Mary Cummings

“Most of us will not have to die for our faith, though it might come to that, even for those living in the West. But we will all face moments when we will have to choose between Christ and something else that vies for our ultimate allegiance.”
― Gerald Sittser

“[A]s the generation of the Great Depression and the world wars passes on, so does the memory of what it took to build the system of abundance that we enjoy today. As America becomes predominantly made up of people who didn't have a hand in building the system in the first place, it is producing more and more people who want to destroy the system because they don't understand it. They don't appreciate how fragile their freedom is, how precious their system of government, how rare their way of life. And so they entertain fantasies of tearing it down. In some cases, those fantasies are becoming reality.”
― Yeonmi Park, While Time Remains: A North Korean Defector's Search for Freedom in America

“We probably can do more to affect the quality of our lives by controlling our expectations than we can by doing virtually anything else. The blessing of modest expectations is that they leave room for many experiences to be a pleasant surprise, a hedonic plus. The challenge is to find a way to keep expectations modest, even as actual experiences keep getting better.”
― Barry Schwartz, The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less

“When your love for a person is so profound that it’s part of who you are, then the absence of the person becomes part of your DNA, your bones, and your skin.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful