Or when, under ether, the mind is conscious but conscious
of nothing-
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without
love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the
waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the
dancing.
-East Coker, T.S. Eliot
“But still, still bless me anyway. I want more life. I can't help myself. I do. I've lived through such terrible times and there are people who live through much worse. But you see them living anyway. When they're more spirit than body, more sores than skin, when they're burned and in agony, when flies lay eggs in the corners of the eyes of their children - they live. Death usually has to take life away. I don't know if that's just the animal. I don't know if it's not braver to die, but I recognize the habit; the addiction to being alive. So we live past hope. If I can find hope anywhere, that's it, that's the best I can do. It's so much not enough. It's so inadequate. But still bless me anyway: I want more life. ” -Angels in America, Tony Kushner
“But I don't happen to agree. If chained is where you have been, your arms will always bear marks of the shackles. What you have to lose is your story, your own slant. You'll look at the scars on your arms and see mere ugliness, or you'll take great care to look away from them and see nothing. Either way, you have no words for the story of where you came from.” -The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver
“I keep going round and round on the same old circuit
A wire travels underground to a vacant lot
Where something I can't see interrupts the current
And shrinks the picture down to a tiny dot
And from behind the screen it can look so perfect
But it's not.” -It's Not, Aimee Mann
If you see a whole thing - it seems that it's always beautiful. Planets, lives... But up close a world's all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life's a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern. -Ursula Le Guin
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.
- Voltaire
What is to give light must endure the burning. -Eleanor Roosevelt
there's this restless moving inside tonight, It's got no name no face no size no shape no over no under no visible mother no predictable finish...nothing but this strange power to suck you dry and leave you numb, this power to keep you in your room tonight...again. I'm not that old yet and it's not that bad really.
but to some extent we are all of us warm containers of pain. at times, it would seem that we are that and little else...but really...
that may seem strange; life is strange, i open my eyes. i rest my case. and here's to truth in cliche. i will close my eyes.
"Live not for battles won. Live not for the-end-of-the-song. Live in the along." -
-Gwendolyn Brooks
"How do you pick up the threads of an old life? How do you go on, when in your heart you begin to understand there is no going back? There are some things time cannot mend. Some hurts that go too deep... and take hold." -J.R.R. Tolkien
"Too much awareness is a sickness; it keeps me awake all night." -Yi Cho-nyon
"The cruelest lies are often told in silence." -Robert Louis Stevenson
The happy have whole days,
and those they choose.
The unhappy have but hours,
and those they lose. -Colley Cibber
"Strange is our situation here upon earth. However, there's one thing that we do know. Man is here for the sake of other men, above all for those upon whose smile and well-being our own happiness depends. And also for the countless unknown souls with whose fate we are connected by a bond of sympathy." --Albert Einstein
I don’t want to live. I want to love first, and live incidentally. (Zelda Fitzgerald)
“I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, and stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong.” -Abraham Lincoln
Life is a shipwreck but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats. (Voltaire)
“Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.” -Einstein
Success is relative. It is what we can make of the mess we have made of things.
T. S. Eliot
What you discover in a democracy is that it is difficult to build a house when each nail has an opinion. ~Robert Brault
I used to believe that anything was better than nothing. Now I know that sometimes nothing is better. ~Glenda Jackson
Losing an illusion makes you wiser than finding a truth.
~Ludwig Börne
All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own. ~Johann von Goethe
“We speak of stories ending, [...] when in truth it is we who end. The stories go on and on.” -Jacqueline Carey
The important thing is this: To be able at any moment to sacrifice that which we are for what we could become. ~Charles DuBois
Have a heart that never hardens, a temper that never tires, a touch that never hurts. ~Charles Dickens
My life has been one great big joke, a dance that's walked a song that's spoke, I laugh so hard I almost choke when I think about myself.
-Maya Angelou
Knowing is better than wondering, waking is better than sleeping, and even the biggest failure, even the worst, beat the hell out of never trying.
-Grey's
Aspire to a lower level of harm. ~Anonymous
"I do not agree with a word you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
- Voltaire
The most important things in life aren’t things. (Anthony J. D’Angelo)
I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And I will not let what I cannot do interfere with what I can do.
~Edward Everett Hale
Live simply that others might simply live.
~Elizabeth Seaton
Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not. ~Dr. Seuss
This is the true joy in life - being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.
~George Bernard Shaw
Be an opener of doors for such as come after thee, and do not try to make the universe a blind alley.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
What you perceive, your observations, feelings, interpretations, are all your truth. Your truth is important. Yet it is not The Truth.
-Linda Ellinor
Every action in our lives touches on some chord that will vibrate in eternity.
~Edwin Hubbel Chapin
How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in your life you will have been all of these.
~George Washington Carver
Human beings are the only creatures who are able to behave irrationally in the name of reason. ~ Ashley Montagu
All change is not growth as all movement is not forward
~ Ellen Glasgow
We like someone because. We love someone Although
~ Henri De Montherlant
Conflict cannot survive without your participation
~ Wayne Dyer
We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever
~ Carl Sagan
"It's not the load that breaks you down, It's the way you carry it." ~ Lena Horne
"Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly. Hold fast to dreams, for when dreams go, life is a barren field, frozen with snow."
-Langston Hughes
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. -Nelson Mandela
"Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite." ~ C.S Lewis
If you look for the bad in people expecting to find it, you surely will.
-Abraham Lincoln
"Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength; loving someone deeply gives you courage." -Lao-Tzu
"Every human being on this earth is born with a tragedy, and it isn't original sin. He's born with the tragedy that he has to grow up. That he has to leave the nest, the security, and go out to do battle. He has to lose everything that is lovely and fight for a new loveliness of his own making, and it's a tragedy. A lot of people don't have the courage to do it." -Helen Hayes
"All men and women are born, live suffer and die; what distinguishes us one from another is our dreams, whether they be dreams about worldly or unworldly things, and what we do to make them come about... We do not choose to be born. We do not choose our parents. We do not choose our historical epoch, the country of our birth, or the immediate circumstances of our upbringing. We do not, most of us, choose to die; nor do we choose the time and conditions of our death. But within this realm of choicelessness, we do choose how we live." -Joseph Epstein
"If you find it in your heart to care for somebody else, you will have succeeded."
-Maya Angelou
"A successful person is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks that others throw at him." -David Brink
Whose woods these are I think I know,
His house is in the village though.
He will not see me stopping here,
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
---
My little horse must think it queer,
To stop without a farmhouse near,
Between the woods and frozen lake,
The darkest evening of the year.
---
He gives his harness bells a shake,
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep,
Of easy wind and downy flake.
---
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
-Robert Frost, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Well, Son, I tell you, life for me aint been no crystal stair.
Its been hard and bare and rough places on the floor,
But all the while I'se been climbing, and going forth
In the dark, cause there ain't been no light.
So dont you sit down cause its kinds hard,
Dont you quit because its rough
Cause you see, I'se still climbing
And life for me aint been no crystal stair.
-Langston Hughes
"I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge -- myth is more potent than history -- dreams are more powerful than facts -- hope always triumphs over experience -- laughter is the cure for grief -- love is stronger than death."
-Robert Fulghum
"When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, "I used everything you gave me".
-Erma Bombeck
"The heart dies a slow death, shedding each hope like leaves. Until one day there are none." ~ Memoirs of a Geisha
I do the very best I know how - the very best I can; and I mean to keep on doing so until the end. -Abraham Lincoln
It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place. -- H. L. Mencken
"Tell me who admires you and loves you, and I will tell you who you are."
-Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve
Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm.
Abraham Lincoln
Don't worry when you are not recognized, but strive to be worthy of recognition.
Abraham Lincoln
"Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around." -Leo Buscaglia
"Keep your dreams alive. Understand to achieve anything requires faith and belief in yourself, vision, hard work, determination, and dedication. Remember all things are possible for those who believe." -Gail Devers
"I think I am afraid to be happy. Because whenever I get too happy, something bad always happens" -Charlie Brown
"Man’s loneliness is but his fear of life." -Eugene O’Neill
“I love you, and because I love you, I would sooner have you hate me for telling you the truth than adore me for telling you lies." -Pietro Arentinio
"Each player must accept the cards life deals him or her: but once they are in hand, he or she alone must decide how to play the cards in order to win the game."
-Voltaire
"Don't be reckless with other people's hearts, and don't put up with people that are reckless with yours."
— Kurt Vonnegut
"There are too many of us and we are all too far apart."
— Kurt Vonnegut
"They do not love one another because they do not love themselves."
—Kurt Vonnegut
"You meet saints everywhere. They can be anywhere. They are people behaving decently in an indecent society."
-Kurt Vonnegut
"A sane person to an insane society must appear insane."
— Kurt Vonnegut (Welcome to the Monkey House)
"We could have saved [the Earth] but we were too damned cheap."
— Kurt Vonnegut
"I wanted all things to seem to make some sense,
So we could all be happy, yes, instead of tense.
And I made up lies, so
they all fit nice,
and I made this sad world
a paradise"
— Kurt Vonnegut
"If you can do no good, at least do no harm."
— Kurt Vonnegut (Slapstick)
"1492. As children we were taught to memorize this year with pride and joy as the year people began living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America. Actually, people had been living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America for hundreds of years before that. 1492 was simply the year sea pirates began to rob, cheat, and kill them."
— Kurt Vonnegut
"A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved."
— Kurt Vonnegut (The Sirens of Titan)
"Many people need desperately to receive this message: 'I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone."
— Kurt Vonnegut (Timequake)
"I was a victim of a series of accidents, as are we all."
— Kurt Vonnegut (The Sirens of Titan)
Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance. -Kurt Vonnegut, Hocus Pocus
"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be."
- Kurt Vonnegut (Mother Night)
"We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down." -Kurt Vonnegut
"Dear future generations: Please accept our apologies. We were rolling drunk on petroleum." -Kurt Vonnegut
"Believing ourselves to be possessors of absolute truth degrades us: we regard every person whose way of thinking is different from ours as a monster and a threat and by so doing turn our own selves into monsters and threats to our fellows."
-Octavio Paz
"We are adhering to life now with our last muscle - the heart." ~Djuna Barnes
"Many of us go through life feeling as an actor might feel who does not like his part, and does not believe in the play." ~Mignon McLaughlin
"God made everything out of nothing. But the nothingness shows through."
~Paul Valéry
"Everything is funny as long as it is happening to somebody else."
~Will Rogers
"Relationships are like glass. Sometimes it's better to leave them broken than try to hurt yourself putting it back together." ~Author Unknown
Nobody ever sees truth except in fragments.
-HENRY WARD BEECHER, Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
"Just because everything is different doesn't mean anything has changed."
~Irene Peter
"People don't change. Only their costumes do."
~Gene Moore
Say not, "I have found the truth," but rather, "I have found a truth." Say not, "I have found the path of the soul." Say rather, "I have met the soul walking upon my path." For the soul walks upon all paths. The soul walks not upon a line, neither does it grow like a reed. The soul unfolds itself, like a lotus of countless petals.
-Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet, 1923
Respect your fellow human being, treat them fairly, disagree with them honestly, enjoy their friendship, explore your thoughts about one another candidly, work together for a common goal and help one another achieve it. ~Bill Bradley
Sometimes life's Hell. But hey! Whatever gets the marshmallows toasty.
~J. Andrew Helt
The truth is rarely pure and never simple.
- Oscar Wilde
To dream the impossible dream
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
To run where the brave dare not go
To right the unrightable wrong
To love, pure and chaste from afar
To try, when your arms are too weary
To reach the unreachable star
This is my quest, to follow that star
No matter how hopeless
No matter how far
To fight for the right without question or pause
To be willing to march into hell
For a heavenly cause
And I know if I’ll only be true to this glorious quest
That my heart will be peaceful and calm
When I’m laid to my rest
And the world will be better for this
That one man, scorned and covered with scars
Still strove with his last ounce of courage
To reach the unreachable stars. . . .
Never be afraid to laugh at yourself, after all, you could be missing out on the joke of the century. - Dame Edna Everage
No vision and you perish;
No ideal, and you're lost;
Your heart must ever cherish
Some faith at any cost.
Some hope, some dream to cling to,
Some rainbow in the sky,
Some melody to sing to,
Some service that is high.
~Harriet Du Autermont
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise. ~F. Scott Fitzgerald
I don't think I could tell the whole truth about anything. That's a pretty heavy burden, because we all just view the world through this little piece of coke bottle.
-Jeff Melvoin
The girl with a future avoids a man with a past.
- Evan Esar
Reality is the leading cause of stress amongst those in touch with it.
- Jane Wagner
Only that in you which is me can hear what I'm saying.
-Baba Ram Dass
I am a part of all that I have met.
-Alfred Lord Tennyson
You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.
-Author Unknown
Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us, but our emptiness. The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there.
-Eric Hoffer, Passionate State of Mind, 1955
I believe that men are generally still a little afraid of the dark, though the witches are all hung, and Christianity and candles have been introduced.
-Henry David Thoreau, "Solitude," Walden, 1854
When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe. -John Muir
Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. -Anne Lamott
You've gotta have hope. Without hope life is meaningless. Without hope life is meaning less and less.
-Author Unknown
Sanity may be madness but the maddest of all is to see life as it is and not as it should be. -Don Quixote
Everywhere I go, I’m followed by a lot of people
Such a lot of people-- it’s almost a parade
And if you could see all the people
They’re everyone I ever was and everyone I ever will be
All the lives of me
Nothing left to hide
I come in many colors, assorted shapes and sizes
Can adapt to your demands
And if you smile at someone, then I’ll just become that one
And throw in all the others for free
All the lives of me
Faults aren’t things for hiding on a shelf
And if you like who I am now
That’s only a reflection of yourself
All the games are gone
We face each other naked, stripped of all disguises
Love is being made
And if I make you feel good
After knowing all you know is really only all that you see
All the lives of me
And if you see all the people
They’re everyone I ever was and everyone I ever will be
All the lives of me
All the lives of me. . . .
We cannot bear to regard ourselves simply as playthings of blind chance; we cannot admit to feeling ourselves abandoned.
-Ugo Betti
Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart and his friends can only read the title. ~Virginia Woolf
Freedom means choosing your burden.
-Hephzibah Menuhin
The sound of tireless voices is the price we pay for the right to hear the music of our own opinions.
-Adlai Stevenson
Ultimately, aren't we all just talking monkeys with an attitude problem?
-"Uncle" Ben, as seen on quotes‑r‑us.org
Man is a strange animal, he doesn't like to read the handwriting on the wall until his back is up against it.
-Adlai Stevenson
Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are and what they ought to be.
-William Hazlitt, The English Comic Writers, 1819
Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory.
- Albert Schweitzer
Nature is neutral. Man has wrested from nature the power to make the world a desert or to make the deserts bloom. There is no evil in the atom; only in men's souls.
-Adlai Stevenson
I don't have to attend every argument I'm invited to.
~Author Unknown'
Her hearing was keener than his, and she heard silences he was unaware of.
~D.M. Thomas
You are sad because they abandon you and you have not fallen.
~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943
Alas! must it ever be so?
Do we stand in our own light, wherever we go,
And fight our own shadows forever?
~Edward Robert Bulwer Lytton
I have had more trouble with myself than with any other man I have ever met.
-Dwight Lyman Moody
Man talks about everything, and he talks about everything as though the understanding of everything were all inside him.
-Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin
The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between political parties either - but right through every human heart.
-Alexander Solzhenitsyn
It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that they can't see the problem.
~G.K. Chesterton
We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality. -Albert Einstein
If the human brain were so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn't. -Emerson M. Pugh
No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous. -Henry Brooks Adams
What words say does not last. The words last. Because words are always the same, and what they say is never the same. -Antonio Porchia
Man will do many things to get himself loved; he will do all things to get himself envied. -Mark Twain, Following the Equator, 1897
"I'd rather be a 'could-be' if I cannot be an 'are';
because a 'could-be' is a 'may-be' who is reaching for a star.
I'd rather be a 'has-been' than a 'might-have-been', by far;
for a 'might have-been' has never been, but a 'has-been' was once an 'are'."
-Milton Berle
Happiness is always a by-product. It is probably a matter of temperament, and for anything I know it may be glandular. But it is not something that can be demanded from life, and if you are not happy you had better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness.
-Robertson Davies
When you are describing,
A shape, or sound, or tint;
Don't state the matter plainly,
But put it in a hint;
And learn to look at all things,
With a sort of mental squint.
-Lewis Carroll
In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. -Ralph Waldo Emerson
Transcend political correctness and strive for human righteousness.
-Anthony J. D'Angelo
The theoretician believes in logic and believes that he despises dreams, intuition, and poetry. He does not recognize that these three fairies have only disguised themselves in order to dazzle him.... He does not know that he owes his greatest discoveries to them. -Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wartime Writings 1939-1944
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom the emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed. -Albert Einstein
The right to do something does not mean that doing it is right.
-William Safire
Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live. -Oscar Wilde
"Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken." -Bertrand Russell
"When you think you've lost everything, you find out you can lose a little more" -Bob Dylan
"Life is a shipwreck, but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats." -Voltaire
"Life is rough for everyone....Life isn't always fair. Whatever it is that hits the fan, its never evenly distributed - some always tend to get more of it than others."
-Ann Landers
"My life has a superb cast but I can't figure out the plot"
-Ashleigh Brilliant
"An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind" -Gandhi
"There are always a lot of people so afraid of rocking the boat that they stop rowing. We can never get ahead that way" -Harry S. Truman, 1952
"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh
-Voltaire
If we cannot live so as to be happy, let us at least live so as to deserve it.
-Immanuel Hermass von Fichte
Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve. -Erich Fromm, Man for Himself, 1947
You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.
-Mark Twain
You do not wake up one morning a bad person. It happens by a thousand tiny surrenders of self-respect to self-interest. -Robert Brault
Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world. -George Bernard Shaw
I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, and that enables you to laugh at life's realities. -Theodore Geisel
Here is the basic question: Are we marionettes, or are we creatures of free will who just happen to have a lot of jerky reflexes? -Robert Brault
The creative person is both more primitive and more cultivated, more destructive, a lot madder and a lot saner, than the average person.
-Frank Barron, Think, November-December 1962
We have a world for each one, but we do not have a world for all.
-Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin
There are truths of which I have an inkling, but of most I have only a penciling.
-Robert Brault
"Ideas have become far more important to us than action - ideas so cleverly expressed in books by the intellectuals in every field. The more cunning, the more subtle, those ideas are the more we worship them and the books that contain them. We are those books, we are those ideas, so heavily conditioned are we by them. We are forever discussing ideas and ideals and dialectically offering opinions. Every religion has its dogma, its formula, its own scaffold to reach the gods, and when inquiring into the beginning of thought we are questioning the importance of this whole edifice of ideas. We have separated ideas from action because ideas are always of the past and action is always the present - that is, living is always the present. We are afraid of living and therefore the past, as ideas, has become so important to us."
-J. Krishnamurti
Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it is the only one you have.
~Emile Chartier
"You can't talk yourself out of what you've behaved yourself into."
~ Stephen R. Covey
Home is a person, not a place.
"How people treat you is their karma; how you react is yours."
~Wayne Dyer
"Inside my empty bottle I was constructing a lighthouse while all the others were making ships." -Charles Simic
Who you want to be is not nearly as important as who you are right now.
There's nothing scary about choice. Scary is when you don't have choice.
"If we amplify everything, we hear nothing."
-Jon Stewart
Don't become a wandering generality. Be a meaningful specific.
~Zig Ziglar
"Loneliness is the human condition. Cultivate it. The way it tunnels into you allows your soul room to grow. Never expect to outgrow loneliness. Never hope to find people who will understand you, someone to fill that space. And intelligent, sensitive person is the exception, the very great exception. If you expect to find people who will understand you, you will grow murderous with disappointment. The best you'll ever do is to understand yourself, know what it is that you want, and not let the cattle stand in your way." -Janet Fitch
"You've got to let go of who you were, to become who you will be."
- Janet Fitch
"Let me tell you a few things about regret...There is no end to it. You cannot find the beginning of the chain that brought us from there to here. Should you regret the whole chain, and the air in between, or each link separately as if you could uncouple them? Do you regret the beginning which ended so badly, or just the ending itself?"
-Janet Fitch
"The pearls weren't really white, they were a warm oyster beige, with little knots in between so if they broke, you only lost one. I wished my life could be like that, knotted up so that even if something broke, the whole thing wouldn't come apart."
- Janet Fitch (White Oleander)
"It's such a liability to love another person."
-Janet Fitch
"That was the thing about words, they were clear and specific-chair, eye, stone- but when you talked about feelings, words were too stiff, they were this and not that, they couldn't include all the meanings. In defining, they always left something out."
-Janet Fitch (White Oleander)
"Fight for your dreams, and your dreams will fight for you."
~ Paulo Coelho
Don't spend time beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door.
~Coco Chanel
Going through the motions requires little emotion, but wreaks havoc on your soul.
“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”
~ Socrates
of nothing-
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without
love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the
waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the
dancing.
-East Coker, T.S. Eliot
“But still, still bless me anyway. I want more life. I can't help myself. I do. I've lived through such terrible times and there are people who live through much worse. But you see them living anyway. When they're more spirit than body, more sores than skin, when they're burned and in agony, when flies lay eggs in the corners of the eyes of their children - they live. Death usually has to take life away. I don't know if that's just the animal. I don't know if it's not braver to die, but I recognize the habit; the addiction to being alive. So we live past hope. If I can find hope anywhere, that's it, that's the best I can do. It's so much not enough. It's so inadequate. But still bless me anyway: I want more life. ” -Angels in America, Tony Kushner
“But I don't happen to agree. If chained is where you have been, your arms will always bear marks of the shackles. What you have to lose is your story, your own slant. You'll look at the scars on your arms and see mere ugliness, or you'll take great care to look away from them and see nothing. Either way, you have no words for the story of where you came from.” -The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver
“I keep going round and round on the same old circuit
A wire travels underground to a vacant lot
Where something I can't see interrupts the current
And shrinks the picture down to a tiny dot
And from behind the screen it can look so perfect
But it's not.” -It's Not, Aimee Mann
If you see a whole thing - it seems that it's always beautiful. Planets, lives... But up close a world's all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life's a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern. -Ursula Le Guin
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.
- Voltaire
What is to give light must endure the burning. -Eleanor Roosevelt
there's this restless moving inside tonight, It's got no name no face no size no shape no over no under no visible mother no predictable finish...nothing but this strange power to suck you dry and leave you numb, this power to keep you in your room tonight...again. I'm not that old yet and it's not that bad really.
but to some extent we are all of us warm containers of pain. at times, it would seem that we are that and little else...but really...
that may seem strange; life is strange, i open my eyes. i rest my case. and here's to truth in cliche. i will close my eyes.
"Live not for battles won. Live not for the-end-of-the-song. Live in the along." -
-Gwendolyn Brooks
"How do you pick up the threads of an old life? How do you go on, when in your heart you begin to understand there is no going back? There are some things time cannot mend. Some hurts that go too deep... and take hold." -J.R.R. Tolkien
"Too much awareness is a sickness; it keeps me awake all night." -Yi Cho-nyon
"The cruelest lies are often told in silence." -Robert Louis Stevenson
The happy have whole days,
and those they choose.
The unhappy have but hours,
and those they lose. -Colley Cibber
"Strange is our situation here upon earth. However, there's one thing that we do know. Man is here for the sake of other men, above all for those upon whose smile and well-being our own happiness depends. And also for the countless unknown souls with whose fate we are connected by a bond of sympathy." --Albert Einstein
I don’t want to live. I want to love first, and live incidentally. (Zelda Fitzgerald)
“I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, and stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong.” -Abraham Lincoln
Life is a shipwreck but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats. (Voltaire)
“Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.” -Einstein
Success is relative. It is what we can make of the mess we have made of things.
T. S. Eliot
What you discover in a democracy is that it is difficult to build a house when each nail has an opinion. ~Robert Brault
I used to believe that anything was better than nothing. Now I know that sometimes nothing is better. ~Glenda Jackson
Losing an illusion makes you wiser than finding a truth.
~Ludwig Börne
All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own. ~Johann von Goethe
“We speak of stories ending, [...] when in truth it is we who end. The stories go on and on.” -Jacqueline Carey
The important thing is this: To be able at any moment to sacrifice that which we are for what we could become. ~Charles DuBois
Have a heart that never hardens, a temper that never tires, a touch that never hurts. ~Charles Dickens
My life has been one great big joke, a dance that's walked a song that's spoke, I laugh so hard I almost choke when I think about myself.
-Maya Angelou
Knowing is better than wondering, waking is better than sleeping, and even the biggest failure, even the worst, beat the hell out of never trying.
-Grey's
Aspire to a lower level of harm. ~Anonymous
"I do not agree with a word you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
- Voltaire
The most important things in life aren’t things. (Anthony J. D’Angelo)
I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And I will not let what I cannot do interfere with what I can do.
~Edward Everett Hale
Live simply that others might simply live.
~Elizabeth Seaton
Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not. ~Dr. Seuss
This is the true joy in life - being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.
~George Bernard Shaw
Be an opener of doors for such as come after thee, and do not try to make the universe a blind alley.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
What you perceive, your observations, feelings, interpretations, are all your truth. Your truth is important. Yet it is not The Truth.
-Linda Ellinor
Every action in our lives touches on some chord that will vibrate in eternity.
~Edwin Hubbel Chapin
How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in your life you will have been all of these.
~George Washington Carver
Human beings are the only creatures who are able to behave irrationally in the name of reason. ~ Ashley Montagu
All change is not growth as all movement is not forward
~ Ellen Glasgow
We like someone because. We love someone Although
~ Henri De Montherlant
Conflict cannot survive without your participation
~ Wayne Dyer
We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever
~ Carl Sagan
"It's not the load that breaks you down, It's the way you carry it." ~ Lena Horne
"Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly. Hold fast to dreams, for when dreams go, life is a barren field, frozen with snow."
-Langston Hughes
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. -Nelson Mandela
"Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite." ~ C.S Lewis
If you look for the bad in people expecting to find it, you surely will.
