Richard paul evans quotes

The thing is, the only real sign of life is growth. And growth requires pain. So to choose life is to accept pain.

Those with the softest hearts build the hardest shells.

The truest grace is not to forgive, but to have never found fault.

The truest indication of gratitude is to return what you are grateful for.

Only those who never step, never stumble.

There are none so impoverished as those who do not acknowledge the abundance of their lives

Old friends are memories personified.

Heroes rarely look the way we draw them in our minds: attractive, imposing figures with rippling muscles and strong chins. More times than not they are humble beings, small and flawed. It is only their spirits that are beautiful and strong.

When a man loses his vision of the future he dies.

There are people I've yet to meet who are waiting for my path to intersect with theirs, so they can complete their own journeys. I don't know who or where they are, but I know for certain that they are waiting.

Denial, perhaps, is a necessary human mechanism to cope with the heartaches of life.

The strength of a friendship can be measured by the weight of the burden it's willing to share. (If you want to test this just ask someone to help you move.)

"You know, I've wondered if it's more painful to lose someone you love to death or to lose someone you love because she no longer loves you back." "I don't know," I said. "On the surface, it seems an easy question. It should be so much easier to lose someone who doesn't love you, because why would you want to be with someone who doesn't want you? But rejection's not an east road. A part of you always wonders what makes you so unlovable."

The smells of Christmas are the smells of childhood [p. 53]

Some people spend so much time hunting treasure that they fail to see it all around them. It's like sifting through gold to find the silt.

It's been said that every new beginning in some other beginning's end.

The assumption of time is one of humanity's greatest follies. We tell ourselves that there's always tomorrow, when we can no more predict tomorrow than we can the weather. Procrastination is the thief of dreams.

We are chained to that which we do not forgive

Everybody needs love. Everybody. Those who don't believe that frighten me a little.

We can only lose what we have first claimed.

Commitment to a plan or thought carries with it a force that can influence the unconscious mind and bring about the desired effect. In other words, once we decide to have something, the mind unconsciously begins to create the reality necessary to bring to pass what we desire.

When we hate someone we make them more powerfull than they are.

In the beginning, I had considered these stops on my journey as interruptions - but I'm coming to understand that perhaps these detours are my journey.

Joy isn't the natural response to blessings - joy is what comes from acknowledging them.

It is often during the worst of times that we see the best of humanity–awakening within the most ordinary of us that which is most sublime. I do not believe that it is circumstance that produces such greatness any more than it is the canvas that makes the artist. Adversity merely presents the surface on which we render our souls’ most exacting likeness. It is in the darkest skies that stars are best seen.

Life is the soil, our choices and actions the sun and rain, but our dreams are the seeds.

Could it be that to truly love a thing is not to desire it, but to desire happiness for it?

The first step of a journey is always the longest.

Sometimes its not the strength but gentleness that cracks the hardest shells.

Nothing heals the soul like chocolate ... It's God's apology for broccoli.

I am a believer in angels, though not the picture-book kind with wings and harps. Such angelic accoutrements seem as nonsensical to me as devils sporting horns and carrying pitchforks. To me, angel wings are merely symbolic of their role as divine messengers.

Things that seem bad at the time are really blessings.

Like all living things, love, too, struggles against hardship, and in the process sheds its fatuous skin to expose one composed of more than just a storm of emotion-one of loyalty and divine friendship. And though it may be temporarily blinded by adversity, it never gives in or up, holding tight to lofty ideals that transcend this earth and time- while its counterfeit simply concludes it was mistaken and quickly runs off to find the next real thing.

The first casualty of hitting rock bottom is vanity.

To forgive is to unlock the cage of another's folly to set ourselves free.

Magna est veritas, et praevalebit: truth is mighty, and will prevail

Everyone has problems. It's how you choose to deal with them. Some people choose to be whiners some choose to be winners. Some choose to be victims some choose to be victors.

We humans are born egocentric. The sky thunders and children believe that God is mad at them for something they've done - parents divorce and children believe it's their fault for not being good enough. Growing up means putting aside our egocentricity for truth. Still, some people cling to this childish mind-set. As painful as their self-flagellation may be, they'd rather believe their crises are their fault so they can believe they have control. In doing so they make fools and false gods of themselves.

That which we expect of life is indeed all that it ever can be.

It is in the darkest skies that stars are best seen.

