Privacy is so sacred, and any time a victim is returned, a survivor is found and rescued, privacy is one of the greatest gifts we can give them because if they decide to share, that's up to them, and they will come forward.
Elizabeth SmartRead
I think forgiveness is probably one of the greatest forms of self-love there is because you don't do forgiveness for anybody else. My captors will never care if I forgive them... It will not make a day of difference to them at all, but it will make a huge difference to me.
Interpretation
Forgiveness is a powerful act of self-love that primarily benefits the forgiver.
This quote emphasizes that forgiveness is primarily for oneself rather than for the person who has wronged you. Elizabeth Smart underscores that the act of forgiving does not affect the wrongdoer, but it empowers the person who forgives, allowing them to find peace and healing in their own life.
In practice
During a motivational speech on personal growth, one might say: 'As Elizabeth Smart remarked, forgiveness is one of the greatest forms of self-love.'
Privacy is so sacred, and any time a victim is returned, a survivor is found and rescued, privacy is one of the greatest gifts we can give them because if they decide to share, that's up to them, and they will come forward.
I'm grateful for rain because, when I was kidnapped, that meant that I had something to drink.
Yesterday from my office window I saw a crippled girl negotiating her way across the street, her shoulders squarely braced. At each jerky movement her hair flew back like an annunciatory angel, and I saw she was the only dancer on the street.
How can I be kind? How can I find bird-relief in the nest-building of day-to-day? Necessity supplies no velvet wing with which to escape. I am indeed and mortally pierced with the seeds of love.
That happened to me, but I'm so much more than that girl that was kidnapped.
Even when I get on airplanes, very often, as I walk down the aisle, I notice a lot of people staring or whispering. I recognize the fact that yes, to a lot of people, I will always be that 14-year-old girl who was kidnapped and who was held captive.
This book, conceived in sorrow, composed in grief, and constructed at the brink of despair, contains my mind's best thoughts, and my soul's triumph over the powers of darkness.
The self-confidence of the warrior is not the self-confidence of the average man. The average man seeks certainty in the eyes of the onlooker and calls that self-confidence. The warrior seeks impeccability in his own eyes and calls that humbleness. The average man is hooked to his fellow men, while the warrior is hooked only to infinity.
Nothing is harder than to accept oneself.
Don't expect your genius to be discovered; do what you must do because it gives you joy. Don't expect your love to be accepted. Love because it justifies your life.
I cannot tell if what the world considers ‘happiness’ is happiness or not. All I know is that when I consider the way they go about attaining it, I see them carried away headlong, grim and obsessed, in the general onrush of the human herd, unable to stop themselves or to change their direction. All the while they claim to be just on the point of attaining happiness.
A man can counterfeit love, he can counterfeit faith, he can counterfeit hope and all the other graces, but it is very difficult to counterfeit humility.
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