-Abraham Lincoln
"Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength; loving someone deeply gives you courage." -Lao-Tzu
"Every human being on this earth is born with a tragedy, and it isn't original sin. He's born with the tragedy that he has to grow up. That he has to leave the nest, the security, and go out to do battle. He has to lose everything that is lovely and fight for a new loveliness of his own making, and it's a tragedy. A lot of people don't have the courage to do it." -Helen Hayes
"All men and women are born, live suffer and die; what distinguishes us one from another is our dreams, whether they be dreams about worldly or unworldly things, and what we do to make them come about... We do not choose to be born. We do not choose our parents. We do not choose our historical epoch, the country of our birth, or the immediate circumstances of our upbringing. We do not, most of us, choose to die; nor do we choose the time and conditions of our death. But within this realm of choicelessness, we do choose how we live." -Joseph Epstein
"If you find it in your heart to care for somebody else, you will have succeeded."
-Maya Angelou
"A successful person is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks that others throw at him." -David Brink
Whose woods these are I think I know,
His house is in the village though.
He will not see me stopping here,
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
---
My little horse must think it queer,
To stop without a farmhouse near,
Between the woods and frozen lake,
The darkest evening of the year.
---
He gives his harness bells a shake,
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep,
Of easy wind and downy flake.
---
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
-Robert Frost, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Well, Son, I tell you, life for me aint been no crystal stair.
Its been hard and bare and rough places on the floor,
But all the while I'se been climbing, and going forth
In the dark, cause there ain't been no light.
So dont you sit down cause its kinds hard,
Dont you quit because its rough
Cause you see, I'se still climbing
And life for me aint been no crystal stair.
-Langston Hughes
"I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge -- myth is more potent than history -- dreams are more powerful than facts -- hope always triumphs over experience -- laughter is the cure for grief -- love is stronger than death."
-Robert Fulghum
"When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, "I used everything you gave me".
-Erma Bombeck
"The heart dies a slow death, shedding each hope like leaves. Until one day there are none." ~ Memoirs of a Geisha
I do the very best I know how - the very best I can; and I mean to keep on doing so until the end. -Abraham Lincoln
It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place. -- H. L. Mencken
"Tell me who admires you and loves you, and I will tell you who you are."
-Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve
Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm.
Abraham Lincoln
Don't worry when you are not recognized, but strive to be worthy of recognition.
Abraham Lincoln
"Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around." -Leo Buscaglia
"Keep your dreams alive. Understand to achieve anything requires faith and belief in yourself, vision, hard work, determination, and dedication. Remember all things are possible for those who believe." -Gail Devers
"I think I am afraid to be happy. Because whenever I get too happy, something bad always happens" -Charlie Brown
"Man’s loneliness is but his fear of life." -Eugene O’Neill
“I love you, and because I love you, I would sooner have you hate me for telling you the truth than adore me for telling you lies." -Pietro Arentinio
"Each player must accept the cards life deals him or her: but once they are in hand, he or she alone must decide how to play the cards in order to win the game."
-Voltaire
"Don't be reckless with other people's hearts, and don't put up with people that are reckless with yours."
— Kurt Vonnegut
"There are too many of us and we are all too far apart."
— Kurt Vonnegut
"They do not love one another because they do not love themselves."
—Kurt Vonnegut
"You meet saints everywhere. They can be anywhere. They are people behaving decently in an indecent society."
-Kurt Vonnegut
"A sane person to an insane society must appear insane."
— Kurt Vonnegut (Welcome to the Monkey House)
"We could have saved [the Earth] but we were too damned cheap."
— Kurt Vonnegut
"I wanted all things to seem to make some sense,
So we could all be happy, yes, instead of tense.
And I made up lies, so
they all fit nice,
and I made this sad world
a paradise"
— Kurt Vonnegut
"If you can do no good, at least do no harm."
— Kurt Vonnegut (Slapstick)
"1492. As children we were taught to memorize this year with pride and joy as the year people began living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America. Actually, people had been living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America for hundreds of years before that. 1492 was simply the year sea pirates began to rob, cheat, and kill them."
— Kurt Vonnegut
"A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved."
— Kurt Vonnegut (The Sirens of Titan)
"Many people need desperately to receive this message: 'I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone."
— Kurt Vonnegut (Timequake)
"I was a victim of a series of accidents, as are we all."
— Kurt Vonnegut (The Sirens of Titan)
Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance. -Kurt Vonnegut, Hocus Pocus
"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be."
- Kurt Vonnegut (Mother Night)
"We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down." -Kurt Vonnegut
"Dear future generations: Please accept our apologies. We were rolling drunk on petroleum." -Kurt Vonnegut
"Believing ourselves to be possessors of absolute truth degrades us: we regard every person whose way of thinking is different from ours as a monster and a threat and by so doing turn our own selves into monsters and threats to our fellows."
-Octavio Paz
"We are adhering to life now with our last muscle - the heart." ~Djuna Barnes
"Many of us go through life feeling as an actor might feel who does not like his part, and does not believe in the play." ~Mignon McLaughlin
"God made everything out of nothing. But the nothingness shows through."
~Paul Valéry
"Everything is funny as long as it is happening to somebody else."
~Will Rogers
"Relationships are like glass. Sometimes it's better to leave them broken than try to hurt yourself putting it back together." ~Author Unknown
Nobody ever sees truth except in fragments.
