Adam was but human—this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple’s sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden.  
—Mark Twain
 
I have come to realize that the greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity, or power, but self-rejection.
–Henri J. M. Nouwen
 

May you not forget the infinite possibilities that are born of faith.
—Saint Teresa of Ávila

There is always enough God.
–Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts
 

From now on there can be no more wars of faith. The only way to overcome our enemy is by loving him.
—Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship
 
To desire and expect nothing for oneself and to have profound sympathy for others is genuine holiness.
–Ivan Turgenev
 

Say what you will about the Ten Commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them.
—H. L. Mencken

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers.
–Alfred Tennyson
 

Our acts make or mar us, we are the children of our own deeds.
—Victor Hugo
 
As for the destitute, we can only reach them with love and the works of mercy, performed personally, at a sacrifice.
–Dorothy Day
 

The triumphant Christian does not fight for victory; [they] celebrate . . . a victory already won.
—Reginald Wallis
 
Have patience with all things, but, first of all with yourself.
–Saint Francis de Sales

 

You will know your vocation by the joy that it brings you.
—Dorothy Day
 
The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge . . . is itself a frightful despotism.
–George Washington

The Lord was baptized . . . to cleanse waters, so that those waters . . . might have the power of baptism.
—Saint Ambrose of Milan

Service which is rendered without joy helps neither the servant nor the served. But all other pleasures and possessions pale into nothingness before service which is rendered in a spirit of joy.
–Mahatma Gandhi

Christian living means dying with Christ and rising again. That . . . is part of the meaning of baptism, the starting point of the Christian pilgrimage. 
—N. T. Wright, Simply Christian
 
Other means would have been short . . . of perfect justice, but that God’s own Son humbled himself to take on mortal clay.
–Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy

One true king knew when to step aside and give up the reins of power—to remove his crown and relinquish his kingdom—all for the sake of glimpsing, just once in a lifetime, the face of a holy child.
—Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration
 
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms, / But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation, / With an alien people clutching their gods.
–T. S. Eliot, Journey of the Magi