"There is no normal life that is free of pain. It's the very wrestling with our problems that can be the impetus for our growth."

"Little by little we human beings are confronted with situations that give us more and more clues that we are not perfect."

"Peace means far more than the opposite of war."

"Discovering the truth about ourselves is a lifetime’s work, but it’s worth the effort."

"There is something of yourself that you leave at every meeting with another person."

"The older I get, the more convinced I am that the space between people who are trying their best to understand each other is hallowed ground."

"We all have different gifts, so we all have different ways of saying to the world who we are."

"Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping."

"I'm proud of you for the times you came in second, or third, or fourth, but what you did was the best you have ever done"

"Kids can spot a phony a mile away."

"Love and trust, in the space between what’s said and what’s heard in our life, can make all the difference in the world."

"There's a world of difference between insisting on someone's doing something and establishing an atmosphere in which that person can grow into wanting to do it."

"Human relationships are primary in all of living. When the gusty winds blow and shake our lives, if we know that people care about us, we may bend with the wind ... but we won’t break."

"If your "trusted "and people will allow you to share their inner gardern...what better gift?"

"Imagining may be the first step in making it happen, but it takes the real time and real efforts of real people to learn things, make things, turn thoughts into deeds or visions into inventions."

"Mutual caring relationships require kindness and patience, tolerance, optimism, joy in the other's achievements, confidence in oneself, and the ability to give without undue thought of gain."

"Play gives children a chance to practice what they are learning...They have to play with what they know to be true in order to find out more, and then they can use what they learn in new forms of play."

"Our world hangs like a magnificent jewel in the vastness of space. Every one of us is a part of that jewel. A facet of that jewel. And in the perspective of infinity, our differences are infinitesimal."

"Love begins with listening."

"Honesty is often very hard. The truth is often painful. But the freedom it can bring is worth the trying."

"Life is deep and simple, and what our society gives us is shallow and complicated."

"In appreciating our neighbor, we're participating in something truly sacred."

"Parents who expect change in themselves as well as in their children, who accept it and find in it the joy as well as the pains ofgrowth, are likely to be the happiest and most confident parents."

"Real strength has to do with helping others."

"The best teacher in the world is someone who loves what he or she does, and just loves it in front of you."

"I think of discipline as the continual everyday process of helping a child learn self-discipline."

"We want to raise our children so that they can take a sense of pleasure in both their own heritage and the diversity of others."

"If it's mentionable, it's manageable."

"We speak with more than our mouths. We listen with more than our ears."

"Fame is a four-letter word. And like tape, or zoom, or face, or pain, or love, or life, what ultimately matters is what we do with it."

"Love isn't a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun like struggle. To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now."

"It would have been sad for me to spend my life just trying to superimpose stuff on people rather than trying to encourage them to look within themselves for what's of value."

"Who we are in the present includes who we were in the past."

"The world is not always a kind place. That's something all children learn for themselves, whether we want them to or not, but it's something they really need our help to understand."

"We Don't always succeed in what we try, certainly not by the world's standards, but I think you'll find it's the willingness to keep trying that matters most."

"You make each day a special day. You know how, by just your being you."

"Often, problems are knots with many strands, and looking at those strands can make a problem seem different."

"You rarely have time for everything you want in this life, so you need to make choices. And hopefully your choices can come from a deep sense of who you are."

"All of us have special ones who have loved us into being. Would you just take, along with me, ten seconds to think of the people who have helped you become who you are....Ten seconds of silence."

"We need to help people to discover the true meaning of love. Love is generally confused with dependence. Those of us who have grown in true love know that we can love only in proportion to our capacity for independence."

"Silence is so powerful, so important. There is so much to be learned from it."

"It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood, a beautiful day for a neighbor. Would you be mine; could you be mine?"

"All I know to do is to light the candle that has been given to me."

"In times of stress, the best thing we can do for each other is to listen with our ears and our "hearts "and to be assured that our questions are just as important as our answers."

"Feeling good about ourselves is essential in our being able to love others."

"The world needs a sense of worth, and it will achieve it only by its people feeling that they are worthwhile."

"The real issue in life is not how many blessings we have, but what we do with our blessings. Some people have many blessings and hoard them. Some have few and give everything away."

"Try your best to make goodness attractive. That's one of the toughest assignments you'll ever be given."

"It may take months or years for a wish to come true, but it's far more likely to happen when you care so much about a wish that you'll do all you can to make it happen."

"My hunch is that if we allow ourselves to give who we really are to the children in our care, we will in some way inspire cartwheels in their hearts."