“even when we do not choose evil, we choose the good so half heartedly and with so many qualifications that mediocrity becomes our canonized statis quo.”

“They said I would never live. I lived. They said I would never think. I think. They said I would never walk. I walked. They said I would never dance, but I never danced anyway.”

“We would do well to remember that envy is clearly the flint that ignites evil in our hearts. It apparently signals "I'm available" to demons searching for a cheap date. Envy is as volatile as nitroglycerin, and we cannot carry it inside us without evil exploding.”

“Since the purpose of reading, of education, is to become good, our most important task is to choose the right books. Our personal set of stories, our canon, shapes our lives. I believe it is a law of the universe that we will not rise above our canon. Our canon is part of us, deeply, subconsciously. And the characters and teachings in our canon shape our characters--good, evil, mediocre, or great.”

“Shame usually follows a pattern—a cycle of self-recrimination and lies that claims life after life. First, we experience an intensely painful event. Second, we believe the lie that our pain and failure is who we are—not just something we’ve done, or had done to us—and we experience shame. And finally, our feelings of shame trap us into thinking that we can never recover—that, in fact, we don’t even deserve to.”

“When happiness becomes our standard for judging truth, things that make us happy give us permission to do some things that otherwise would be considered wrong.”

“When we look at other people comparatively and competitively, we're not seeing them as our brothers and sisters. We're not loving them more than we love ourselves, and we we're definitely not seeing them as God sees them.”