8 Dec 2014

This quotation about Christmas could refer either to the religious or secular aspect:

“Christmas renews our youth by stirring our wonder. The capacity for wonder has been called our most pregnant human faculty, for in it [is] born our art, our science, our religion.”

Ralph W Sockman
(Now to Live!, Kessinger Publishing, 2005)

1 Dec 2014

“Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it. My optimism, then, does not rest on the absence of evil, but on a glad belief in the preponderance of good and a willing effort always to cooperate with the good, that it may prevail. I try to increase the power God has given me to see the best in everything and every one, and make that Best a part of my life.”

Helen Keller (Optimism: An Essay). Helen Keller (1880-1968) was a deaf and blind writer and social activist.