Seth Berger

“I face Aurae. “It’s been a journey,” I mumble. “I wanted to say thank you. For bringing us here. For giving me The Path to the Vale. I was spiraling. People have saved my life before, but I think you saved my soul.”

“And you saved Cassius’s,” she says. “It wasn’t me that did it. I liked him very much. In another life, I might have loved him. But he didn’t need a woman’s love. He needed a brother’s. The way he talked about you. Well…” Her eyes swim with tears. “Lysander was an obligation. You were an aspiration. He was so afraid on our journey to the Core. So nervous to see you and be rejected. But when he saw you respected him, valued him, he shined like a star. His path led back to you, because you made him feel loved. That is all that matters, Darrow. When he died, he knew he was loved. So when you think of him, when you feel sad, remember that.” She kisses me on the cheek. “If we do not meet again, I will see you in the Vale with Cassius. You know the path.”
― Pierce Brown, Light Bringer

“Flannery O’Connor, who wrote about one of her characters, Hazel Motes, that “he knew that the best way to avoid Jesus was to avoid sin.”2 If you are avoiding sin and living morally so that God will have to bless and save you, then ironically, you may be looking to Jesus as a teacher, model, and helper but you are avoiding him as Savior. You are trusting in your own goodness rather than in Jesus for your standing with God. You are trying to save yourself by following Jesus.”
― Timothy Keller, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism

“Everything depends on what circumstances and what environment man lives in. Environment is everything, and man himself is nothing.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

“How can a man of consciousness have the slightest respect for himself”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground