Richard Paul Evans Quotes

Sunsets, like childhood, are viewed with wonder not just because they are beautiful but because they are fleeting.

I have come to believe that we do not walk alone in this life. There are others, fellow sojourners, whose journeys are interwoven with ours in seemingly random patterns, yet, in the end, have been carefully placed to reveal a remarkable tapestry. I believe God is the weaver at that loom.

I have Tourettes syndrome.

The most difficult of decisions are often not the ones in which we cannot determine the correct course; rather the ones in which we are certain of the path but fear the journey.

Forgiveness does not require us to close our eyes but rather to truly open them.

So often the pain of our life is no more than a reminder to take our hand off the stove.

There are none so impoverished as those who do not acknowledge the abundance of their lives

such fickle days of love when pain and ecstasy share the same hour

The greatest shackles we bear in thislife are those forged by our own fears

The assumption of time is one of humanity's greatest follies. We tell ourselves that there's always tomorrow, when we can no more predict tomorrow than we can the weather. Procrastination is the thief of dreams.

Heroes rarely look the way we draw them in our minds: attractive, imposing figures with rippling muscles and strong chins. More times than not they are humble beings, small and flawed. It is only their spirits that are beautiful and strong.

Forgiveness is the key to the heart's shackles.

Roses can grow in slums just as weeds can grow around mansions.

To choose the path is to choose the destination, but sometimes it seems that the path is under our feet even before we know we're walking.

Regret is the most tiresome of companions.

From our first babblings to our last word, we make but one statement, and that is our life.

The most important story we'll ever write in life is our own-not with ink, but with our daily choices.

Everyone who got to where they are had to begin where they were.

...even the most horribl e of nightmares is laced with the promise of dawn.

There are moments, it would seem, that were created in cosmic theater where we are given strange and fantastic tests. In these times, we do not show who we are to God, for surely He must already know, but rather to ourselves.

"You know, I've wondered if it's more painful to lose someone you love to death or to lose someone you love because she no longer loves you back." "I don't know," I said. "On the surface, it seems an easy question. It should be so much easier to lose someone who doesn't love you, because why would you want to be with someone who doesn't want you? But rejection's not an east road. A part of you always wonders what makes you so unlovable."

Denial, perhaps, is a necessary human mechanism to cope with the heartaches of life.

I have learned a great truth of life. We do not succeed in spite of our challenges and difficulties, but rather, precisely because of them.

I think the secret to a hoppy life is a selective memory. Remember what you are most grateful for and quickly forget what your not.

There are far too many people for us to think about each of them during our short stay on earth—like the thousands of books in a library we haven’t time to read in an afternoon. But this is no excuse to cease browsing. For every now and then, we find that one book that reaches us deep inside and introduces us to ourselves. And, in someone else’s story, we come to understand our own.

It is better to be loved by one person who knows your soul than millions who don't even know your phone number.

Everyone has problems. It's how you choose to deal with them. Some people choose to be whiners some choose to be winners. Some choose to be victims some choose to be victors.

What a culture we live in, we are swimming in an ocean of information, and drowning in ignorance.

Every life can be learned from, as either a flame of hope or a cautionary flare.

There are two kinds of people. Those who climb mountains and those who sit in the shadow of the mountains and critique the climbers.

We can only lose what we have first claimed.

Life is the soil, our choices and actions the sun and rain, but our dreams are the seeds.

Usually life’s greatest gifts come wrapped in adversity.

Feelings can be like wild animals-we underrate how fierce they are until we've opened their cage

I see people getting so caught up in celebrating diversity that they are neglecting their commonality. I don't see this as a good thing. The Chinese culture has survived for more than five thousand years in part because the Chinese have embraced the same language and culture. I hope I am wrong about this, and that the flame is still on beneath the great American melting pot. Americans need each other, and a house divided, no matter the color of its occupants, is still divided. And divided we all fall.

Psychologists tested the story of the Good Samaritan. What they learned gives us reason to pause. The greatest determinant of who stopped to help the stranger in need was not compassion, morality, or religious creed. It was those who had the time. Makes me wonder if I have time to do good.

We plan our lives in long, unbroken stretches that intersect our dreams the way highways connect the city dots on a road map. But in the end we learn that life is lived in the side roads, alleys, and detours.

Some so fear the future that they suffocate the present. It's like committing suicide to avoid being murdered.

We can spend our days bemoaning our losses, or we can grow from them. Ultimately the choice is ours. We can be victims of circumstance or masters of our own fate, but make no mistake, we cannot be both. The Walk - Epilogue Page 288

Old friends are memories personified.

People aren't wired to be alone. Even in the stressful population of prison, solitary confinement is still considered a cruel punishment.

We're all moons. Sometimes our dark sides overshadow our light.

We are chained to that which we do not forgive

There are people I've yet to meet who are waiting for my path to intersect with theirs, so they can complete their own journeys. I don't know who or where they are, but I know for certain that they are waiting.

The universe is a trillion, trillion threads moving in seemingly unrelated directions. Yet when you look at them together, they create a remarkable tapestry.

It is in the darkest skies that stars are best seen.

Love is never convenient-and rarely painless

Dance. Dance for the joy and breath of childhood. Dance for all children, including that child who is still somewhere entombed beneath the responsibility and skepticism of adulthood. Embrace the moment before it escapes from our grasp. For the only promise of childhood, of any childhood, is that it will someday end. And in the end, we must ask ourselves what we have given our children to take its place. And is it enough?

...for we are all amateurs at life, but if we do not focus too much on our mistakes, a miraculous picture emerges. And we learn that it's not the beauty of the image that warrants our gratitude--it's the chance to paint.

If the errors of my life have profited me one great truth it is this: believe. Believe in your destiny and the star from which it shines. Believe you have been sent from God as an arrow pulled from his own bow. It is the single universal trait which the great of this earth have all shared, while the shadows are fraught with ghosts who roam the winds with mournful wails of regret on their lips. Believe as if your life depended upon it, for indeed it does.