β
Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.
β
β
Robert A. Heinlein
β
Libraries were full of ideasβperhaps the most dangerous and powerful of all weapons.
β
β
Sarah J. Maas (Throne of Glass (Throne of Glass, #1))
β
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing there is a field.
I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.
β
β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
The Paradoxical Commandments
People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.
If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.
If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.
The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.
Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.
The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds.
Think big anyway.
People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.
Fight for a few underdogs anyway.
What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.
People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.
Help people anyway.
Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway.
β
β
Kent M. Keith (The Silent Revolution: Dynamic Leadership in the Student Council)
β
I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.
β
β
Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird)
β
I no longer believed in the idea of soul mates, or love at first sight. But I was beginning to believe that a very few times in your life, if you were lucky, you might meet someone who was exactly right for you. Not because he was perfect, or because you were, but because your combined flaws were arranged in a way that allowed two separate beings to hinge together.
β
β
Lisa Kleypas (Blue-Eyed Devil (Travises, #2))
β
Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own.
β
β
Paulo Coelho (The Alchemist)
β
Investigation?" Isabelle laughed. "Now we're detectives? Maybe we should all have code names."
"Good idea," said Jace. "I shall be Baron Hotschaft Von Hugenstein.
β
β
Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
β
When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago.
β
β
Friedrich Nietzsche
β
Now, you two β this year, you behave yourselves. If I get one more owl telling me you've β you've blown up a toilet or β"
"Blown up a toilet? We've never blown up a toilet."
"Great idea though, thanks, Mum.
β
β
J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Harry Potter, #1))
β
That was the thing. You never got used to it, the idea of someone being gone. Just when you think it's reconciled, accepted, someone points it out to you, and it just hits you all over again, that shocking.
β
β
Sarah Dessen (The Truth About Forever)
β
I'm not sentimental--I'm as romantic as you are. The idea, you know,
is that the sentimental person thinks things will last--the romantic
person has a desperate confidence that they won't.
β
β
F. Scott Fitzgerald (This Side of Paradise)
β
We shouldn't be looking for heroes, we should be looking for good ideas.
β
β
Noam Chomsky
β
Mom. I have something to tell you. Iβm undead. Now, I know you may have some preconceived notions about the undead. I know you may not be comfortable with the idea of me being undead. But Iβm here to tell you that undead are just like you and me β¦ well, okay. Possibly more like me than you.
β
β
Cassandra Clare (City of Ashes (The Mortal Instruments, #2))
β
Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.
β
β
Henry Thomas Buckle
β
Behind this mask there is more than just flesh. Beneath this mask there is an idea... and ideas are bulletproof.
β
β
Alan Moore (V for Vendetta)
β
Adults are always asking little kids what they want to be when they grow up βcause theyβre looking for ideas.
β
β
Paula Poundstone
β
I am lonely, yet not everybody will do. I don't know why, some people fill the gaps and others emphasize my loneliness. In reality those who satisfy me are those who simply allow me to live with my ''idea of them.
β
β
AnaΓ―s Nin
β
Ideas are easy. It's the execution of ideas that really separates the sheep from the goats.
β
β
Sue Grafton
β
Reading is like thinking, like praying, like talking to a friend, like expressing your ideas, like listening to other people's ideas, like listening to music, like looking at the view, like taking a walk on the beach.
β
β
Roberto BolaΓ±o (2666)
β
Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people.
β
β
Socrates
β
When did we see each other face-to-face? Not until you saw into my cracks and I saw into yours. Before that, we were just looking at ideas of each other, like looking at your window shade but never seeing inside. But once the vessel cracks, the light can get in. The light can get out.
β
β
John Green (Paper Towns)
β
Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward. They may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.
β
β
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
β
Surround Yourself with People Who Believe in Your Dreams:
Surround yourself with people who believe in your dreams, encourage your ideas, support your ambitions, and bring out the best in you.
β
β
Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
β
Don't let the expectations and opinions of other people affect your decisions. It's your life, not theirs. Do what matters most to you; do what makes you feel alive and happy. Don't let the expectations and ideas of others limit who you are. If you let others tell you who you are, you are living their reality β not yours. There is more to life than pleasing people. There is much more to life than following others' prescribed path. There is so much more to life than what you experience right now. You need to decide who you are for yourself. Become a whole being. Adventure.
β
β
Roy T. Bennett
β
There's a difference between really loving someone and loving the idea of her.
β
β
Gillian Flynn (Gone Girl)
β
Jumping out a window five hundred feet above ground is not usually my idea of fun. Especially when I'm wearing bronze wings and flapping my arms like a duck.
β
β
Rick Riordan (The Battle of the Labyrinth (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #4))
β
Mad Hatter: βWhy is a raven like a writing-desk?β
βHave you guessed the riddle yet?β the Hatter said, turning to Alice again.
βNo, I give it up,β Alice replied: βWhatβs the answer?β
βI havenβt the slightest idea,β said the Hatter
β
β
Lewis Carroll (Alice in Wonderland)
β
If someone isn't what others want them to be, the others become angry. Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own.
β
β
Paulo Coelho (The Alchemist)
β
I think....you still have no idea. The effect you can have.
β
β
Suzanne Collins (Mockingjay (The Hunger Games, #3))
β
Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.
β
β
John Steinbeck
β
Paris is always a good idea.
β
β
Audrey Hepburn
β
My idea of good company...is the company of clever, well-informed people, who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I call good company.'
'You are mistaken,' said he gently, 'that is not good company, that is the best.
β
β
Jane Austen (Persuasion)
β
Eventually everything connects - people, ideas, objects. The quality of the connections is the key to quality per se.
β
β
Charles Eames
β
A man's mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions.
β
β
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (Autocrat of the Breakfast Table)
β
People laugh at me because I use big words. But if you have big ideas, you have to use big words to express them, haven't you?
β
β
L.M. Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables (Anne of Green Gables, #1))
β
An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.
β
β
Oscar Wilde
β
The unreal is more powerful than the real. Because nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it. Because its only intangible ideas, concepts, beliefs, fantasies that last. Stone crumbles. Wood rots. People, well, they die. But things as fragile as a thought, a dream, a legend, they can go on and on. If you can change the way people think. The way they see themselves. The way they see the world. You can change the way people live their lives. That's the only lasting thing you can create.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Choke)
β
I honestly have no idea how to live without you.
β
β
Stephenie Meyer (New Moon (The Twilight Saga, #2))
β
If I told you Iβve worked hard to get where Iβm at, Iβd be lying, because I have no idea where I am right now.
β
β
Jarod Kintz (This Book is Not for Sale)
β
No intelligent idea can gain general acceptance unless some stupidity is mixed in with it
β
β
Fernando Pessoa
β
You know, it's hard work to write a book. I can't tell you how many times I really get going on an idea, then my quill breaks. Or I spill ink all over my writing tunic.
β
β
Ellen DeGeneres (The Funny Thing Is...)
β
Of course not," said Sturmhond. "Anything worth doing always starts as a bad idea.
β
β
Leigh Bardugo (Siege and Storm (The Shadow and Bone Trilogy, #2))
β
I have no idea what's awaiting me, or what will happen when this all ends. For the moment I know this: there are sick people and they need curing.
β
β
Albert Camus (The Plague)
β
And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about.
β
β
John Steinbeck (East of Eden)
β
I don't care that they stole my idea . . I care that they don't have any of their own
β
β
Nikola Tesla
β
We never love anyone. What we love is the idea we have of someone. It's our own conceptβour own selvesβthat we love.
β
β
Fernando Pessoa (The Book of Disquiet)
β
I didnβt want any flowers, I only wanted
to lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty.
How free it is, you have no idea how free.
β
β
Sylvia Plath (Ariel)
β
A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one's neighbor β such is my idea of happiness.
