Related:

• God gives us our relatives; thank God we can choose our friends.
• My deeply held belief is that if a God of anything like the traditional sort exists, our curiosity and intelligence is provided by such a God.
  We would be unappreciative of that gift ... if we suppressed our passion to explore the universe and ourselves....
• Our children give us the opportunity to become the parents we always wish we had.
• God gives us relatives; thank God we can chose our friends.
• What we cry, what we contend for, in our world of toil and blood, it all lies beneath the notice of the hacker we call God.
  -- Thomas Pynchon, "Vineland", 1990...
• Our destiny changes with our thought; we shall become what we wish to become, do what we wish to do, when our habitual thought corresponds with our desire.
  Orison S. Marde...
• Never despise fashion. It's what we have instead of God. -- Malcolm Bradbury
• Our deeds follow us, and what we have been makes us what we are. John Dyke
• What we frankly give, forever is our own. -- George Granville