β
Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.
β
β
Martin Luther King Jr. (A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches)
β
Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift of God, which is why we call it the present.
β
β
Bil Keane
β
You donβt forget the face of the person who was your last hope.
β
β
Suzanne Collins (The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games, #1))
β
You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us. And the world will live as one.
β
β
John Lennon
β
Thomas Edison's last words were "It's very beautiful over there". I don't know where there is, but I believe it's somewhere, and I hope it's beautiful.
β
β
John Green (Looking for Alaska)
β
I hope she'll be a fool -- that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.
β
β
F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby)
β
Listen to the mustn'ts, child. Listen to the don'ts. Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the won'ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me... Anything can happen, child. Anything can be.
β
β
Shel Silverstein
β
I have hated words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right.
β
β
Markus Zusak (The Book Thief)
β
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all.
β
β
Emily Dickinson
β
I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes...you're Doing Something.
β
β
Neil Gaiman
β
They say a person needs just three things to be truly happy in this world: someone to love, something to do, and something to hope for.
β
β
Tom Bodett
β
The best love is the kind that awakens the soul and makes us reach for more, that plants a fire in our hearts and brings peace to our minds. And that's what you've given me. That's what I'd hoped to give you forever
β
β
Nicholas Sparks
β
I love you. I am who I am because of you. You are every reason, every hope, and every dream I've ever had, and no matter what happens to us in the future, everyday we are together is the greatest day of my life. I will always be yours.
β
β
Nicholas Sparks (The Notebook)
β
When we love, we always strive to become better than we are. When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.
β
β
Paulo Coelho (The Alchemist)
β
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
β
β
Anonymous (Holy Bible: New International Version)
β
May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art -- write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.
β
β
Neil Gaiman
β
I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge. That myth is more potent than history. That dreams are more powerful than facts. That hope always triumphs over experience. That laughter is the only cure for grief. And I believe that love is stronger than death.
β
β
Robert Fulghum (All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten: Uncommon Thoughts On Common Things)
β
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
β
β
Anonymous (The Holy Bible: King James Version)
β
Hold fast to dreams,
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird,
That cannot fly.
β
β
Langston Hughes
β
I like the night. Without the dark, we'd never see the stars.
β
β
Stephenie Meyer (Twilight (The Twilight Saga, #1))
β
You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope...I have loved none but you.
β
β
Jane Austen (Persuasion)
β
I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be.
β
β
Charles Dickens (Great Expectations)
β
People think dreams aren't real just because they aren't made of matter, of particles. Dreams are real. But they are made of viewpoints, of images, of memories and puns and lost hopes.
β
β
Neil Gaiman
β
She wasn't bitter. She was sad, though. But it was a hopeful kind of sad. The kind of sad that just takes time.
β
β
Stephen Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower)
β
Hope
Smiles from the threshold of the year to come,
Whispering 'it will be happier'...
β
β
Alfred Tennyson
β
Many people lose the small joys in the hope for the big happiness.
β
β
Pearl S. Buck
β
If you're reading this...
Congratulations, you're alive.
If that's not something to smile about,
then I don't know what is.
β
β
Chad Sugg (Monsters Under Your Head)
β
Only once in your life, I truly believe, you find someone who can completely turn your world around. You tell them things that youβve never shared with another soul and they absorb everything you say and actually want to hear more. You share hopes for the future, dreams that will never come true, goals that were never achieved and the many disappointments life has thrown at you. When something wonderful happens, you canβt wait to tell them about it, knowing they will share in your excitement. They are not embarrassed to cry with you when you are hurting or laugh with you when you make a fool of yourself. Never do they hurt your feelings or make you feel like you are not good enough, but rather they build you up and show you the things about yourself that make you special and even beautiful. There is never any pressure, jealousy or competition but only a quiet calmness when they are around. You can be yourself and not worry about what they will think of you because they love you for who you are. The things that seem insignificant to most people such as a note, song or walk become invaluable treasures kept safe in your heart to cherish forever. Memories of your childhood come back and are so clear and vivid itβs like being young again. Colours seem brighter and more brilliant. Laughter seems part of daily life where before it was infrequent or didnβt exist at all. A phone call or two during the day helps to get you through a long dayβs work and always brings a smile to your face. In their presence, thereβs no need for continuous conversation, but you find youβre quite content in just having them nearby. Things that never interested you before become fascinating because you know they are important to this person who is so special to you. You think of this person on every occasion and in everything you do. Simple things bring them to mind like a pale blue sky, gentle wind or even a storm cloud on the horizon. You open your heart knowing that thereβs a chance it may be broken one day and in opening your heart, you experience a love and joy that you never dreamed possible. You find that being vulnerable is the only way to allow your heart to feel true pleasure thatβs so real it scares you. You find strength in knowing you have a true friend and possibly a soul mate who will remain loyal to the end. Life seems completely different, exciting and worthwhile. Your only hope and security is in knowing that they are a part of your life.
β
β
Bob Marley
β
Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but - I hope - into a better shape.
β
β
Charles Dickens (Great Expectations)
β
Love is always patient and kind. It is never jealous. Love is never boastful or conceited. It is never rude or selfish. It does not take offense and is not resentful. Love takes no pleasure in other peopleβs sins, but delights in the truth. It is always ready to excuse, to trust, to hope, and to endure whatever comes.
β
β
Anonymous (Holy Bible: New International Version)
β
I have decided to stick to love...Hate is too great a burden to bear.
β
β
Martin Luther King Jr. (A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches)
β
Never lose hope. Storms make people stronger and never last forever.
β
β
Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
β
It's really a wonder that I haven't dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.
β
β
Anne Frank (The Diary of a Young Girl)
β
The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.
β
β
Barbara Kingsolver (Animal Dreams)
β
The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.
β
β
J.R.R. Tolkien (The Fellowship of the Ring (The Lord of the Rings, #1))
β
Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty. There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.
β
β
Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)
β
There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life.
β
β
John Lennon
β
Strange as it may seem, I still hope for the best, even though the best, like an interesting piece of mail, so rarely arrives, and even when it does it can be lost so easily.
β
β
Lemony Snicket (The Beatrice Letters)
β
You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.
β
β
William Faulkner
β
Time was passing like a hand waving from a train I wanted to be on.
I hope you never have to think about anything as much as I think about you.
β
β
Jonathan Safran Foer
β
I carry your heart with me (I carry it in my heart)I am never without it (anywhere
I go you go,my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing,my darling)
I fear no fate (for you are my fate,my sweet)I want no world (for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
I carry your heart (I carry it in my heart)
β
β
E.E. Cummings
β
Hope can be a powerful force. Maybe there's no actual magic in it, but when you know what you hope for most and hold it like a light within you, you can make things happen, almost like magic.
β
β
Laini Taylor (Daughter of Smoke & Bone (Daughter of Smoke & Bone, #1))
β
There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. We must have felt what it is to die, Morrel, that we may appreciate the enjoyments of life.
" Live, then, and be happy, beloved children of my heart, and never forget, that until the day God will deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is contained in these two words, 'Wait and Hope.
β
β
Alexandre Dumas
β
I hope you're pleased with yourselves. We could all have been killed - or worse, expelled. Now if you don't mind, I'm going to bed.
β
β
J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Harry Potter, #1))
β
We live and breathe words. .... It was books that made me feel that perhaps I was not completely alone. They could be honest with me, and I with them. Reading your words, what you wrote, how you were lonely sometimes and afraid, but always brave; the way you saw the world, its colors and textures and sounds, I felt--I felt the way you thought, hoped, felt, dreamt. I felt I was dreaming and thinking and feeling with you. I dreamed what you dreamed, wanted what you wanted--and then I realized that truly I just wanted you.
β
β
Cassandra Clare (Clockwork Prince (The Infernal Devices, #2))
β
But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars.
β
β
Martin Luther King Jr.
β
Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.
β
β
Epicurus
β
Life's under no obligation to give us what we expect.
β
β
Margaret Mitchell
β
All human wisdom is contained in these two words - Wait and Hope
β
β
Alexandre Dumas (The Count of Monte Cristo)
β
Hope is a waking dream.
β
β
Aristotle
β
Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.
β
β
Alexander Pope
β
When you have lost hope, you have lost everything. And when you think all is lost, when all is dire and bleak, there is always hope.
β
β
Pittacus Lore (I Am Number Four (Lorien Legacies, #1))
β
I hope that one day you will have the experience of doing something you do not understand for someone you love.
β
β
Jonathan Safran Foer (Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close)
β
We dream to give ourselves hope. To stop dreaming - well, thatβs like saying you can never change your fate.
β
β
Amy Tan (The Hundred Secret Senses)
β
The things you do for yourself are gone when you are gone, but the things you do for others remain as your legacy.
β
β
Kalu Ndukwe Kalu
β
I hope you find someone you can't live without.I really do. And I hope you never have to know what it's like to have to try and live without them.
β
β
Kiera Cass (The Selection (The Selection, #1))
β
Never leave a friend behind. Friends are all we have to get us through this life--and they are the only things from this world that we could hope to see in the next.