β
β
Leo Tolstoy (Π‘Π΅ΠΌΠ΅ΠΉΠ½ΠΎΠ΅ ΡΡΠ°ΡΡΠΈΠ΅)
β
It is always the false that makes you suffer, the false desires and fears, the false values and ideas, the false relationships between people. Abandon the false and you are free of pain; truth makes happy, truth liberates.
β
β
Nisargadatta Maharaj
β
Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas.
β
β
Marie Curie
β
When you make music or write or create, it's really your job to have mind-blowing, irresponsible, condomless sex with whatever idea it is you're writing about at the time.
β
β
Lady Gaga
β
Books can also provoke emotions. And emotions sometimes are even more troublesome than ideas. Emotions have led people to do all sorts of things they later regret-like, oh, throwing a book at someone else.
β
β
Pseudonymous Bosch (The Name of This Book Is Secret (Secret, #1))
β
I abhor the idea of a perfect world. It would bore me to tears.
β
β
Shelby Foote
β
It is not the brains that matter most, but that which guides them β the character, the heart, generous qualities, progressive ideas.
β
β
Fyodor Dostoevsky
β
I hated being volunteered. The problem with my life was that it was someone else's idea.
β
β
Benjamin Alire SΓ‘enz (Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe (Aristotle and Dante, #1))
β
Wit is the unexpected copulation of ideas.
β
β
Patrick O'Brian (The Hundred Days (Aubrey & Maturin, #19))
β
There's zero correlation between being the best talker and having the best ideas.
β
β
Susan Cain (Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking)
β
I have dreamt in my life, dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they have gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the color of my mind. And this is one: I'm going to tell it - but take care not to smile at any part of it.
β
β
Emily BrontΓ« (Wuthering Heights)
β
I haven't the slightest idea how to change people, but still I keep a long list of prospective candidates just in case I should ever figure it out.
β
β
David Sedaris (Naked)
β
What horrifies me most is the idea of being useless: well-educated, brilliantly promising, and fading out into an indifferent middle age.
β
β
Sylvia Plath (The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath)
β
Life is like a novel. It's filled with suspense. You have no idea what is going to happen until you turn the page.
β
β
Sidney Sheldon
β
I think the idea is that every person has to live for his or her own life and then make the choice to share it with other people. Maybe that is what makes people "participate.
β
β
Stephen Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower)
β
For instance, this new idea that You-Know-Who can kill with a single glance from his eyes. Thatβs a basilisk, listeners. One simple test: Check whether the thing thatβs glaring at you has got legs. If it has, itβs safe to look into its eyes, although if it really is You-Know-Who, thatβs still likely to be the last thing you ever do.
β
β
J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter, #7))
β
There was beauty in the idea of freedom, but it was an illusion. Every human heart was chained by love.
β
β
Cassandra Clare (Lady Midnight (The Dark Artifices, #1))
β
That's why I like you. Do you realize how rare it is to come across a hot girl who creates a adjectival version of the word pedophile? You are so busy being you that you have no idea how utterly unprecedented you are.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
And while I was talking, the idea of actually losing Peeta hit me again and I realized how much I don't want him to die. And it's not about the sponsors. And it's not about what will happen when we get home. And it's not just that I don't want to be alone. It's him. I do not want to lose the boy with the bread.
β
β
Suzanne Collins (The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games, #1))
β
You get ideas from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we're doing it.
β
β
Neil Gaiman
β
You have to be burning with an idea, or a problem, or a wrong that you want to right. If you're not passionate enough from the start, you'll never stick it out.
β
β
Steve Jobs
β
The idea of being strong for someone else having never entered their heads, I find myself in the position of having to console them. Since I'm the person going in to be slaughtered, this is somewhat annoying.
β
β
Suzanne Collins (Catching Fire (The Hunger Games, #2))
β
Sometimes I feel so- I donβt know - lonely. The kind of helpless feeling when everything youβre used to has been ripped away. Like thereβs no more gravity, and Iβm left to drift in outer space with no idea where Iβm goingβ
Like a little lost Sputnik?β
I guess so.
β
β
Haruki Murakami (Sputnik Sweetheart)
β
People, I thought, wanted security. They couldn't bear the idea of death being a big black nothing, couldn't bear the thought of their loved ones not existing, and couldn't even imagine themselves not existing. I finally decided that people believed in an afterlife because they couldn't bear not to.
β
β
John Green (Looking for Alaska)
β
If you wish to glimpse inside a human soul and get to know a man, don't bother analyzing his ways of being silent, of talking, of weeping, of seeing how much he is moved by noble ideas; you will get better results if you just watch him laugh. If he laughs well, he's a good man.
β
β
Fyodor Dostoevsky
β
When you're lost in those woods, it sometimes takes you a while to realize that you are lost. For the longest time, you can convince yourself that you've just wandered off the path, that you'll find your way back to the trailhead any moment now. Then night falls again and again, and you still have no idea where you are, and it's time to admit that you have bewildered yourself so far off the path that you don't even know from which direction the sun rises anymore.
β
β
Elizabeth Gilbert
β
I was drawn to all the wrong things: I liked to drink, I was lazy, I didn't have a god, politics, ideas, ideals. I was settled into nothingness; a kind of non-being, and I accepted it. I didn't make for an interesting person. I didn't want to be interesting, it was too hard. What I really wanted was only a soft, hazy space to live in, and to be left alone.
β
β
Charles Bukowski
β
Ester asked why people are sad.
"Thatβs simple," says the old man. "They are the prisoners of their personal history. Everyone believes that the main aim in life is to follow a plan. They never ask if that plan is theirs or if it was created by another person. They accumulate experiences, memories, things, other people's ideas, and it is more than they can possibly cope with. And that is why they forget their dreams.
β
β
Paulo Coelho (The Zahir)
β
Medium clever,β Simon acknowledged. βLike a cross between George Clooney in Oceanβs Eleven and those MythBusters guys, but, you know, better-looking.β
βIβm always so glad I have no idea what youβre vacantly chattering about,β said Jace. βIt fills me with a sense of peace and well-being.
β
β
Cassandra Clare (City of Fallen Angels (The Mortal Instruments, #4))
β
Books are always obviously having conversations with other books, and some times they're amiable and sometimes not.
β
β
China MiΓ©ville (The City & the City)
β
He had no idea where the stereotype of dumb giggly blondes came from. Ever since he'd met Annabeth at the Grand Canyon last winter,when she'd marched toward him with that Give me Percy Jackson or Iβll kill you expression, Leo had thought of blondes as much too smart and much too dangerous.
β
β
Rick Riordan (The Mark of Athena (The Heroes of Olympus, #3))
β
These rough sketches, which are born in an instant in the heat of inspiration, express the idea of their author in a few strokes, while on the other hand too much effort and diligence sometimes saps the vitality and powers of those who never know when to leave off.
β
β
Giorgio Vasari
β
For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them.
β
β
John Milton (Areopagitica)
β
From behind Lissa, I heard Christian say, "Worst. Timing. Ever." Adrian studied Lissa and then looked at Christain sprawling on the bed on the far side of the suite.
"Huh," Adrian said, letting himself in. "So that's how you're going to fix the family problem. Little Dragomirs. Good idea." Christian sat up and strolled toward them.
"Yeah, that's exactly it. You're interrupting official Council business.
β
β
Richelle Mead (Last Sacrifice (Vampire Academy, #6))
β
A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is... A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in.
β
β
C.S. Lewis (Mere Christianity)
β
Most people don't realize how important librarians are. I ran across a book recently which suggested that the peace and prosperity of a culture was solely related to how many librarians it contained. Possibly a slight overstatement. But a culture that doesn't value its librarians doesn't value ideas and without ideas, well, where are we?
β
β
Neil Gaiman
β
Can't stay long, Mother," he said. "I'm up front, the prefects have got two compartments to themselves-"
"Oh, are you a prefect, Percy?" said one of the twins, with an air of great surprise. "You should have said something, we had no idea."
"Hang on, I think I remember him saying something about it," said the other twin. "Once-"
"Or twice-"
"A minute-"
"All summer-"
"Oh, shut up," said Percy the Prefect.
β
β
J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Harry Potter, #1))
β
I like the scientific spiritβthe holding off, the being sure but not too sure, the willingness to surrender ideas when the evidence is against them: this is ultimately fineβit always keeps the way beyond openβalways gives life, thought, affection, the whole man, a chance to try over again after a mistakeβafter a wrong guess.
β
β
Walt Whitman (Walt Whitman's Camden Conversations)
β
If by a "Liberal" they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people-their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights and their civil liberties-someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a "Liberal", then I'm proud to say I'm a "Liberal.
β
β
John F. Kennedy (Profiles in Courage)
β
It's much easier to not know things sometimes. Things change and friends leave. And life doesn't stop for anybody. I wanted to laugh. Or maybe get mad. Or maybe shrug at how strange everybody was, especially me. I think the idea is that every person has to live for his or her own life and than make the choice to share it with other people. You can't just sit their and put everybody's lives ahead of yours and think that counts as love. You just can't. You have to do things. I'm going to do what I want to do. I'm going to be who I really am. And I'm going to figure out what that is. And we could all sit around and wonder and feel bad about each other and blame a lot of people for what they did or didn't do or what they didn't know. I don't know. I guess there could always be someone to blame. It's just different. Maybe it's good to put things in perspective, but sometimes, I think that the only perspective is to really be there. Because it's okay to feel things. I was really there. And that was enough to make me feel infinite. I feel infinite.
β
β
Stephen Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower)
β
I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.
β
β
Mahatma Gandhi (The Essential Gandhi: An Anthology of His Writings on His Life, Work, and Ideas)
β
You speak of sacrifice, but it is not my sacrifice I offer. It is yours I ask of you," he went on. "I can offer you my life, but it is a short life; I can offer you my heart, though I have no idea how many more beats it shall sustain. But I love you enough to hope that you wil not care that I am being selfish in trying to make the rest of my life - whatever length - happy, by spending it with you. I want to be married to you, Tessa. I want it more than I have ever wanted anything else in my life." He looked up at her through the veil of silvery hair that fell over his eyes. "That is," he said shyly, "if you love me, too.
β
β
Cassandra Clare (Clockwork Prince (The Infernal Devices, #2))
β
People pontificate, "Suicide is selfishness." Career churchmen like Pater go a step further and call in a cowardly assault on the living. Oafs argue this specious line for varying reason: to evade fingers of blame, to impress one's audience with one's mental fiber, to vent anger, or just because one lacks the necessary suffering to sympathize. Cowardice is nothing to do with it - suicide takes considerable courage. Japanese have the right idea. No, what's selfish is to demand another to endure an intolerable existence, just to spare families, friends, and enemies a bit of soul-searching.
β
β
David Mitchell (Cloud Atlas)
β
Isn't it funny how the memories you cherish before a breakup can become your worst enemies afterwards? The thoughts you loved to think about, the memories you wanted to hold up to the light and view from every angle--it suddenly seems a lot safer to lock them in a box, far from the light of day and throw away the key. It's not an act of bitterness. It's an act if self-preservation. It's not always a bad idea to stay behind the window and look out at life instead, is it?
β
β
Ally Condie (First Day)
β
Maybe its like you said before, all of us being cracked open. Like each of us starts out as a watertight vessel. And then things happen - these people leave us, or donβt love us, or donβt get us, or we donβt get them, and we lose and fail and hurt one another. And the vessel starts to crack in places. And I mean, yeah once the vessel cracks open, the end becomes inevitable. Once it starts to rain inside the Osprey, it will never be remodeled. But there is all this time between when the cracks start to open up and when we finally fall apart. And its only that time that we see one another, because we see out of ourselves through our cracks and into others through theirs. When did we see each other face to face? Not until you saw into my cracks and I saw into yours. Before that we were just looking at ideas of each other, like looking at your window shade, but never seeing inside. But once the vessel cracks, the light can get in. The light can get out.
