We are too busy mopping the floor to turn off the faucet. ~Author Unknown
It is never too late to be who you might have been. ~George Eliot
You learn you can do your best even when it's hard, even when you're tired and maybe hurting a little bit. It feels good to show some courage. ~Joe Namath
We do not do what we want and yet we are responsible for what we are - that is the fact. ~Jean Paul Sartre
“Let them think what they liked, but I didn't mean to drown myself. I meant to swim till I sank -- but that's not the same thing.” -Joseph Conrad
How strange to use "You only live once" as an excuse to throw it away. ~Bill Copeland
“I close my eyes and I let my body shut itself down and I let my mind wander. It wanders to a familiar place. A place I don’t talk about or acknowledge exists. A place where there is only me. A place that I hate. I am alone. Alone here and alone in the world. Alone in my heart and alone in my mind. Alone everywhere, all the time, for as long as I can remember. Alone with my Family, alone with my friends, alone in a Room full of People. Alone when I wake, alone through each awful day, alone when I finally meet the blackness. I am alone in my horror. Alone in my horror. I don’t want to be alone. I have never wanted to be alone. I fucking hate it. I hate that I have no one to talk to, I hate that I have no one to call, I hate that I have no one to hold my hand, hug me, tell me everything is going to be all right. I hate that I have no one to share my hopes and dreams with, I hate that I no longer have any hopes or dreams, I hate that I have no one to tell me to hold on, that I can find them again. I hate that when I scream, and I scream bloody murder, that I am screaming into emptiness. I hate that there is no one to hear my scream and that there is no one to help me learn how to stop screaming. . . More than anything, all I have ever wanted is to be close to someone. More than anything, all I have ever wanted is to feel as if I wasn’t alone.” -James Frey, A Million Little Pieces
I was weak and pathetic and I couldn't control myself. An explanation, especially a bullshit one, doesn't alter the circumstances. I need to change, I have to change, and at this point, change is my only option, unless I am ready to die. All that matters is that I make myself something else and someone else for the future. -James Frey
“About life: "It is not complicated unless I make it so. It is not difficult unless I allow it to be. A second is no more than a second, a minute no more than a minute, a day no more than a day. They pass. All things and all time will pass. Don't force or fear, don't control or lose control. Don't fight and don't stop fighting. Embrace and endure. If you embrace, you will endure.” -James Frey, A Million Little Pieces
“Everything I know and I am and I have seen felt done past present past now then before now seen felt done hurt felt focus into a something beyond words beyond beyond beyond and it speaks now and it says.
Stay.
Fight.
Live.
Take it.”
- James Frey, A Million Little Pieces
“The clock holds me nowhere. Nowhere. Nowhere. There is nothing else but now and the shifting depth of the night. I sit at a table alone smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee and listening and surviving. I should not be here or anywhere. I should not be breathing or taking space. I should not have been given this moment or anything else. I should not have this opportunity again to live. I do not deserve it or deserve anything yet it is here and I am here and I Have it all of it still. I won't have it again. This moment or this chance they are the same and they are mine if I choose them and I do. I want them. Now and as long as I can have them they are both precious and fleeting and gone in the blink of an eye don't waste them. A moment and an opportunity and a life, all in the unseen tick of a clock holding me nowhere. My heart is beating. The walls are pale and quiet. I am surviving. ” -James Frey, A Million Little Pieces
“I turn and I look back across the lake. The mist is gone and the ice diminished, the drip of the icicles quick and heavy. The sun is up and the sky is blue empty blue light blue clear blue. I would drink the sky if I could drink it, drink it and celebrate it and let it fill me and become me. I am getting better. Empty and clear and light and blue. I am getting better.” -James Frey, A Million Little Pieces
“No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.” George Burns
“Never take a person's dignity: it is worth everything to them, and nothing to you.” -Frank Barron
Sometimes I sit up late with my thoughts, reluctant to fall asleep and leave my thoughts alone by themselves. ~Robert Brault
Not being able to sleep is terrible. You have the misery of having partied all night... without the satisfaction. ~Lynn Johnston
I've lived to bury my desires
and see my dreams corrode with rust
now all that's left are fruitless fires
that burn my empty heart to dust.
― Alexander Pushkin
"Don't wait for a light to appear at the end of the tunnel, stride down there and light the bloody thing yourself."-- Sara Henderson
Truth is after all a moving target
Hairs to split,
And pieces that don't fit
How can anybody be enlightened?
Truth is after all so poorly lit.
