"I was grateful I'd been in a plane crash. I got to see my grandfather every single day for months. If that plane hadn't plummeted, we would have stalled at spaghetti Tuesdays.

"Grandpa found a sturdy branch and used it as a walking stick.

Si quelques heures font une grande diff?rence dans le c?ur de l'homme, faut-il s'en ?tonner ? Il n'y a qu'une minute de la vie ? la mort.

"Para ser grande, s? inteiro: nada

What is grand is necessarily obscure to weak men. That which can be made explicit to the idiot is not worth my care.

"Grandmother didn't answer, not directly anyway, as most great masters do. They never say

Vivi muito tempo no mundo das pessoas grandes. Vi-as de bem perto.N?o fiquei com muito melhor opini?o delas.

There was a way in which my grandmother's true self was not these guests' business; no one's true self was the business of more than a very small number of family members or close friends.

It was not sympathy in the ordinary sense which he [Adolf Hitler] felt for the disinherited. That would not have been sufficient. He not only suffered with them, he lived for them and devoted all his thoughts to the salvation of those people from distress and poverty... his noble and grandiose work, which was intended 'for everybody'...

It is as if Little Red Riding Hood had asked the wolf: "Dear Grandmother, what is the truth for?" And the wolf had replied: "The truth helps me tell you better lies.

"To be content, horse people need only a horse, or, lacking that, someone else who loves horses with whom they can talk. It was always that way with my grandfather. He took me places just so we could

I was a veritable Johnny Appleseed of grand expectations, and all I reaped for my trouble was a harvest of bitter fruit.

"For me the real evil of masturbation would be that it takes an appetite which, in lawful use, leads the individual out of himself to complete (and correct) his own personality in that of another (and finally in children and even grandchildren) and turns it back: sends the man back into the prison of himself, there to keep a harem of imaginary brides. And this harem, once admitted, works against his ever getting out and really uniting with a real woman. For the harem is always accessible, always subservient, calls for no sacrifices or adjustments, and can be endowed with erotic and psychological attractions which no real woman can rival. Among those shadowy brides he is always adored, always the perfect lover: no demand is made on his unselfishness, no mortification ever imposed on his vanity. In the end, they become merely the medium through which he increasingly adores himself . . . . And it is not only the faculty of love which is thus sterilized, forced back on itself, but also the faculty of imagination.

While people argue with one another about the specifics of Freud's work and blame him for the prejudices of his time, they overlook the fundamental truth of his writing, his grand humility: that we frequently do not know our own motivations in life and are prisoners to what we cannot understand. We can recognize only a small fragment of our own, and an even smaller fragment of anyone else's, impetus.

Coffee, she'd discovered, was tied to all sorts of memories, different for each person. Sunday mornings, friendly get-togethers, a favorite grandfather long since gone, the AA meeting that saved their life. Coffee meant something to people. Most found their lives were miserable without it. Coffee was a lot like love that way. And because Rachel believed in love, she believed in coffee, too.

Things never have an absolute value; they have relative value, relative to the circumstance. There can be a time when even 10 bucks can be important for you, and at another time, even a grand is nothing.

It is not needful for our dreams to be very grand nor very big. It is only needful for our dreams to be very shiny.

He was once an abstract Grandeur which I struggled more in fear than love to please. He has become a living Presence, dear and real

We are each called to reach out to others. On rare occasions that can happen on a grand scale. But most of the time it happens in simple acts of kindness of one person to another. Those are the events that really matter.

I believe in a benevolent God not because He created the Grand Canyon or Michelangelo, but because He gave us snacks.

Think of the self that God has given as an acorn. It is a marvelous little thing, a perfect shape, perfectly designed for its purpose, perfectly functional. Think of the grand glory of an oak tree. God's intention when He made the acorn was the oak tree. His intention for us is '? the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.' Many deaths must go into our reaching that measure, many letting-goes. When you look at the oak tree, you don't feel that the loss' of the acorn is a very great loss. The more you perceive God's purpose in your life, the less terrible the losses seem.

the grandeur of God reveals itself through simple things

"No, I don't believe it," Joseph said. "From listening to my father and grandfather talk about El Shaddai, I think he's different from the Gods of Egypt. I think that none of us could ever be good enough for God. I think of Him as being so good that a human can't even enter His presence. A man would die if he did. I think God's merciful, Rashidi. I think he forgives us because he loves us, just as we forgive our children because we love them.

When I think of existence, I cannot help but wonder, "What is life, anyway?" Where do I fit in the grand scheme of life? What is the point of it, anyway? Is this a test-and if so, am I passing it?