Lise

“Why wait for the real thing when I can settle for a fake one that looks similar? This is also how many of our minds work when it comes to love and relationships, even unknowingly. Why do we so often settle for a knockoff version of real love? Is it because it’s easier? Because it doesn’t cost as much? Because we can obtain it faster? We settle for a less-than version of what we could have because maybe we are tired of being alone, we are tired of waiting, or we fear we might not find anything better. But you don’t need more of what you’ve been settling for; you need something that will last.”
― Madison Prewett Troutt, The Love Everybody Wants: What You're Looking For Is Already Yours

“BUT THOUGH YOU THINK you’ll leave the past in the past, you never do. It drags along behind you, tin cans tied to rope around your ankles, clanking and clattering at the most inopportune moments.”
― Rachel Kapelke-Dale, The Fortune Seller

“The Greek word for “stir up” is used most often for waking someone from sleep. That’s the way it’s used, for example, in Mark 4:39: “[Jesus] awoke and rebuked the wind.” Peter assumes that his Christian readers need to be wakened. I know I continually need awakening. Especially when Christmas approaches. I am prone to be dull, spiritually drowsy, halfhearted, lukewarm. That is the way human beings are, including Christians, even about great things. Peter knows it and is writing to “awaken” or to “stir up” his readers so that they don’t just know but also feel the wonder of the truth.”
― John Piper, The Dawning of Indestructible Joy: Daily Readings for Advent

“In the life of everyone there is a limited number of unhappy experiences which are not written upon the memory, but stamped there with a die; and in long years after, they can be called up in detail, and every emotion that was stirred by them can be lived through anew; these are the tragedies of life.”
― James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man