Nick Ayers

“In a cruel land, you either learned to laugh at cruelty or spent your life weeping;”
― Robert Jordan, A Crown of Swords

“Virtue is what happens when someone has made a thousand small choices requiring effort and concentration to do something which is good and right, but which doesn't come naturally. And then, on the thousand and first time, when it really matters, they find that they do what's required automatically. Virtue is what happens when wise and courageous choices become second nature.”
― N.T. Wright, After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters

“No one can become and remain a theologian unless he is compelled again and again to be astonished at himself.”
― Karl Barth, Evangelical Theology: An Introduction

“It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end… because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing… this shadow. Even darkness must pass.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers