“
Wait a second," Four says. I turn toward him, wondering which version of Four I'll see now-the one who scolds me, or the one who climbs Ferris wheels with me. He smiles a little, but the smile doesn't spread to his eyes, which look less tense and worried.
"You belong here, you know that?" he says. "You belong with us. It'll be over soon, so just hold on, okay?"
He scratches behind his ear and looks away, like he's embarrassed by what he said.
I stare at him. I feel my heartbeat everywhere, even in my toes. I feel like doing something bold, but I could just as easily walk away. I am not sure which option is smarter, or better. I am not sure that I care.
I reach out and take his hand. His fingers slide between mine. I can't breathe.
I stare up at him, and he stares down at me. For a long moment, we stay that way. Then I pull my hand away and run after Uriah and Lynn and Marlene. Maybe now he thinks I'm stupid, or strange. Maybe it was worth it.
”
”
Veronica Roth (Divergent (Divergent, #1))
“
Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive. Ambition is only understood if it’s to rise to the top of some imaginary ladder of success. Someone who takes an undemanding job because it affords him the time to pursue other interests and activities is considered a flake. A person who abandons a career in order to stay home and raise children is considered not to be living up to his potential — as if a job title and salary are the sole measure of human worth.
You’ll be told in a hundred ways, some subtle and some not, to keep climbing, and never be satisfied with where you are, who you are, and what you’re doing. There are a million ways to sell yourself out, and I guarantee you’ll hear about them.
To invent your own life’s meaning is not easy, but it’s still allowed, and I think you’ll be happier for the trouble.
”
”
Bill Watterson
“
Don't try to write anything you can't feel - it will be a failure - 'echoes nothing worth
”
”
L.M. Montgomery (Emily Climbs (Emily, #2))
“
I no longer think that any principle or opinion is worth anything if it makes you unkind or intolerant.
”
”
Karen Armstrong (The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness)
“
Of course not. No one is chosen. Not ever. Not in the real world. You chose to climb out of your window and ride on a leopard. You chose to get a witch’s Spoon back, and to make friends with a wyvern. You chose to trade your shadow for a child’s life. You chose not to let the Marquess hurt your friend--you chose to smash her cages! You chose to face your own Death, not to balk at a great sea to cross and no ship to cross it in. And twice now you have chosen not to go home when you might have, if only you abandoned your friends. You are not the chosen one, September. Fairyland did not choose you--you chose yourself. You could have had a lovely holiday in Fairyland and never met the Marquess, never worried yourself with local politics, had a romp with a few brownies and gone home with enough memories for a lifetime’s worth of novels. But you didn’t. You chose. You chose it all. Just like you chose your path on the beach: to lose your heart is not a path for the faint and fainting.
”
”
Catherynne M. Valente (The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making (Fairyland, #1))
“
Charlie threads his fingers through mine and lifts the back of my hand to his lips. “For what it’s worth,” he says, “I doubt I will ever like anyone else in the world as much as I like you.”
I slip my arms around his neck and climb into his lap, kissing his temples, his jaw, his mouth. Love, I think, a tremor in my hands as they move into his hair, as he kisses me.
The last-page ache.
The deep breath in after you’ve set the book aside.
When he walks me to the door sometime later, he takes my face in his hands and says, “You, Nora Stephens, will always be okay.
”
”
Emily Henry (Book Lovers)
“
(Title: To the Moon)
Art thou pale for weariness
Of climbing heaven, and gazing on the earth,
Wandering companionless
Among the stars that have a different birth,--
And ever-changing, like a joyless eye
That finds no object worth its constancy?
”
”
Percy Bysshe Shelley
“
How she’d found the strength to climb out of that pit when no one else thought her worth saving, Jean didn’t know, but hand over bloodied hand she’d scaled the wall. She’d chosen life; she’d chosen hope. She’d chosen second chances, and now she was watching to see if he would follow.
”
”
Nora Sakavic (The Sunshine Court (All For the Game, #4))
“
For Jenn
At 12 years old I started bleeding with the moon
and beating up boys who dreamed of becoming astronauts.
I fought with my knuckles white as stars,
and left bruises the shape of Salem.
There are things we know by heart,
and things we don't.
At 13 my friend Jen tried to teach me how to blow rings of smoke.
I'd watch the nicotine rising from her lips like halos,
but I could never make dying beautiful.
The sky didn't fill with colors the night I convinced myself
veins are kite strings you can only cut free.
I suppose I love this life,
in spite of my clenched fist.
I open my palm and my lifelines look like branches from an Aspen tree,
and there are songbirds perched on the tips of my fingers,
and I wonder if Beethoven held his breath
the first time his fingers touched the keys
the same way a soldier holds his breath
the first time his finger clicks the trigger.
We all have different reasons for forgetting to breathe.
But my lungs remember
the day my mother took my hand and placed it on her belly
and told me the symphony beneath was my baby sister's heartbeat.
And I knew life would tremble
like the first tear on a prison guard's hardened cheek,
like a prayer on a dying man's lips,
like a vet holding a full bottle of whisky like an empty gun in a war zone…
just take me just take me
Sometimes the scales themselves weigh far too much,
the heaviness of forever balancing blue sky with red blood.
We were all born on days when too many people died in terrible ways,
but you still have to call it a birthday.
You still have to fall for the prettiest girl on the playground at recess
and hope she knows you can hit a baseball
further than any boy in the whole third grade
and I've been running for home
through the windpipe of a man who sings
while his hands playing washboard with a spoon
on a street corner in New Orleans
where every boarded up window is still painted with the words
We're Coming Back
like a promise to the ocean
that we will always keep moving towards the music,
the way Basquait slept in a cardboard box to be closer to the rain.
Beauty, catch me on your tongue.
Thunder, clap us open.
The pupils in our eyes were not born to hide beneath their desks.
Tonight lay us down to rest in the Arizona desert,
then wake us washing the feet of pregnant women
who climbed across the border with their bellies aimed towards the sun.
I know a thousand things louder than a soldier's gun.
I know the heartbeat of his mother.
Don't cover your ears, Love.