~Neil Peart
You can kiss your family and friends good-bye and put miles between you, but at the same time you carry them with you in your heart, your mind, your stomach, because you do not just live in a world but a world lives in you. ~Frederick Buechner
Sometimes you have to get to know someone really well to realize you're really strangers. ~Mary Tyler Moore
We are, many of us, a planet orbiting somebody's sun, unconscious of a lonely moon, orbiting our planet. ~Robert Brault
Eventually the person who tries to fix the problem will be blamed for causing it. ~Robert Brault
When there is hell to pay, it is usually cheaper to pay it than to finance an endless purgatory. ~Robert Brault
I believe that every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every possession, a duty. ~John D. Rockefeller, Jr.
The greatest enemy of any one of our truths may be the rest of our truths. ~William James
You must take personal responsibility. You cannot change the circumstances, the seasons, or the wind, but you can change yourself. ~Jim Rohn
Never point a finger where you never lent a hand. ~Robert Brault
Dr. Miller says we are pessimistic because life seems like a very bad, very screwed-up film. If you ask "What the hell is wrong with the projector?" and go up to the control room, you find it's empty. You are the projectionist, and you should have been up there all the time. ~Colin Wilson
Without faith there is no truth, for that is all the truth is or ever was. ~Robert Brault
Life is too short to hold a grudge, also too long. ~Robert Brault
Anger ventilated often hurries toward forgiveness; and concealed often hardens into revenge. ~Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton
Being responsible sometimes means pissing people off. ~Colin Powell
Get mad, then get over it. ~Colin Powell
Before you give someone a piece of your mind, make sure you can get by with what is left. ~Author Unknown
Diplomat: A person who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that you actually look forward to the trip. ~Caskie Stinett
Whoever one is, and wherever one is, one is always in the wrong if one is rude. ~Maurice Baring
What you discover about people you try not to offend is that you can offend them without trying. ~Robert Brault
Don't be sweet, lest you be eaten up; don't be bitter, lest you be spewed out. ~Jewish Proverb
Excuses are the nails used to build a house of failure. ~Don Wilder and Bill Rechin
Maybe you don't like your job, maybe you didn't get enough sleep, well nobody likes their job, nobody got enough sleep. Maybe you just had the worst day of your life, but you know, there's no escape, there's no excuse, so just suck up and be nice. ~Ani Difranco
“It is a curious thing, but as one travels the world getting older and older, it appears that happiness is easier to get used to than despair. The second time you have a root beer float, for instance, your happiness at sipping the delicious concoction may not be quite as enormous as when you first had a root beer float, and the twelfth time your happiness may be still less enormous, until root beer floats begin to offer you very little happiness at all, because you have become used to the taste of vanilla ice cream and root beer mixed together. However, the second time you find a thumbtack in your root beer float, your despair is much greater than the first time, when you dismissed the thumbtack as a freak accident rather than part of the scheme of a soda jerk, a phrase which here means "ice cream shop employee who is trying to injure your tongue," and by the twelfth time you find a thumbtack, your despair is even greater still, until you can hardly utter the phrase "root beer float" without bursting into tears. It is almost as if happiness is an acquired taste, like coconut cordial or ceviche, to which you can eventually become accustomed, but despair is something surprising each time you encounter it.”― Lemony Snicket, The End
To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. To not dare is to lose oneself. -Soren Kierkegaard
Progress always involves risks. You can't steal second base and keep your foot on first. ~Frederick B. Wilcox
The torment of precautions often exceeds the dangers to be avoided. It is sometimes better to abandon one's self to destiny. ~Napoleon Bonaparte
It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that they are difficult. ~Seneca
What great thing would you attempt if you knew you could not fail? ~Robert H. Schuller
Often we... expect and want every day to be just like today. Even though we're not satisfied with today, we settle for security instead of discovery. ~Stephen G. Scalese, The Whisper in Your Heart
Behold the turtle. He makes progress only when he sticks his neck out. ~James Bryant Conant
Change may come to you in trinkets and I hope it adorns your life gracefully. ~Dodinsky
If you would attain to what you are not yet, you must always be displeased by what you are. For where you are pleased with yourself there you have remained. Keep adding, keep walking, keep advancing. ~Saint Augustine
We spend our time searching for security and hate it when we get it. ~John Steinbeck
Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him. ~Dwight D. Eisenhower
Waiting for the fish to bite or waiting for wind to fly a kite. Or waiting around for Friday night or waiting perhaps for their Uncle Jake or a pot to boil or a better break or a string of pearls or a pair of pants or a wig with curls or another chance. Everyone is just waiting. ~Dr. Seuss
As if you could kill time without injuring eternity. ~Henry David Thoreau, "Economy," Walden, 1854
Life is not lost by dying; life is lost minute by minute, day by dragging day, in all the thousand small uncaring ways. ~Stephen Vincent Benét
Why must conversions always come so late? Why do people always apologize to corpses? ~David Brin
You will never find time for anything. If you want time you must make it. ~Charles Buxton
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. ~Annie Dillard, The Writing Life
You may delay, but time will not. ~Benjamin Franklin
Most of us spend our lives as if we had another one in the bank. ~Ben Irwin