β
β
Dean Koontz (Fear Nothing (Moonlight Bay, #1))
β
There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right.
β
β
Martin Luther King Jr. (A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches)
β
My life is a perfect graveyard of buried hopes.
β
β
L.M. Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables (Anne of Green Gables, #1))
β
The grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.
β
β
George Washington Burnap (The Sphere and Duties of Woman: A Course of Lectures)
β
If pain must come, may it come quickly. Because I have a life to live, and I need to live it in the best way possible. If he has to make a choice, may he make it now. Then I will either wait for him or forget him.
β
β
Paulo Coelho (By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept)
β
There is a saying in Tibetan, 'Tragedy should be utilized as a source of strength.'
No matter what sort of difficulties, how painful experience is, if we lose our hope, that's our real disaster.
β
β
Dalai Lama XIV
β
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.
β
β
Philip K. Dick (I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon)
β
The best way to not feel hopeless is to get up and do something. Donβt wait for good things to happen to you. If you go out and make some good things happen, you will fill the world with hope, you will fill yourself with hope.
β
β
Barack Obama
β
I live for coincidences. They briefly give to me the illusion or the hope that there's a pattern to my life, and if there's a pattern, then maybe I'm moving toward some kind of destiny where it's all explained.
β
β
Jonathan Ames (My Less Than Secret Life: A Diary, Fiction, Essays)
β
You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep Spring from coming.
β
β
Pablo Neruda
β
Tears shed for another person are not a sign of weakness. They are a sign of a pure heart.
β
β
JosΓ© N. Harris (MI VIDA: A Story of Faith, Hope and Love)
β
Maybe everyone can live beyond what they're capable of.
β
β
Markus Zusak (I Am the Messenger)
β
It's amazing how a little tomorrow can make up for a whole lot of yesterday.
β
β
John Guare (Landscape of the Body)
β
Some things don't last forever, but some things do. Like a good song, or a good book, or a good memory you can take out and unfold in your darkest times, pressing down on the corners and peering in close, hoping you still recognize the person you see there.
β
β
Sarah Dessen (This Lullaby)
β
In a time of destruction, create something.
β
β
Maxine Hong Kingston
β
Don't spend time beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door.
β
β
Coco Chanel
β
I don't think of all the misery, but of the beauty that still remains.
β
β
Anne Frank (The Diary of a Young Girl)
β
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.
β
β
Charles Dickens (A Tale of Two Cities)
β
There is a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in.
β
β
Leonard Cohen (Selected Poems, 1956-1968)
β
Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.
β
β
G.K. Chesterton
β
And I thought about how many people have loved those songs. And how many people got through a lot of bad times because of those songs. And how many people enjoyed good times with those songs. And how much those songs really mean. I think it would be great to have written one of those songs. I bet if I wrote one of them, I would be very proud. I hope the people who wrote those songs are happy. I hope they feel it's enough. I really do because they've made me happy. And I'm only one person.
β
β
Stephen Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower)
β
He smiled understandingly-much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced--or seemed to face--the whole eternal world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.
β
β
F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby)
β
I decided it is better to scream. Silence is the real crime against humanity.
β
β
Nadezhda Mandelstam (Hope Against Hope)
β
This is where it all begins. Everything starts here, today.
β
β
David Nicholls (One Day)
β
If you can love someone with your whole heart, even one person, then there's salvation in life. Even if you can't get together with that person.
β
β
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3))
β
It is often in the darkest skies that we see the brightest stars.
β
β
Richard Evans
β
What else? She is so beautiful. You donβt get tired of looking at her. You never worry if she is smarter than you: You know she is. She is funny without ever being mean. I love her. I am so lucky to love her, Van Houten. You donβt get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices. I hope she likes hers.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
You are okay?" he asked. "Not eaten by monsters?"
"Not even a little bit." I showed him that I still had both arms and both legs, and Tyson clapped happily.
"Yay!" he said. "Now we can eat peanut butter sandwiches and ride fish ponies! We can fight monsters and see Annabeth and make things go BOOM!"
I hoped he didn't mean all at the same time, but I told him absolutely, we'd have a lot of fun this summer.
β
β
Rick Riordan (The Battle of the Labyrinth (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #4))
β
For what itβs worth: itβs never too late or, in my case, too early to be whoever you want to be. Thereβs no time limit, stop whenever you want. You can change or stay the same, there are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. And I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life youβre proud of. If you find that youβre not, I hope you have the courage to start all over again.
