I'd have to say, for me, as a child, my favorite memories were always centered around Christmas time. It always seemed like no matter how much money my parents had or didn't have, we got completely spoiled rotten. There were always presents under the tree, and we always did special things, like hide elves around the house.

The whole point of me doing a Christmas record and what I centered it around was the song 'Christmas with You' from the point-of-view of the soldiers in Iraq.

My family background is Mexican, and I was born in Chicago. It's pretty much family tradition every time we get together for Christmas and major holidays to sing. Our family time is centered around the food and a little bit of performing for one another.

A woman whose life is involved in the righteous rearing of her children has a better chance of keeping up her spirits than the woman whose total concern is centered in her own personal problems.

I have never entered into any controversy in defense of my philosophical opinions; I leave them to take their chance in the world. If they are right, truth and experience will support them; if wrong, they ought to be refuted and rejected. Disputes are apt to sour one's temper and disturb one's quiet.

I accidentally entered a youth pageant when I was 14. That's like a beauty pageant, but without the beauty. It was terrible.

Extra dimensional theories are sometimes considered science fiction with equations. I think that's a wrong attitude. I think extra dimensions are with us, they are with us to stay, and they entered physics a long time ago. They are not going to go away.

Marriage is an alliance entered into by a man who can't sleep with the window shut, and a woman who can't sleep with the window open.

Like the marriage contract you entered into, your divorce is a legal transaction. Treat it that way. Try not to let emotion, hurt, fear or anger dictate the circumstances of your discussions or negotiations.

Too much self-centered attitude, you see, brings, you see, isolation. Result: loneliness, fear, anger. The extreme self-centered attitude is the source of suffering.

I liked the way they treated the first, second, and third place finishers equally. It was an amazing year. I only entered two song contests this year; I won one and placed second in the other. And I entered each of them a day or two before the deadline.

Life is a road of uncertainty. Like standing on the edge of your board, the unknowing can be treacherous. But if you stay focused and centered along the journey, your spirit is ready to handle anything that comes your way.

"Not soon, as late as the approach of my ninetieth year, I felt a door opening in me and I entered the clarity of early morning.

Every single thing happens for you for a reason. Even if you can't see it right now, and it all feels confusing or unfair. Every storm you walk through and walk out of makes you a stronger, wiser, and more resilient human being. You'll never be the same person who entered when you exit, and that's something to embrace, not fear.

If tragedy never entered our lives, we wouldn't appreciate the magic.

A garden should make you feel you've entered privileged space -- a place not just set apart but reverberant -- and it seems to me that, to achieve this, the gardener must put some kind of twist on the existing landscape, turn its prose into something nearer poetry.

A person who does not pray habitually, no matter how believing or pious he may be, will not achieve full spiritual growth. Neither will he acquire peace of soul because he will always experience excessive scruples and never view things beyond their human or worldly significance. Thus, one will always suffer from vanity, selfishness, self-centeredness, ambition, meanness of heart, vileness of judgment, and a sickly willfulness and attachment to one's opinions. A person who does not pray may acquire human wisdom and prudence, but not true spiritual freedom or that deep and radical purification of the heart. One will not be able to grasp the depths of divine mercy or know how to make it known to others. His judgment will always end up shortsighted, mistaken, and contemptible. One will never be able to tread God's ways, which are far different from what many-even those who have committed themselves to a life in the spirit-conceive them to be.

The testimony of the greatest humans who have ever lived is that the way to make the most of ourselves is by transcending ourselves. We must learn to move beyond self-centeredness to make room within ourselves for others. When you transcend yourself, the fact will be confirmed by the quality of your life. We will attain ? even if only momentarily ? a transparency and a radiance of being which results from living both within and beyond yourself. This is the promise and the excitement of self-understanding.

For the unified mind in accord with the Way all self-centered striving ceases. Doubts and irresolutions vanish and life in true faith is possible. With a single stroke we are freed from bondage; nothing clings to us and we hold nothing. All is empty, clear, self-illuminating, with no exertion of the mind's power.

When we begin to reflect Christ, the Bible, when more understood as being centered around Christ, seems to be potentially every man's biography regarding God's promised experiences and truth for him - his individual, unique path of humbling oneself before the Lord and then being exalted by the Lord back into his true and righteous personhood. Many followers may speak of it merely to try to change other people (before changing themselves), but the prophets speak of it as a living word which miraculously tells their very own experiences.

"When I became convinced that the Universe is natural ? that all the ghosts and Gods are myths, there entered into my brain, into my soul, into every drop of my blood, the sense, the feeling, the joy of freedom. The walls of my prison crumbled and fell, the dungeon was flooded with light and all the bolts, and bars, and manacles became dust. I was no longer a servant, a serf or a slave. There was for me no master in all the wide world -- not even in infinite space. I was free -- free to think, to express my thoughts -- free to live to my own ideal -- free to live for myself and those I loved -- free to use all my faculties, all my senses -- free to spread imagination's wings -- free to investigate, to guess and dream and hope -- free to judge and determine for myself -- free to reject all ignorant and cruel creeds, all the "inspired" books that savages have produced, and all the barbarous legends of the past -- free from popes and priests -- free from all the "called" and "set apart" -- free from sanctified mistakes and holy lies -- free from the fear of eternal pain -- free from the winged monsters of the night -- free from devils, ghosts and Gods. For the first time I was free. There were no prohibited places in all the realms of thought -- no air, no space, where fancy could not spread her painted wings -- no chains for my limbs -- no lashes for my back -- no fires for my flesh -- no master's frown or threat ? no following another's steps -- no need to bow, or cringe, or crawl, or utter lying words. I was free. I stood erect and fearlessly, joyously, faced all worlds.

People are always complaining that life's not fair, but that simply isn't true. Life is extraordinarily fair. It's just not centered on you.

The victory over self is centered entirely on the surrender of self to the God from whom the entirety of oneself finds itself.

There is something in the depths of our being that hungers for wholeness and finality. Because we are made for eternal life, we are made for an act that gathers up all the powers and capacities of our being and offers them simultaneously and forever to God. The blind spiritual instinct that tells us obscurely that our owns lives have a particular importance and purpose, and which urges us to find out our vocation, seeks in so doing to bring us to a decision that will dedicate our lives irrevocably to their true purpose. The man who loses this sense of his own personal destiny, and who renounces all hope of having any kind of vocation in life has either lost all hope of happiness or else has entered upon some mysterious vocation that God alone can understand.