The holiness of the gospel softens the hardness of the heart.

— Lailah Gifty Akita

You can't tell how heavy somebody else's load is just from looking. The Lord doesn't give us more than we can carry.

— Lalita Tademy

Sirs, so much as your hearts as is empty of Christ and heaven, let it be filled with shame and sorrow, and not with ease (483).

— Richard Baxter

Only hardship softens the hardness of the human heart.

— Lailah Gifty Akita

A hardness to change reveals a hardness of heart.

— Gary Rohrmayer

To want and not to have, sent all up her body a hardness, a hollowness, a strain. And then to want and not to have- to want and want- how that wrung the heart, and wrung it again and again!

— Virginia Woolf

Life is flinching in the midst of breathing, gasping at the thought of dying. It’s climbing ropeless up sheer rock faces, groping for the next finger-hole of hope. Steady on! Only a thousand feet to go and after that a jungle, a minefield, a rapids. (Can I stop smiling now?)Once, not long ago, I was flung off the cliff of the moment, thrust into an illicit relationship with destiny, an affair not of my making. Was I making love or being raped? The lines were fuzzy.

— Chila Woychik

Reaching too deep into something not meant for you is full of pain. Figure out what you can have and work on that.

— Lalita Tademy