β
You've gotta dance like there's nobody watching,
Love like you'll never be hurt,
Sing like there's nobody listening,
And live like it's heaven on earth.
β
β
William W. Purkey
β
You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.
β
β
Mae West
β
To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.
β
β
Oscar Wilde
β
Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.
β
β
Mahatma Gandhi
β
There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.
β
β
Albert Einstein
β
It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.
β
β
J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Harry Potter, #1))
β
I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living.
β
β
Dr. Seuss
β
A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.
β
β
George R.R. Martin (A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire, #5))
β
It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at allβin which case, you fail by default.
β
β
J.K. Rowling
β
Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day so I never have to live without you.
β
β
Joan Powers (Pooh's Little Instruction Book)
β
Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead.
β
β
Charles Bukowski
β
Who are you to judge the life I live?
I know I'm not perfect
-and I don't live to be-
but before you start pointing fingers...
make sure you hands are clean!
β
β
Bob Marley
β
Do not pity the dead, Harry. Pity the living, and, above all those who live without love.
β
β
J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter, #7))
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
I'm the one that's got to die when it's time for me to die, so let me live my life the way I want to.
β
β
Jimi Hendrix (The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Axis: Bold as Love (Guitar Tabulature))
β
The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.
β
β
Mark Twain
β
I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.
β
β
J.R.R. Tolkien (The Fellowship of the Ring (The Lord of the Rings, #1))
β
You can't live your life for other people. You've got to do what's right for you, even if it hurts some people you love.
β
β
Nicholas Sparks (The Notebook (The Notebook, #1))
β
You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.
β
β
Albert Camus
β
A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading.
β
β
William Styron (Conversations with William Styron (Literary Conversations Series))
β
I wish I could freeze this moment, right here, right now and live in it forever.
β
β
Suzanne Collins (Catching Fire (The Hunger Games, #2))
β
I would die for you. But I won't live for you.
β
β
Stephen Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower)
β
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
β
β
Oscar Wilde (De Profundis)
β
Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living.
β
β
Jonathan Safran Foer (Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close)
β
Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.
β
β
Gustave Flaubert
β
I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life. And I am horribly limited.
β
β
Sylvia Plath (The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath)
β
May you live every day of your life.
β
β
Jonathan Swift
β
If my life is going to mean anything, I have to live it myself.
β
β
Rick Riordan (The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #1))
β
Get busy living or get busy dying.
β
β
Stephen King (Different Seasons)
β
We all die. The goal isn't to live forever, the goal is to create something that will.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Diary)
β
Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.
β
β
Rainer Maria Rilke (Letters to a Young Poet)
β
Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.
β
β
Oscar Wilde
β
We should all start to live before we get too old. Fear is stupid. So are regrets.
β
β
Marilyn Monroe
β
Never laugh at live dragons.
β
β
J.R.R. Tolkien
β
Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.
β
β
SΓΈren Kierkegaard
β
Donβt go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.
β
β
Mark Twain
β
Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.
β
β
Stephen King
β
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
β
β
Martin Luther King Jr. (I Have a Dream: Writings and Speeches That Changed the World)
β
You know, you could live a thousand lifetimes and not deserve him.
β
β
Suzanne Collins (Catching Fire (The Hunger Games, #2))
β
I cannot live without books.
β
β
Thomas Jefferson
β
The unexamined life is not worth living.
β
β
Socrates
β
I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
β
β
Henry David Thoreau (Walden: Or, Life in the Woods)
β
Each day means a new twenty-four hours. Each day means everything's possible again. You live in the moment, you die in the moment, you take it all one day at a time.
β
β
Marie Lu (Legend (Legend, #1))
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
Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope.
β
β
Dr. Seuss
β
Live the Life of Your Dreams: Be brave enough to live the life of your dreams according to your vision and purpose instead of the expectations and opinions of others.
β
β
Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
β
You have to die a few times before you can really
live.
β
β
Charles Bukowski (The People Look Like Flowers at Last)
β
He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much;
Who has enjoyed the trust of pure women, the respect of intelligent men and the love of little children;
Who has filled his niche and accomplished his task;
Who has never lacked appreciation of Earth's beauty or failed to express it;
Who has left the world better than he found it,
Whether an improved poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul;
Who has always looked for the best in others and given them the best he had;
Whose life was an inspiration;
Whose memory a benediction.
β
β
Bessie Anderson Stanley (More Heart Throbs Volume Two in Prose and Verse Dear to the American People And by them contributed as a Supplement to the original $10,000 Prize Book HEART THROBS)
β
I don't mind living in a man's world, as long as I can be a woman in it.
β
β
Marilyn Monroe (Marilyn)
β
I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow; but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.
β
β
Agatha Christie
β
Live, travel, adventure, bless, and don't be sorry.
β
β
Jack Kerouac
β
You are the answer to every prayer I've offered. You are a song, a dream, a whisper, and I don't know how I could have lived without you for as long as I have.
β
β
Nicholas Sparks (The Notebook (The Notebook, #1))
β
The past is a place of reference, not a place of residence; the past is a place of learning, not a place of living.
β
β
Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
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
Deserves it! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.
β
β
J.R.R. Tolkien (The Fellowship of the Ring (The Lord of the Rings, #1))
β
I read so I can live more than one life in more than one place.
β
β
Anne Tyler
β
[...]the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes βAwww!
β
β
Jack Kerouac (On the Road)
β
I hate to hear you talk about all women as if they were fine ladies instead of rational creatures. None of us want to be in calm waters all our lives.
β
β
Jane Austen (Persuasion)
β
He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.
β
β
Friedrich Nietzsche
β
If you want to be happy, do not dwell in the past, do not worry about the future, focus on living fully in the present.
β
β
Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
β
Some people have lives; some people have music.
β
β
John Green (Will Grayson, Will Grayson)
β
Life is for the living.
Death is for the dead.
Let life be like music.
And death a note unsaid.
β
β
Langston Hughes (The Collected Poems)
β
Do you remember back at the hotel when you promised that if we lived, youβd get dressed up in a nurseβs outfit and give me a sponge bath?" asked Jace.
"It was Simon who promised you the sponge bath."
"As soon as Iβm back on my feet, handsome," said Simon.
"I knew we should have left you a rat.
β
β
Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
β
We live for books.
β
β
Umberto Eco
β
If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.
β
β
Albert Einstein
β
When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.
β
β
Henri J.M. Nouwen (Out of Solitude: Three Meditations on the Christian Life)
β
People aren't born good or bad. Maybe they're born with tendencies either way, but its the way you live your life that matters.
β
β
Cassandra Clare (City of Glass (The Mortal Instruments, #3))
β
A woman has to live her life, or live to repent not having lived it.
β
β
D.H. Lawrence (Lady Chatterley's Lover)
β
People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life.
A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then leave.
A soul mates purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you have to transform your life, then introduce you to your spiritual master...
β
β
Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love)
β
Attitude is a choice. Happiness is a choice. Optimism is a choice. Kindness is a choice. Giving is a choice. Respect is a choice. Whatever choice you make makes you. Choose wisely.
β
β
Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
β
Live to the point of tears.
β
β
Albert Camus
β
If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain.
β
β
Emily Dickinson
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
I lived in books more than I lived anywhere else.
β
β
Neil Gaiman (The Ocean at the End of the Lane)
β
Don't be pushed around by the fears in your mind. Be led by the dreams in your heart.
β
β
Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
β
Believe in Your Heart
Believe in your heart that you're meant to live a life full of passion, purpose, magic and miracles.
β
β
Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
β
How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.
β
β
Henry David Thoreau
β
A book, too, can be a star, a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe.
β
β
Madeleine L'Engle
β
You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, 'I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.' You must do the thing you think you cannot do.
β
β
Eleanor Roosevelt (You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life)
β
But in the end one needs more courage to live than to kill himself.
β
β
Albert Camus
β
When a man is denied the right to live the life he believes in, he has no choice but to become an outlaw.
β
β
Nelson Mandela
β
The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, nor to worry about the future, but to live the present moment wisely and earnestly.
β
β
Bukkyo Dendo Kyokai (The Teaching of Buddha)
β
Instead of worrying about what you cannot control, shift your energy to what you can create.
β
β
Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
β
As if you were on fire from within.
The moon lives in the lining of your skin.
β
β
Pablo Neruda
β
Forget safety.
Live where you fear to live.
Destroy your reputation.
Be notorious.
β
β
Rumi
β
The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.
β
β
Douglas Adams (The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time)
β
I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.
β
β
L.M. Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables)
β
The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.
β
β
Ralph Waldo Emerson
β
Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air.
β
β
Ralph Waldo Emerson
β
Don't be afraid of death; be afraid of an unlived life. You don't have to live forever, you just have to live.
β
β
Natalie Babbitt (Tuck Everlasting)
β
Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.
β
β
Mark Twain
β
Live in the present, remember the past, and fear not the future, for it doesn't exist and never shall. There is only now.
β
β
Christopher Paolini (Eldest (Inheritance, #2))
β
How many slams in an old screen door? Depends how loud you shut it. How many slices in a bread? Depends how thin you cut it. How much good inside a day? Depends how good you live 'em. How much love inside a friend? Depends how much you give 'em.
β
β
Shel Silverstein
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
Think before you speak. Read before you think.
β
β
Fran Lebowitz (The Fran Lebowitz Reader)
β
I realize now that dying is easy. Living is hard.
β
β
Gayle Forman (If I Stay (If I Stay #1))
β
Be the reason someone smiles. Be the reason someone feels loved and believes in the goodness in people.
β
β
Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
β
She read books as one would breathe air, to fill up and live.
β
β
Annie Dillard (The Living)
β
If you ask me what I came to do in this world, I, an artist, will answer you: I am here to live out loud.
β
β
Γmile Zola
β
I regret that it takes a life to learn how to live.
β
β
Jonathan Safran Foer (Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close)
β
Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.
β
β
Carl Sagan (Cosmos)
β
Maybe everyone can live beyond what they're capable of.
β
β
Markus Zusak (I Am the Messenger)
β
People can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned.
β
β
Saul Bellow
β
Stuff your eyes with wonder, he said, live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories.
β
β
Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451)
β
You only get one life. It's actually your duty to live it as fully as possible.
β
β
Jojo Moyes (Me Before You (Me Before You, #1))
β
Love the life you live.
Live the life you love.
β
β
Bob Marley
β
Be with me always - take any form - drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I can not live without my life! I can not live without my soul!
β
β
Emily BrontΓ« (Wuthering Heights)
β
Be mindful. Be grateful. Be positive. Be true. Be kind.
β
β
Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
β
Accept yourself, love yourself, and keep moving forward. If you want to fly, you have to give up what weighs you down.
β
β
Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
β
I meant," said Ipslore bitterly, "what is there in this world that truly makes living worthwhile?"
Death thought about it.
CATS, he said eventually. CATS ARE NICE.
β
β
Terry Pratchett (Sourcery (Discworld, #5; Rincewind, #3))
β
We are all different. Donβt judge, understand instead.
β
β
Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
β
let me live, love, and say it well in good sentences
β
β
Sylvia Plath (The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath)
β
He was going to live forever, or die in the attempt.
β
β
Joseph Heller (Catch-22)
β
The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it.
β
β
Albert Einstein
β
No one knows for certain how much impact they have on the lives of other people. Oftentimes, we have no clue. Yet we push it just the same.
β
β
Jay Asher (Thirteen Reasons Why)
β
You're alive only once, as far as we know, and what could be worse than getting to the end of your life and realizing you hadn't lived it?
β
β
Edward Albee
β
Books are easily destroyed. But words will live as long as people can remember them.
β
β
Tahereh Mafi (Unravel Me (Shatter Me, #2))
β
War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.
β
β
J.R.R. Tolkien (The Two Towers (The Lord of the Rings, #2))
β
Believe in yourself. You are braver than you think, more talented than you know, and capable of more than you imagine.
β
β
Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
β
Remember, remember, this is now, and now, and now. Live it, feel it, cling to it. I want to become acutely aware of all Iβve taken for granted.
β
β
Sylvia Plath
β
The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.
β
β
Eleanor Roosevelt
β
What's the good of living if you don't try a few things?
β
β
Charles M. Schulz
β
And thus the heart will break, yet brokenly live on.
β
β
Lord Byron
β
To me, Fearless is not the absense of fear. It's not being completely unafraid. To me, Fearless is having fears. Fearless is having doubts. Lots of them. To me, Fearless is living in spite of those things that scare you to death.
β
β
Taylor Swift
β
Donβt waste your time in anger, regrets, worries, and grudges. Life is too short to be unhappy.
β
β
Roy T. Bennett
β
Itβs only after youβve stepped outside your comfort zone that you begin to change, grow, and transform.
β
β
Roy T. Bennett
β
And, in the end
The love you take
is equal to the love you make.
β
β
Paul McCartney (The Beatles Illustrated Lyrics)
β
For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command nor faith a dictum. I am my own god. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.
β
β
Charles Bukowski
β
You cannot control the behavior of others, but you can always choose how you respond to it.
β
β
Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
β
Don't Just
Don't just learn, experience.
Don't just read, absorb.
Don't just change, transform.
Don't just relate, advocate.
Don't just promise, prove.
Don't just criticize, encourage.
Don't just think, ponder.
Don't just take, give.
Don't just see, feel.
Donβt just dream, do.
Don't just hear, listen.
Don't just talk, act.
Don't just tell, show.
Don't just exist, live.
β
β
Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
β
More smiling, less worrying. More compassion, less judgment. More blessed, less stressed. More love, less hate.
β
β
Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
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
And when her lips met mine, I knew that I could live to be a hundred and visit every country in the world, but nothing would ever compare to that single moment when I first kissed the girl of my dreams and knew that my love would last forever.
β
β
Nicholas Sparks (Dear John)
β
I spent my life folded between the pages of books.
In the absence of human relationships I formed bonds with paper characters. I lived love and loss through stories threaded in history; I experienced adolescence by association. My world is one interwoven web of words, stringing limb to limb, bone to sinew, thoughts and images all together. I am a being comprised of letters, a character created by sentences, a figment of imagination formed through fiction.
β
β
Tahereh Mafi (Shatter Me (Shatter Me, #1))
β
We can never judge the lives of others, because each person knows only their own pain and renunciation. It's one thing to feel that you are on the right path, but it's another to think that yours is the only path.
β
β
Paulo Coelho
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
Life becomes easier and more beautiful when we can see the good in other people.
β
β
Roy T. Bennett
β
I believe the universe wants to be noticed. I think the universe is inprobably biased toward the consciousness, that it rewards intelligence in part because the universe enjoys its elegance being observed. And who am I, living in the middle of history, to tell the universe that it-or my observation of it-is temporary?
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
Success is not how high you have climbed, but how you make a positive difference to the world.
β
β
Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
β
Pursue what catches your heart, not what catches your eyes.
β
β
Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
β
Keep Going
Your hardest times often lead to the greatest moments of your life. Keep going. Tough situations build strong people in the end.
β
β
Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
β
A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
β
β
Albert Einstein
β
Let everything happen to you
Beauty and terror
Just keep going
No feeling is final
β
β
Rainer Maria Rilke
β
Learn to light a candle in the darkest moments of someoneβs life. Be the light that helps others see; it is what gives life its deepest significance.