Don't cover your ears, Life.
There is a boy writing poems in Central Park
and as he writes he moves
and his bones become the bars of Mandela's jail cell stretching apart,
and there are men playing chess in the December cold
who can't tell if the breath rising from the board
is their opponents or their own,
and there's a woman on the stairwell of the subway
swearing she can hear Niagara Falls from her rooftop in Brooklyn,
and I'm remembering how Niagara Falls is a city overrun
with strip malls and traffic and vendors
and one incredibly brave river that makes it all worth it.
Ya'll, I know this world is far from perfect.
I am not the type to mistake a streetlight for the moon.
I know our wounds are deep as the Atlantic.
But every ocean has a shoreline
and every shoreline has a tide
that is constantly returning
to wake the songbirds in our hands,
to wake the music in our bones,
to place one fearless kiss on the mouth of that brave river
that has to run through the center of our hearts
to find its way home.
”
”
Andrea Gibson
“
They tell you that if you're assaulted, there's a kingdom, a courthouse, high up on a mountain where justice can be found. Most victims are turned away at the base of the mountain, told they don't have enough evidence to make the journey. Some victims sacrifice everything to make the climb, but are slain along the way, the burden of proof impossibly high. I set off, accompanied by a strong team, who helped carry the weight, until I made it, the summit, the place few victims reached, the promised land. We'd gotten an arrest, a guilty verdict, the small percentage that gets a conviction. It was time to see what justice looked like. We threw open the doors, and there was nothing. It took the breath out of me. Even worse was looking back down to the bottom of the mountain, where I imagined expectant victims looking up, waving cheering, expectantly. What do you see? What does it feel like? What happens when you arrive? What could I tell them? A system does not exist for you. The pain of this process couldn't be worth it. These crimes are not crimes but inconveniences. You can fight and fight and for what? When you are assaulted, run and never look back. This was not one bad sentence. This was the best we could hope for.
”
”
Chanel Miller (Know My Name)
“
The Moon
And, like a dying lady lean and pale,
Who totters forth, wrapp'd in a gauzy veil,
Out of her chamber, led by the insane
And feeble wanderings of her fading brain,
The moon arose up in the murky east
A white and shapeless mass.
Art thou pale for weariness
Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth,
Wandering companionless
Among the stars that have a different birth,
And ever changing, like a joyless eye
That finds no object worth its constancy?
”
”
Percy Bysshe Shelley (The Complete Poems)
“
Outside the window, there was so much to see, and hear, and touch — walks to take, hills to climb, caterpillars to watch as they strolled through the garden. There were voices to hear and conversations to listen to in wonder, and the special smell of each day.
And, in the very room in which he sat, there were books that could take you anywhere, and things to invent, and make, and build, and break, and all the puzzle and excitement of everything he didn't know — music to play, songs to sing, and worlds to imagine and then someday make real. His thoughts darted eagerly about as everything looked new — and worth trying.
"Well, I would like to make another trip," he said, jumping to his feet; "but I really don't know when I'll have the time. There's just so much to do right here.
”
”
Norton Juster (The Phantom Tollbooth)
“
A very wise person once told me, “When it comes to overcoming obstacles, there are three kinds of people. The first kind sees most obstacles as insurmountable and walks away. The second kind sees an obstacle and says, I can overcome it, and starts to dig under, climb over, or blast through it. The third type of person, before deciding to overcome the obstacle, tries to find a viewpoint where what is on the other side of the obstacle can be seen. Then, only if the reward is worth the effort, does he attempt to overcome the obstacle.
”
”
W. Timothy Gallwey (The Inner Game of Tennis: The Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance)
“
Brad (Lauren's ex) ignored Hayley (she's Brad's ex girlfriend) and looked at me, he did a top to toe and back again then his gaze moved to Tate.
"I'm here to tell you I'm suing you," he announced.
Jim-Billy, Nadine, Steg, Wing and my eyes moved to Tate.
Tate stared at Brad then he said, "Come again?"
"I'm suing you," Brad repeated.
"For what?" Tate asked.
"Alienation of affection," Brad answered.
Without hesitation, Tate threw his head back and burst out laughing.
Then he looked at me and remarked, "You're right, babe, this is fun."
Ignoring Tate's comment, Brad declared, "You stole my wife."
Tate looked back at Brad. "Yeah, bud, I did."
Brad pointed at Tate and his voice was raised when he proclaimed, "See? You admit it." He threw his arm out. "I have witnesses."
"Not that any judge'll hear your case, seein' as Lauren divorced your ass before I alienated her affection, but you manage it, I'll pay the fine. In the meantime, I'll keep alienating her affection. You should know, and feel free to share it with your lawyers," Tate continued magnanimously, "schedule's comin' out mornin' and night. Usually, in the mornin', she sucks me off or I make her come in the shower. Night, man…shit, that's even better. Definitely worth the fine."
Sorry, it's just too long; I have to cut it off. But it continues…like that:
"This is the good life?" (Brad)
"Part of it," Tate replied instantly, taking his fists from the bar, leaning into his forearms and asking softly, in a tone meant both to challenge and provoke, "She ever ignite, lose so much control she'd attack you? Climb on top and fuck you so hard she can't breathe?"
I watched Brad suffer that blow because I hadn't, not even close. We'd had good sex but not that good and Brad was extremely proud of his sexual prowess. He was convinced he was the best. And he knew, with Tate's words, he was wrong.
"Jesus, you're disgusting," Brad muttered, calling up revulsion to save face.
"She does that to me," Tate continued.
"Fuck off," Brad snapped.
"All the fuckin' time," Tate pushed.
"Fuck off," Brad repeated.
"It's fuckin' magnificent," Tate declared.
"Thanks, honey," I whispered and grinned at him when his eyes came to me.
I was actually expressing gratitude, although embarrassed by his conversation, but I was also kind of joking to get in Brad's face.
Tate wasn't. His expression was serious when he said, "You are, Ace. Fuckin' magnificent.
”
”
Kristen Ashley (Sweet Dreams (Colorado Mountain, #2))
“
Those who only says what is the truth, they're not worth listening to.
”
”
Jonas Jonasson (The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared (The Hundred-Year-Old Man, #1))
“
...I hate myself. I feel like an idiot saying it because, blah, blah, teen angst, boo hoo, but I do. I hate myself. Almost all the time. I try not to tell anyone because I don't want to burden them, but I feel like I'm falling farther and farther away from them. Like the well's getting deeper and I'm running out of energy to climb it and any minute now, any second, it's going to stop being worth even trying.
”
”
Patrick Ness (The Rest of Us Just Live Here)
“
It was like I'd climbed Everest, had the summit in my sight, the flag in my hand, all ready to pierce it into the top of the mountain and say, "Whoopdedoo, I made it," and then an avalanche from out of nowhere swept me right back to the bottom of the mountain again. Was it worth bothering to try and climb it again? I was exhausted. I'd already climbed it. I didn't want to...but, then, what other choice was there?
”
”
Holly Bourne (Am I Normal Yet? (The Spinster Club, #1))
“
Tall mountains may be harder to climb, but the view from the top is always worth it.
”
”
Virginia Andrews
“
The thing about the Lexington International Bank ladder was that it was very long, and climbing it was very exhausting, and so Andrew Brown didn't have a lot of time to think about whether he really wanted to get to the top of it—and besides, since so many other people were climbing too, the view from the top must be worth it.
So he kept going. He worked hard. He put his heart and mind and soul into it. There was an opening for a position half a rung higher than he already was. With a promotion, he might get two hours a week of a secretary's time. He'd go to more important meetings, with more senior people, and have the opportunity to impress them, and if he did he might be promoted again and then... well, of course eventually he'd be running the whole office. It's important to have a dream: otherwise you might notice where you really are.
”
”
Naomi Alderman (Doctor Who: Borrowed Time)
“
Dear woman, look at yourself in the mirror and be your own favourite person. Every curve, every freckle, every hair on your skin. Because you are worth your tears, your laughter, your joys and your pains. You are worth the broken roads you've traveled, the nights you've spent alone with a bottle of champagne, the times you climbed out of graves. You are worth the smiles only you see, the ones you generously share, then all the others in between. You're worth the love that's meant for you and the pains you've broken through. Dear woman, look at yourself; you love you.
”
”
C. JoyBell C.
“
In the loveliest town of all where the houses were white and high and the elm trees were green and higher than the houses where the front yards were wide and pleasant and the back yards were bushy and worth finding out about, where the streets sloped down to the stream and the stream flowed quietly under the bridge, where the lawns ended in orchards and the orchards ended in fields and the fields ended in pastures and the pastures climbed the hill and disappeared over the top toward the wonderful wide sky, in this loveliest of all towns Stuart stopped to get a drink of sarsaparilla.
”
”
E.B. White (Stuart Little)
“
Please don't laugh, Miss Carroll. If you're laughing, you must be smiling, and I don't think I can climb back up to see it."
[...]
"My smile," she called out, "would not be worth such exertion."
"You are quite wrong."
"Even so, it is hardly an uncommon commodity."
"That does not lessen its value.
”
”
Alexis Hall (A Lady for a Duke)
“
I hate myself. Almost all the time. I try not to tell anyone because I don’t want to burden them, but I feel like I’m falling farther and farther away from them. Like the well’s getting deeper and I’m running out of energy to climb it and any minute now, any second, it’s going to stop being worth even trying.
”
”
Patrick Ness (The Rest of Us Just Live Here)
“
Mitchell Maxwell’s Maxims
• You have to create your own professional path. There’s no longer a roadmap for an artistic career.
• Follow your heart and the money will follow.
• Create a benchmark of your own progress. If you never look down while you’re climbing the ladder you won’t know how far you’ve come.
• Don’t define success by net worth, define it by character. Success, as it’s measured by society, is a fleeting condition.
• Affirm your value. Tell the world “I am an artist,” not “I want to be an artist.”
• You must actively live your dream. Wishing and hoping for someday doesn’t make it happen. Get out there and get involved.
• When you look into the abyss you find your character.
• Young people too often let the fear of failure keep them from trying. You have to get bloody, sweaty and rejected in order to succeed.
• Get your face out of Facebook and into somebody’s face. Close your e-mail and pick up the phone. Personal contact still speaks loudest.
• No one is entitled to act entitled. Be willing to work hard.
• If you’re going to buck the norm you’re going to have to embrace the challenges.
• You have to love the journey if you’re going to work in the arts.
• Only listen to people who agree with your vision.
• A little anxiety is good but don’t let it become fear, fear makes you inert.
• Find your own unique voice. Leave your individual imprint on the world, not a copy of someone else.
• Draw strength from your mistakes; they can be your best teacher.
”
”
Mitchell Maxwell
“
Our Heavenly Father loves each one of us and understands that this process of climbing higher takes preparation, time, and commitment. He understands that we will make mistakes at times, that we will stumble, that we will become discouraged and perhaps even wish to give up and say to ourselves it is not worth the struggle. We know it is worth the effort, for the prize, which is eternal life, is “the greatest of all the gifts of God.” And to qualify, we must take one step after another and keep going to gain the spiritual heights we aspire to reach.
”
”
Joseph B. Wirthlin
“
You will hold this book in your hands, and learn all the things that I learned, right along with me:
There is no immortality that is not built on friendship and work done with care. All the secrets in the world worth knowing are hiding in plain sight. It takes forty-one seconds to climb a ladder three stories tall. It’s not easy to imagine the year 3012, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. We have new capabilities now—strange powers we’re still getting used to. The mountains are a message from Aldrag the Wyrm-Father. Your life must be an open city, with all sorts of ways to wander in.
After that, the book will fade, the way all books fade in your mind. But I hope you will remember this:
A man walking fast down a dark lonley street. Quick steps and hard breathing, all wonder and need. A bell above a door and the tinkle it makes. A clerk and a ladder and warm golden light, and then: the right book exactly, at exactly the right time.
”
”
Robin Sloan (Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, #1))
“
Some of us are born to Run. Some of us are born to Climb. But we are all born to Live.