-HENRY WARD BEECHER, Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
"Just because everything is different doesn't mean anything has changed."
~Irene Peter
"People don't change. Only their costumes do."
~Gene Moore
Say not, "I have found the truth," but rather, "I have found a truth." Say not, "I have found the path of the soul." Say rather, "I have met the soul walking upon my path." For the soul walks upon all paths. The soul walks not upon a line, neither does it grow like a reed. The soul unfolds itself, like a lotus of countless petals.
-Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet, 1923
Respect your fellow human being, treat them fairly, disagree with them honestly, enjoy their friendship, explore your thoughts about one another candidly, work together for a common goal and help one another achieve it. ~Bill Bradley
Sometimes life's Hell. But hey! Whatever gets the marshmallows toasty.
~J. Andrew Helt
The truth is rarely pure and never simple.
- Oscar Wilde
To dream the impossible dream
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
To run where the brave dare not go
To right the unrightable wrong
To love, pure and chaste from afar
To try, when your arms are too weary
To reach the unreachable star
This is my quest, to follow that star
No matter how hopeless
No matter how far
To fight for the right without question or pause
To be willing to march into hell
For a heavenly cause
And I know if I’ll only be true to this glorious quest
That my heart will be peaceful and calm
When I’m laid to my rest
And the world will be better for this
That one man, scorned and covered with scars
Still strove with his last ounce of courage
To reach the unreachable stars. . . .
Never be afraid to laugh at yourself, after all, you could be missing out on the joke of the century. - Dame Edna Everage
No vision and you perish;
No ideal, and you're lost;
Your heart must ever cherish
Some faith at any cost.
Some hope, some dream to cling to,
Some rainbow in the sky,
Some melody to sing to,
Some service that is high.
~Harriet Du Autermont
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise. ~F. Scott Fitzgerald
I don't think I could tell the whole truth about anything. That's a pretty heavy burden, because we all just view the world through this little piece of coke bottle.
-Jeff Melvoin
The girl with a future avoids a man with a past.
- Evan Esar
Reality is the leading cause of stress amongst those in touch with it.
- Jane Wagner
Only that in you which is me can hear what I'm saying.
-Baba Ram Dass
I am a part of all that I have met.
-Alfred Lord Tennyson
You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.
-Author Unknown
Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us, but our emptiness. The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there.
-Eric Hoffer, Passionate State of Mind, 1955
I believe that men are generally still a little afraid of the dark, though the witches are all hung, and Christianity and candles have been introduced.
-Henry David Thoreau, "Solitude," Walden, 1854
When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe. -John Muir
Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. -Anne Lamott
You've gotta have hope. Without hope life is meaningless. Without hope life is meaning less and less.
-Author Unknown
Sanity may be madness but the maddest of all is to see life as it is and not as it should be. -Don Quixote
Everywhere I go, I’m followed by a lot of people
Such a lot of people-- it’s almost a parade
And if you could see all the people
They’re everyone I ever was and everyone I ever will be
All the lives of me
Nothing left to hide
I come in many colors, assorted shapes and sizes
Can adapt to your demands
And if you smile at someone, then I’ll just become that one
And throw in all the others for free
All the lives of me
Faults aren’t things for hiding on a shelf
And if you like who I am now
That’s only a reflection of yourself
All the games are gone
We face each other naked, stripped of all disguises
Love is being made
And if I make you feel good
After knowing all you know is really only all that you see
All the lives of me
And if you see all the people
They’re everyone I ever was and everyone I ever will be
All the lives of me
All the lives of me. . . .
We cannot bear to regard ourselves simply as playthings of blind chance; we cannot admit to feeling ourselves abandoned.
-Ugo Betti
Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart and his friends can only read the title. ~Virginia Woolf
Freedom means choosing your burden.
-Hephzibah Menuhin
The sound of tireless voices is the price we pay for the right to hear the music of our own opinions.
-Adlai Stevenson
Ultimately, aren't we all just talking monkeys with an attitude problem?
-"Uncle" Ben, as seen on quotes‑r‑us.org
Man is a strange animal, he doesn't like to read the handwriting on the wall until his back is up against it.
-Adlai Stevenson
Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are and what they ought to be.
-William Hazlitt, The English Comic Writers, 1819
Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory.
- Albert Schweitzer
Nature is neutral. Man has wrested from nature the power to make the world a desert or to make the deserts bloom. There is no evil in the atom; only in men's souls.
-Adlai Stevenson
I don't have to attend every argument I'm invited to.
~Author Unknown'
Her hearing was keener than his, and she heard silences he was unaware of.
~D.M. Thomas
You are sad because they abandon you and you have not fallen.
~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943
Alas! must it ever be so?
Do we stand in our own light, wherever we go,
And fight our own shadows forever?
~Edward Robert Bulwer Lytton
I have had more trouble with myself than with any other man I have ever met.
-Dwight Lyman Moody
Man talks about everything, and he talks about everything as though the understanding of everything were all inside him.
-Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin
The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between political parties either - but right through every human heart.
-Alexander Solzhenitsyn
It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that they can't see the problem.
~G.K. Chesterton
We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality. -Albert Einstein
If the human brain were so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn't. -Emerson M. Pugh
No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous. -Henry Brooks Adams
What words say does not last. The words last. Because words are always the same, and what they say is never the same. -Antonio Porchia
Man will do many things to get himself loved; he will do all things to get himself envied. -Mark Twain, Following the Equator, 1897
"I'd rather be a 'could-be' if I cannot be an 'are';
because a 'could-be' is a 'may-be' who is reaching for a star.