β
β
Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
β
Make improvements, not excuses. Seek respect, not attention.
β
β
Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
β
Start each day with a positive thought and a grateful heart.
β
β
Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
β
Treat everyone with politeness and kindness, not because they are nice, but because you are.
β
β
Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
β
Be grateful for what you already have while you pursue your goals.
If you arenβt grateful for what you already have, what makes you think you would be happy with more.
β
β
Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
β
Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.
β
β
Rainer Maria Rilke
β
Every book, every volume you see here, has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it and of those who read it and lived and dreamed with it. Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down its pages, its spirit grows and strengthens.
β
β
Carlos Ruiz ZafΓ³n (The Shadow of the Wind (The Cemetery of Forgotten Books, #1))
β
Forever is composed of nows.
β
β
Emily Dickinson
β
Follow your heart, listen to your inner voice, stop caring about what others think.
β
β
Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
β
No amount of regretting can change the past, and no amount of worrying can change the future.
β
β
Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
β
Some birds are not meant to be caged, that's all. Their feathers are too bright, their songs too sweet and wild. So you let them go, or when you open the cage to feed them they somehow fly out past you. And the part of you that knows it was wrong to imprison them in the first place rejoices, but still, the place where you live is that much more drab and empty for their departure.
β
β
Stephen King (Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption)
β
The only way that we can live, is if we grow. The only way that we can grow is if we change. The only way that we can change is if we learn. The only way we can learn is if we are exposed. And the only way that we can become exposed is if we throw ourselves out into the open. Do it. Throw yourself.
β
β
C. JoyBell C.
β
Life is about accepting the challenges along the way, choosing to keep moving forward, and savoring the journey.
β
β
Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
β
Acts of Kindness:
A random act of kindness, no matter how small, can make a tremendous impact on someone else's life.
β
β
Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
β
But who can say what's best? That's why you need to grab whatever chance you have of happiness where you find it, and not worry about other people too much. My experience tells me that we get no more than two or three such chances in a life time, and if we let them go, we regret it for the rest of our lives.
β
β
Haruki Murakami (Norwegian Wood)
β
Be brave to stand for what you believe in even if you stand alone.
β
β
Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
β
Great things happen to those who don't stop believing, trying, learning, and being grateful.
β
β
Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
β
Even if you cannot change all the people around you, you can change the people you choose to be around. Life is too short to waste your time on people who donβt respect, appreciate, and value you. Spend your life with people who make you smile, laugh, and feel loved.
β
β
Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
β
Never lose hope. Storms make people stronger and never last forever.
β
β
Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
β
To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget.
β
β
Arundhati Roy (The Cost of Living)
β
Do not fear failure but rather fear not trying.
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
Always find opportunities to make someone smile, and to offer random acts of kindness in everyday life.
β
β
Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
β
If you want to forget something or someone, never hate it, or never hate him/her. Everything and everyone that you hate is engraved upon your heart; if you want to let go of something, if you want to forget, you cannot hate.
β
β
C. JoyBell C.
β
Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book. And then there are books like An Imperial Affliction, which you can't tell people about, books so special and rare and yours that advertising your affection feels like betrayal
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever 'til the end of time!
But He loves you. He loves you, and He needs money! He always needs money! He's all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, somehow just can't handle money!
β
β
George Carlin
β
You will find that it is necessary to let things go; simply for the reason that they are heavy. So let them go, let go of them. I tie no weights to my ankles.
β
β
C. JoyBell C.
β
Art and love are the same thing: Itβs the process of seeing yourself in things that are not you.
β
β
Chuck Klosterman (Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story)
β
Promise Yourself
To be so strong that nothing
can disturb your peace of mind.
To talk health, happiness, and prosperity
to every person you meet.
To make all your friends feel
that there is something in them
To look at the sunny side of everything
and make your optimism come true.
To think only the best, to work only for the best,
and to expect only the best.
To be just as enthusiastic about the success of others
as you are about your own.