Begin doing what you want to do now. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand, and melting like a snowflake. ~Marie Ray
If I could only remember that the days were, not bricks to be laid row on row, to be built into a solid house, where one might dwell in safety and peace, but only food for the fires of the heart. ~Edmund Wilson
The more side roads you stop to explore, the less likely that life will pass you by. ~Robert Brault
The word "now" is like a bomb through the window, and it ticks. ~Arthur Miller
What to do with your one life? The same thing you would do if you had two lives, and this were the second. ~Robert Brault
Life happens too fast for you ever to think about it. If you could just persuade people of this, but they insist on amassing information. ~Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Each day is an opportunity to travel back into tomorrow's past and change it. ~Robert Brault
Whether it's the best of times or the worst of times, it's the only time we've got. ~Art Buchwald
If you woke up breathing, congratulations! You have another chance. ~Andrea Boydston
Life is always walking up to us and saying, "Come on in, the living's fine," and what do we do? Back off and take its picture. ~Russell Baker
There's never enough time to do all the nothing you want. ~Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes
I don't want to get to the end of my life and find that I lived just the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well. ~Diane Ackerman
Men talk of killing time, while time quietly kills them. ~Dion Boucicault
Regret for wasted time is more wasted time. ~Mason Cooley
Eventually you realize that your whole life up to now has been preparation, and you begin to suspect that the rest might be preparation, too. ~Robert Brault
Now is the time to get drunk! To stop being the martyred slaves of time, to get absolutely drunk - on wine, poetry, or on virtue, as you please. ~Charles Baudelaire
The time you think you're missing, misses you too. ~Terri Guillemets
The moment when you first wake up in the morning is the most wonderful of the twenty-four hours. No matter how weary or dreary you may feel, you possess the certainty that, during the day that lies before you, absolutely anything may happen. And the fact that it practically always doesn't, matters not a jot. The possibility is always there. ~Monica Baldwin
Present your family and friends with their eulogies now - they won't be able to hear how much you love them and appreciate them from the grave. ~Anonymous
Don't ever save anything for a special occasion. Being alive is the special occasion. ~Author Unknown
Don't let the fear of the time it will take to accomplish something stand in the way of your doing it. The time will pass anyway; we might just as well put that passing time to the best possible use. ~Earl Nightingale
Vitality shows in not only the ability to persist but the ability to start over. ~F. Scott Fitzgerald
Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
Pull yourself together and use what you have. ~Betsy Cañas Garmon
The dreams of the broken are mightier than the wishes of the dead. ~Dodinsky
People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them. ~G.B. Shaw
If one dream should fall and break into a thousand pieces, never be afraid to pick one of those pieces up and begin again. ~Flavia Weedn
If you want to make your dreams come true, the first thing you have to do is wake up. ~J.M. Power
Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending. ~Attributed to Carl Bard
Between the great things we cannot do and the small things we will not do, the danger is that we shall do nothing. ~Adolph Monod
Don't say you don't have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresea, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein. ~Life's Little Instruction Book, compiled by H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
Success is 10% inspiration, 90% last-minute changes. ~From a billboard advertisement
Seventy percent of success in life is showing up. ~Woody Allen
We are kept from our goal not by obstacles but by a clear path to a lesser goal. ~Robert Brault
When I was a Boy Scout, we played a game when new Scouts joined the troop. We lined up chairs in a pattern, creating an obstacle course through which the new Scouts, blindfolded, were supposed to maneuver. The Scoutmaster gave them a few moments to study the pattern before our adventure began. But as soon as the victims were blindfolded, the rest of us quietly removed the chairs. I think life is like this game. Perhaps we spend our lives avoiding obstacles we have created for ourselves and in reality exist only in our minds. We're afraid to apply for that job, take violin lessons, learn a foreign language, call an old friend, write our Congressman - whatever it is that we would really like to do but don't because of personal obstacles. Don't avoid any chairs until you run smack into one. And if you do, at least you'll have a place to sit down. ~Pierce Vincent Eckhart
You must have long-range goals to keep you from being frustrated by short-range failures. ~Charles C. Noble
Many are stubborn in pursuit of the path they have chosen, few in pursuit of the goal. ~Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
This is a story about four people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, and Nobody. There was an important job to be done and Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it. Somebody got angry about that, because it was Everybody's job. Everybody thought Anybody could do it, but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn't do it. It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anyone could have. ~Author Unknown
Despair is anger with no place to go. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960
I have woven a parachute out of everything broken. ~William Stafford
“I am a sailor, you're my first mate
We signed on together, we coupled our fate
Hauled up our anchor, determined not to fail
For the heart's treasure, together we set sail
With no maps to guide us, we steered our own course
Rode out the storms when the winds were gale force
Sat out the doldrums in patience and hope
Working together, we learned how to cope.