”
”
Saim .A. Cheeda
“
See, Six? This is what makes life worth living. Men who don't know if they wanna fight or fuck, but will climb into a cage to figure it out in front of everyone in the sector.
”
”
Kit Rocha (Beyond Control (Beyond, #2))
“
Life Is A Climb But Its Worth Climbing So You Can Have A Chance To Express Yourself To The World
”
”
Allie Roberts
“
It's worth remembering that [having a baby] is not of vital use to you as a woman. Yes, you could learn thousands of interesting things about love, strength, faith, fear, human relationships, genetic loyalty, and the effect of apricots on an immune digestive system. But I don't think there's a single lesson that motherhood has to offer that couldn't be learned elsewhere. If you want to know what's in motherhood for you, as a woman, then-in truth-it's nothing you couldn't get from, say, reading the 100 greatest books in human history; learning a foreign language well enough to argue in it; climbing hills; loving recklessly; sitting quietly, alone, in the dawn; drinking whiskey with revolutionaries; learning to do close-hand magic; swimming in a river in the winter; growing foxgloves, peas, and roses; calling your mum; singing while you walk; being polite; and always, always helping strangers. No one has ever claimed for a minute that childless men have missed out on a vital aspect of their existence, and were the poorer and crippled by it. Da Vinci, Van Gogh, Newton, Faraday, Plato, Aquinas, Beethoven, Handel, Kant, Hume, Jesus. They all seem to have managed quite well.
”
”
Caitlin Moran (How to Be a Woman)
“
Let me say something about that word: miracle. For too long it's been used to characterize things or events that, though pleasant, are entirely normal. Peeping chicks at Easter time, spring generally, a clear sunrise after an overcast week - a miracle, people say, as if they've been educated from greeting cards. I'm sorry, but nope. Such things are worth our notice every day of the week, but to call them miracles evaporates the strength of the word. Real miracles bother people, like strange sudden pains unknown in medical literature. It's true: They rebut every rule all we good citizens take comfort in. Lazarus obeying order and climbing up out of the grave - now there's a miracle, and you can bet it upset a lot of folks who were standing around at the time When a person dies, the earth is generally unwilling to cough him back up. A miracle contradicts the will of the earth. My sister, Swede, who often sees to the nub, offered this: People fear mirales because they fear being changed - though ignoring them will change you also. Swede said another thing, too, and it rang in me like a bell: No miracle happens without a witness. Someone to declare, Here's what I saw. Here's how it went. Make of it what you will.
”
”
Leif Enger
“
Some people expect things to fall into their lap. Oh, they might work a bit for it. I'll just shake this tree, and if I shake it long enough that pretty red apple will plop right into my hand. Never occurs to them that they might have to climb the damn tree, fall out a couple times, get some scrapes and bruises before they get to that apple. Because if the apple's worth wanting, it's worth risking a broken neck.
”
”
Nora Roberts (Face the Fire (Three Sisters Island, #3))
“
Look at the evolution of the price of a kilogram of the drug, as it makes its way from the Andes to Los Angeles. To make that much cocaine, one needs somewhere in the neighborhood of 350 kilograms of dried coca leaves. Based on price data from Colombia obtained by Gallego and Rico, that would cost about $385. Once this is converted into a kilo of cocaine, it can sell in Colombia for $800. According to figures pulled together by Beau Kilmer and Peter Reuter at the RAND Corporation, an American think tank, that same kilo is worth $2,200 by the time it is exported from Colombia, and it has climbed to $14,500 by the time it is imported to the United States. After being transferred to a midlevel dealer, its price climbs to $19,500. Finally, it is sold by street-level dealers for $78,000.10 Even these soaring figures do not quite get across the scale of the markups involved in the cocaine business. At each of these stages, the drug is diluted, as traffickers and dealers “cut” the drug with other substances, to make it go further. Take this into account, and the price of a pure kilogram of cocaine at the retail end is in fact about $122,000.
”
”
Tom Wainwright (Narconomics: How to Run a Drug Cartel)
“
Someday in our future it may be possible for women everywhere not to be restricted to those roles society deems natural, God-given, or appropriately feminine. A woman will not need to be disguised as a man to go outside, to climb a tree, or to make money. She will not need to make an effort to resemble a man, or to think like one. Instead, she can speak a language that men will want to understand. She will be free to wear a suit or a skirt or something entirely different. She will not count as three-quarters of a man, and her testimony will not be worth half a man's. She will be recognized as someone's sister, mother, and daughter. And maybe, someday, her identity will not be confined to how she relates to a brother, a son, or a father. Instead, she will be recognized as an individual, whose life holds value only in itself.
”
”
Jenny Nordberg (The Underground Girls of Kabul: In Search of a Hidden Resistance in Afghanistan)
“
Living in the land of, "What if....?" leads to emotional paralysis. It sets the stage for doom and gloom thinking. It prevents us from experiencing the beauty of the present moment. Happiness resides in the here and now. It can not thrive in a prison of the past or in the worry of future outcomes that may or may not, happen. We need to trust that we have the divine wisdom within ourselves and through the support of others, to climb the treacherous terrain this human existence brings. It is worth the struggle. The view from the top is extraordinary. Onward and upward!
”
”
Jaeda DeWalt
“
It was time to confront everything I had hated about the Navy as I climbed up through its ranks, and fix it all. Though the goal was presumptuous, I told myself that it was important that I try to do this. I might never get promoted again, but I decided that the risk was worth it. I wanted a life I could be proud of. I wanted to have a positive effect on young people’s lives. I wanted to create the best organization I could. And I didn’t want to squander this leadership opportunity. I have learned over and over that once you squander an opportunity, you can never get it back.
”
”
D. Michael Abrashoff (It's Your Ship: Management Techniques from the Best Damn Ship in the Navy)
“
He asked simply, as if the matter of her presence were not unusual at all: “Did you have a hard time climbing those stairs?” She answered, “A little. All climbing is hard. But it’s usually worth it.
”
”
Ayn Rand (Ideal)
“
I've never found any elevators in life; I've had to climb to every place worth reaching. And now I think it over, I wish it so with everybody, for then no one would rise any higher than he deserves to go. I
”
”
Orison Swett Marden (SUCCESS. A book of ideas, helps and examples for all desiring to make the most of life (Timeless Wisdom Collection))
“
The worst thing about being underweight or overweight; too dark or too white – in short too plain and bland in someone’s perception is the fact that most people just end up talking to you because they feel you can be a good stepping stone. And guess what – it sucks! It sucks being the ladder to so many, helping everyone grow and bloom, only to find yourself splayed upon the mud to be used as a path from one person to another. Not moving an inch. Just lying there on the sticky dirt infused ground – hoping someone would help you up – no one ever comes. The only person who can help you crawl out is yourself. Get up. Try. Just try.
You ARE Enough!
”
”
Sijdah Hussain (Red Sugar, No More)
“
Settling” is a coarse way of saying “adjusting my expectations,” and I think that gets a bad rap. Dude, I would rather settle than be “chronically unfulfilled due to my outsize desires.” I don’t mean that you should marry someone you hate just because they won’t go away, but I do think it’s worth examining what you actually want while being honest about what is important to you. Then it won’t feel like such a compromise, you know? On top of that, it’s totally unfair to make a flesh-and-bone person compete against an imaginary ideal that was imprinted on you when you were too young to understand what was happening. Shit, growing up I wanted to marry the Beast from Beauty and the Beast. A strong, virile creature who read tons of books and could fuck up a wolf ? Yes please! Sign me up! I could’ve lain awake every night waiting for Mufasa to save me from a wildebeest stampede in a gorge, but do I climb into bed next to a fucking lion? No, bitch, because I am realistic. Instead, I married this person who makes her own kombucha and charges her crystals under the new moon. Girl, adapt!
”
”
Samantha Irby (Wow, No Thank You.)
“
There is no immortality that is not built on friendship and work done with care. All the secrets in the world worth knowing are hiding in plain sight. It takes forty-one seconds to climb a ladder three stories tall. It’s not easy to imagine the year 3012, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. We have new capabilities now—strange powers we’re still getting used to. The mountains are a message from Aldrag the Wyrm-Father. Your life must be an open city, with all sorts of ways to wander in.
”
”
Robin Sloan (Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, #1))
“
But the point is that is takes real work for a woman to sustain the creation of something outside herself that is not a child. Real will, because we are always going to be tempted in a way men aren’t to wander off the road and find some place to get knocked up so we can relieve ourselves of the burden of trying to figure out what everything in life is really worth, and then, as a reward for this abdication of responsibility, get ourselves worshipped as if we’d climbed Mount Everest when all we’d done was let nature take its course.
”
”
Carlene Bauer (Girls They Write Songs About)
“
That was interesting.Who was that?"
Matt looks unhappy. "What?" I ask him.
"You'll talk to that guy,but you won't talk to us anymore?"
"Sorry," I mumble, and climb out of his car. "He's just a friend.Thanks for the ride."
Matt gets out,too. Cherrie starts to follow,but he throws her a sharp look. "So what does that mean?" he calls out. "We aren't friends anymore? You're bailing on us?"
I trudge toward the house. "I'm tired, Matt.I'm going to bed."
He follows anyway.I dig out my house key,but he grabs my wrist to stop me from opening the door. "Listen,I know you don't want to talk about it,but I just have this one thing to say before you go in there and cry yourself to sleep-"
"Matt,please-"
"Toph isn't a nice guy.He's never been a nice guy. I don't know what you ever saw in him.He talks back to everyone, he's completely unreliable, he wears those stupid fake clothes-"
"Why are you telling me this?" I'm crying again.I pull my wrist from his grasp.
"I know you didn't like me as much as I liked you. I know you would have rather been with him,and I dealth with that a long time ago.I'm over it."
The shame is overwhelming. Even though I knew Matt was aware that I liked Toph,it's awful to hear him say it aloud.
"But I'm still your friend." He's exasperated. "And I'm sick of seeing you waste your energy on that jerk. You've spent all this time afraid to talk about what was going on between you two,but if you'd bothered to just ask him, you would have discovered that he wasn't worth it. But you didn't.You never asked him, did you?"
The weight of hurt is unbearable. "Please leave," I whisper. "Please just leave."
"Anna." His voice levels, and he waits for me to look at him. "It was still wrong of him and Bridge not to tell you. Okay? You deserve better than that. And I sincerely hope whomever you were just talking to"-Matt gestures toward the phone in my purse-"is better than that.
”
”
Stephanie Perkins (Anna and the French Kiss (Anna and the French Kiss, #1))
“
The next thing I knew Jamie was in my lap wrapping her arms around my neck as if she planned on keeping me hostage for eternity. If that were the case, bring on the shackles babe, because no way was I going to be the one to end this epic kiss.
I felt like I was on fire—like warm energy was spilling out of Jamie, washing over me and causing all my hair to stand on end. I started shaking—just a slight tremor in my hands at first, but it quickly progressed to violent, uncontrollable shivers. The energy was filling my body so full I thought I’d literally burst apart at my seams.
Then, when I was ready to combust Jamie finally stilled. She pulled her face back and smiled at me with a cool expression, but I know she was affected as I was. I wasn’t the only one breathing hard and shaking.
“You can keep the gum,” she said, trying to mask her feelings with a smirk. She couldn’t quite manage it though. Her eyes were bright and full of disbelief. She was as surprised as I was.
She climbed off me and with a wink said, “Have fun at the dance.” And then she was gone. She walked out of the cafeteria as if that hadn’t just happened. As if she hadn’t just completely wrecked me.
I had no idea if what I felt meant we were soul mates or something crazy like that, but I knew two things for certain. One: Jamie Baker wasn’t the ice queen she pretended to be. And two: I wanted her more than anything I’d ever wanted in my entire life.
I had a feeling this wasn’t going to be easy, but I knew deep down in my gut it would be worth it. “Game on, Ice Queen,” I muttered as I stumbled back over to Mike to rub my victory in his face. “You’re already mine. You just don’t know it yet.
”
”
Kelly Oram (Kissing Jamie Baker (Jamie Baker, #1.5))
“
The most fun I’ve ever had in my whole life was watching you climb over the counter in Mercer Brothers while instructing Mr. Hamish on how to make his sign. You have thoroughly corrupted me,” he admitted, “and like any reprobate worth his salt I’m a grateful participant in my own downfall.
”
”
Lynn Messina (An Infamous Betrayal (Beatrice Hyde-Clare Mysteries, #3))
“
Let me say something about that word: miracle. For too long it’s been used to characterize things or events that, though pleasant, are entirely normal. Peeping chicks at Easter time, spring generally, a clear sunrise after an overcast week—a miracle, people say, as if they’ve been educated from greeting cards. I’m sorry, but nope. Such things are worth our notice every day of the week, but to call them miracles evaporates the strength of the word.
Real miracles bother people, like strange sudden pains unknown in medical literature. It’s true: They rebut every rule all we good citizens take comfort in. Lazarus obeying orders and climbing up out of the grave—now there’s a miracle, and you can bet it upset a lot of folks who were standing around at the time. When a person dies, the earth is generally unwilling to cough him back up. A miracle contradicts the will of earth.
”
”
Leif Enger (Peace Like a River)
“
Our town, Kasrilevke - that's where I'm from, you know - is a small town, and a poor one. There is no thievery there. No one steals anything for the simple reason that there is nobody to steal from and nothing worth stealing. And besides, a Jew is not a thief by nature. That is, he may be a thief, but not the sort who will climb through a window or attack you with a knife. He will divert, pervert, subvert, and contravert as a matter of course, but he won't pull anything out of your pocket. He won't be caught like a common thief and led through the streets with a yellow placard on his back.
("A Yom Kippur Scandal")
”
”
Sholom Aleichem
“
Know this...GOD IS BIGGER, than anything you're going through, trust him...KEEP YOUR TRUST IN HIM" -Gary Linville
"I don't pretend to know what love is for everyone, but I can tell you what love is for me; love is knowing all about someone, and still wanting to be with them more than any other person, love is trusting them enough to tell them everything about yourself, including the things you might be ashamed of, love is feeling comfortable and safe with someone, but still getting weak knees when they walk into a room and smile at you."
"Prayer makes the darkened cloud withdraw,
Prayer climbs the ladder Jacob saw;
Gives exercise to faith and love,
Brings every blessing from above."
Nahum 1:7, "The Lord is good, a strong refuge when trouble comes. He is close to those who trust in him."
"be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace."
♥ Ephesians 4:2-3
“the truth is, everyone is going to hurt you. you just got to find the ones worth suffering for.” ― Bob Marley
"The thing about the shadows is that they're not all darkness. You need to have light to have shadows"
- A. Meredith Walters "Light in the Shadows" (Find You in the Dark #2)
”
”
Muliple
“
Women have got it all wrong now. They give it up too soon, and the men don't respect them. And before you tell me I don't have a clue, let me tell you something. By the time I let my future husbands climb into my bed, I'd made them work for it. And you know what? By the time they left it the next morning, they were begging for me to marry them.
”
”
Rose Wynters (My Wolf Fighter (Wolf Town Guardians, #4))
“
So he'd waited. Counted the minutes.
It had been worth it.
Seeing her claw her way onto the landing, panting, hair curling with the sweat sliding down her face- completely worth his generally shit day.
Nesta was still sprawled on the hall floor when she hissed, 'Whoever designed those stairs was a monster.'
'Would you believe that Rhys, Az, and I had to climb up and down them as punishment when we were boys?'
Her eyes shimmered with temper- good. Better than the vacant ice.
'Why?'
'Because we were young and stupid and testing boundaries with a High Lord who didn't understand practical jokes regarding public nudity.' He nodded toward the stairs. 'I got so dizzy on the hike down that I puked on Az. he then puked on Rhys, and Rhys puked all over himself. It was the height of summer, and by the time we made the trek back up, the heat was unbearable, we all reeked, and the scent of the vomit on the stairs had become horrific. We all puked again as we walked through it.'
He could have sworn the corners of her mouth were trying to twitch upward.
He didn't hold back his own grin at the memory. Even if they'd still had to hike back down and mop it all up.
”
”
Sarah J. Maas (A Court of Silver Flames (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #4))
“
I realize, looking back, I wouldn't have had it any other way because when you fucking climb that bitch of a mountain with fear on your back, not knowing where the fuck you are going, you have to find trust in something; you have to surrender to the road of the unknown. You say to yourself, "I am enough to pass through this bullshit. My life is worth living. This is my fucking world, no one else's.
”
”
Karen A. Baquiran
“
I can’t answer that question for everybody. I can answer it for me…about you,” he says, pausing. “I knew I was in love with you when I wanted you more than I wanted anything else. I don’t need you to live my life. I want you in my life to make it worth living.” He clears his throat, nodding. “It started off as a challenge. I won’t lie, Win. I wanted you because I couldn’t have you. You were like this jagged mountainside that I had to climb to get what I wanted. I never anticipated wanting to open up to you and what that would lead to. The day you trusted me enough to jump out of an airplane, I took a leap too. I decided to go all in. I’m all in, Windsor. There’s no going back from this, or pretending I don’t want to spend the rest of my life with you. I know I love you because you’re good. Your honesty is the most beautiful thing about you. You make me a better person without even trying. It’s uncomplicated because it’s innate for you. I’m just waiting for you to realize how amazing you really are and leave my sorry, fucked-up ass. I know I love you because of this,” he says putting his fisted hand over his heart—over my tattoo. “It would stop beating if you weren’t mine. I’m yours, Windsor.
”
”
Rachel Robinson
“
I hate myself. I feel like an idiot saying it because, blah, blah, teen angst, boo hoo, but I do. I hate myself. Almost all the time. I try not to tell anyone because I don't want to burden them, but I feel like I'm falling farther and farther away from them. Like the well's getting deeper and I'm running out of energy to climb it and any minute now, any second, it's going to stop being worth even trying.