To forget the mistakes of the past
and press on to the greater achievements of the future.
To wear a cheerful countenance at all times
and give every living creature you meet a smile.
To give so much time to the improvement of yourself
that you have no time to criticize others.
To be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear,
and too happy to permit the presence of trouble.
To think well of yourself and to proclaim this fact to the world,
not in loud words but great deeds.
To live in faith that the whole world is on your side
so long as you are true to the best that is in you.
β
β
Christian D. Larson (Your Forces and How to Use Them)
β
We are all alone, born alone, die alone, andβin spite of True Romance magazinesβwe shall all someday look back on our lives and see that, in spite of our company, we were alone the whole way. I do not say lonelyβat least, not all the timeβbut essentially, and finally, alone. This is what makes your self-respect so important, and I don't see how you can respect yourself if you must look in the hearts and minds of others for your happiness.
β
β
Hunter S. Thompson (The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967)
β
You will lose someone you canβt live without,and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesnβt seal back up. And you come through. Itβs like having a broken leg that never heals perfectlyβthat still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp.
β
β
Anne Lamott
β
Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.
β
β
C.S. Lewis (Mere Christianity)
β
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms...
β
β
Henry David Thoreau
β
If you want to really hurt you parents, and you don't have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possible can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.
β
β
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (A Man Without a Country)
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
You must make a decision that you are going to move on. It wont happen automatically. You will have to rise up and say, βI donβt care how hard this is, I donβt care how disappointed I am, Iβm not going to let this get the best of me. Iβm moving on with my life.
β
β
Joel Osteen (Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential)
β
Do you think I am an automaton? β a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! β I have as much soul as you β and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh: it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God's feet, equal β as we are!
β
β
Charlotte BrontΓ« (Jane Eyre)
β
THE FIRST TEN LIES THEY TELL YOU IN HIGH SCHOOL
1. We are here to help you.
2. You will have time to get to your class before the bell rings.
3. The dress code will be enforced.
4. No smoking is allowed on school grounds.
5. Our football team will win the championship this year.
6. We expect more of you here.
7. Guidance counselors are always available to listen.
8. Your schedule was created with you in mind.
9. Your locker combination is private.
10. These will be the years you look back on fondly.
TEN MORE LIES THEY TELL YOU IN HIGH SCHOOL
1. You will use algebra in your adult lives.
2. Driving to school is a privilege that can be taken away.
3. Students must stay on campus during lunch.
4. The new text books will arrive any day now.
5. Colleges care more about you than your SAT scores.
6. We are enforcing the dress code.
7. We will figure out how to turn off the heat soon.
8. Our bus drivers are highly trained professionals.
9. There is nothing wrong with summer school.
10. We want to hear what you have to say.
β
β
Laurie Halse Anderson (Speak)
β
The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them -- words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.
β
β
Stephen King
β
Much of my life had been devoted to trying not to cry in front of people who loved me, so I knew what Augustus was doing. You clench your teeth. You look up. You tell yourself that if they see you cry, it will hurt them, and you will be nothing but a Sadness in their lives, and you must not become a mere sadness, so you will not cry, and you say all of this to yourself while looking up at the ceiling, and then you swallow even though your throat does not want to close and you look at the person who loves you and smile.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
Weβre all seeking that special person who is right for us. But if youβve been through enough relationships, you begin to suspect thereβs no right person, just different flavors of wrong. Why is this? Because you yourself are wrong in some way, and you seek out partners who are wrong in some complementary way. But it takes a lot of living to grow fully into your own wrongness. And it isnβt until you finally run up against your deepest demons, your unsolvable problemsβthe ones that make you truly who you areβthat weβre ready to find a lifelong mate. Only then do you finally know what youβre looking for. Youβre looking for the wrong person. But not just any wrong person: it's got to be the right wrong personβsomeone you lovingly gaze upon and think, βThis is the problem I want to have.β
I will find that special person who is wrong for me in just the right way.
β
β
Andrew Boyd (Daily Afflictions: The Agony of Being Connected to Everything in the Universe)
β
Itβs probably not just by chance that Iβm alone. It would be very hard for a man to live with me, unless heβs terribly strong. And if heβs stronger than I, Iβm the one who canβt live with him. β¦ Iβm neither smart nor stupid, but I donβt think Iβm a run-of-the-mill person. Iβve been in business without being a businesswoman, Iβve loved without being a woman made only for love. The two men Iβve loved, I think, will remember me, on earth or in heaven, because men always remember a woman who caused them concern and uneasiness. Iβve done my best, in regard to people and to life, without precepts, but with a taste for justice.
β
β
Coco Chanel
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
Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back. That's part of what it means to be alive. But inside our heads - at least that's where I imagine it - there's a little room where we store those memories. A room like the stacks in this library. And to understand the workings of our own heart we have to keep on making new reference cards. We have to dust things off every once in awhile, let in fresh air, change the water in the flower vases. In other words, you'll live forever in your own private library.
β
β
Haruki Murakami (Kafka on the Shore)
β
We have to allow ourselves to be loved by the people who really love us, the people who really matter. Too much of the time, we are blinded by our own pursuits of people to love us, people that don't even matter, while all that time we waste and the people who do love us have to stand on the sidewalk and watch us beg in the streets! It's time to put an end to this. It's time for us to let ourselves be loved.
β
β
C. JoyBell C.
β
Well, now
If little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you
Little by little
If suddenly you forget me
Do not look for me
For I shall already have forgotten you
If you think it long and mad the wind of banners that passes through my life
And you decide to leave me at the shore of the heart where I have roots
Remember
That on that day, at that hour, I shall lift my arms
And my roots will set off to seek another land
β
β
Pablo Neruda (Selected Poems)
β
You should date a girl who reads.
Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes, who has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.
Find a girl who reads. Youβll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag. Sheβs the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she has found the book she wants. You see that weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a secondhand book shop? Thatβs the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow and worn.
Sheβs the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because sheβs kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the authorβs making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.
Buy her another cup of coffee.
Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyceβs Ulysses sheβs just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.
Itβs easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas, for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry and in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, sheβs going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.
She has to give it a shot somehow.
Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.
Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who read understand that all things must come to end, but that you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.
Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series.
If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. Sheβll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.
You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time sheβs sick. Over Skype.
You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasnβt burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.
Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then youβre better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.
Or better yet, date a girl who writes.
β
β
Rosemarie Urquico
β
Sonnet XVII
I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.
I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way than this:
where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.
β
β
Pablo Neruda
β
Did you know that for pretty much the entire history of the human species, the average life span was less than thirty years? You could count on ten years or so of real adulthood, right? There was no planning for retirement, There was no planning for a career. There was no planning. No time for plannning. No time for a future. But then the life spans started getting longer, and people started having more and more future. And now life has become the future. Every moment of your life is lived for the future--you go to high school so you can go to college so you can get a good job so you can get a nice house so you can afford to send your kids to college so they can get a good job so they can get a nice house so they can afford to send their kids to college.
β
β
John Green (Paper Towns)
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
A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ....
enough money within her control to move out
and rent a place of her own even if she never wants
to or needs to...
A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ....
something perfect to wear if the employer or date of her
dreams wants to see her in an hour...
A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ...
a youth she's content to leave behind....
A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ....
a past juicy enough that she's looking forward to
retelling it in her old age....
A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE .....
a set of screwdrivers, a cordless drill, and a black
lace bra...
A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ....
one friend who always makes her laugh... and one who
lets her cry...
A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ....
a good piece of furniture not previously owned by anyone
else in her family...
A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ....
eight matching plates, wine glasses with stems, and a
recipe for a meal that will make her guests feel honored...
A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ....
a feeling of control over her destiny...
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
how to fall in love without losing herself..
