Jessie

“man thinks of war as being won with the loud, sudden violence of swords and battle, but the slow, quiet wars can be lost in peace. It is as if the whole land sleeps. I fear we will awake one day and find that the Dark has crept so close that its face is the face of our neighbor, our loved one, ourselves.”
― Christopher Bunn, The Shadow at the Gate

“Set any one to talk about himself, instead of about other people, and you will have a seam of the precious mental metal opened up to you at once; only ore, most likely, that needs much smelting and refining; or it may be, not gold at all, but a metal which your mental alchemy may turn into gold.”
― George MacDonald, Adela Cathcart, Volume 2

“That is why hardships, troubles, disappointments, and all kinds of pain and suffering, are sent to so many of us. We are so full of ourselves, and feel so grand, that we should never come to know what poor creatures we are, never begin to do better, but for the knock-down blows that the loving God gives us. We do not like them, but he does not spare us for that. A Rough Shaking, ch.”
― George MacDonald, 365 Meditations from George MacDonald's Fiction

“Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God,
But only he who sees takes off his shoes;
The rest sit round and pluck blackberries.”
― Elizabeth Barrett Browning