Rarely do we invest the time to open the book of another's life. When we do, we are usually surprised to find its cover so misleading and its reviews so flawed.

We're all moons. Sometimes our dark sides overshadow our light.

Everyone has some inner power that awaits discovery.

...for we are all amateurs at life, but if we do not focus too much on our mistakes, a miraculous picture emerges. And we learn that it's not the beauty of the image that warrants our gratitude--it's the chance to paint.

Mr. Dallstrom is a bald, scarecrow of a man with a poochy stomache. Think of a pregnant Abraham Lincoln.

Love never gives in or up, holding tight to lofty ideals that transcend this earth and time, while its counterfeit simply concludes it was mistaken and quickly runs off to find the next real thing.

No,' he said, 'you only have to live long enough to inspire others to do great things.

It has been a mistake living my life in the past. One cannot ride a horse backwards and still hold its reins.

Sunsets, like childhood, are viewed with wonder not just because they are beautiful but because they are fleeting.

From our first babblings to our last word, we make but one statement, and that is our life.

...even the most horribl e of nightmares is laced with the promise of dawn.

There are moments, it would seem, that were created in cosmic theater where we are given strange and fantastic tests. In these times, we do not show who we are to God, for surely He must already know, but rather to ourselves.

The depth of love is revealed in its departure.

Some so fear the future that they suffocate the present. It's like committing suicide to avoid being murdered.

Everyone who got to where they are had to begin where they were.

If you passed me walking home from school, you probably wouldn't even notice me. That's because I'm just a kid like you. I go to school like you. I get bullied like you. Unlike you, I live in Idaho. Don't ask me what state Idaho is in––news flash––Idaho IS a state. ~Michael Vey

There's no hurt so great that love can't heal it.

Some people in this world have stopped looking for beauty, then wonder why their lives are so ugly. Don't be like them. The ability to appreciate beauty is of God. Especially in one another. Look for beauty in everyone you meet, and you'll find it. Everyone carries divinity within them. And everyone we meet has something to impart.

I have learned a great truth of life. We do not succeed in spite of our challenges and difficulties, but rather, precisely because of them.

I see people getting so caught up in celebrating diversity that they are neglecting their commonality. I don't see this as a good thing. The Chinese culture has survived for more than five thousand years in part because the Chinese have embraced the same language and culture. I hope I am wrong about this, and that the flame is still on beneath the great American melting pot. Americans need each other, and a house divided, no matter the color of its occupants, is still divided. And divided we all fall.

Life is what happens to us while we're planning something else.

The only way to remove pain from death is to remove love from life.

I absolutely love playing the game 'Risk.

Chocolate is God's apology for brocolli

I have come to believe that we do not walk alone in this life. There are others, fellow sojourners, whose journeys are interwoven with ours in seemingly random patterns, yet, in the end, have been carefully placed to reveal a remarkable tapestry. I believe God is the weaver at that loom.

A man's worth isn't measured by a bank register or diploma... It's about integrity

There can be no joy without gratitude.

Some people were born to work for others. Not in a mindless, servile-way--rather they simply work better in a set regimen of daily tasks and functions. Others were born of the entrepreneurial spirit and enjoy the demands of self-determination and the roll of the dice.

What a culture we live in, we are swimming in an ocean of information, and drowning in ignorance.

You're the type who thinks of the glass as being half full, instead of half empty. "No," she said, "I'm just grateful for the glass.

Often times, the greatest peace comes of surrender.

The most important story we'll ever write in life is our own-not with ink, but with our daily choices.

You should always be careful of what you say in parting.

I have Tourettes syndrome.

If the errors of my life have profited me one great truth it is this: believe. Believe in your destiny and the star from which it shines. Believe you have been sent from God as an arrow pulled from his own bow. It is the single universal trait which the great of this earth have all shared, while the shadows are fraught with ghosts who roam the winds with mournful wails of regret on their lips. Believe as if your life depended upon it, for indeed it does.

such fickle days of love when pain and ecstasy share the same hour

Every life can be learned from, as either a flame of hope or a cautionary flare.

There are two kinds of people. Those who climb mountains and those who sit in the shadow of the mountains and critique the climbers.

There are far too many people for us to think about each of them during our short stay on earth—like the thousands of books in a library we haven’t time to read in an afternoon. But this is no excuse to cease browsing. For every now and then, we find that one book that reaches us deep inside and introduces us to ourselves. And, in someone else’s story, we come to understand our own.

