Bloom Yourself Quotes

If you feel lost, disappointed, hesitant, or weak, return to yourself, to who you are, here and now and when you get there, you will discover yourself, like a lotus flower in full bloom, even in a muddy pond, beautiful and strong.

I hope you will go out and let stories, that is life, happen to you, and that you will work with these stories... water them with your blood and tears and your laughter till they bloom, till you yourself burst into bloom.

Life is painful. It has thorns, like the stem of a rose. Culture and art are the roses that bloom on the stem. The flower is yourself, your humanity. Art is the liberation of the humanity inside yourself.

I hope you will go out and let stories, that is life, happen to you,and that you will work with these stories from your life--not someone else's life--water them with your blood and tears and your laughter till they bloom, till you yourself burst into bloom. That is the work. The only work.

And so my prayer is that your story will have involved some leaving and some coming home, some summer and some winter, some roses blooming out like children in a play. My hope is your story will be about changing, about getting something beautiful born inside of you about learning to love a woman or a man, about learning to love a child, about moving yourself around water, around mountains, around friends, about learning to love others more than we love ourselves, about learning oneness as a way of understanding God. We get one story, you and I, and one story alone. God has established the elements, the setting and the climax and the resolution. It would be a crime not to venture out, wouldn't it? It might be time for you to go. It might be time to change, to shine out. I want to repeat one word for you: Leave. Roll the word around on your tongue for a bit. It is a beautiful word, isn't it? So strong and forceful, the way you have always wanted to be. And you will not be alone. You have never been alone. Don't worry. Everything will still be here when you get back. It is you who will have changed.

Finnick and I sit for a long time in silence, watching the knots bloom and vanish, before I can ask, 'How do you bear it?' Finnick looks at me in disbelief. 'I don't, Katniss! Obviously, I don't. I drag myself out of nightmares each morning and find there's no relief in waking.' Something in my expression stops him. 'Better not give in to it. It takes ten times as long to put yourself together as it does to fall apart.' Well, he must know. I take a deep breath, forcing myself back into one piece.

Whatever your passion is, keep doing it. Don't waste time chasing after success or comparing yourself to others. Every flower blooms at a different pace. Excel at doing what your passion is and only focus on perfecting it. Eventually people will see what you are great at doing, and if you are truly great, success will come chasing after you.

Love yourself, even a little bit each day, and your life will bloom into infinite joy.

If the end result is customer satisfaction, your business will thrive. If the end result is customer loyalty, your business will bloom.

Roses and thorns are parts of the same plant. Somehow though, some people are concerned mainly about the roses. The rose is not on the plant for more than a week, but the thorns are there forever. Roses are teaching that the beauty of life will bloom, once you have taught yourself the lessons given by living with the thorns.

Be kind to yourself while blooming. I know sometimes it feels like your soul doesn’t always fit. It’s all a part of the process.

A dream is a seed. Vision plants it. Imagination nurtures growth. Opportunities create blooms. Thoughts become things!

Our soul is like a soft and gentle flower, it needs to be nurtured, cared for, tended to, with sufficient sunlight, fresh air and freedom to bloom into its most precious and beautiful form. This, my friend, is self-love.

The Reformation was a time when men went blind, staggering drunk because they had discovered, in the dusty basement of late medievalism, a whole cellar full of fifteen-hundred-year-old, two-hundred proof Grace–bottle after bottle of pure distilate of Scripture, one sip of which would convince anyone that God saves us single-handedly. The word of the Gospel–after all those centuries of trying to lift yourself into heaven by worrying about the perfection of your bootstraps–suddenly turned out to be a flat announcement that the saved were home before they started…Grace has to be drunk straight: no water, no ice, and certainly no ginger ale; neither goodness, nor badness, not the flowers that bloom in the spring of super spirituality could be allowed to enter into the case.

Until you become yourself," Bloom avers, "what benefit can you be to others.

Real haiku is the soul of poetry. Anything that is not actually present in one's heart is not haiku. The moon glows, flowers bloom, insects cry, water flows. There is no place we cannot find flowers or think of the moon. This is the essence of haiku. Go beyond the restrictions of your era, forget about purpose or meaning, separate yourself from historical limitations—there you will find the essence of true art, religion, and science.

Let today be the day you are kind to yourself and focus on believing what is beautiful and true. And this does not mean you ignore your imperfections. It means, in spite of them, you believe there is beauty to you.

I'll tell you how the sun rose A ribbon at a time... It's a living book, this life; it folds out in a million settings, cast with a billion beautiful characters, and it is almost over for you. It doesn't matter how old you are; it is coming to a close quickly, and soon the credits will roll and all your friends will fold out of your funeral and drive back to their homes in cold and still and silence. And they will make a fire and pour some wine and think about how you once were . . . and feel a kind of sickness at the idea you never again will be. So soon you will be in that part of the book where you are holding the bulk of the pages in your left hand, and only a thin wisp of the story in your right. You will know by the page count, not by the narrative, that the Author is wrapping things up. You begin to mourn its ending, and want to pace yourself slowly toward its closure, knowing the last lines will speak of something beautiful, of the end of something long and earned, and you hope the thing closes out like last breaths, like whispers about how much and who the characters have come to love, and how authentic the sentiments feel when they have earned a hundred pages of qualification. And so my prayer is that your story will have involved some leaving and some coming home, some summer and some winter, some roses blooming out like children in a play. My hope is your story will be about changing, about getting something beautiful born inside of you, about learning to love a woman or a man, about learning to love a child, about moving yourself around water, around mountains, around friends, about learning to love others more than we love ourselves, about learning oneness as a way of understanding God. We get one story, you and I, and one story alone. God has established the elements, the setting and the climax and the resolution. It would be a crime not to venture out, wouldn't it?

