To truly laugh, you must be able to take your pain, and play with it!

You need to associate with people who inspire you, people that challenge you to raise higher, people that make you better. Don’t waste your valuable time with people that are not adding to your growth. Your destiny is too important.

The great challenge of adulthood is holding on to your idealism after you lose your innocence.

The hardest challenge is to be yourself in a world where everyone is trying to make you be somebody else.

Compassion asks us to go where it hurts, to enter into the places of pain, to share in brokenness, fear, confusion, and anguish. Compassion challenges us to cry out with those in misery, to mourn with those who are lonely, to weep with those in tears. Compassion requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless. Compassion means full immersion in the condition of being human.

Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but – I hope – into a better shape.

The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us.

The hardest assumption to challenge is the one you don’t even know you are making.

The pro-Israel lobby has been remarkably successful in suppressing criticism. Politicians challenge it at their peril because of the lobby’s ability to influence political contributions.

You don’t develop courage by being happy in your relationships everyday. You develop it by surviving difficult times and challenging adversity.

A person you excuse from any genuine challenge is a person you do not truly respect.

The secret of success is to make your mind work for you – not against you. This means constantly being positive, constantly setting up challenges you can meet – either today, next week, or next month etc.

Do not stop thinking of life as an adventure. You have no security unless you can live bravely, excitingly, imaginatively; unless you can choose a challenge instead of competence.

I personally think if something’s not a challenge there’s no point doing it because you’re not gonna learn much.

I never wanted to be a career politician. I always am interested just to take on challenges that everyone says are impossible to do and to take it on.

I’m hungrier than those other guys out there. Every rebound is a personal challenge.

Life is very interesting… in the end, some of your greatest pains, become your greatest strengths.

In time of difficulties, we must not lose sight of our achievements.

My best life lessons and education didn’t come from a classroom – they’ve come from the wild. How you act in the big moments, the ones that challenge you, scare you, tempt you, and force you to make the right decisions, is what defines you.

The challenge, whenever you create anything, is to persevere and push away the negative voices. And the more you accomplish, the louder they get. The key is to shut them off and trust in your heart where you’re going.

Give your life to Christ, he’ll challenge you.

The ultimate is not to win, but to reach within the depths of your capabilities and to compete against yourself.

Almost anything difficult, any challenge takes time, patience, and hard work.

Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.

Don’t be afraid to challenge the pros, even in their own backyard. Learn from the pros, observe them, seek them out as mentors and partners. But remember that even the pros may have leveled out in terms of their learning and skills. Sometimes even the pros can become complacent and lazy.

Once you choose hope, anything’s possible

Life is based on growth and finding new challenges to face and overcome, new contributions to make to society, and constantly coming to a better understanding of yourself and the universe in which you live.

So another challenge for our generation is to create global institutions that reflect our ideas of fairness and responsibility, not the ideas that were the basis of the last stage of financial development over these recent years.

Whether…a change from the supremacy of natural science to a new social science will take place…depends on one factor: how many brilliant, learned, disciplined, and caring men and women are attracted by the new challenge.

Whenever faced with a challenge, I dig deep within myself and summon my spiritual and physical forces. This gives me the focus, determination, perseverance, and support I need to succeed.

The true measure of a successful leader is their ability to discover the hidden talent in those they lead and challenge them to achieve greatness. If you think you can do a thing or think you can’t do a thing, you are right.

Teachers can change lives with just the right mix of chalk and challenges.

I have come to believe that, while we certainly continue to need people of goodwill to serve in elected office, meeting the challenges our country faces will require more than just policy-making.

At the center of the universe, is a deep abiding love. We are called to be part of it. We Catholics and Christians are not ashamed to believe this. We invite everyone to accept the challenge to live as if we were all loved into existence.

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.