To pretend is to do nothing more than imagine life as something wonderful so that we don’t have to incur the pain that it takes to actually make life wonderful.

If sacrifice is not the theme of my life, there’s no sense telling the story.

To be ignorant of the sacrifices of others that yielded the blessings I enjoy leaves me exchanging the reality of 'blessing' for the assumption of 'entitlement.' And once that happens, I will forfeit the reality of the former which will destroy the assumption of the latter. And in what terribly dark place will that now leave me?

Discerning the difference between a dictator and a leader is quite easy. The former cannot help but see ‘leading’ and ‘serving’ as stark contradictions that by their very nature are utterly incompatible. The latter can’t tell the difference.

The difference between a ‘man’ and a ‘father’ is that the former shares his genes, but latter gives his life.

It's unfortunate to be bitten by political ambition. The deadly disease causes a man to want to access power by all means either by sacrificing others to its altar or by sacrificing himself when he fails.

If I have attached anything to sacrifice other than loss, I have at some level assumed a pay-off. And if I’ve assumed a pay-off, I’m only assuming a sacrifice.

If I’m asking what kind of ‘return’ I should be expecting on the sacrifices I’m making, I have in that question revealed the need to ‘return’ that question to wherever I found it and have the word ‘return’ edited out of it.

Love never lives on a one-way street, for it will always come back up the road bigger than how we had sent it down the road.

The father who has selflessly poured himself into the life of his children may leave no other monument than that of his children. But as for a life well lived, no other monument is necessary.