Because when you’ve been around forever, you have to find something outside yourself to believe in or go mad. I believe in humanity. I believe in you.

The soul gropes in search of a soul, and finds it. And that soul, found and proven, is a woman. A hand sustains you, it is hers; lips lightly touch your forehead, they are her lips; you hear breathing near you, it is she. To have her wholly, from her devotion to her pity, never to be left alone, to have that sweet shyness as, to lean on that unbending reed, to touch, Providence with your hands and be able to grasp it in your arms; God made palpable, what transport! The heart, that dark celestial flower, bursts into a mysterious bloom. You would not give up that shade for all the light in the world! The angel soul is there, forever there; if she goes away, it is only to return; she fades away in a dream and reappears in reality. You feel an approaching warmth, she is there. You overflow with serenity, gaiety, and ecstasy; you are radiant in your darkness. And the thousand little cares! The trifles that are enormous in this void. The most ineffable accents of the womanly voice used to comfort you, and replacing for you the vanished universe! You are caressed through the soul. You see nothing but you feel yourself adored. It is paradise of darkness.

I don't think anyone could really know her, just as the peak of her struggle blooms, she again appearered to have held it all together when the whole world; would have thought, she'd fall Apart.

You know, through pain, you learn a lot about yourself--things you thought you never knew you wanted to learn. And it's kind of like those animals that regrow a part of their body--like a starfish. You might not feel it. You might not even want to grow, but you will. You'll grow that part that broke off, and that growing, that blooming--cannot happen without the pain.

The most important conversations you’ll ever have are the ones you’ll have with yourself. You wake up with them, you walk around with them, you go to bed with them, and eventually you act on them. Whether they be good or bad. We are all our own worst haters and doubters because self doubt is a natural reaction to any bold attempt to change your life for the better. You can’t stop it from blooming in your brain, but you can neutralize it, and all the other external chatter by asking, What if?

No tree tries to become a certain kind of tree. No flower tries to become a certain kind of flower. The tree and the flower open up to the sun and soak up water. Thus, they grow into themselves. No judgment. No expectations. No commentary. Your task is the same. If you can stop trying so hard to become who you think you should be, and instead commit to understanding and nourishing yourself, you will bloom into whatever kind of person you are.

if you’re kicking yourself for not having accomplished all you thought you should have by now, don’t worry about it. People bloom at different stages of their lives, and often more than once.

Rereading old books is the highest form of literary pleasure and instructs you in what is deepest in your own yearnings. Reading well is one of the great pleasures that solitude can afford you, because it is, at least in my experience, the most healing of pleasures. It returns you to otherness, whether in yourself or in friends. Imaginative literature is otherness and as such, alleviates loneliness.

I don’t want to wait until I’m 73 to embrace my body. To look back and think of my beauty: How did I miss it? Let’s not wait another moment.

Suppose that a man leaps out of a burning building—as my dear friend and colleague Jeff Goldberg sat and said to my face over a table at La Tomate in Washington not two years ago—and lands on a bystander in the street below. Now, make the burning building be Europe, and the luckless man underneath be the Palestinian Arabs. Is this a historical injustice? Has the man below been made a victim, with infinite cause of complaint and indefinite justification for violent retaliation? My own reply would be a provisional 'no,' but only on these conditions. The man leaping from the burning building must still make such restitution as he can to the man who broke his fall, and must not pretend that he never even landed on him. And he must base his case on the singularity and uniqueness of the original leap. It can't, in other words, be 'leap, leap, leap' for four generations and more. The people underneath cannot be expected to tolerate leaping on this scale and of this duration, if you catch my drift. In Palestine, tread softly, for you tread on their dreams. And do not tell the Palestinians that they were never fallen upon and bruised in the first place. Do not shame yourself with the cheap lie that they were told by their leaders to run away. Also, stop saying that nobody knew how to cultivate oranges in Jaffa until the Jews showed them how. 'Making the desert bloom'—one of Yvonne's stock phrases—makes desert dwellers out of people who were the agricultural superiors of the Crusaders.

Do you experience that? Ask yourself, "Have I ever experienced the wonders of life?" Meditate about it. Meditation helps your spirit bloom like a beautiful flower. The experience can be beautiful and great. Poetry is the language of the soul. So listen. "Life is like a dewdrop on a grass leaf. When is slips away, it's gone forever.

your growth in the midst of a big leap forward; hold steady and allow yourself to bloom.

pull yourself out of your flesh. burn down those walls. uncover your bones and see how fiercely you bloom when you let your body breathe. ________ raw.

I hope you will go out and let stories happen to you, and that you will work them, water them with your blood and tears and you laughter till they bloom, till you yourself burst into bloom.

You don’t have to remind a flower when its time to bloom is near; it has been preparing for it all of its life.

Appearances are really just manifestations of how we see ourselves. And so, with that in mind, the way you see yourself, well, it has a direct effect on what you become, and how others see you.

WEAN YOURSELF Little by little, wean yourself. This is the gist of what I have to say. From an embryo, whose nourishment comes in the blood, move to an infant drinking milk, to a child on solid food, to a searcher after wisdom, to a hunter of more invisible game. Think how it is to have a conversation with an embryo. You might say, "The world outside is vast and intricate. There are wheatfields and mountain passes, and orchards in bloom. At night there are millions of galaxies, and in sunlight the beauty of friends dancing at a wedding." You ask the embryo why he, or she, stays cooped up in the dark with eyes closed. Listen to the answer. There is no "other world." I only know what I've experienced. You must be hallucinating.

It’s okay if it takes you some time to find it again. And it’s okay if you find it just to lose a bit of it here and there. That’s the beauty of it, yeah? It comes and goes. Not every day is a happy one and it shouldn’t be. It’s in the trying, I think.” I clear the cobwebs out of my throat. “Trying to be happy?” “No.” He shakes his head once. “That doesn’t work. Trying to be happy is like—it’s like telling a flower to bloom.” He crosses his ankles and drags his palm against his stubble. “You can’t make yourself be happy. But you can be open to it. You can trust yourself enough to feel it when you stumble on it.” I

Archie! Trying to figure out a woman is just like punching yourself in the head -- It feels good when you stop!! (Jughead Jones)

1. WE'VE LEFT SHORE SOMEHOW BECOME THE FRIENDS OF EARLY THEORY CLOSE ENOUGH TO SPEAK DESIRE AND PAIN OF ABSENCE OF MISTAKES WE'D MAKE GIVEN THE CHANCE. EACH SMILE RETURNED MAKES HARDER AVOIDING DREAMS THAT SEE US LYING IN EARLY EVENING CURTAIN SHADOWS, SKIN SAFE AGAINST SKIN. BLOOM OF COMPASSION RESPECT FOR MOMENTS EYES LOCK TURNS FOREVER INTO ONE MORE VEIL THAT FALLS AWAY. 2. THIS AFTER SEEING YOU LAST NIGHT, FIRST TIME SMELLING YOU WITH PERMISSION: SHOULDERS TO WONDER OPENLY AT AS CAREFULLY KISSED AS THOSE ARMS WAITED IMPOSSIBLY ON. THEY'VE HELD ME NOW AND YOUR BREATH DOWN MY BACK SENT AWAY NIGHT AIR THAT HAD ME SHAKING IN THE UNLIT ANGLICAN DOORWAY. 3. ARE WE RUINED FOR FINDING OUR FACES FIT AND WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT MORNING? IS FRIENDSHIP CANCELLED IF WE CAN'T CALL EACH OTHER ANYMORE IN AMNESIA, INVITE OURSELVES TO LAST GLANCES UNDER SUSPICIOUS CLOCKS TELLING US WHEN WE'VE HAD ENOUGH? 4. YOUR STEADY HANDS CRADLING MY GRATEFUL SKULL: WERE YOU TAKING IN MY FACE TO SAVE AN IMAGE YOU'VE RARELY ALLOWED YOURSELF AFTER LEAVING THAT COLD ALCOVE? AM I A PHOTOGRAPH YOU GAZE AT IN MOMENTS OF WEAKNESS? YOU ORDERED ME OFF MY KNEES INTO YOUR ARMS. WASN'T TO BEG THAT I KNELT; ONLY TO SEE YOU ONCE FROM BELOW. TRIED TO SAY SOMETHING THAT FILLED MY MOUTH AND LONGED TO REST IN YOUR EAR. DON'T DARE WRITE IT DOWN FOR FEAR IT'LL BECOME WORDS, JUST WORDS.

Go for a walk outdoors. Reconnect with the feeling of the wind blowing through your hair. Listen to the birds that live in a tree in your yard. Watch the sunset. Take time to smell the flowers that bloom in the park during the summer. The natural world is just as natural as it ever was, except there's less of it than there was twenty-five years ago - and most of us don't make a point of enjoying it often enough.

As she drove, she surprised herself with a sudden laugh. How blind, infinitely blind, she had been to think that men’s inability to see her forty-eight-year-old self was a regret or, worse, a failing on her own part. No, what it really was was a blessing, for that inability had separated the wheat from the chaff. The spotlight was indeed always there but only for someone perceptive enough, brave enough, mature enough to see it still shining above her head.

Free will is a powerful thing, Riley. Sometimes it's the only way to realize your true destiny, though it does require a fair bit if trust–in yourself, in the universe–as I'm sure you now know.

This has been her life for the past fifty years, this striving to help save the world a little bit, to push it just a bit farther into the right. This action was the only thing that sustained her during the hard times [when] only her purposeful life propped her up from total collapse, and she thought how strange that she had taught the morality play Everyman all those years but didn’t fully understand its central lesson or how true it was: We are our good deeds, and they alone will come with us into the afterlife.

Lost is a state of mind. You’ll find yourself when you acknowledge you’re exactly where you need to be in this moment.

Thorns do not keep a rose from blooming, neither should obstacles keep you from success.

Just because the rose died on the vine, doesn't mean it lied to you when it was in bloom.

They want you thinking you're bad at being a girl instead of good at being yourself. They want you to buy your blush from a store instead of letting it bloom from your butterflies. They're telling you to blend in, like you've never seen how a blender works. Like they think you've never seen the mess from the blade.

Sow flowers to make a garden bloom around you, The thorns you sow will prick your own feet. Arrows shot at others Will return to hit you as they fall. You yourself will come to teeter on the lip Of a well dug to undermine another. Though you look at others with contempt, It's you whose body will be reduced to dust. Humanity is all one body; To torture another is simply to wound yourself. [...]Make your path straight now, by the bright light of day; For pitch darkness will come without warning.

It offends me when you doubt my love. These jealousies are unwarranted. If only you lived in my head for a day, you’d see that you live eternally in my heart. Try it for yourself. Take this knife to my chest and you will find that I bleed you. Cast your suspicions to the wind for there will never come a time when I will not love you. Does the sea get bored of kissing the shore’s feet? Cast your suspicions to the wind and let us get drunk off each other. "Don’t fall in love with a poet,” they warn you. But they don’t know that galaxies circumambulate you. They don’t see that the waves of your hair are where stars go to die. They don’t hear how your voice is the sound of flowers blooming. Cast your suspicions to the wind and come spend your life with me. There will never come a time when I will not be in love with you.

He tried to live a good life and devote that life to helping others, but he never thought the world would reward him for his efforts. Such a thought would be the ultimate in self-deluding self-aggrandizement, for why would the world care one iota about him? Now, however, he wondered if he had been wrong. Now, he thought that maybe, just maybe, if you lived a good life, the universe—this cold, cold world—might just reward you. And he did feel rewarded—rewarded beyond all the gold in the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan.

The spotlight hadn’t dimmed as Molly aged but had changed its glow instead. It had grown more intense with each new experience, had become more personalized and distinguished. It was no longer the bland whitish light of youth, a light dictated by a ceaselessly shallow society and therefore able to be seen by everyone in such a society. No, hers at present was a spotlight with highly individualized rays that could no longer be seen by most men simply because most men’s eyes weren’t good enough to see them.

When the highest Chakra opens, you will find yourself sitting on the lotus of nothingness. The entire world will seem like mud upon which the lotus blooms. The mud is neither bad nor good. If you think it’s bad, you are still attached to it; you are still swimming into it. True detachment is the only way to slowly move upward from one Chakra to another.

Gloom has a way of making us bloom.

I can understand not wanting to remain around sad memories. ... Wherever you go, you take yourself with you. Memories and all. ... Might as well stay put.

Because it has lived its life intensely the parched grass still attracts the gaze of passers-by. The flowers merely flower, and they do this as well as they can. The white lily, blooming unseen in the valley, Does not need to explain itself to anyone; It lives merely for beauty. Man, however, cannot accept that 'merely'. If tomatoes wanted to be melons, they would look completely ridiculous. I am always amazed that so many people are concerned with wanting to be what they are not; what's the point of making yourself look ridicuolous? You don't always have to pretend to be strong, there's no need to prove all the time that everything is going well, you shouldn't be concerned about what other people are thinking, cry if you need to, it's good to cry out all your tears (because only then will you be able to smile again).

You are your truest you not when you are analyzing yourself or measuring yourself against someone else. You are your truest you when your eyes are fixed on Jesus (Heb. 12:2), when you are following him in faith, and when you are serving others in love with the grace-gifts God has assigned to you

I’m pretty sure she’s got an angel job now where she plucks a large handful of flowers and carries them up to God where they will bloom even brighter than on earth.”   Can we ask God to bring her back home?” You know what, she’s already home.” Starla patted her chest. “She’ll always be right here in our hearts.” But I can’t give her a hug.”   Yes, you can . . . if you hug yourself or me or Willa or Daddy or Big Pop or GoGo you’re hugging her because she’s a part of us.

No one’s feelings about you should ever overpower the facts of who you are. You can’t control the words, beliefs, or actions of others but you can control your own. It’s not about the world liking you. It’s about knowing, understanding, and loving yourself.

Not only believe in yourself but trust in yourself. Confidence will bloom.

If you have to lose yourself to please your partner, you're with the wrong person.

This holiday season give yourself the gift of self love and self acceptance. Your season will bloom into ultimate bliss.

Folks don’t give themselves enough credit. The mother who endures cavities so her children can get braces. The father who works a dead-end job so his kids can have a roof over their heads. The daughter who sacrifices college so she can take care of her disabled mother. They are all heroes.

When you find yourself falling into the pit of anxiety, remember the ladder of hope that reminds you there is no reason to be afraid. There is still a way out of this, and you are still capable—not perfect, but capable—and you have permission to try to climb again. Even if your hands shake, and your knees are weaker from the fall, you can still trade your fears of tomorrow with hope for today: the courageous decision to climb on anyway out of the pit of anxious thoughts. There is no reason to live afraid.

Bloom where you are planted,' the poster reads. But the poster does not tell the whole story. ' plant yourself where you know you can bloom' may well be the poster we all need to see. Or better yet, "Work the arid soil however long it takes until something that fulfills the rest of you finally makes the desert in you bloom.

You don’t need to be a fortress to be strong. You don’t need to build walls to keep yourself safe. Open the windows and let the breeze breathe life into your bones. Go outside, touch the earth with your bare hands, and remind yourself how it feels to plant the seeds of love and watch them bloom into something beautiful. Water those flowers well; your garden will reawaken in the sun.

(Quoted in Dennis Okholm's Monk Habits for Everyday People) Settle down in your room at a moment when you have nothing else to do. Say "I am now with myself," and just sit with yourself. After an amazingly short time you will most likely feel bored. This teaches us one very useful thing. It gives us insight into the fact that if after ten minutes of being alone with ourselves we feel like that, it is no wonder that others should feel equally bored! Why is this so? It is so because we have so little to offer to our own selves as food for thought, for emotion and for life. If you watch your life carefully you will discover quite soon that we hardly ever live from within outwards; instead we respond to incitement, to excitement. In other words, we live by reflection, by reaction... We are completely empty, we do not act from within ourselves but accept as our life a life which is actually fed in from the outside; we are used to things happening which compel us to do other things. How seldom can we live simply by means of the depth and the richness we assume that there is within ourselves.

For as Molly looked at him, she felt an immediate … she didn’t know what. Despite her love of the language arts, she also possessed an analytic mind, and that mind straightaway tried to seek out the why. And it couldn’t unearth the reason apart from his smile. Or, rather, how he smiled at her—warm and full-armed, like the embrace from a long-absent friend, without the slightest trace of fakeness or concealed motive. His was the most open face she’d ever seen in her life. Concomitant with these sensations, all delivered within a split second, was a thought, seemingly originating not in her mind but from the center of her torso and radiating out to the ends of each nerve, inexplicable in its suddenness and surety. A thought that children and very young people might have, but never middle-aged adults, especially one with a divorce behind her and the conviction that she already knew the world and what it was able to offer. But there it was, undeniably, the thought: I’m on a great adventure.

The only person who should be able to make you cry like that is yourself. People can betray you all they want and you’ll survive. Even if it hurts and a few tears come, it will be over soon. Betray yourself and everything inside of you will die. That’s something worth crying about. Do you understand me?

Not on your life, sweetheart, you're mine forbthe weekend. You just said so yourself. Don't worry, i will send through a message in your behalf.

Whenever you enjoy the bounties of nature like the sunrise or a blooming flower you are connecting yourself with the pure potentiality.

Luck I get,” she said when they’d sat in silence once more. “But why brave?” He shifted in his seat then sat forward, his gaze piercing through her. “Because, Natalia, love is a risk. Love from the depths of your soul requires a certain amount of sacrifice. It bids you to give yourself wholly to another. To allow someone to view you like a prism, assessing you at every angle, examining every flaw. You must lay yourself before them, open and bare, and say, ‘here I am. I hold nothing back. I am yours, mind, body, and soul.’ And all you can do is hope they don’t crush you.” He leaned closer. “But the man who truly loves you will tend to your heart like he tends a garden, nurturing it until it grows and blooms under his hand.

I hope you will go out and let stories happen to you, and that you will work them, water them with your blood and tears and laughter 'til they bloom, 'til you yourself burst into bloom.

Suppression also played another tragic role. By burying my pain, by avoiding my heartaches, I lost touch with knowing and owning what was important to me. I no longer went within, which was a scary road. If you were once attacked on a road, you make sure to avoid it. But the avoidance means you also miss out on the wild flowers when they’re blooming, the snow-capped mountains in winter, the waterfall, the deer, the beautiful people, like Tony, who walk there every day. You also miss out on knowing yourself better, on understanding what is important to you.

Your confidence will begin to bloom the minute you start to love, accept and believe in yourself just as you are this very minute, a being of beauty, joy and a wonderful gift to the world.

I want you to be happy and you need to know that you are beautiful inside and out. Really start believing in yourself, Moxie, and relationships will bloom into something beautiful and honest.

The most precious gift we can offer others is our presence. When our mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers. If you love someone but rarely make yourself available to him or her, that is not true love. When your beloved is suffering, you need to recognize her suffering, anxiety, and worries, and just by doing that, you already offer some relief. Mindfulness relieves suffering because it is filled with understanding and compassion. When you are really there, showing your loving-kindness and understanding, the energy of the Holy Spirit is in you.

You don’t need to be a fortress to be strong. You don’t need to build walls to keep yourself safe. Open the windows and let the breeze breathe life into your bones. Go outside, touch the earth with your bare hands, and remind yourself how it feels to plant the seeds of love and watch them bloom into something beautiful. Water those flowers well; your garden will reawaken in the sun.

Is it better to throw yourself head first and laughing into the holy rage calling your name? It's not about the outward appearances but inward significance. A grandeur in the world, but not of the world, a grandeur that the world doesn't understand. That first glimpse of pure otherness, in whose presence you bloom out and out and out. A self one does not want. A heart one cannot help.

Never look back. The past is done. The future is a blank canvas. Work on creating a masterpiece. Only you have the power to make your painting beautiful. Do not waste time chasing after success or comparing yourself to others. Every flower blooms at a different pace. Excel at doing what your passion is and only focus on perfecting it. Eventually people will see what you are great at doing, and if you are truly great, success will come chasing after you. Those who chase after success are flowers with bulbs that fade out early. Those who have success chasing after them, become eternal flowers. But remember, you were born an original work of art. Stay original always. Originals cost more than imitations. Just take a look at the the coolest people in history. History does not remember the forgettable. It honors the unique minority the majority cannot forget.

The worst thing about being underweight or overweight; too dark or too white – in short too plain and bland in someone’s perception is the fact that most people just end up talking to you because they feel you can be a good stepping stone. And guess what – it sucks! It sucks being the ladder to so many, helping everyone grow and bloom, only to find yourself splayed upon the mud to be used as a path from one person to another. Not moving an inch. Just lying there on the sticky dirt infused ground – hoping someone would help you up – no one ever comes. The only person who can help you crawl out is yourself. Get up. Try. Just try. You ARE Enough!

We cleave our way through the mountains until the interstate dips into a wide basin brimming with blue sky, broken by dusty roads and rocky saddles strung out along the southern horizon. This is our first real glimpse of the famous big-sky country to come, and I couldn't care less. For all its grandeur, the landscape does not move me. And why should it? The sky may be big, it may be blue and limitless and full of promise, but it's also really far away. Really, it's just an illusion. I've been wasting my time. We've all been wasting our time. What good is all this grandeur if it's impermanent, what good all of this promise if it's only fleeting? Who wants to live in a world where suffering is the only thing that lasts, a place where every single thing that ever meant the world to you can be stripped away in an instant? And it will be stripped away, so don't fool yourself. If you're lucky, your life will erode slowly with the ruinous effects of time or recede like the glaciers that carved this land, and you will be left alone to sift through the detritus. If you are unlucky, your world will be snatched out from beneath you like a rug, and you'll be left with nowhere to stand and nothing to stand on. Either way, you're screwed. So why bother? Why grunt and sweat and weep your way through the myriad obstacles, why love, dream, care, when you're only inviting disaster? I'm done answering the call of whippoorwills, the call of smiling faces and fireplaces and cozy rooms. You won't find me building any more nests among the rose blooms. Too many thorns.

When you felt like you missed an opportunity, a pathway, a finish line on your journey—clarity bloomed within you, and you learned how to give yourself permission to change, you learned how to give yourself permission to make mistakes and overcome them, permission to take a different path, to dream a different dream. See, at the end of the day, all that you have lost is all that you have gained. The universe does not leave you empty; it always balances the scales within you. For all that it takes, it gives. For all that it destroys, it creates. Reassess all that you think is damaged and defeated within you. Every breakdown was just a step forward into your becoming.

Falling out of love is a lot harder than falling in love. When you fall in love, everything is beautiful—flowers bloom, music plays, and every star in the sky is winking at you. But falling out of love is like finding yourself in a pitch-black tunnel. At first you think in time you’ll get through it, and then you realize how terribly long the tunnel is. I’m starting to see pinpricks of light ahead, so I might be coming to the end, but I’m not there yet.

You're asking yourself if you will ever get over it. - I don't believe we ever do. Getting over something implies you floated on past the pain, blew kisses, and waved goodbye while leaping to freedom. I've never been able to jump after having the contents of my heart scattered and sewn over fields that will produce memory-laden blooms. The thing is... you get through it. But the seeds have been planted. Those memories grow. And every morning I still hear: 'He loved me. He loved me not.

AWAKENING To open both your drowsy eyes, To stretch your limbs and realise That day is here. To watch the dancing, shifting beam Of sun, awake yet half in dream, Uncertain if the fitful gleam Be far or near. To turn with soft, contented sigh, And through the window watch the sky, All opal blue. To feel the air steal in the room, Made fragrant by the soft perfume Of lime-trees, when their scented bloom Is damp with dew. To hear the rustling voice of leaves, The chirp of birds beneath the eaves, But now awake. The tiny hum of timid things That fly with gauzy, fragile wings, Where yet the dusk to daylight clings, When mornings break. To feel the soul look forth and smile, Contented with each fruitful mile That it beholds. To hear the heart beat loud and strong, In unison with Nature's song, That echoes tremulous and long While dawn unfolds. To know yourself a thing complete, With strength of mind and limb replete, With vast desire; A creature made to dominate The lesser things of earth, a fate On whom the universe must wait, With force entire. And then to cry in deep delight God made the world and made it right; Dear Heaven above! Was ere completeness so complete, Was ever sweetness half so sweet, Was ever loving half so meet; Thank God for love.

What do they think has happened, the old fools, To make them like this ? Do they somehow suppose It's more grown-up when your mouth hangs open and drools And you keep on pissing yourself, and can't remember Who called this morning ? Or that, if they only chose, They could alter things back to when they danced all night, Or went to their wedding, or sloped arms some September ? Or do they fancy there's really been no change, And they've always behaved as if they were crippled or tight, Or sat through days of thin continuous dreaming Watching light move ? If they don't (and they can't), it's strange: Why aren't they screaming ? At death, you break up: the bits that were you Start speeding away from each other for ever With no one to see. It's only oblivion, true: We had it before, but then it was going to end, And was all the time merging with a unique endeavour To bring to bloom the million-petalled flower Of being here. Next time you can't pretend There'll be anything else. And these are the first signs: Not knowing how, not hearing who, the power Of choosing gone. Their looks show that they're for it: Ash hair, toad hands, prune face dried into lines- How can they ignore it ? Perhaps being old is having lighted rooms Inside your head, and people in them, acting. People you know, yet can't quite name; each looms Like a deep loss restored, from known doors turning, Setting down a Iamp, smiling from a stair, extracting A known book from the shelves; or sometimes only The rooms themselves, chairs and a fire burning, The blown bush at the window, or the sun' s Faint friendliness on the wall some lonely Rain-ceased midsummer evening. That is where they live: Not here and now, but where all happened once. This is why they give An air of baffled absence, trying to be there Yet being here. For the rooms grow farther, leaving Incompetent cold, the constant wear and tear Of taken breath, and them crouching below Extinction' s alp, the old fools, never perceiving How near it is. This must be what keeps them quiet. The peak that stays in view wherever we go For them is rising ground. Can they never tell What is dragging them back, and how it will end ? Not at night? Not when the strangers come ? Never, throughout The whole hideous inverted childhood? Well, We shall find out. - The Old Fools

You know those times when an opportunity comes up and you hear yourself in some voice you hardly recognize saying yes? Like some imposter had invaded your throat, thumped on your vocal chords, and made a decision for you before you even have had a chance to think it through?

One of the most important lessons I've come to learn is this: We are all sailing in our own individual ship of life; and no matter how great of a sailer you may be, we all experience seasons the same. The storms will come, and the cold will come, the warmth shall come, and the blossom of spring shall also come. ... Winter is not bad for existing, nor is summer any less great for being hot. Each season exists to serve its purpose... And none of us are exempted from enduring the seasons. Understand the seasons and times of life. Take delight in the sun and at the sight of blooming flowers, but remember, the storms and the winter shall also surely come. Learn how to adjust your sails and know when to adjust them, prepare yourself for the cold and the stormy seasons, but remember to always enjoy the sun while it shines...

Truth isn’t truth if it doesn’t upset someone. You can’t please everyone all the time, especially when you’re true to yourself. Lies are comfortable. We can hide behind masks our entire lives, but that’s not love. Be honest. Tell him how you feel. And whatever happens, happens.

Destiny?” I laugh, a bitter thing. “What destiny?” Everything here is blood and violence. After I graduate tomorrow, nothing will change. The missions, the rote viciousness, will wear me down until there’s nothing left of the boy the Augurs stole fourteen years ago. Maybe that’s a type of destiny. But it’s not one I’d choose for myself. “This life is not always what we think it will be,” Cain says. “You are an ember in the ashes, Elias Veturius. You will spark and burn, ravage and destroy. You cannot change it. You cannot stop it.” “I don’t want—” “What you want doesn’t matter. Tomorrow you must make a choice. Between deserting and doing your duty. Between running from your destiny and facing it. If you desert, the Augurs will not stop you. You will escape. You will leave the Empire. You will live. But you will find no solace in doing so. Your enemies will hunt you. Shadows will bloom in your heart, and you will become everything you hate—evil, merciless, cruel. You will be chained to the darkness within yourself as surely as if chained to the walls of a prison cell.” He

As beautiful as you are my lady, You sick answers to why love is never by your side Your heart wonders around trying to find your ideal love But yet nothing is completing your need. You’re a women of strength and resemble power within, Filled with joy on your angelic face, yet no good man appreciates it A laughter that one can capture for a lifetime, too bad that all the men you seem to meet erase it all You display Emotions that one can wish to dwell in and feel the energy you hold within. Take a stand my lady, no rose ever dies without growing back again, You need no tears to fall for a man who sees less in you You need no sad feeling to crush that happy self, he’ll never be worth the joy in you Show him no sad emotions, you’re too strong to give in now. As a flower you bloomed gracefully and a beautiful lady rose up from that seed the Lord God planted As a pillar you balanced yourself against all negative forces of life and that was your strength As an ocean you cried your tears out but that never hindered the ocean from being full again As a beautiful picture frame you lit up the room and no soul will ever take that away from you. Let yourself love you, is the greatest love one can ever behold, I’m done seeing you cry!!!

Have you never noticed that to be rich always means an impoverishment on another level? It is enough for you to say 'I have this watch, it is mine', and close your hand on it, to be in possession of a watch and to have lost a hand. And if you close your mind on your riches, if you close your heart so that you can keep what is in it safe, never to lose it, then it becomes as small as the thing on which you have closed yourself in.

but a man of pleasure like yourself ought to know that all who are in the flower of youth do somehow or other raise a pang or emotion in a lover's breast, and are thought by him to be worthy of his affectionate regards. Is not this a way which you have with the fair: one has a snub nose, and you praise his charming face; the hook-nose of another has, you say, a royal look; while he who is neither snub nor hooked has the grace of regularity: the dark visage is manly, the fair are children of the gods; and as to the sweet 'honey pale,' as they are called, what is the very name but the invention of a lover who talks in diminutives, and is not averse to paleness if appearing on the cheek of youth? In a word, there is no excuse which you will not make, and nothing which you will not say, in order not to lose a single flower that blooms in the spring-time of youth. If

There’s a moment,” she said, “near the end of Ulysses when the character Molly Bloom appears to speak directly to the author. She says, ‘O Jamesy let me up out of this.’ You’re imprisoned within a self that doesn’t feel wholly yours, like Molly Bloom. But also, to you that self often feels deeply contaminated.” I nodded. “But you give your thoughts too much power, Aza. Thoughts are only thoughts. They are not you. You do belong to yourself, even when your thoughts don’t.” “But your thoughts are you. I think therefore I am, right?” “No, not really. A fuller formation of Descartes’s philosophy would be Dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum. ‘I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am.’ Descartes wanted to know if you could really know that anything was real, but he believed his ability to doubt reality proved that, while it might not be real, he was. You are as real as anyone, and your doubts make you more real, not less.

