Richard Paul Evans Quotes

Everyone can open a book not everyone can appreciate the beauty of the writing.

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.)

The shackles of belief, when reinforced by fear, are difficult to break free from and rarely done.

Heroes are heroes precisely because they are willing to do what everyone else won't - oppose the popular voice.

Fate is an excuse for people who are too stupid or too weak to make their own future, he said.

I believe it's after the honeymoon ends that true love begins. It's in the hard times that the greater virtues of love reveal themselves, like tolerance and patience and kindness.

You want to know what hell is? What brimstone and burining really is?"
Yes"
Hell is the perfect recollection of every evil thing you've done in your life, every thoughtless word, every cruel, evil thought or action. It's knowing that you could have helped your brother and didn't. Hell is clarity, Bob. It's nothing more than clarity." He leaned forward as if to confide in me, his gaze intense. "Do you want to know what heaven is?"
I was locked into his gaze. "Yes."
His voice was barely above a whisper, "It's the same thing.

There can be no joy without gratitude.

New hopes are a fountain of energy.

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.

The reason we start things is rarely the reason we continue them.

Some men see mountains as obstacles. Others as a canvas.

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

If love is our reason we may veer off course sometimes, but we'll never be lost.

Nowhere is our vision more distorted than when we turn it on ourselves.

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

Maybe, if we just accepted our deaths, we might finally start to live.

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

Prologue When I began writing this story, I thought I had some idea of what it was about. I was wrong. In my life writing I've discovered that there are times when a story, like architecture, is carefully designed, erected, and furnished. Then there are tales that take their own way, and I find myself being dragged along after them like a white-knuckled water skier behind a speedboat.

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

Man has left footprints on the moon but still hasn't walked on the ocean floor.

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

We cannot enslave others without enslaving a part of ourselves.

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.

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

We need to get the information out of Grace, Hey Mitchell, do you have a computer.- Michael
Like six of them- Mitchell
We need your most powerful one. We've got to upload Grace.- Michael
What's grace- Mitchell
I'm Grace- Grace
I don't get it. Will someone please tell me what's going on?- Mitchell
They're uploading me. -Grace
I'm so confused -Mitchell

Of all, clockmakers and morticians should bear the keenest sense of priority - their lives daily spent in observance of the unflagging procession of time ... and the end thereof.

As long as you remember the whys, the hows will take care of themselves.

We all have two stories---the journal of our life evnets, and the fiction we tell ourselves about them.
Charles James's Diary

I believe that in spite of the chains we bind ourselves with, there's a primordial section of the human psyche that is still nomadic and still yearns to roam free.

I loved you, Jim. I loved you with all my heart. And you left me. You left me when I needed you the most. It's too late, it's too late. You can't come back.

It takes great courage to wear kindness as if one had never been hurt.

Home is where they don't want to kill you, Jack said.

People are like books, unknown until they are opened.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Simply stated, earth is a school-a divine educational process custom-fit to each of us.

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.

For the third time since I began, my walk has been delayed. 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. No matter how much I, or the rest of humanity wishes otherwise, life is not lived in smooth, downhill expressways, but in the obscure, perilous trails and rocky back roads of life where we stumble and feel our way through the fog of the unknown.

They say love is blind, but it's not. Infatuation is blind. Emotional neediness is blind. Love sees the fault - it just sees beyond it as well.

There have been seasons of my life when rejection rained down. And then there have been typhoons. Kimberly Rossi's Diary

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

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

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

Usually life's greatest gifts come wrapped in adversity.

It's good to take counsel from the past but not to be ruled by it. Otherwise we end up using today to fight yesterday's battles and miss tomorrow's promis.

I had locked from him the deepest chambers of my fear, only to discover that he had his own key.

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.

And if our lives are but a single flash in the dark hollow of eternity, then if, but for the briefest of moments, we shine - then how brilliantly our light has burned. And as starlight knows no boundary of space or time, so too, our illumination will shine forth throughout all eternity, for darkness has no power to quell such light. And this is a lesson we must all learn and take to heart - that all light is eternal and all love is light. And it must forever be so.

The sound of a kiss is not as strong as that of a cannon, but its echo endures much longer.

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

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.

Never trade what you love for what's behind curtain B. Never.

They are like pythons in the jungle. The smallest child can crush a python egg. But let the snake hatch and grow and the python with squeeze and devour the child.

The first casualty of hitting rock bottom is vanity.

Without great mountains we cannot reach great heights. And we are born to reach great heights

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.

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

Life is not yours to take.

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. Alan Christoffersen's diary

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

Never criticize a man until you've walked a mile in his shoes. That way he can't do anything to you because you're a mile away and you've got his shoes.

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.

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.

Why is it that good always has to fight an uphill battle?"
I thought for a moment, then said, "I don't know. Maybe that's the point. Good things are higher up.

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

I would say that I was without faith, but no one is truly faithless; they just have faith in the wrong things: fear and defeat.

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

We do not succeed in spite of our obstacles and challenges. We succeed precisely because of them.

My Dear Son,
I am so very proud of you. Now, as you embark on a new journey, I'd like to share this one piece of advice. Always, always remember that - adversity is not a detour. It is part of the path.

You will encounter obstacles. You will make mistakes. Be grateful for both. Your obstacles and mistakes will be your greatest teachers. And the only way to not make mistakes in this life is to do nothing, which is the biggest mistake of all.

Your challenges, if you let them, will become your greatest allies. Mountains can crush or raise you, depending on which side of the mountain you choose to stand on. All history bears out that the great, those who have changed the world, have all suffered great challenges. And, more times than not it's precisely those challenges that, in God's time, lead to triumph.

Abhor victimhood. Denounce entitlement. Neither are gifts, rather cages to damn the soul. Everyone who has walked this earth is a victim of injustice. Everyone.

Most of all, do not be too quick to denounce your sufferings. The difficult road you are called to walk may, in fact be your only path to success.

We are all in motion, always. Those who are not climbing towards something are descending toward nothing.

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

It is in the dark times that the light of friendship shines brightest.

Can you ever forgive me? I already have. How could you? I don't deserve it. That's what makes it love.

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

I don't want to go to Peru."
How do you know? You've never been there."
I've never been to hell either and I'm pretty sure I don't want to go there.

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.

You are thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn't at all. You can be discouraged by failure-or you can learn from it. So go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because, remember, that's where you will find success.

It's been my experience that those with the toughest shells have the softest hearts

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.

Dwelling on him would make him a bigger part of my life than I want him to be.

The depth of love is revealed in its departure.

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.

Just like our story, the original Christmas tales were stories of searching, not so much for the lost, as for the familiar. Mary and Joseph sought in Bethlehem- the home of their familial ancestry- a place to start their own family; the three kings from the East journeyed beneath the sentinel star to find the King of Kings; and the shepherds sought a child in a place most familiar to them: a manger.

Forgiveness is the key to the heart's shackles.

People talk of life's storms as if they are universal experiences. But they're not. Some people hear thunder while others touch lightning.

Everyone has suffered more than you know.

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.

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.

Believe. Believe in your destiny and the star from which it shines. Believe you have been sent from God as an arrow shot from His own bow.
It is the single universal trait that 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 on it ... for indeed it does.

Regret is a useless emotion.

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

I've never understood why people said 'in your own words.' Who else's words would I use?

Oftentimes, the hottest fires of hell are fueled from within.

On the calendar, all days look the same, but they do not carry the same weight.

The more I study history the more I realize how little mankind has changed. There are no new scripts, just different actors.

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