Anissa Smith

“It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

“Her eyes were liquid with compassion--deep, deep, as the earth is deep. Her brow knew his suffering and knew, besides that, worlds more. But the goodness was that, though this wide brow knew so much, yet it bent over his pain alone and creased with it. Chaunticleeer watched his own desolation appear in the brown eyes of the cow, then sink so deeply into them that she shuddered. Her eyes pooled as she looked at him. The tears rose and spilled over. And then she was weeping even as he had wept a few minutes ago--except without the anger. Strangely, Chaunticleer felt an urge to comfort her; but at this moment he was no Lord, and the initiative was not in him. A simple creature only, he watched--felt--the miracle take place. Nothing changed: The clouds would not be removed, nor his sons returned, nor his knowledge plenished. But there was this. His grief had become her grief, his sorrow her own. And though he grieved not one bit less for that, yet his heart made room for her, for her will and wisdom, and he bore the sorrow better.”
― Walter Wangerin Jr.

“A philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn't there. A theologian is the man who finds it.”
― H.L. Mencken

“I wonder how many people I've looked at all my life and never seen.”
― John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent