often we allow ourselves to be upset by small things we should despise and forget … Here we are on this earth, with only a few more decades to live, and we lose many irreplaceable hours brooding over grievances that, in a year's time, will be forgotten by us and by everybody. No, let us devote our life to worth-while actions and feelings, to great thoughts, real affections and enduring undertakings. For life is too short to be little.

Half the nation savagely condemned these incompetent generals, but Lincoln, "with malice toward none, with charity for all," held his peace. One of his favorite quotations was "Judge not, that ye be not judged.

In the confusion we stay with each other, happy to be together, speaking without uttering a single word.

We're all human and disagreements come up even between two people who are deeply in love.

The Christian gospel is a summons to peace, calling for justice beyond anger, mercy beyond justice, forgiveness beyond mercy, love beyond forgiveness.

In order to survive, a plurality of true communities would require not egalitarianism and tolerance but knowledge, an understanding of the necessity of local differences, and respect. Respect, I think, always implies imagination - the ability to see one another, across our inevitable differences, as living souls. (pg. 181, Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community)

The two families, sundered in the ruin of a friendship, were united again first in new friendship and then in mariage. My grandfather made a peace here that has joined many who would otherwise have been divided. I am the child of his forgiveness.

Forgiveness offered -especially when so undeserved - cuts chains off the human heart that no other power in any universe anywhere can rattle much less break....love did what hatred can not and never will.

Some are wrestling with painful words spoken over them by someone they love or walking around in chains of their own making.

Man's greatest need is forgiveness while his greatest desire is power.

Hatred is a commodity I couldn't afford in prison. Too expensive then. Too expensive now... I couldn't live every day with that stuff bubbling up inside me.... Gage taught me that. He found me in a bad place. Picked me up. Showed me I had a choice. I couldn't change my circumstances, but I had a lot to say about who I was in the midst of them. And who I became. Gage helped me, showed me, how to lay it down.

Forgiveness offered—especially when so undeserved—cuts chains off the human heart that no other power in any universe anywhere can rattle much less break.