Greg Coates

“I also believe that no one is given a heavier burden than one is able to bear. What is most difficult for me is the fact that you are forced to share in carrying this burden. But the way in which you do it is, on the other hand, also a source of boundless happiness and strength for me. I am very happy that Maria has written you a letter filled with such courage and confident trust. Oh, how our life indeed depends completely on trust, and how impoverished life becomes without it. I am now learning daily how good my life with you has always been, and besides, I now have to practice myself what I have told others in my sermons and books.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison

“Don’t be afraid of anything; never be afraid”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“Jerome’s dictum was final: “A man who is a merchant can seldom if ever please God” (Homo mercator vix aut numquam potest Deo placere).”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century

“I work all day, and get half-drunk at night. Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare. In time the curtain-edges will grow light. Till then I see what’s really always there: Unresting death, a whole day nearer now, Making all thought impossible but how And where and when I shall myself die.”
― Christian Wiman, My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer