The great epochs of life come when we gain the courage to re-christen our evil as what is best in us

Whatever period of life we are in is good only to the extent that we make use of it, that we live it to the hilt, that we continue to develop and understand what it has to offer us and we have to offer it.

The most powerful moments of our lives happen when we string together the small flickers of light created by courage, compassion, and connection and see them shine in the darkness of our struggles.

When we face the worst that can happen in any situation, we grow. When circumstances are at their worst, we can find our best. When we find the true meaning of these lessons, we also find happy, meaningful lives. Not perfect, but authentic. We can live life profoundly.

"Reclaiming ourselves usually means coming to recognize and accept that we have in us both sides of everything. We are capable of fear and courage, generosity and selfishness, vulnerability and strength. These things do not cancel each other out but offer us a full range of power and response to life. Life is as complex as we are. Sometimes our vulnerability is our strength, our fear develops our courage, and our woundedness is the road to our integrity. It is not an either/or world. It is a real world. In calling ourselves "heads" or "tails," we may never own and spend our human currency, the pure gold of which our coin is made.

But judgment may heal over time. One of the blessings of growing older is the discovery that many of the things I once believed to be my shortcomings have turned out in the long run to be my strengths, and other things of which I was unduly proud have revealed themselves in the end to be among my shortcomings. Things that I have hidden from others for years turn out to be the anchor and enrichment of my middle age. What a blessing it is to outlive your self-judgments and harvest your failures."

How great it is when we come to know that times of disappointment can be followed by joy; that guilt over falling short of our ideals can be replaced by pride in doing all that we can; and that anger can be channeled into creative achievements... and into dreams that we can make come true.

The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers.

There are moments in our lives when we summon the courage to make choices that go against reason, against common sense and the wise counsel of people we trust.

There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.

The greatest day in your life and mine is when we take total responsibility for our attitudes. That's the day we truly grow up.

Sometimes the little times you don't think are anything while they're happening turn out to be what marks a whole period of your life.

When this ends, we’ll smile sweetly, finally seeing In testing times, we became the best of beings.

In times of adversity and change, we really discover who we are and what we're made of.

We gain strength, and courage, and confidence by each experience in which we really stop to look fear in the face... we must do that which we think we cannot.