berty.bell

“Stories shape our existence because we recognize in a deep part of ourselves that life itself is a story. The tale of the world opens with a sort of divine "once upon a time" or "in the beginning... The gospel itself comes to us in narrative form and one of its great tenets is that we have the chance to join the story of the Kingdom come in this world, to be agents in the ongoing story of redemption, what Rowan William call the "freedom of a sort of authorship.”
― Sarah Clarkson, Book Girl: A Journey through the Treasures and Transforming Power of a Reading Life

“If there is a God and future life, there is truth and good, and man's highest happiness consists in striving to attain them. We must live, we must love, and we must believe that we live not only today on this scrap of earth, but have lived and shall live”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“Be guided only by the healer of the sick, the raiser of the dead, the friend of all who were afflicted and forlorn, the patient Master who shed tears of compassion for our infirmities.”
― Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit

“Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire”
― Gustav Mahler