For children are innocent and love justice, while most of us are wicked and naturally prefer mercy.

Nor public flame, nor private, dare to shine;

Nor human light is left, nor glimpse divine!

Lo! Thy dread Empire, Chaos, is restored;

Light dies before thine uncreating word:

Thy hand, great Anarch, lets the curtain fall;

And universal darkness buries all.

Very soon the shadow will give way to Reality. The partial will pass into the Perfect. The foretaste will lead to the Banquet. The troubled path will end in Paradise.

A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.

Religion divorced from morality, words without deeds, creeds that satisfy the head but never warm the heart, are vain.

It is not a question of keeping to a standard, it is not a question of vainly striving to do something; it is a question of getting ready for the place to which you are going....if you are a child of God, you are destined for heaven and for glory, and that all the things you see inside yourself and outside yourself cannot prevent that plan from being carried out.

It is easy, when you are young, to believe that what you desire is no less than what you deserve, to assume that if you want something badly enough, it is your God-given right to have it. When I decided to go to Alaska that April, like Chris McCandless, I was a raw youth who mistook passion for insight and acted according to an obscure, gap-ridden logic. I thought climbing the Devils Thumb would fix all that was wrong with my life. In the end, of coruse, it changed almost nothing. But I cam to appreciate that mountains make poor receptacles for dreams. And I lived to tell my tale.

"Sisters, do not allow yourselves to be made to feel inadequate or frustrated because you cannot do everything others seem to be accomplishing. Rather, each should assess her own situation, her own energy, and her own talents, and then choose the best way to mold her family into a team, a unit that works together and supports each other. Only you and your Father in Heaven know your needs, strengths, and desires. Around this knowledge your personal course must be charted and your choices made."

"Since it is so likely that children will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter but darker."

"If for a while the harder you try the harder it gets, take heart. So it has been with the best people who ever lived."