β
β
John Green (Paper Towns)
β
It's a very Greek idea, and a very profound one. Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it. And what could be more terrifying and beautiful, to souls like the Greeks or our own, than to lose control completely? To throw off the chains of being for an instant, to shatter the accident of our mortal selves? Euripides speaks of the Maenads: head thrown I back, throat to the stars, "more like deer than human being." To be absolutely free! One is quite capable, of course, of working out these destructive passions in more vulgar and less efficient ways. But how glorious to release them in a single burst! To sing, to scream, to dance barefoot in the woods in the dead of night, with no more awareness of mortality than an animal! These are powerful mysteries. The bellowing of bulls. Springs of honey bubbling from the ground. If we are strong enough in our souls we can rip away the veil and look that naked, terrible beauty right in the face; let God consume us, devour us, unstring our bones. Then spit us out reborn.
β
β
Donna Tartt (The Secret History)
β
The problem was you had to keep choosing between one evil or another, and no matter what you chose, they sliced a little bit more off you, until there was nothing left. At the age of 25 most people were finished. A whole god-damned nation of assholes driving automobiles, eating, having babies, doing everything in the worst way possible, like voting for the presidential candidates who reminded them most of themselves. I had no interests. I had no interest in anything. I had no idea how I was going to escape. At least the others had some taste for life. They seemed to understand something that I didn't understand. Maybe I was lacking. It was possible. I often felt inferior. I just wanted to get away from them. But there was no place to go.
β
β
Charles Bukowski
β
My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.
β
β
Thomas Merton (Thoughts in Solitude)
β
Here's to the kids.
The kids who would rather spend their night with a bottle of coke & Patrick or Sonny playing on their headphones than go to some vomit-stained high school party.
Here's to the kids whose 11:11 wish was wasted on one person who will never be there for them.
Here's to the kids whose idea of a good night is sitting on the hood of a car, watching the stars.
Here's to the kids who never were too good at life, but still were wicked cool.
Here's to the kids who listened to Fall Out boy and Hawthorne Heights before they were on MTV...and blame MTV for ruining their life.
Here's to the kids who care more about the music than the haircuts.
Here's to the kids who have crushes on a stupid lush.
Here's to the kids who hum "A Little Less 16 Candles, A Little More Touch Me" when they're stuck home, dateless, on a Saturday night.
Here's to the kids who have ever had a broken heart from someone who didn't even know they existed.
Here's to the kids who have read The Perks of Being a Wallflower & didn't feel so alone after doing so.
Here's to the kids who spend their days in photobooths with their best friend(s).
Here's to the kids who are straight up smartasses & just don't care.
Here's to the kids who speak their mind.
Here's to the kids who consider screamo their lullaby for going to sleep.
Here's to the kids who second guess themselves on everything they do.
Here's to the kids who will never have 100 percent confidence in anything they do, and to the kids who are okay with that.
Here's to the kids.
This one's not for the kids,
who always get what they want,
But for the ones who never had it at all.
It's not for the ones who never got caught,
But for the ones who always try and fall.
This one's for the kids who didnt make it,
We were the kids who never made it.
The Overcast girls and the Underdog Boys.
Not for the kids who had all their joys.
This one's for the kids who never faked it.
We're the kids who didn't make it.
They say "Breaking hearts is what we do best,"
And, "We'll make your heart be ripped of your chest"
The only heart that I broke was mine,
When I got My Hopes up too too high.
We were the kids who didnt make it.
We are the kids who never made it.
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Pete Wentz
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Responsibility to yourself means refusing to let others do your thinking, talking, and naming for you...it means that you do not treat your body as a commodity with which to purchase superficial intimacy or economic security; for our bodies to be treated as objects, our minds are in mortal danger. It means insisting that those to whom you give your friendship and love are able to respect your mind. It means being able to say, with Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre: "I have an inward treasure born with me, which can keep me alive if all the extraneous delights should be withheld or offered only at a price I cannot afford to give.
