Richard Paul Evans Famous Quotes & Sayings
100 Richard Paul Evans Famous Sayings, Quotes and Quotation.
Simply stated, earth is a school-a divine educational process custom-fit to each of us.
When I think of God I feel like an ant crawling into a computer.
They say that time heals all wounds. But even as wounds heal they leave scars, token reminders of the pain.
In most cases, true greatness is a silent and lonely affair, unaccompanied by the trumpeted fanfare of acclaim.
To forgive is to unlock the cage of another's folly to set ourselves free.
If love is our reason we may veer off course sometimes, but we'll never be lost.
Unfortunately, large cities don't have a monopoly on loneliness. It can be found in small towns as well. Loneliness can be found everywhere there are people.
In the end, we all lose it. Remember that. In the end, we own nothing.
Such fickle days of love when pain and ecstasy share the same hour
Sometimes the most profound experiences of our lives start with an act so simple and careless that we hardly think about it - like tossing a small stone that causes a massive avalanche.
It has been said that sometimes the greatest hope in our lives is just a second chance to do what we should have done right in the first place.
But more than brave, you have love. And love is brave.
Actually, all fear is born of the imagination, which means the danger we fear doesn't need to be rational or even real to be potent. Like my fear of snakes. When I was eighteen I drove my car off the highway into a ditch because there was a snake on the road. It didn't matter that the snake couldn't have bitten me through the car. It didn't matter that the snake probably wasn't even poisonous or might have even already been dead. It didn't even matter than swerving off the road at fifty miles per hour posed a much greater danger than the snake I was frightened of. Fear doesn't listen to reason. It takes its own counsel.
We can spend our days bemoaning our losses, or we can grow from them. Ultimately the choice is ours. We can be victims of circumstance or masters of our own fate, but make no mistake, we cannot be both.
The Walk - Epilogue Page 288
My mom used to say that faith and fear can't exist simultaneously in the mind any more than light and dark can exist simultaneously in the same room.
It's been said that the Magi, wise men, gazed up into the night skies, following a star. But they were not looking for a star. They were looking for hope. Hope of a new world. Hope of redemption. Light is not found in dark places, & hope is not found looking down or looking back. May you always look up.
Suffering ceases to be suffering when we form a clear picture of it.
Deep in our hearts everyone walks free.
Sometimes it's the fight that makes a thing worth having
When a man loses his vision of the future he dies.
Fate is an excuse for people who are too stupid or too weak to make their own future, he said.
Take it out on whoever is close. Even people we love. Taylor's afraid for Michael and so she's upset. And since he isn't here, she took it out on you.
Those with the softest hearts build the hardest shells.
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.
Usually the most interesting stories are written not on paper but hearts.
Life is not yours to take.
I'm a humble guy, okay?
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.
Why is it that we so easily confide secrets to strangers that we so carefully hide from ourselves?
There's a problem with marrying up. You always worry that someday they'll see through you and leave. Or, worse yet, someone better will come along and take her. In my case, it wasn't someone. And it wasn't something better.
The thing is, the only real sign of life is growth. And growth requires pain. So to choose life is to accept pain.
People aren't wired to be alone. Even in the stressful population of prison, solitary confinement is still considered a cruel punishment.
So I've been thinking. Do you believe there's a hell?"
"Sure. Doesn't everybody?"
"Well, what if this is hell, but we just don't know it?"
"That's crazy. Hell is like lakes of fire, and there are devils with horns and pitchforks. here's none of those around here."
"But what if hell's not really like that?" Grace asked.
"Everyone says it's that way," I said.
"I don't think Jesus every talked about fire and brimstone."
"Then why do they teach us that at church?"
"To scare us."
"Why would they want to scare us?"
"I don't know. I just don't think God wants us to do good things because we're scared. I think he wants us to do good things because we're good.
I am facing the most difficult thing of my life, my own greatest failure.
It is that to which we cling that drags us to the bottom of the abyss. There is real power at having nothing to lose.
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.
Everyone has suffered more than you know.
I have Tourettes syndrome.
If you remember the why, the how will work itself out.
Fate does not bend for us-we must bend to it.
The universe is a trillion, trillion threads moving in seemingly unrelated directions. Yet when you look at them together, they create a remarkable tapestry.
The Golden Rule is a two-edged sword. If some of us treated others as we treat ourselves, we would be jailed.
Suppose we as children are selfish by nature, judging our parents in the context not of their worlds and challenges but of our worlds and how they meet our needs. Even as we mature we rarely think of them as having been young like us.
It seems a long time since I remembered all I have to be grateful for. Perhaps that's why it's been such a long time since I've been really happy.
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.
It is in the dark times that the light of friendship shines brightest.
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.
I may be wrong, but it seems that there may be some unraveling of the American tapestry. 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".
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.
... Or he could choose life. At that pivotal moment, it occurred to him that with all his
schooling in theology he had, perhaps, missed the entire point of his studies, the very
crux of the gospel he had professed to believe. That the measure of a person's heart, the
barometer of good or evil, was nothing more than the extent of their willingness to
choose life over death. That the path of God was, simply, the path of life, abundant and
eternal. And this is where he failed, for to choose life is to choose sorrow as well as joy,
pain as well as pleasure. When Hunter had buried Rachel, he buried along with her his
heart, lest it might heal and feel and grow again. And in so doing he had chosen more
than death, he had chosen damnation itself, for damnation is nothing more than to stop
a thing in its eternal progression. In that first flight from West Chester he had run not
only from the horror and pain of death but from life itself.