β
β
Eric Roth (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button Screenplay)
β
I hope you will have a wonderful year, that you'll dream dangerously and outrageously, that you'll make something that didn't exist before you made it, that you will be loved and that you will be liked, and that you will have people to love and to like in return. And, most importantly (because I think there should be more kindness and more wisdom in the world right now), that you will, when you need to be, be wise, and that you will always be kind.
β
β
Neil Gaiman
β
Dare to Be
When a new day begins, dare to smile gratefully.
When there is darkness, dare to be the first to shine a light.
When there is injustice, dare to be the first to condemn it.
When something seems difficult, dare to do it anyway.
When life seems to beat you down, dare to fight back.
When there seems to be no hope, dare to find some.
When youβre feeling tired, dare to keep going.
When times are tough, dare to be tougher.
When love hurts you, dare to love again.
When someone is hurting, dare to help them heal.
When another is lost, dare to help them find the way.
When a friend falls, dare to be the first to extend a hand.
When you cross paths with another, dare to make them smile.
When you feel great, dare to help someone else feel great too.
When the day has ended, dare to feel as youβve done your best.
Dare to be the best you can β
At all times, Dare to be!
β
β
Steve Maraboli (Life, the Truth, and Being Free)
β
β¨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. An 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.
β
β
Janet Fitch (White Oleander)
β
I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes.
Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You're doing things you've never done before, and more importantly, you're Doing Something.
So that's my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody's ever made before. Don't freeze, don't stop, don't worry that it isn't good enough, or it isn't perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life.
Whatever it is you're scared of doing, Do it.
Make your mistakes, next year and forever.
β
β
Neil Gaiman
β
It's going to be all right, sir," Harry said over and over again, more worried by Dumbledore's silence than he had been by his weakened voice. "We're nearly there ... I can Apparate us both back ... don't worry ..."
"I am not worried, Harry," said Dumbledore, his voice a little stronger despite the freezing water. "I am with you.
β
β
J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Harry Potter, #6))
β
I have come to accept the feeling of not knowing where I am going. And I have trained myself to love it. Because it is only when we are suspended in mid-air with no landing in sight, that we force our wings to unravel and alas begin our flight. And as we fly, we still may not know where we are going to. But the miracle is in the unfolding of the wings. You may not know where you're going, but you know that so long as you spread your wings, the winds will carry you.
β
β
C. JoyBell C.
β
I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath. For you alone, I think and plan. Have you not seen this? Can you fail to have understood my wishes? I had not waited even these ten days, could I have read your feelings, as I think you must have penetrated mine. I can hardly write. I am every instant hearing something which overpowers me. You sink your voice, but I can distinguish the tones of that voice when they would be lost on others. Too good, too excellent creature! You do us justice, indeed. You do believe that there is true attachment and constancy among men. Believe it to be most fervent, most undeviating, in F. W.
I must go, uncertain of my fate; but I shall return hither, or follow your party, as soon as possible. A word, a look, will be enough to decide whether I enter your father's house this evening or never.
β
β
Jane Austen (Persuasion)
β
Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean - except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be.
β
β
J.D. Salinger
β
The feelings that hurt most, the emotions that sting most, are those that are absurd - The longing for impossible things, precisely because they are impossible; nostalgia for what never was; the desire for what could have been; regret over not being someone else; dissatisfaction with the worldβs existence. All these half-tones of the soulβs consciousness create in us a painful landscape, an eternal sunset of what we are.
β
β
Fernando Pessoa
β
Must you go? I was rather hoping you'd stay and be a ministering angel, but if you must go, you must."
"I'll stay," Will said a bit crossly, and threw himself down in the armchair Tessa had just vacated. "I can minister angelically."
"None too convincingly. And you're not as pretty to look at as Tessa is," Jem said, closing his eyes as he leaned back against the pillow.
"How rude. Many who have gazed upon me have compared the experience to gazing at the radiance of the sun."
Jem still had his eyes closed. "If they mean it gives you a headache, they aren't wrong.
β
β
Cassandra Clare (Clockwork Angel (The Infernal Devices, #1))
β
Tess, Tess, Tessa.
Was there ever a more beautiful sound than your name? To speak it aloud makes my heart ring like a bell. Strange to imagine that, isnβt it β a heart ringing β but when you touch me that is what it is like: as if my heart is ringing in my chest and the sound shivers down my veins and splinters my bones with joy.
Why have I written these words in this book? Because of you. You taught me to love this book where I had scorned it. When I read it for the second time, with an open mind and heart, I felt the most complete despair and envy of Sydney Carton. Yes, Sydney, for even if he had no hope that the woman he loved would love him, at least he could tell her of his love. At least he could do something to prove his passion, even if that thing was to die.