Responsibility to yourself means that you don't fall for shallow and easy solutions--predigested books and ideas...marrying early as an escape from real decisions, getting pregnant as an evasion of already existing problems. It means that you refuse to sell your talents and aspirations short...and this, in turn, means resisting the forces in society which say that women should be nice, play safe, have low professional expectations, drown in love and forget about work, live through others, and stay in the places assigned to us. It means that we insist on a life of meaningful work, insist that work be as meaningful as love and friendship in our lives. It means, therefore, the courage to be "different"...The difference between a life lived actively, and a life of passive drifting and dispersal of energies, is an immense difference. Once we begin to feel committed to our lives, responsible to ourselves, we can never again be satisfied with the old, passive way.
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Adrienne Rich
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Don't exist.
Live.
Get out, explore.
Thrive.
Challenge authority. Challenge yourself.
Evolve.
Change forever.
Become who you say you always will. Keep moving. Don't stop. Start the revolution. Become a freedom fighter. Become a superhero. Just because everyone doesn't know your name doesn't mean you dont matter.
Are you happy? Have you ever been happy? What have you done today to matter? Did you exist or did you live? How did you thrive?
Become a chameleon-fit in anywhere. Be a rockstar-stand out everywhere. Do nothing, do everything. Forget everything, remember everyone. Care, don't just pretend to. Listen to everyone. Love everyone and nothing at the same time. Its impossible to be everything,but you can't stop trying to do it all.
All I know is that I have no idea where I am right now. I feel like I am in training for something, making progress with every step I take. I fear standing still. It is my greatest weakness.
I talk big, but often don't follow through. That's my biggest problem. I don't even know what to think right now. It's about time I start to take a jump. Fuck starting to take. Just jump-over everything. Leap.
It's time to be aggressive. You've started to speak your mind, now keep going with it, but not with the intention of sparking controversy or picking a germane fight. Get your gloves on, it's time for rebirth. There IS no room for the nice guys in the history books.
THIS IS THE START OF A REVOLUTION. THE REVOLUTION IS YOUR LIFE. THE GOAL IS IMMORTALITY. LET'S LIVE, BABY. LET'S FEEL ALIVE AT ALL TIMES. TAKE NO PRISONERS. HOLD NO SOUL UNACCOUNTABLE, ESPECIALLY NOT YOUR OWN. IF SOMETHING DOESN'T HAPPEN, IT'S YOUR FAULT.
Make this moment your reckoning. Your head has been held under water for too long and now it is time to rise up and take your first true breath.
Do everything with exact calculation, nothing without meaning. Do not make careful your words, but make no excuses for what you say. Fuck em' all. Set a goal for everyday and never be tired.
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Brian Krans (A Constant Suicide)
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I have lots of things to teach you now, in case we ever meet, concerning the message that was transmitted to me under a pine tree in North Carolina on a cold winter moonlit night. It said that Nothing Ever Happened, so don't worry. It's all like a dream. Everything is ecstasy, inside. We just don't know it because of our thinking-minds. But in our true blissful essence of mind is known that everything is alright forever and forever and forever. Close your eyes, let your hands and nerve-ends drop, stop breathing for 3 seconds, listen to the silence inside the illusion of the world, and you will remember the lesson you forgot, which was taught in immense milky way soft cloud innumerable worlds long ago and not even at all. It is all one vast awakened thing. I call it the golden eternity. It is perfect. We were never really born, we will never really die. It has nothing to do with the imaginary idea of a personal self, other selves, many selves everywhere: Self is only an idea, a mortal idea. That which passes into everything is one thing. It's a dream already ended. There's nothing to be afraid of and nothing to be glad about. I know this from staring at mountains months on end. They never show any expression, they are like empty space. Do you think the emptiness of space will ever crumble away? Mountains will crumble, but the emptiness of space, which is the one universal essence of mind, the vast awakenerhood, empty and awake, will never crumble away because it was never born.
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Jack Kerouac (The Portable Jack Kerouac (Portable Library))