbing down, but a numbing.”
― Diane Ackerman, An Alchemy of Mind: The Marvel and Mystery of the Brain

“And yet, words are the passkeys to our souls. Without them, we can't really share the enormity of our lives.”
― Diane Ackerman, One Hundred Names for Love: A Stroke, a Marriage, and the Language of Healing

“Fear is danger to your body, but disgust is danger to your soul.”
― Diane Ackerman, A Slender Thread

“...he'd know about the role of mirror neurons in the brain, special cells in the premotor cortex that fire right before a person reaches for a rock, steps forward, turns away, begins to smile.Amazingly, the same neurons fire whether we do something or watch someone else do the same thing, and both summon similar feelings. Learning form our own mishaps isn't as safe as learning from someone else's, which helps us decipher the world of intentions, making our social whirl possible. The brain evolved clever ways to spy or eavesdrop on risk, to fathom another's joy or pain quickly, as detailed sensations, without resorting to words. We feel what we see, we experience others as self.”
― Diane Ackerman, The Zookeeper's Wife

“Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim.”
― Nora Ephron

“Reading is everything. Reading makes me feel like I've accomplished something, learned something, become a better person. Reading makes me smarter. Reading gives me something to talk about later on. Reading is the unbelievably healthy way my attention deficit disorder medicates itself. Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape; it's a way to make contact with reality after a day of making things up, and it's a way of making contact with someone else's imagination after a day that's all too real. Reading is grist. Reading is bliss.”
― Nora Ephron, I Feel Bad About My Neck and Other Thoughts on Being a Woman

“I love that you get cold when it's 71 degrees out. I love that it takes you an hour and a half to order a sandwich. I love that you get a little crinkle above your nose when you're looking at me like I'm nuts. I love that after I spend the day with you, I can still smell your perfume on my clothes. And I love that you are the last person I want to talk to before I go to sleep at night. And it's not because I'm lonely, and it's not because it's New Year's Eve. I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.”
― Nora Ephron, When Harry Met Sally

“Don't you love New York in the fall? It makes me want to buy school supplies. I would send you a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils if I knew your name and address.”
― Nora Ephron

“When I buy a new book, I always read the last page first, that way in case I die before I finish, I know how it ends. That, my friend, is a dark side.”
― Nora Ephron, When Harry Met Sally

“And then the dreams break into a million tiny pieces. The dream dies. Which leaves you with a choice: you can settle for reality, or you can go off, like a fool, and dream another dream.”
― Nora Ephron, Heartburn

“When your children are teenagers, it's important to have a dog so that someone in the house is happy to see you.”
― Nora Ephron, I Feel Bad About My Neck and Other Thoughts on Being a Woman