Life is an ocean and love it a boat
In troubled waters it keeps us afloat
When we started the voyage there was just me and you
Now gathered round us we have our own crew
Together we're in this relationship
We built it with care to last the whole trip
Our true destination's not marked on any chart
We're navigating the shores of the heart”
-John McDermott
I think I'm done gunnin to get closer.
To some imagined bliss.
I gotta knuckle down.
And just be ok with this.
-Ani DiFranco
"Every tool is a weapon - if you hold it right." -Ani DiFranco
You must start with a positive attitude or you will surely end without one. ~Carrie Latet
How can something bother you if you won't let it? ~Terri Guillemets
Don't be mean when you've had a bad day. Be nice, and your day will get better. ~Terri Guillemets
Either way, things are a lot better - either a lot better than they were or a lot better than they're going to be. ~Robert Brault
And their eyes are all asking
Are you in or are you out?
And I think, oh man
What is this about?
Tonight you can't put me
Up on any shelf
Cause I came here alone
And I'm gonna leave by myself.
-Ani DiFranco
Keep a green tree in your heart and perhaps a singing bird will come. ~Chinese Proverb
People are not disturbed by things, but by the view they take of them. ~Epictetus
Work is either fun or drudgery. It depends on your attitude. I like fun. ~Colleen C. Barrett
I’m going to go ahead and go boldly
Cause a little bird told me
That jumping is easy
That falling is fun
Right up ‘til you hit the sidewalk
Shivering and stunned.
-Ani DiFranco
Become a possibilitarian. No matter how dark things seem to be or actually are, raise your sights and see possibilities - always see them, for they're always there. ~Norman Vincent Peale
Since the house is on fire let us warm ourselves. ~Italian Proverb
You've got your whole life to do something,
And that's not very long.
So why don't you give me a call
When you're willing to fight
For what you think is real,
For what you think is right.
-Ani DiFranco
'Course numb is an old hat, old as my oldest memories.
See that one's my mother, and that one's my father, and that one in the hat, that's me.
It's a skill I'd hoped to abandon, when I got out on the open road,
But any more pent up emotion and I think I'm gonna explode.
-Ani DiFranco
The best way to dispel negative thoughts is to require that they have a purpose. ~Robert Brault
If you keep on saying things are going to be bad, you have a good chance of becoming a prophet. ~Isaac Bashevis Singer
There's a crowd of people harbored in every person, there are so many roles that we play. And you've decided to love me for eternity. I'm still deciding who I want to be today" -Ani DiFranco
The human spirit is stronger than anything that can happen to it. ~C.C. Scott
I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet. ~Mahatma Gandhi
You know, taken out of context I must, seem so strange. -Ani DiFranco
Two people can have a middling day, but one rounds up and the other rounds down. ~Robert Brault
And everything seems to have gone terribly wrong that can.
But one breath at a time is an acceptable plan,
She tells herself.
-Ani DiFranco
The soul does not absorb negativity by accident, always by choice. ~Dodinsky
He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts. ~Samuel Johnson
So often time it happens, we all live our life in chains, and we never even know we have the key. ~The Eagles, "Already Gone"
My life may not be something special
But it's never been lived before.
-Ani DiFranco
We awaken in others the same attitude of mind we hold toward them. ~Elbert Hubbard
I've decided that the stuff falling through the cracks is confetti and I'm having a party! ~Betsy Cañas Garmon
I fight with love, and I laugh with rage.
You've gotta live light enough to see the humor,
And long enough to see some change.
-Ani DiFranco
Learn to smile at every situation. See it as an opportunity to prove your strength and ability. ~Joe Brown
To be wronged is nothing unless you continue to remember it. ~Confucius
Love sets fire to your schedule,
And then calls an end to time.
-Ani DiFranco
Just because you're miserable doesn't mean you can't enjoy your life. ~Annette Goodheart
We have to be able to criticize what we love,
Say what we have to say,
'Cause if you're not trying to make something better,
Then as far as I can tell, you are just in the way.
