Language is a mixture of statement and evocation.
Mary had Joseph. Esther had Mordecai. Ruth had Boaz. We will not become the women God intends us to be without the guidance, counsel, wisdom, strength, and love of good men in our lives.
When a woman forsakes her vulnerability because she's been hurt or because she lives in a dangerous world or doesn't want to be used, she loses something essential about being a woman.
Instead of asking, 'What should a woman do—what is her role?' it would be far more helpful to ask, 'What is a woman—what is her design?' and, 'Why did God place Woman in our midst?
Christianity has basically communicated to men that the reason God put you on this Earth is to be a good boy. Mind your manners, be a nice guy. That's soul killing!
Most of what you encounter when you meet a man is a facade, an elaborate fig leaf, a brilliant disguise.
A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a strange carelessness about dying. He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it; he must desire life like water and yet drink death like wine.
The world is always going to be dangerous, and people get badly banged up, but how can there be more meaning than helping one another stand up in a wind and stay warm?
You can do gross-out until the cows come home but if there isn't something to balance it, then it's not going to work at all.
There is a foolish corner in the brain of the wisest man.
To bear failure with courage is the best proof of character that anyone can give. . . You will find that people forget the failures of others very quickly. . . . My last piece of advice is not to let anyone see your mortification, but whatever you fancy people are saying about you to go on with your ordinary life as though nothing unpleasant had happened to you.