I started traveling out of curiosity, but I have come to believe in travel's political importance, that encouraging a nation's citizenry to travel may be as important as encouraging school attendance, environmental conservation, or national thrift. You cannot understand the otherness of places you have not encountered.

Develop resilience and be brave. There are days when it is very discouraging. You have to develop personal resilience to environmental things that come along. If you let every single environmental challenge knock you off your game, it's going to be very, very hard.

Education is a cause very close to me. What matters is encouraging my fans to focus on their education, because only an educated generation can ensure a better future. Even when I was on tour, I did my homework and studied.

In America we have big issues with education - in impoverished communities especially. I work with Teach For All, and so we're encouraging more people to get into teaching.

The mother cannot expect her daughter to understand the mysteries of housekeeping without education. She should instruct them patiently, lovingly, and make the work as agreeable as she can by her cheerful countenance and encouraging words of approval. If they fail once, twice, or thrice, censure not.

There is only one secure foundation: a genuine, deep relationship with Jesus Christ, which will carry you through any and all turmoil. No matter what storms are raging all around, you'll stand firm if you stand on His love.

I still refer to myself as a 'cheerleader' because I keep encouraging others to have confidence and to use their talents to follow their dreams. It's been one of the most important reasons for my success and my helping others succeed.

I was 17 when my body started changing, and I worried about what I did wrong. I went through a period where I didn't eat at all. I also had someone who was encouraging me to take diet pills. I pushed myself to the extreme because I woke up one day and had hips - and a butt - and thought, 'Oh my gosh, I'm getting fat!'

We have a limit, a very discouraging, humiliating limit: death.

If I am to be known for anything, I would like it to be for encouraging Canadians, for knowing a little bit about their daily, extraordinary courage. And for wanting that courage to be recognized.

I don't really like encouraging people to go on the Internet too much, we're constantly distracted with the Internet and computers.

I'm encouraging kids to use computers at their own pace to build aspirations.

Business leaders regularly complain that young people don't leave school with the right skills. Encouraging young people to be entrepreneurs makes the connection between school and the world of work, teaching them about practical thinking, team-work, communication and financial literacy.

Life isn't always really glamorous and fabulous. It's about encouraging people to go back to natural beauty.

It's very shocking, I think, for people caring for the dying to realise how unsaintly they feel, how much anger is mixed up with their grief. In fact, often I think the anger that they feel is a form of grief; it's a kind of raging against what's happening.

Almost everyone can remember losing his or her virginity, and most writers can remember the first book he/she put down thinking: I can do better than this. Hell, I am doing better than this! What could be more encouraging to the struggling writer than to realize his/her work is unquestionably better than that of someone who actually got paid for his/her stuff?

Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul. When writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh about ourselves or life, our buoyancy is restored. We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again. It's like singing on a boat during a terrible storm at sea. You can't stop the raging storm, but singing can change the hearts and spirits of the people who are together on that ship.

Life is a storm that will test you unceasingly. Don't wait for calm waters that may not arrive. Derive purpose from resilience. Learn to sail the raging sea.

Peace is white sun reflections on summer pear trees, and ocean mist droplets defying gravity by air currents. Peace is caffeinated goodbye-kissing and velvet smiles laced with credence. Trumpet horns sound off the coming of Blue Jays, Swallows and Chickadee's. And there is no sadness echoing within or without. There is a taste of God in every grass blade and car horn raging in the city. The stop lights are all green, and there are children playing in the fountains. A dog laps my hand, and finally-I remembered what it's all about.

That's the best way to know anything, although no one ever tells you that. No one ever says, "Just use the expansive feeling in your chest to understand what's true, and what you want, and where to go, and what really matters," because they're too busy forcing you to learn from books that they're choosing, and pointing at whiteboards that they're writing on, and encouraging you to ask questions from curriculums that they've set.

Encouraging youths to be creative is preventing so many unhealable disasters out there in the world. A writer for example will focus on their writing, a poet will do their poems just like a sculptor or musician - always finding ways to be the best in their craft. An idle mind is the devil's workshop but a creative mind is a gold mine!

I'm not out to compete with any one, I'm here to complete, by encouraging and inspiring souls through a text at a time

speak quietly to yourself & promise there will be better days. whisper gently to yourself and provide assurance that you really are extending your best effort. console your bruised and tender spirit with reminders of many other successes. offer comfort in practical and tangible ways - as if you were encouraging your dearest friend. recognize that on certain days the greatest grace is that the day is over and you get to close your eyes. tomorrow comes more brightly...

Choking with dry tears and raging, raging, raging at the absolute indifference of nature and the world to the death of love, the death of hope and the death of beauty, I remember sitting on the end of my bed, collecting these pills and capsules together and wondering why, why when I felt I had so much to offer, so much love, such outpourings of love and energy to spend on the world, I was incapable of being offered love, giving it or summoning the energy with which I knew I could transform myself and everything around me.