Sherlene Shartle

“I like what you’ve done to the place,’ he says, eyeing the ripped fabric and scorched stuffing hanging from the ceiling and walls.”
― Trevor Alan Foris, The Octunnumi Fosbit Files Prologue

“But now I know that I can help;
I can make a difference, too.
I’ll stand with you; I’ll shout with you,
And the rest can’t say, “I never knew.”
― Dave Pelzer, A Child Called "It"

“Emotional detachment from the plight of others — easily achieved by simply looking the other way — always favoured the perpetrators rather than the victims who were reduced to being inconsequential nonentities; were persecuted and denied legal and human rights; were starving, sick, and dying; were victims of Apartheid policies with racial segregations inclusive of political and economic discrimination; were harassed, internally displaced, or forcibly deported; were imprisoned, tortured, or simply “disappeared”; were enslaved, exploited, or trafficked; and were ultimately the victims of mindless massacres that defied the comprehension of anyone even remotely humane.”
― William Hanna, THE GRIM REAPER

“I have observed that when any of us embarks on the pursuit of happiness for ourselves, it eludes us. Often I've asked myself why. It must be because happiness comes to us only as a dividend. When we become absorbed in something demanding and worthwhile above and beyond ourselves, happiness seems to be there as a by-product of the self-giving. That should not be a startling truth, yet I'm surprised by how few people understand and accept it. Have we made a god of happiness?..."You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide." John 15:16 RSV....Somehow that passage was like light penetrating their darkness: much of their unhappiness, they realized, was caused by self-centeredness.”
― Catherine Marshall, Something More : In Search of a Deeper Faith