I am lonely, I am lonely, I am lonely, I am lonely, I am lonely. How appropriate that I write this to myself.
Sometimes life is like that ... Things that seem bad at the time are really blessings.
I once heard one of his colleagues describe my father as the kind of guy who could tell you to go to hell and you'd look forward to the trip.
If God came to save the world, why are so many of His professed followers intent on damning it?
As a boy I heard this story in church.
A man was patching a pitched roof of a tall building when he began sliding off. As he neared the edge of the roof he prayed, "Save me, Lord, and I'll go to church every Sunday, I'll give up drinking, I'll be the best man this city has ever known."
As he finished his prayer, a nail snagged onto his overalls and saved him. The man looked up to the sky and shouted, "Never mind, God. I took care of it myself."
How true of us.
People are like books, unknown until they are opened.
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 have come to believe that the defining moments of most lives are not acts of courage or greatness, rather they are the simple acts: expressions of virtue or vice that are tossed carelessly like seeds from a farmer's hand, leaving their fruits to be revealed at a future date.
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.
Roses can grow in slums just as weeds can grow around mansions.
Before you judge me too harshly, consider your own deepest fears - real or imagined. Actually, all fear is born of the imagination, which means that the danger we fear doesn't need to be rational or even real to be potent.
There are none so impoverished as those who do not acknowledge the abundance of their lives
It's been my experience that those with the toughest shells have the softest hearts
Some people deal with their problems by talking them to death. In fact, some enjoy the execution so much they resurrect their problems just so they can kill them again.-Nathan Hurst
I've learned that the greatest threat to love is not circumstance but the absence of attentions. For we do not neglect others because we have ceased to love; rather we ceased to love others because we have neglected them. I've learned that each day is a miracle unearned. I've learned that while life is ephemeral-a vapor- LOVE is not. In short, I have learned what matters and what does not.
I have found that the most significant experiences of our lives rarely come when we're expecting them and oftentimes when we're not even paying attention.
Jade Dragon will go.
I once heard a preacher say, "The reason we sometimes connect so quickly with a complete stranger is because the friendship is not of this life, but is the resumption of a friendship from another." I do not know if this is true, but sometimes it feels true.
You're not my boss, Alan." He returned to his game. Honestly, my first instinct was to smack the kid, but i doubted that would fly with his parents.
How did I come to such a dark place? I don't know where my road now leads but I fear the shadowlands that lie ahead. But it is not the darkness of the path I fear. Just the loneliness of the trail.
Man has left footprints on the moon but still hasn't walked on the ocean floor.
Books are the most tolerant of friends.
Humans need to belong. Humans have always needed tribes. Today we find tribes in family or clubs or religion. What happens when we fall out of them? I suppose, in prehistoric times, it was fatal to be cast out of a tribe, to be exiled or excommunicated from the group, away from the people we love and need. Exile from the tribe is a form of execution.
Love is full of pain and mistakes. That's what makes it interesting and that's why we explore relationships in literature. That whole 'love is never having to say you're sorry' crap is just that, crap. Love is learning how to say you're sorry.
I don't believe society has ever grown more tolerant. It just changes targets.
The kids who speak well, are articulate and intelligent, are all readers.
Raising or caring for children requires sacrifice and service, which, I believe, heals us from the destructive forces of self-centeredness.
There can be no joy without gratitude.
I hope you can someday forgive me.'
'I forgive you now.
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.
Forgiveness is the key to the heart's shackles.
It's a shame that humans don't come with reset buttons.
Trauma has a way of indelibly linking the incidentals to the profound.
Life is the soil, our choices and actions the sun and rain, but our dreams are the seeds.
As you grow older, Michael, you'll learn an important lesson - that most people spend their entire lives wishing for a second chance to do what they should have done right the first time.
As long as you remember the whys, the hows will take care of themselves.
It is oftentimes a blessing to not know our limitations.
It's the only way to accomplish the impossible.
What the masses don't realize is that they're looking for a shepherd. Those who don't think they can be influenced or call themselves 'independent thinkers' are usually the biggest conformists of all - and the easiest to turn. Why do you think cults prey on college students? Easy picking.
The law of centrifugal force seems to be as true for the human condition as it is for the Newtonian mechanics. The faster our lives spin, the more things tend to fly apart.
Real love is to expand our own capacity for tolerance and caring, to actively seek another's well-being. All else is simply a charade of self-interest. Zeke
People are looking for inspiration, and my books are sometimes the vehicles of what people are looking for.
I once read that love is like a rose: we fixate on the blossom, but it's the thorny stem that keeps it alive and aloft. I think marriage is like that. Like my father said, the things of greatest value are the things we fight for. And in the end, if we do it right, we value the stem far more than the blossom
Joy isn't the natural response to blessings - joy is what comes from acknowledging them.
Elgen can twist the truth all they want, but they can't change
We all swim deep in the river of our ancestry.
I don't get that, I mean, what's power? Let's say he suddenly becomes king of the world. What is he going to do with it that he can't do now? Is his food going to taste better? Is the weather going to be nicer? Will love feel better? I just don't understand that mentality.
I've wondered why the famous congregate with each other. Perhaps it's to assure each other that they really are as important as they think they are.
I'm glad I have you for my boyfriend." "Me too," I said. "Sometimes I have to pinch myself." She pinched my arm and smiled. "You're so cute.
At one time in my career, Barnes and Noble bookstores categorized my books as religious fiction.
It's almost as difficult to believe that someone with so many trials could harbor such hope, as that there are those with so much advantage who harbor such hopelessness.