-Ani DiFranco
It is never too late to be who you might have been. ~George Eliot
You learn you can do your best even when it's hard, even when you're tired and maybe hurting a little bit. It feels good to show some courage. ~Joe Namath
We do not do what we want and yet we are responsible for what we are - that is the fact. ~Jean Paul Sartre
“Let them think what they liked, but I didn't mean to drown myself. I meant to swim till I sank -- but that's not the same thing.” -Joseph Conrad
How strange to use "You only live once" as an excuse to throw it away. ~Bill Copeland
“I close my eyes and I let my body shut itself down and I let my mind wander. It wanders to a familiar place. A place I don’t talk about or acknowledge exists. A place where there is only me. A place that I hate. I am alone. Alone here and alone in the world. Alone in my heart and alone in my mind. Alone everywhere, all the time, for as long as I can remember. Alone with my Family, alone with my friends, alone in a Room full of People. Alone when I wake, alone through each awful day, alone when I finally meet the blackness. I am alone in my horror. Alone in my horror. I don’t want to be alone. I have never wanted to be alone. I fucking hate it. I hate that I have no one to talk to, I hate that I have no one to call, I hate that I have no one to hold my hand, hug me, tell me everything is going to be all right. I hate that I have no one to share my hopes and dreams with, I hate that I no longer have any hopes or dreams, I hate that I have no one to tell me to hold on, that I can find them again. I hate that when I scream, and I scream bloody murder, that I am screaming into emptiness. I hate that there is no one to hear my scream and that there is no one to help me learn how to stop screaming. . . More than anything, all I have ever wanted is to be close to someone. More than anything, all I have ever wanted is to feel as if I wasn’t alone.” -James Frey, A Million Little Pieces
I was weak and pathetic and I couldn't control myself. An explanation, especially a bullshit one, doesn't alter the circumstances. I need to change, I have to change, and at this point, change is my only option, unless I am ready to die. All that matters is that I make myself something else and someone else for the future. -James Frey
“About life: "It is not complicated unless I make it so. It is not difficult unless I allow it to be. A second is no more than a second, a minute no more than a minute, a day no more than a day. They pass. All things and all time will pass. Don't force or fear, don't control or lose control. Don't fight and don't stop fighting. Embrace and endure. If you embrace, you will endure.” -James Frey, A Million Little Pieces
“Everything I know and I am and I have seen felt done past present past now then before now seen felt done hurt felt focus into a something beyond words beyond beyond beyond and it speaks now and it says.
Stay.
Fight.
Live.
Take it.”
- James Frey, A Million Little Pieces
“The clock holds me nowhere. Nowhere. Nowhere. There is nothing else but now and the shifting depth of the night. I sit at a table alone smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee and listening and surviving. I should not be here or anywhere. I should not be breathing or taking space. I should not have been given this moment or anything else. I should not have this opportunity again to live. I do not deserve it or deserve anything yet it is here and I am here and I Have it all of it still. I won't have it again. This moment or this chance they are the same and they are mine if I choose them and I do. I want them. Now and as long as I can have them they are both precious and fleeting and gone in the blink of an eye don't waste them. A moment and an opportunity and a life, all in the unseen tick of a clock holding me nowhere. My heart is beating. The walls are pale and quiet. I am surviving. ” -James Frey, A Million Little Pieces
“I turn and I look back across the lake. The mist is gone and the ice diminished, the drip of the icicles quick and heavy. The sun is up and the sky is blue empty blue light blue clear blue. I would drink the sky if I could drink it, drink it and celebrate it and let it fill me and become me. I am getting better. Empty and clear and light and blue. I am getting better.” -James Frey, A Million Little Pieces
“No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.” George Burns
“Never take a person's dignity: it is worth everything to them, and nothing to you.” -Frank Barron
Sometimes I sit up late with my thoughts, reluctant to fall asleep and leave my thoughts alone by themselves. ~Robert Brault
Not being able to sleep is terrible. You have the misery of having partied all night... without the satisfaction. ~Lynn Johnston
I've lived to bury my desires
and see my dreams corrode with rust
now all that's left are fruitless fires
that burn my empty heart to dust.
― Alexander Pushkin
"Don't wait for a light to appear at the end of the tunnel, stride down there and light the bloody thing yourself."-- Sara Henderson
Truth is after all a moving target
Hairs to split,
And pieces that don't fit
How can anybody be enlightened?
Truth is after all so poorly lit.