I'd rather be a 'has-been' than a 'might-have-been', by far;
for a 'might have-been' has never been, but a 'has-been' was once an 'are'."
-Milton Berle
Happiness is always a by-product. It is probably a matter of temperament, and for anything I know it may be glandular. But it is not something that can be demanded from life, and if you are not happy you had better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness.
-Robertson Davies
When you are describing,
A shape, or sound, or tint;
Don't state the matter plainly,
But put it in a hint;
And learn to look at all things,
With a sort of mental squint.
-Lewis Carroll
In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. -Ralph Waldo Emerson
Transcend political correctness and strive for human righteousness.
-Anthony J. D'Angelo
The theoretician believes in logic and believes that he despises dreams, intuition, and poetry. He does not recognize that these three fairies have only disguised themselves in order to dazzle him.... He does not know that he owes his greatest discoveries to them. -Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wartime Writings 1939-1944
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom the emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed. -Albert Einstein
The right to do something does not mean that doing it is right.
-William Safire
Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live. -Oscar Wilde
"Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken." -Bertrand Russell
"When you think you've lost everything, you find out you can lose a little more" -Bob Dylan
"Life is a shipwreck, but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats." -Voltaire
"Life is rough for everyone....Life isn't always fair. Whatever it is that hits the fan, its never evenly distributed - some always tend to get more of it than others."
-Ann Landers
"My life has a superb cast but I can't figure out the plot"
-Ashleigh Brilliant
"An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind" -Gandhi
"There are always a lot of people so afraid of rocking the boat that they stop rowing. We can never get ahead that way" -Harry S. Truman, 1952
"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh
-Voltaire
If we cannot live so as to be happy, let us at least live so as to deserve it.
-Immanuel Hermass von Fichte
Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve. -Erich Fromm, Man for Himself, 1947
You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.
-Mark Twain
You do not wake up one morning a bad person. It happens by a thousand tiny surrenders of self-respect to self-interest. -Robert Brault
Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world. -George Bernard Shaw
I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, and that enables you to laugh at life's realities. -Theodore Geisel
Here is the basic question: Are we marionettes, or are we creatures of free will who just happen to have a lot of jerky reflexes? -Robert Brault
The creative person is both more primitive and more cultivated, more destructive, a lot madder and a lot saner, than the average person.
-Frank Barron, Think, November-December 1962
We have a world for each one, but we do not have a world for all.
-Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin
There are truths of which I have an inkling, but of most I have only a penciling.
-Robert Brault
"Ideas have become far more important to us than action - ideas so cleverly expressed in books by the intellectuals in every field. The more cunning, the more subtle, those ideas are the more we worship them and the books that contain them. We are those books, we are those ideas, so heavily conditioned are we by them. We are forever discussing ideas and ideals and dialectically offering opinions. Every religion has its dogma, its formula, its own scaffold to reach the gods, and when inquiring into the beginning of thought we are questioning the importance of this whole edifice of ideas. We have separated ideas from action because ideas are always of the past and action is always the present - that is, living is always the present. We are afraid of living and therefore the past, as ideas, has become so important to us."
-J. Krishnamurti
Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it is the only one you have.
~Emile Chartier
"You can't talk yourself out of what you've behaved yourself into."
~ Stephen R. Covey
Home is a person, not a place.
"How people treat you is their karma; how you react is yours."
~Wayne Dyer
"Inside my empty bottle I was constructing a lighthouse while all the others were making ships." -Charles Simic
Who you want to be is not nearly as important as who you are right now.
There's nothing scary about choice. Scary is when you don't have choice.
"If we amplify everything, we hear nothing."
-Jon Stewart
Don't become a wandering generality. Be a meaningful specific.
~Zig Ziglar
"Loneliness is the human condition. Cultivate it. The way it tunnels into you allows your soul room to grow. Never expect to outgrow loneliness. Never hope to find people who will understand you, someone to fill that space. And intelligent, sensitive person is the exception, the very great exception. If you expect to find people who will understand you, you will grow murderous with disappointment. The best you'll ever do is to understand yourself, know what it is that you want, and not let the cattle stand in your way." -Janet Fitch
"You've got to let go of who you were, to become who you will be."
- Janet Fitch
"Let me tell you a few things about regret...There is no end to it. You cannot find the beginning of the chain that brought us from there to here. Should you regret the whole chain, and the air in between, or each link separately as if you could uncouple them? Do you regret the beginning which ended so badly, or just the ending itself?"
-Janet Fitch
"The pearls weren't really white, they were a warm oyster beige, with little knots in between so if they broke, you only lost one. I wished my life could be like that, knotted up so that even if something broke, the whole thing wouldn't come apart."
- Janet Fitch (White Oleander)
"It's such a liability to love another person."
-Janet Fitch
"That was the thing about words, they were clear and specific-chair, eye, stone- but when you talked about feelings, words were too stiff, they were this and not that, they couldn't include all the meanings. In defining, they always left something out."
-Janet Fitch (White Oleander)
"Fight for your dreams, and your dreams will fight for you."
~ Paulo Coelho
Don't spend time beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door.
~Coco Chanel
Going through the motions requires little emotion, but wreaks havoc on your soul.
“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”
~ Socrates