I would have chosen death for a chance to tell you the truth, Tessa, if I could have been assured that death would be my own. And that is why I envied Sydney, for he was free.
And now at last I am free, and I can finally tell you, without fear of danger to you, all that I feel in my heart.
You are not the last dream of my soul.
You are the first dream, the only dream I ever was unable to stop myself from dreaming. You are the first dream of my soul, and from that dream I hope will come all other dreams, a lifetimeβs worth.
With hope at least,
Will Herondale
β
β
Cassandra Clare (Clockwork Prince (The Infernal Devices, #2))
β
to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you've held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.
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Ellen Bass
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Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.
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Carl Sagan (Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space)
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Passion makes a person stop eating, sleeping, working, feeling at peace. A lot of people are frightened because, when it appears, it demolishes all the old things it finds in its path.
No one wants their life thrown into chaos. That is why a lot of people keep that threat under control, and are somehow capable of sustaining a house or a structure that is already rotten. They are the engineers of the superseded.
Other people think exactly the opposite: they surrender themselves without a second thought, hoping to find in passion the solutions to all their problems. They make the other person responsible for their happiness and blame them for their possible unhappiness. They are either euphoric because something marvelous has happened or depressed because something unexpected has just ruined everything.
Keeping passion at bay or surrendering blindly to it - which of these two attitudes is the least destructive?
I don't know.
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Paulo Coelho (Eleven Minutes)
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I will love you as a thief loves a gallery and as a crow loves a murder, as a cloud loves bats and as a range loves braes. I will love you as misfortune loves orphans, as fire loves innocence and as justice loves to sit and watch while everything goes wrong. I will love you as a battlefield loves young men and as peppermints love your allergies, and I will love you as the banana peel loves the shoe of a man who was just struck by a shingle falling off a house. I will love you as a volunteer fire department loves rushing into burning buildings and as burning buildings love to chase them back out, and as a parachute loves to leave a blimp and as a blimp operator loves to chase after it.
I will love you as a dagger loves a certain personβs back, and as a certain person loves to wear dagger proof tunics, and as a dagger proof tunic loves to go to a certain dry cleaning facility, and how a certain employee of a dry cleaning facility loves to stay up late with a pair of binoculars, watching a dagger factory for hours in the hopes of catching a burglar, and as a burglar loves sneaking up behind people with binoculars, suddenly realizing that she has left her dagger at home. I will love you as a drawer loves a secret compartment, and as a secret compartment loves a secret, and as a secret loves to make a person gasp, and as a gasping person loves a glass of brandy to calm their nerves, and as a glass of brandy loves to shatter on the floor, and as the noise of glass shattering loves to make someone else gasp, and as someone else gasping loves a nearby desk to lean against, even if leaning against it presses a lever that loves to open a drawer and reveal a secret compartment. I will love you until all such compartments are discovered and opened, and until all the secrets have gone gasping into the world. I will love you until all the codes and hearts have been broken and until every anagram and egg has been unscrambled.
I will love you until every fire is extinguised and until every home is rebuilt from the handsomest and most susceptible of woods, and until every criminal is handcuffed by the laziest of policemen. I will love until M. hates snakes and J. hates grammar, and I will love you until C. realizes S. is not worthy of his love and N. realizes he is not worthy of the V. I will love you until the bird hates a nest and the worm hates an apple, and until the apple hates a tree and the tree hates a nest, and until a bird hates a tree and an apple hates a nest, although honestly I cannot imagine that last occurrence no matter how hard I try. I will love you as we grow older, which has just happened, and has happened again, and happened several days ago, continuously, and then several years before that, and will continue to happen as the spinning hands of every clock and the flipping pages of every calendar mark the passage of time, except for the clocks that people have forgotten to wind and the calendars that people have forgotten to place in a highly visible area. I will love you as we find ourselves farther and farther from one another, where we once we were so close that we could slip the curved straw, and the long, slender spoon, between our lips and fingers respectively.
I will love you until the chances of us running into one another slip from slim to zero, and until your face is fogged by distant memory, and your memory faced by distant fog, and your fog memorized by a distant face, and your distance distanced by the memorized memory of a foggy fog. I will love you no matter where you go and who you see, no matter where you avoid and who you donβt see, and no matter who sees you avoiding where you go. I will love you no matter what happens to you, and no matter how I discover what happens to you, and no matter what happens to me as I discover this, and now matter how I am discovered after what happens to me as I am discovering this.
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Lemony Snicket