The attempt to redefine the family as a purely voluntary arrangement grows out of the modern delusion that people can keep all their options open all the time.

There will always be those little minds who, out of vanity or intellectual display, will attempt to destroy faith in the very foundations of life.

People have to realize that just because you're a Christian, it doesn't mean that you're perfect, because every once in a while everyone stumbles. Living by faith is about when you do mess up, getting back up, brushing yourself off, and keep trying to improve where you mess up or where you have temptation.

Themes of redemption, temptation, and faith don't necessarily apply directly to religion. A lot of people find faith in their lives outside of God and still deal with notions of temptation and redemption that aren't religious.

Religion is part of the human make-up. It's also part of our cultural and intellectual history. Religion was our first attempt at literature, the texts, our first attempt at cosmology, making sense of where we are in the universe, our first attempt at health care, believing in faith healing, our first attempt at philosophy.

America thinks of itself as a meritocracy, so people have more respect for success and more contempt for failure.

Is anarchism possible? The failure of attempts to attain freedom does not mean the cause is lost.

This attempt to isolate cell constituents might have been a failure if they had been destroyed by the relative brutality of the technique employed. But this did not happen.

When I was about 15... I made my first attempt as a leading lady, and was, of course, a complete failure.

Jill Eisenstadt's comic second novel, 'Kiss Out,' is a work of such extravagant wackiness, eccentricity, and exuberance that any attempt to squeeze it into the confines of a simple plot summary seems doomed to failure and is possibly pointless.

The freedom to fail is vital if you're going to succeed. Most successful people fail from time to time, and it is a measure of their strength that failure merely propels them into some new attempt at success.

Myth is an attempt to narrate a whole human experience, of which the purpose is too deep, going too deep in the blood and soul, for mental explanation or description.

Efforts to bar transgender people from restrooms are nothing more than an attempt to codify discrimination before our country advances any further on transgender equality.

We should never forget that Americans continue to advocate for individual liberty, equality and self-governance. We often step in when it's necessary to help countries in need. But our history needs no whitewashing. To attempt this does us a terrible disservice.

I don't have any contempt for the men who have to have jobs and have to commute and have to pay the mortgage and have to get their kids an education. To me, that's the backbone of America, to coin a phrase.

No man who worships education has got the best out of education... Without a gentle contempt for education no man's education is complete.

The permanent temptation of life is to confuse dreams with reality. The permanent defeat of life comes when dreams are surrendered to reality.

I'm off the diet, but not the treadmill. I speak as someone who's attempted to lose weight and get fit thrice before in my life.

It's tempting to look back into history with rose-tinted glasses. Most people in the Stone Age didn't live anywhere near as long as we're living now. Today we can enjoy a more wide-ranging diet and we have fruit and vegetables available all year round.

I've etched out who I am through myriad haircut attempts, outfit attempts, beauty attempts, diet attempts. It's been an evolution.

I am persuaded, that if any attempt is made to improve the education of the poor, and such an unmanly spirit should guide the resolution of a society or committee for that purpose, it would render the design abortive.

In the '70s and '80s there was an attempt in K-12 to teach science through art or art through science. The challenge today is how do you build the ethos of art and design into the academy of science.

In Christ we see a maturity of love that flowers in self-sacrifice and forgiveness; a maturity of power that never swerves from the ideal of service; a maturity of goodness that overcomes every temptation, and, of course, we see the ultimate victory of life over death itself.

There is no such thing as inner peace. There is only nervousness or death. Any attempt to prove otherwise constitutes unacceptable behavior.