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
HOW TO QUIT A JOB,
BREAK UP WITH A LOVER,
AND CONFRONT A FRIEND WITHOUT RUINING THE FRIENDSHIP...
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
when to try harder... and WHEN TO WALK AWAY...
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
that she can't change the length of her calves,
the width of her hips, or the nature of her parents..
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
that her childhood may not have been perfect...but it's over...
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
what she would and wouldn't do for love or more...
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
how to live alone... even if she doesn't like it...
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
whom she can trust,
whom she can't,
and why she shouldn't
take it personally...
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
where to go...
be it to her best friend's kitchen table...
or a charming inn in the woods...
when her soul needs soothing...
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
what she can and can't accomplish in a day...
a month...and a year...
β
β
Pamela Redmond Satran
β
I can believe things that are true and things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not.
I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and the Beatles and Marilyn Monroe and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen - I believe that people are perfectable, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkled lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women.
I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone's ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state.
I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste.
I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we'll all be wiped out by the common cold like martians in War of the Worlds.
I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman.
I believe that mankind's destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it's aerodynamically impossible for a bumble bee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time (although if they don't ever open the box to feed it it'll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself.
I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck.
I believe that anyone who says sex is overrated just hasn't done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what's going on will lie about the little things too.
I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman's right to choose, a baby's right to live, that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system.
I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.
β
β
Neil Gaiman (American Gods (American Gods, #1))
β
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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It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.
It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.
It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain!I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it, or fix it.
I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember the limitations of being human.
It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul; if you can be faithlessand therefore trustworthy.
I want to know if you can see beauty even when it's not pretty, every day,and if you can source your own life from its presence.
I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, βYes!β
It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up, after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done to feed the children.
It doesn't interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.
It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you, from the inside, when all else falls away.
I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.
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Oriah Mountain Dreamer
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The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings but shorter tempers, wider Freeways, but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but have less, we buy more, but enjoy less. We have bigger houses and smaller families, more conveniences, but less time. We have more degrees but less sense, more knowledge, but less judgment, more experts, yet more problems, more medicine, but less wellness.
We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get too angry, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too little, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom. We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often.
We've learned how to make a living, but not a life. We've added years to life not life to years. We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbor. We conquered outer space but not inner space. We've done larger things, but not better things.
We've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul. We've conquered the atom, but not our prejudice. We write more, but learn less. We plan more, but accomplish less. We've learned to rush, but not to wait. We build more computers to hold more information, to produce more copies than ever, but we communicate less and less.
These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion, big men and small character, steep profits and shallow relationships.
These are the days of two incomes but more divorce, fancier houses, but broken homes. These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throwaway morality, one night stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer, to quiet, to kill. It is a time when there is much in the showroom window and nothing in the stockroom. A time when technology can bring this letter to you, and a time when you can choose either to share this insight, or to just hit delete...
Remember, to spend some time with your loved ones, because they are not going to be around forever. Remember, say a kind word to someone who looks up to you in awe, because that little person soon will grow up and leave your side.
Remember, to give a warm hug to the one next to you, because that is the only treasure you can give with your heart and it doesn't cost a cent.
Remember, to say, "I love you" to your partner and your loved ones, but most of all mean it. A kiss and an embrace will mend hurt when it comes from deep inside of you.
Remember to hold hands and cherish the moment for someday that person might not be there again. Give time to love, give time to speak! And give time to share the precious thoughts in your mind.
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Bob Moorehead (Words Aptly Spoken)
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For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfil themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. And every young farmboy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest, the ideal trees grow.
Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.
A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail.
A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy. Out of this trust I live.
When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. Let God speak within you, and your thoughts will grow silent. You are anxious because your path leads away from mother and home. But every step and every day lead you back again to the mother. Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.
A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one's suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother.
So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.
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Hermann Hesse (BΓ€ume: Betrachtungen und Gedichte)