“[I]ndividual readers may conceivably choose (or be led) to regard a given text as literary in cases where such a response is not shared by others, but until their individual responses lose their idiosyncratic nature by being adopted by a larger interpretive community, such responses will be regarded as being to a greater or lesser degree aberrant, and the offender will be regarded as lacking in good taste or good sense or both.”

“Blaming is so much easier than taking responsibility, because if you take responsibility … then you might be to blame.”

“You would not want to be responsible for someone else’s happiness, so please do not hold someone else responsible for yours!”

“According to a Confucian view, there are four steps in social develpment, wrote Wilhem (Sr.). There are the individual, the family, the state, and mankind. The West had always emphasized the individual and the state. Individual development is extolled, and the single human being is regarded as central and as an atom of society. Over-emphasis on the function of the individual has led to deterioration of the family. Unlike Westerners, the Chinese have given greater weight to family and mankind. The consciousness of the individual is contained in the family, and since traditional China considered itself the world, Chinese considered themselves responsible for humankind rather than for the state.”

“Believing that, even though you are not personally in control of everything that happens, that even as our days are numbered and death comes for the righteous and the wise just as it does for the foolish and the wicked – that even lost as we are among the stars – your life nevertheless counts for something that is original and unique, a one-time-only appearance of your personality here on earth, something to be appreciated and maximized, made the most of, every day.”

“What is the Christian's responsibility to this world? Is the Christian's responsibility simply, as the "Great Commission" suggests, to share the Good News of God's Kingdom to others, with the goal of making disciples of all nations and perhaps also, along the way, through acts of charity to help meet the material needs of human beings? In other words, is this the only justification for Christian engagement of the larger world?”

“I only share when I have no unmet needs that I'm trying to fill. I firmly believe that being vulnerable with a larger audience is only a good idea if the healing is tied to the sharing, not to the expectations I might have for the response I get.”