~Neil Peart
You can kiss your family and friends good-bye and put miles between you, but at the same time you carry them with you in your heart, your mind, your stomach, because you do not just live in a world but a world lives in you. ~Frederick Buechner
Sometimes you have to get to know someone really well to realize you're really strangers. ~Mary Tyler Moore
We are, many of us, a planet orbiting somebody's sun, unconscious of a lonely moon, orbiting our planet. ~Robert Brault
Eventually the person who tries to fix the problem will be blamed for causing it. ~Robert Brault
When there is hell to pay, it is usually cheaper to pay it than to finance an endless purgatory. ~Robert Brault
I believe that every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every possession, a duty. ~John D. Rockefeller, Jr.
The greatest enemy of any one of our truths may be the rest of our truths. ~William James
You must take personal responsibility. You cannot change the circumstances, the seasons, or the wind, but you can change yourself. ~Jim Rohn
Never point a finger where you never lent a hand. ~Robert Brault
Dr. Miller says we are pessimistic because life seems like a very bad, very screwed-up film. If you ask "What the hell is wrong with the projector?" and go up to the control room, you find it's empty. You are the projectionist, and you should have been up there all the time. ~Colin Wilson
Without faith there is no truth, for that is all the truth is or ever was. ~Robert Brault
Life is too short to hold a grudge, also too long. ~Robert Brault
Anger ventilated often hurries toward forgiveness; and concealed often hardens into revenge. ~Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton
Being responsible sometimes means pissing people off. ~Colin Powell
Get mad, then get over it. ~Colin Powell
Before you give someone a piece of your mind, make sure you can get by with what is left. ~Author Unknown
Diplomat: A person who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that you actually look forward to the trip. ~Caskie Stinett
Whoever one is, and wherever one is, one is always in the wrong if one is rude. ~Maurice Baring
What you discover about people you try not to offend is that you can offend them without trying. ~Robert Brault
Don't be sweet, lest you be eaten up; don't be bitter, lest you be spewed out. ~Jewish Proverb
Excuses are the nails used to build a house of failure. ~Don Wilder and Bill Rechin
Maybe you don't like your job, maybe you didn't get enough sleep, well nobody likes their job, nobody got enough sleep. Maybe you just had the worst day of your life, but you know, there's no escape, there's no excuse, so just suck up and be nice. ~Ani Difranco
“It is a curious thing, but as one travels the world getting older and older, it appears that happiness is easier to get used to than despair. The second time you have a root beer float, for instance, your happiness at sipping the delicious concoction may not be quite as enormous as when you first had a root beer float, and the twelfth time your happiness may be still less enormous, until root beer floats begin to offer you very little happiness at all, because you have become used to the taste of vanilla ice cream and root beer mixed together. However, the second time you find a thumbtack in your root beer float, your despair is much greater than the first time, when you dismissed the thumbtack as a freak accident rather than part of the scheme of a soda jerk, a phrase which here means "ice cream shop employee who is trying to injure your tongue," and by the twelfth time you find a thumbtack, your despair is even greater still, until you can hardly utter the phrase "root beer float" without bursting into tears. It is almost as if happiness is an acquired taste, like coconut cordial or ceviche, to which you can eventually become accustomed, but despair is something surprising each time you encounter it.”― Lemony Snicket, The End
To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. To not dare is to lose oneself. -Soren Kierkegaard
Progress always involves risks. You can't steal second base and keep your foot on first. ~Frederick B. Wilcox
The torment of precautions often exceeds the dangers to be avoided. It is sometimes better to abandon one's self to destiny. ~Napoleon Bonaparte
It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that they are difficult. ~Seneca
What great thing would you attempt if you knew you could not fail? ~Robert H. Schuller
Often we... expect and want every day to be just like today. Even though we're not satisfied with today, we settle for security instead of discovery. ~Stephen G. Scalese, The Whisper in Your Heart
Behold the turtle. He makes progress only when he sticks his neck out. ~James Bryant Conant
Change may come to you in trinkets and I hope it adorns your life gracefully. ~Dodinsky
If you would attain to what you are not yet, you must always be displeased by what you are. For where you are pleased with yourself there you have remained. Keep adding, keep walking, keep advancing. ~Saint Augustine
We spend our time searching for security and hate it when we get it. ~John Steinbeck
Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him. ~Dwight D. Eisenhower
Waiting for the fish to bite or waiting for wind to fly a kite. Or waiting around for Friday night or waiting perhaps for their Uncle Jake or a pot to boil or a better break or a string of pearls or a pair of pants or a wig with curls or another chance. Everyone is just waiting. ~Dr. Seuss
As if you could kill time without injuring eternity. ~Henry David Thoreau, "Economy," Walden, 1854
Life is not lost by dying; life is lost minute by minute, day by dragging day, in all the thousand small uncaring ways. ~Stephen Vincent Benét
Why must conversions always come so late? Why do people always apologize to corpses? ~David Brin
You will never find time for anything. If you want time you must make it. ~Charles Buxton
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. ~Annie Dillard, The Writing Life
You may delay, but time will not. ~Benjamin Franklin
Most of us spend our lives as if we had another one in the bank. ~Ben Irwin
