“Anger is an essential part of being human. People are taught to deny themselves anger, and in this, they are actually opening themselves up to hate. The more you deny yourself the freedom to be angry, the more you will hate. Let yourself be angry, and hate will disintegrate, and when hate disintegrates, forgiveness prevails! The more you deny that you are angry, in attempts to be “holy” the more inhuman you will become, and the more inhuman you will become, the harder it will be to forgive.”

“I have already forgiven them and thanked God for the trial. We have to forgive instantly. That’s what the Lord did. The actions of your enemy are nothing compared to what you are doing to yourself because of his actions. Your memory is so filled with anger and hurt feelings that it cannot hold anything good. But if you show mercy and forgiveness towards your enemies, you can blamelessly live in the present, and God will take care of the rest.”

“The sound of thunder awake me, and when I got up, my feet sank into muddy water up to my ankles. Mother took Buster and Helen to high ground to pray, but I stayed behind with Apache and Lupe. We barricaded the door with the rug and started bailing water out the window. Mother came back and begged us to go pray with her on the hilltop. “To heck with praying!” I shouted. “Bail, dammit, bail!”Mom look mortified. I could tell she thought I’d probably doomed us all with my blasphemy, and I was a little shocked at it myself, but with the water rising so fast, the situation was dire. We had lit the kerosene lamp, and we could see the walls of the dugout were beginning to sag inward. If Mom had pitched in and helped, there was a chance we might have been able to save the dugout – not a good chance, but a fighting chance. Apache and Lupe and I couldn’t do it on our own, though, and when the ceiling started to cave, we grabbed Mom’s walnut headboard and pulled it through the door just as the dugout collapsed in on itself, burying everything.Afterward, I was pretty aggravated with Mom. She kept saying that the flood was God’s will and we had to submit to it. But I didn’t see things that way. Submitting seemed to me a lot like giving up. If God gave us the strength to bail – the gumption to try to save ourselves – isn’t that what he wanted us to do?”

“When someone you love makes compassion, kindness, forgiveness, respect and God an option, you can be sure they have made you an option, as well.”

“Defeat anger, stop using it as a shield against truth, and you will find the compassion you need to forgive the people you love.”

“I shot up,now as angry and frusterated as him.I had a feeling if i stayed, we’d both snap. In and undertone, I murmured,”this isnt over.i won’t give up on you.”” I’ve given up on you,”he said back,voice also soft. “Love fades. Mine has.”

“Anyone who has learned the Quran and holds it lovingly in his heart will ‘value his nights when people are asleep, his days when people are given to excess, his grief when people are joyful, his weeping when people laugh, his silence when people chatter and his humility when people are arrogant’. In other words every moment of life will be precious to him, and he should therefore be ‘gentle’, never harsh nor quarrelsome, ‘nor one who makes a clamour in the market nor one who is quick to anger’.”

“It’s one thing to think you’re worthless, and quite another for somebody else to tell you that you are.”

“Accomplishments don’t erase shame, hatred, cruelty, silence, ignorance, discrimination, low self-esteem or immorality. It covers it up, with a creative version of pride and ego. Only restitution, forgiving yourself and others, compassion, repentance and living with dignity will ever erase the past.”

“It was badly received by the generation to which it was first addressed, and the outpouring of angry nonsense to which it gave rise is sad to think upon. But the present generation will probably behave just as badly if another Darwin should arise, and inflict upon them that which the generality of mankind most hate—the necessity of revising their convictions. Let them, then, be charitable to us ancients; and if they behave no better than the men of my day to some new benefactor, let them recollect that, after all, our wrath did not come to much, and vented itself chiefly in the bad language of sanctimonious scolds. Let them as speedily perform a strategic right-about-face, and follow the truth wherever it leads.”

“Realize this – your anger with God does not drive a wedge between you and Him. It is your silence that drives the wedge. – Prodigal Life”

“Speak the truth do not become angered and give when asked, even be it a little. By these three conditions one goes to the presence of the gods.”