“Develop and protect a moral sensibility and demonstrate the character to apply it. Dream big. Work hard. Think for yourself. Love everything you love, everyone you love, with all your might. And do so, please, with a sense of urgency, for every tick of the clock subtracts from fewer and fewer.”

“Fewer than half of churchgoers, including born-again Christians, felt strongly that their church demonstrates unconditional love.”

“There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well. The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of merit or sense.”

“You love everything don't ya, but ya know what, as you get older, the things you love so much might not seem so special anymore. Like your jack-in-the-box, maybe you'll realize it's just a piece of tin and a stuffed animal. The older you get, the fewer things you really love. By the time you're my age maybe it's only one or two things, actually it might only be one.”

“When you protect yourself from pain, be sure you do not protect yourself from love.”

“So it's pretty simple for me: Love when you can. Do the work that is yours to do. Be the person that is yours to be at any given time. Think to wish for what is yours at this very moment. To love. To serve. To touch. To know. Think to wish for all that is yours to have. Think to wish for all that is yours to do. And think to wish that you might be who it is that you might most fully be. Avoid wishful thinking. Avoid the traps and pitfalls of nostalgia for the past. Savor every moment as it passes. And enlist yourself in saving that which can be saved this very moment, ir order that it, too, may endure for others to enjoy.”