Begin doing what you want to do now. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand, and melting like a snowflake. ~Marie Ray
If I could only remember that the days were, not bricks to be laid row on row, to be built into a solid house, where one might dwell in safety and peace, but only food for the fires of the heart. ~Edmund Wilson
The more side roads you stop to explore, the less likely that life will pass you by. ~Robert Brault
The word "now" is like a bomb through the window, and it ticks. ~Arthur Miller
What to do with your one life? The same thing you would do if you had two lives, and this were the second. ~Robert Brault
Life happens too fast for you ever to think about it. If you could just persuade people of this, but they insist on amassing information. ~Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Each day is an opportunity to travel back into tomorrow's past and change it. ~Robert Brault
Whether it's the best of times or the worst of times, it's the only time we've got. ~Art Buchwald
If you woke up breathing, congratulations! You have another chance. ~Andrea Boydston
Life is always walking up to us and saying, "Come on in, the living's fine," and what do we do? Back off and take its picture. ~Russell Baker
There's never enough time to do all the nothing you want. ~Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes
I don't want to get to the end of my life and find that I lived just the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well. ~Diane Ackerman
Men talk of killing time, while time quietly kills them. ~Dion Boucicault
Regret for wasted time is more wasted time. ~Mason Cooley
Eventually you realize that your whole life up to now has been preparation, and you begin to suspect that the rest might be preparation, too. ~Robert Brault
Now is the time to get drunk! To stop being the martyred slaves of time, to get absolutely drunk - on wine, poetry, or on virtue, as you please. ~Charles Baudelaire
The time you think you're missing, misses you too. ~Terri Guillemets
The moment when you first wake up in the morning is the most wonderful of the twenty-four hours. No matter how weary or dreary you may feel, you possess the certainty that, during the day that lies before you, absolutely anything may happen. And the fact that it practically always doesn't, matters not a jot. The possibility is always there. ~Monica Baldwin
Present your family and friends with their eulogies now - they won't be able to hear how much you love them and appreciate them from the grave. ~Anonymous
Don't ever save anything for a special occasion. Being alive is the special occasion. ~Author Unknown
Don't let the fear of the time it will take to accomplish something stand in the way of your doing it. The time will pass anyway; we might just as well put that passing time to the best possible use. ~Earl Nightingale
Vitality shows in not only the ability to persist but the ability to start over. ~F. Scott Fitzgerald
Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
Pull yourself together and use what you have. ~Betsy Cañas Garmon
The dreams of the broken are mightier than the wishes of the dead. ~Dodinsky
People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them. ~G.B. Shaw
If one dream should fall and break into a thousand pieces, never be afraid to pick one of those pieces up and begin again. ~Flavia Weedn
If you want to make your dreams come true, the first thing you have to do is wake up. ~J.M. Power
Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending. ~Attributed to Carl Bard
Between the great things we cannot do and the small things we will not do, the danger is that we shall do nothing. ~Adolph Monod
Don't say you don't have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresea, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein. ~Life's Little Instruction Book, compiled by H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
Success is 10% inspiration, 90% last-minute changes. ~From a billboard advertisement
Seventy percent of success in life is showing up. ~Woody Allen
We are kept from our goal not by obstacles but by a clear path to a lesser goal. ~Robert Brault
When I was a Boy Scout, we played a game when new Scouts joined the troop. We lined up chairs in a pattern, creating an obstacle course through which the new Scouts, blindfolded, were supposed to maneuver. The Scoutmaster gave them a few moments to study the pattern before our adventure began. But as soon as the victims were blindfolded, the rest of us quietly removed the chairs. I think life is like this game. Perhaps we spend our lives avoiding obstacles we have created for ourselves and in reality exist only in our minds. We're afraid to apply for that job, take violin lessons, learn a foreign language, call an old friend, write our Congressman - whatever it is that we would really like to do but don't because of personal obstacles. Don't avoid any chairs until you run smack into one. And if you do, at least you'll have a place to sit down. ~Pierce Vincent Eckhart
You must have long-range goals to keep you from being frustrated by short-range failures. ~Charles C. Noble
Many are stubborn in pursuit of the path they have chosen, few in pursuit of the goal. ~Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
This is a story about four people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, and Nobody. There was an important job to be done and Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it. Somebody got angry about that, because it was Everybody's job. Everybody thought Anybody could do it, but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn't do it. It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anyone could have. ~Author Unknown
Despair is anger with no place to go. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960
I have woven a parachute out of everything broken. ~William Stafford
“I am a sailor, you're my first mate
We signed on together, we coupled our fate
Hauled up our anchor, determined not to fail
For the heart's treasure, together we set sail
With no maps to guide us, we steered our own course
Rode out the storms when the winds were gale force
Sat out the doldrums in patience and hope
Working together, we learned how to cope.