”
”
Patrick Ness (The Rest of Us Just Live Here)
“
. . .There is nothing to complain of. . .we had a gorgeous day for the climb, almost windless and brilliantly fine, yet we were unable to get to the summit. So we have no excuse - we have been beaten in fair fight; beaten by the height of the mountain, and by our own shortness of breath. But the fight was worth it, worth it every time, and we shall cherish the privilege of defeat by the world's greatest mountain.
”
”
Howard Somervell
“
Sounds like Luke’s problem was feeling entitled to the good times. Romance doesn’t work like that. You don’t fall in love and just keep falling. You fall, and when the ground catches up, you pull yourselves together, climb back to the top of the cliff, and fall again. You do that over and over until you die. I’m not saying hitting the ground doesn’t hurt. Not saying that it’s an easy climb to the top. I’m saying that it’s worth it to jump again.
”
”
Anyta Sunday (Pisces Hooks Taurus (Signs of Love, #4))
“
behind those walls
behind the barriers
that keep the world
from your heart
is a woman worth
fighting for
behind those walls
that tall, strong
separation from the world
lives a love worth
wishing for
you are greater
than what has happened
you are far more greater
than the what occurred
in your past
behind those walls
behinds that cement
that has kept others
from hurting you
like the ones from before
lives a love
that only you can provide
a love like yours
is worth climbing the wall
that sits in front
of your heart
”
”
R.H. Sin (I hope this reaches her in time)
“
Training builds discipline, perseverance and patience. Mountains are climbed with these superior characteristics, lives are saved and nations are shaped. Tough exercise puts order and rhythm in our lives, diminishing confusion and reducing stress, and that’s worth more than a few trips to a psychiatrist’s couch. As quality is added to life, so is it extended with useful and enjoyable years. When once we said, ‘I can’t,’ after gaining fitness and well-being through dedicated exercise, we say, ‘Don’t just sit there, let’s get moving.
”
”
Dave Draper (A Glimpse in the Rear View)
“
The land is encrusted with ephemeral human conceits. That is not altogether good for a youngster; it disarranges his mind and puts him out of harmony with what is permanent. Just listen a moment. Here, if you are wise, you will seek an antidote. Taken in over-dose, all these churches and pictures and books and other products of our species are toxins for a boy like you. They falsify your cosmic values. Try to be more of an animal. Try to extract pleasure from more obvious sources. Lie fallow for a while. Forget all these things. Go out into the midday glare. Sit among rocks and by the sea. Have a look at the sun and stars for a change; they arc just as impressive as Donatello. Find yourself! You know the Cave of Mercury? Climb down, one night of full moon, all alone, and rest at its entrance. Familiarize yourself with elemental things. The whole earth reeks of humanity and its works. One has to be old and tough to appraise them at their true worth. Tell people to go to Hell, Denis, with their altar-pieces and museums and clock- towers and funny little art-galleries.
”
”
Norman Douglas (South Wind)
“
It was Day Three, Freshman Year, and I was a little bit lost in the school library,looking for a bathroom that wasn't full of blindingly shiny sophomores checking their lip gloss.
Day Three.Already pretty clear on the fact that I would be using secondary bathrooms for at least the next three years,until being a senior could pass for confidence.For the moment, I knew no one,and was too shy to talk to anyone. So that first sight of Edward: pale hair that looked like he'd just run his hands through it, paint-smeared white shirt,a half smile that was half wicked,and I was hooked.
Since, "Hi,I'm Ella.You look like someone I'd like to spend the rest of my life with," would have been totally insane, I opted for sitting quietly and staring.Until the bell rang and I had to rush to French class,completely forgetting to pee.
Edward Willing.Once I knew his name, the rest was easy.After all,we're living in the age of information. Wikipedia, iPhones, 4G ntworks, social networking that you can do from a thousand miles away.The upshot being that at any given time over the next two years, I could sit twenty feet from him in the library, not saying a word, and learn a lot about him.ENough, anyway, for me to become completely convinced that the Love at First Sight hadn't been a fluke.
It's pretty simple.Edward matched four and a half of my If My Prince Does, In Fact, Come Someday,It Would Be Great If He Could Meet These Five Criteria.
1. Interested in art. For me, it's charcoal. For Edward, oil paint and bronze. That's almost enough right there. Nice lips + artist= Ella's prince.
2. Not afraid of love. He wrote, "Love is one of two things worth dying for.I have yet to decide on the second."
3.Or of telling the truth. "How can I believe that other people say if I lie to them?"
4.Hot. Why not?I can dream.
5.Daring. Mountain climbing, cliff dying, defying the parents. Him, not me. I'm terrified of an embarrassing number of things, including heights, convertibles, moths, and those comedians everyone loves who stand onstage and yell insults at the audience.
5, subsection a. Daring enough to take a chance on me.Of course, in the end, that No. 5a is the biggie. And the problem. No matter how muuch I worshipped him,no matter how good a pair we might have been,it was never, ever going to happen. To be fair to Edward,it's not like he was given an opportunity to get to know me. I'm not stupid.I know there are a few basic truths when it comes to boys and me.
Truth: You have to talk to a boy-really talk,if you want him to see past the fact that you're not beautiful.
Truth: I'm not beautiful. Or much of a conversationalist.
Truth: I'm not entirely sure that the stuff behind the not-beautiful is going to be all that alluring, either.
And one written-in-stone, heartbreaking truth about this guy.
Truth:Edward Willing died in 1916.
”
”
Melissa Jensen (The Fine Art of Truth or Dare)
“
Authentic self-worth comes from an internal value system, not from simple achievement. Self-worth comes from the positive results of your effort. You may have learned something about yourself or gained the experiential confidence to attempt more difficult challenges. These effects are genuinely valuable. The achievement itself, however, is no reason for an elevated sense of self-worth. You might not have learned anything from your “success,” or you could have learned something equally valuable by not meeting your objective. Here’s the complete scenario for performance-oriented self-worth: If you have a string of weak performances, you’ll be down on yourself in general, creating a destructive downward spiral. If you climb well half the time, you’ll be the passive recipient of reward half the time, and of punishment the other half. If you manage to climb well all the time, you’ll get the dubious reward of becoming an egomaniac with a precarious self-image, destined for a crash. You can look forward to an old age spent in endless rehash of past days of glory. If you think about it, no matter how well you climb, tangling up your self-worth with your performance is a lose-lose situation.
