There is no end to the creativity, ingenuity, and tenacity of those who look for reasons to criticize. They cannot seem to release their grip on grudges. They gossip and find fault with others. They nurse wounds for decades, taking every opportunity to tear down and demean others. This is not pleasing to the Lord, 'for where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work' (James 3:16).

Often the deep valleys of our PRESENT will be UNDERSTOOD only by LOOKING BACK on them from the mountains of our FUTURE experience. Often we can’t see the LORD’S HAND in our lives until long after the trials have passed. Often the most difficult times of our lives are ESSENTIAL building blocks that form the FOUNDATION of our CHARACTER and pave the way to FUTURE opportunity, understanding, and happiness.

Heavenly Father offers to you the greatest gift of all—eternal life—and the opportunity and infinite blessing of your own “happily ever after.”

I don't need to say anything more. I think that both sides are moving on from something like that. You don't use things like that as an opportunity to create a rift between two clubs.

It's an opportunity to get some more innings for some younger guys.

Duke did a fine job. It was a quality start and he gave an opportunity for the club to win. I don't know how much more you can ask.

When you face a pitcher the caliber of Chris Carpenter, you only get one opportunity like that.

Our golden opportunity was in the seventh inning. We had the bases loaded, we had one out, we had a 3-1 count and we just didn't get it done.

We're looking for 35 or 38 or 39, and this is an opportunity to find out who are those guys beyond the 25.

The best way to approach a player with his type of ability and talent is to feel like you've developed a type of environment to allow his development to continue on its natural course. With what we have done this winter, we have put this young man in a position to where his natural progression as a Major League Baseball player has a genuine opportunity to take place without heaping any unexpected expectations on him.

I won't say where they are going to start. But he is the type of guy we are looking for to hopefully place in between two left-handers that have somewhat similar stuff and not give opposing clubs an opportunity to see the same type of stuff on consecutive days.

He's going to get the ball in the ninth inning. We'll see how it goes. We've got a guy who is a complete novice in that environment. But what I see is a player that an opportunity has been created for him and he's seizing the opportunity.

His record wasn't all that impressive, but I've seen this guy do very well at times. And I think the opportunity to acquire somebody in the Rule 5 draft ... it's not all that often you get somebody whose resume from the previous year shows 141 innings.

Any time you face a pitcher the caliber of Chris Carpenter, you get one opportunity against him. He started quick and it took us until the seventh to get our opportunity to crack through.

Not all of our starters are 22 years old, but we do have four of them that are 24 or less. We have to allow a little bit of time to allow these guys to have the opportunity to stabilize themselves.

Is he a candidate to have an opportunity to make the club? I don't know the answer to that. We'll take it a day at a time and see how he progresses from a health standpoint. If he comes along quicker, that obviously creates more options for us.

Think about the ... significance of ... how many at-bats he takes this year with men on base because the guy (Casey) hitting in front of him is going to be on base. There's going to be a number of times that he's going to come up to the plate with people on base and have the opportunity to either extend the inning, put a game away or extend leads. All those possibilities will be there.

That was his game to determine. It was his baseball game at that point. You have to give him the opportunity to finish it.

As long as he keeps his focus and continues to realize there is no real opportunity to be satisfied and he maintains that hunger, ... he could wind up being a real good pitcher in the Major Leagues.

We had something going on in the fifth, it looked like we had a chance to get back in the game, but they cut the inning off. We took some good at-bats off him, we created some opportunity for ourselves ... but from watching him, he's got a crisp fastball and his breaking ball also is very sharp.

Be quick to take advantage of an advantage.

When opportunity knocks, invite it to stay for dinner.

Volunteer. Sometimes the jobs no one wants conceal big opportunities.

Remember that just the moment you say, "I give up," someone else seeing the same situation is saying, "My, what a great opportunity."