Seeing the God statement Suppose the statement Blessed Are the pure in heart, for they shall see God were placed like a wreath of violets, Lilies, laurel, and olive, blossoms strung together Like words in a sentence, a garland Launched, set out on a flowing creek Imagine that wreath carried Down the frothy rapids, tossed, floating Slipping over water-smooth, moss-colored Boulders, in and out of slow, dark pools, Through poplar and willow shadows. It dips, Sinks momentarily, emerges, travels, maitains Its ring, its declaration and syntax. At times it widens in a broad, deep Current, makes sense as a gift. The pure becomes inclusive, spatial, Generous. God and heart are two Spread wings of one open reading. And at times it narrows, restricts. Violets and heart entangle With God. The blessed braces, Overlaps lilies and laurel. Still, at any point you might reach down yourself, catch that ring of blossoms, lift it up, wear its beauty and blooming distinction across your forehead. Look into a mirror. See what you can see.

With thousands of years of history frozen in time, it's no wonder that many southerners like me romanticize the north as a place where we can freeze our former selves, thaw, and then bloom anew. Here it’s just you, the land, and your thoughts, and you can't leave until you've wrestled with yourself and emerged a survivor. But then again, the light is much more intense up here and everything looks different because of it. The sun hasn’t set in a couple of months, and you can see things much more clearly when it is light all of the time.

There's a moment in the buddleia's lifecycle, purple flowers blooming, cabbage white butterflies flitting, when it's beautiful and triumphant, sprouting out of the broken wall without an ounce of earth to flourish in. That's what we humans have to do, I think whenever I see it, keep blooming despite the barren circumstances we sometimes find ourselves in. After a few weeks the buddleia becomes a weed again, , with grime-splattered leaves and crispy brown flowers that never fall off. You can only fight so hard, and for so long, before your environment engulfs you.

Every time you get angry with yourself for where you are in your process of growth, it’s the equivalent of chopping off the head of the rose because it hasn’t bloomed yet. Now you have to go through that part of the process again. Anger will set you back every time and slow down your growth. However, self-compassion and self-encouragement are like water and sunshine; they help the growth process happen faster and easier. It’s up to you how you want to proceed, but if you can break the habit of getting angry with yourself and replace it with some compassion and encouragement, then you will bloom like you have never bloomed before.

Generally, it is greed, fear and curiosity which make us live outwardly. A French scientist who worked in America, Alexis Carrel, said in a book called "Man the Unknown" that if you ask yourself where your personality ends you will see that the tongue of a greed person is projected like tentacles towards all the edibles of the world; the eyes of the curious person are like tentacles projected and attached to everything around; the ears of the eavesdropper become long and wide and go far far afield. If you could draw a picture of what you look like in those terms you would see that precious little is left of you inside, because everything is extroverted. So that the first thing one must do is to detach the tentacles and bring them in. You cannot go inwards if you are completely outward.

You can forgive yourself,” Daniel had insisted. “I don’t think I can,” she’d replied. He continued to hold her. “I know everything feels wrong, but you can be right again, Marisita, if you try as hard at it as you try with everything else.” This was when the black rose of his darkness had bloomed. Neither Daniel nor Marisita knew what part of that visit triggered it, but the truth was that it was not Daniel coming to comfort her, nor the sensible council he gave. It was not his arms around her or the warmth of his words in her ear. It was, in fact, the way that he said Marisita to her in this last sentence. The way he said her name conveyed all of his sympathy, and it confirmed all of the truth of his advice, and it promised her that she was worthwhile and redeemable, and it indicated that he treasured the way he had seen her selflessly interact with the other pilgrims, and it hinted that if any single thing was different about their circumstances, he would marry her immediately and live with her for decades until they died on the same day just as in love as they were in that moment.

What if one happens to be possessed of a heart that can’t be trusted—? What if the heart, for its own unfathomable reasons, leads one willfully and in a cloud of unspeakable radiance away from health, domesticity, civic responsibility and strong social connections and all the blandly-held common virtues and instead straight towards a beautiful flare of ruin, self-immolation, disaster? Is Kitsey right? If your deepest self is singing and coaxing you straight toward the bonfire, is it better to turn away? Stop your ears with wax? Ignore all the perverse glory your heart is screaming at you? Set yourself on the course that will lead you dutifully towards the norm, reasonable hours and regular medical check-ups, stable relationships and steady career advancement, the New York Times and brunch on Sunday, all with the promise of being somehow a better person? Or—like Boris—is it better to throw yourself head first and laughing into the holy rage calling your name? It’s not about outward appearances but inward significance. A grandeur in the world, but not of the world, a grandeur that the world doesn’t understand. That first glimpse of pure otherness, in whose presence you bloom out and out and out. A self one does not want. A heart one cannot help.