Gratitude was never meant to be an excuse for giving up on the obstacles God has put before you. Some of the most magical things he can bring us require faith and a lot of planning.

When a Wanderess has been caged, or perched with her wings clipped, She lives like a Stoic, She lives most heroic, smiling with ruby, moistened lips once her cup of Death is welcome sipped.

The happiness of a family is such a complex matter. Like a table laid out with a tea service, it looks so ordinary until it's threatened. Then it becomes infinitely precious.

It's not strength, it's PERCEPTION that makes you stronger. If you change how you SEE it, you'll change how you FEEL about it.

He had awoken too late for happiness, but not for strength, and could feel an austere joy, as of a warrior who is homeless but stands fully armed.

There were office-worn gents with yellow faces, bent backs, and one shoulder set slightly higher than the other from spending hours hunched over desks. And their sad, anxious faces spoke volumes about their domestic troubles, never-ending money worries, and all those old hopes which had been dashed for good; for they all belonged to the army of poor threadbare drudges who just about make ends meet in some dismal plasterboard house with a flowerbed for a garden in the rubbish-and-slag-heap belt on the outskirts of Paris.