Psychologists tested the story of the Good Samaritan. What they learned gives us reason to pause. The greatest determinant of who stopped to help the stranger in need was not compassion, morality, or religious creed. It was those who had the time. Makes me wonder if I have time to do good.

I believe that we were meant to live as social creatures, to reach out and bless each other's lives.

Usually life’s greatest gifts come wrapped in adversity.

Don't try to write what other people are writing - write what is true to you.

Forgiveness is the key to the heart's shackles.

Humanity is always looking for the next great world, the next frontier. I wonder how different this world would be if we were content with where we were.

To deny our pasts is to burn the bridge we must cross to self-understanding.

. . . Harboring an emotion as powerful as gratitude has power of its own.

I've come to know that what we want in life is the greatest indication of who we really are (p. 331).

We all arrive on Earth with a round-trip ticket.

People are like books, unknown until they are opened.

I think the secret to a hoppy life is a selective memory. Remember what you are most grateful for and quickly forget what your not.

. . .and every native has a story of winter – stories that usually begin, You call this a storm? And grow in the telling like battle tales shared by graying war veterans. It’s a peculiar character flaw to those of us from cold climates that we feel superior to those who have the sense to live elsewhere.

Life is not a sprint. It was never meant to be. It is just a step of faith after another.

People aren't wired to be alone. Even in the stressful population of prison, solitary confinement is still considered a cruel punishment.

Raising or caring for children requires sacrifice and service, which, I believe, heals us from the destructive forces of self-centeredness.

Dance. Dance for the joy and breath of childhood. Dance for all children, including that child who is still somewhere entombed beneath the responsibility and skepticism of adulthood. Embrace the moment before it escapes from our grasp. For the only promise of childhood, of any childhood, is that it will someday end. And in the end, we must ask ourselves what we have given our children to take its place. And is it enough?

It's our memories that make us who we are. Without them, we're nothing. If that means we have to hurt sometimes, it's worth it.

Love is never convenient-and rarely painless

To choose the path is to choose the destination, but sometimes it seems that the path is under our feet even before we know we're walking.

We spend our life building higher fences and stronger locks, when the gravest dangers are already inside

People are looking for inspiration, and my books are sometimes the vehicles of what people are looking for.

We carry around in our heads these pictures of what our lives are supposed to look like, painted by the brush of out intentions. It's the great, deep secret of humanity that in the end none of our lives look the way we thought they would. As much as we wish to believe otherwise, most of life is a reaction to circumstances.

I believe that love is the choice we make to raise ourselves and others to the highest planes of existence.

We are all in motion. Always. Those who are not climbing toward something are descending toward nothing.

The most difficult of decisions are often not the ones in which we cannot determine the correct course; rather the ones in which we are certain of the path but fear the journey.

Without great mountains we cannot reach great heights.

There's no problem so big that whining won't make it worse.

Forgiveness does not require us to close our eyes but rather to truly open them.

The sweetness of reunion is the joy of heaven.

Sometimes, when tragedy strikes, people give up hope that they can expect anything more from life, when the real quest is finding out what life expects from them.

But more than brave, you have love. And love is brave.

Regret is the most tiresome of companions.

Sometimes our arms are so full with the burdens we carry that it hinders our view of the load those around us are staggering beneath.

Usually the most interesting stories are written not on paper but hearts.

Small kindnesses often, unintentionally, produce the biggest payoffs.

It is better to be loved by one person who knows your soul than millions who don't even know your phone number.

As we walk our individual life journeys, we pick up resentments and hurts, which attach themselves to our souls like burrs clinging to a hiker's socks. These stowaways may seem insignificant at first, but, over time, if we do not occasionally stop and shake them free, the accumulation becomes a burden to our souls.

Books are the most tolerant of friends.

Feelings can be like wild animals-we underrate how fierce they are until we've opened their cage

So often the pain of our life is no more than a reminder to take our hand off the stove.

Life has taught me that to fly, you must first accept the possibility of falling.

We plan our lives in long, unbroken stretches that intersect our dreams the way highways connect the city dots on a road map. But in the end we learn that life is lived in the side roads, alleys, and detours.

In your hurry to keep Christmas, you have forgotten Christmas. The truest gift of Christmas is the gift of self.

We stone our prophets, then build monuments to them after they're gone.

I love when I can reboot people when they are being mean to others.