Life is an ocean and love it a boat
In troubled waters it keeps us afloat
When we started the voyage there was just me and you
Now gathered round us we have our own crew
Together we're in this relationship
We built it with care to last the whole trip
Our true destination's not marked on any chart
We're navigating the shores of the heart”
-John McDermott
I think I'm done gunnin to get closer.
To some imagined bliss.
I gotta knuckle down.
And just be ok with this.
-Ani DiFranco
"Every tool is a weapon - if you hold it right." -Ani DiFranco
You must start with a positive attitude or you will surely end without one. ~Carrie Latet
How can something bother you if you won't let it? ~Terri Guillemets
Don't be mean when you've had a bad day. Be nice, and your day will get better. ~Terri Guillemets
Either way, things are a lot better - either a lot better than they were or a lot better than they're going to be. ~Robert Brault
And their eyes are all asking
Are you in or are you out?
And I think, oh man
What is this about?
Tonight you can't put me
Up on any shelf
Cause I came here alone
And I'm gonna leave by myself.
-Ani DiFranco
Keep a green tree in your heart and perhaps a singing bird will come. ~Chinese Proverb
People are not disturbed by things, but by the view they take of them. ~Epictetus
Work is either fun or drudgery. It depends on your attitude. I like fun. ~Colleen C. Barrett
I’m going to go ahead and go boldly
Cause a little bird told me
That jumping is easy
That falling is fun
Right up ‘til you hit the sidewalk
Shivering and stunned.
-Ani DiFranco
Become a possibilitarian. No matter how dark things seem to be or actually are, raise your sights and see possibilities - always see them, for they're always there. ~Norman Vincent Peale
Since the house is on fire let us warm ourselves. ~Italian Proverb
You've got your whole life to do something,
And that's not very long.
So why don't you give me a call
When you're willing to fight
For what you think is real,
For what you think is right.
-Ani DiFranco
'Course numb is an old hat, old as my oldest memories.
See that one's my mother, and that one's my father, and that one in the hat, that's me.
It's a skill I'd hoped to abandon, when I got out on the open road,
But any more pent up emotion and I think I'm gonna explode.
-Ani DiFranco
The best way to dispel negative thoughts is to require that they have a purpose. ~Robert Brault
If you keep on saying things are going to be bad, you have a good chance of becoming a prophet. ~Isaac Bashevis Singer
There's a crowd of people harbored in every person, there are so many roles that we play. And you've decided to love me for eternity. I'm still deciding who I want to be today" -Ani DiFranco
The human spirit is stronger than anything that can happen to it. ~C.C. Scott
I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet. ~Mahatma Gandhi
You know, taken out of context I must, seem so strange. -Ani DiFranco
Two people can have a middling day, but one rounds up and the other rounds down. ~Robert Brault
And everything seems to have gone terribly wrong that can.
But one breath at a time is an acceptable plan,
She tells herself.
-Ani DiFranco
The soul does not absorb negativity by accident, always by choice. ~Dodinsky
He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts. ~Samuel Johnson
So often time it happens, we all live our life in chains, and we never even know we have the key. ~The Eagles, "Already Gone"
My life may not be something special
But it's never been lived before.
-Ani DiFranco
We awaken in others the same attitude of mind we hold toward them. ~Elbert Hubbard
I've decided that the stuff falling through the cracks is confetti and I'm having a party! ~Betsy Cañas Garmon
I fight with love, and I laugh with rage.
You've gotta live light enough to see the humor,
And long enough to see some change.
-Ani DiFranco
Learn to smile at every situation. See it as an opportunity to prove your strength and ability. ~Joe Brown
To be wronged is nothing unless you continue to remember it. ~Confucius
Love sets fire to your schedule,
And then calls an end to time.
-Ani DiFranco
Just because you're miserable doesn't mean you can't enjoy your life. ~Annette Goodheart
We have to be able to criticize what we love,
Say what we have to say,
'Cause if you're not trying to make something better,
Then as far as I can tell, you are just in the way.
-Ani DiFranco