”
”
Arno Ilgner (The Rock Warrior's Way: Mental Training For Climbers)
“
Negroes know about each other what can here be called family secrets, and this means that one Negro, if he wishes, can “knock” the other’s “hustle”—can give his game away. It is still not possible to overstate the price a Negro pays to climb out of obscurity—for it is a particular price, involved with being a Negro; and the great wounds, gouges, amputations, losses, scars, endured in such a journey cannot be calculated. But even this is not the worst of it, since he is really dealing with two hierarchies, one white and one black, the latter modeled on the former. The higher he rises, the less is his journey worth, since (unless he is extremely energetic and anarchic, a genuinely “bad nigger” in the most positive sense of the term) all he can possibly find himself exposed to is the grim emptiness of the white world—which does not live by the standards it uses to victimize him—and the even more ghastly emptiness of black people who wish they were white. Therefore, one “exceptional” Negro watches another “exceptional” Negro in order to find out if he knows how vastly successful and bitterly funny the hoax has been. Alliances, in the great cocktail party of the white man’s world, are formed, almost purely, on this basis, for if both of you can laugh, you have a lot to laugh about. On the other hand, if only one of you can laugh, one of you, inevitably, is laughing at the other.
”
”
James Baldwin (Nobody Knows My Name)
“
William Slothrop was a peculiar bird. He took off from Boston, heading west in true Imperial style, in 1634 or -5, sick and tired of the Winthrop machine, convinced he could preach as well as anybody in the hierarchy even if he hadn’t been officially ordained. The ramparts of the Berkshires stopped everybody else at the time, but not William. He just started climbing. He was one of the very first Europeans in. After they settled in Berkshire, he and his son John got a pig operation going—used to drive hogs right back down the great escarpment, back over the long pike to Boston, drive them just like sheep or cows. By the time they got to market those hogs were so skinny it was hardly worth it, but William wasn’t really in it so much for the money as just for the trip itself. He enjoyed the road, the mobility, the chance encounters of the day—Indians, trappers, wenches, hill people—and most of all just being with those pigs. They were good company. Despite the folklore and the injunctions in his own Bible, William came to love their nobility and personal freedom, their gift for finding comfort in the mud on a hot day—pigs out on the road, in company together, were everything Boston wasn’t, and you can imagine what the end of the journey, the weighing, slaughter and dreary pigless return back up into the hills must’ve been like for William. Of course he took it as a parable—knew that the squealing bloody horror at the end of the pike was in exact balance to all their happy sounds, their untroubled pink eyelashes and kind eyes, their smiles, their grace in crosscountry movement. It was a little early for Isaac Newton, but feelings about action and reaction were in the air. William must’ve been waiting for the one pig that wouldn’t die, that would validate all the ones who’d had to, all his Gadarene swine who’d rushed into extinction like lemmings, possessed not by demons but by trust for men, which the men kept betraying . . . possessed by innocence they couldn’t lose . . . by faith in William as another variety of pig, at home with the Earth, sharing the same gift of life. . . .
”
”
Thomas Pynchon (Gravity's Rainbow)
“
You have nothing to tell me!" said Vyesovshchikov slowly. "Nothing! My heart is so—it seems to me as if wolves were howling there!" "And I don't want to say anything to you. Only I know that you'll get over this, perhaps not entirely, but you'll get over it!" He smiled, and added, tapping Nikolay on the back: "Why, man, this is a children's disease, something like measles! We all suffer from it, the strong less, the weak more. It comes upon a man at the period when he has found himself, but does not yet understand life, and his own place in life. And when you do not see your place, and are unable to appraise your own value, it seems that you are the only, the inimitable cucumber on the face of the earth, and that no one can measure, no one can fathom your worth, and that all are eager only to eat you up. After a while you'll find out that the hearts in other people's breasts are no worse than a good part of your own heart, and you'll begin to feel better. And somewhat ashamed, too! Why should you climb up to the belfry tower, when your bell is so small that it can't be heard in the great peal of the holiday bells? Moreover, you'll see that in chorus the sound of your bell will be heard, too, but by itself the old church bells will drown it in their rumble as a fly is drowned in oil. Do you understand what I am saying?" "Maybe I understand," Nikolay said, nodding. "Only I don't believe it." The
”
”
Maxim Gorky (Mother)
“
The family were wild," she said suddenly. "They tried to marry me off. And then when I'd begun to feel that after all life was scarcely worth living I found something"—her eyes went skyward exultantly—"I found something!"
Carlyle waited and her words came with a rush.
“Courage—just that; courage as a rule of life, and something to cling to always. I began to build up this enormous faith in myself. I began to see that in all my idols in the past some manifestation of courage had unconsciously been the thing that attracted me. I began separating courage from the other things of life. All sorts of courage—the beaten, bloody prize-fighter coming up for more—I used to make men take me to prize-fights; the déclassé woman sailing through a nest of cats and looking at them as if they were mud under her feet; the liking what you like always; the utter disregard for other people's opinions—just to live as I liked always and to die in my own way—Did you bring up the cigarettes?"
He handed one over and held a match for her silently.
"Still," Ardita continued, "the men kept gathering—old men and young men, my mental and physical inferiors, most of them, but all intensely desiring to have me—to own this rather magnificent proud tradition I'd built up round me. Do you see?"
"Sort of. You never were beaten and you never apologized."
"Never!"
She sprang to the edge, poised or a moment like a crucified figure against the sky; then describing a dark parabola plunked without a slash between two silver ripples twenty feet below.
Her voice floated up to him again.
"And courage to me meant ploughing through that dull gray mist that comes down on life—not only over-riding people and circumstances but over-riding the bleakness of living. A sort of insistence on the value of life and the worth of transient things."
She was climbing up now, and at her last words her head, with the damp yellow hair slicked symmetrically back, appeared on his level.
"All very well," objected Carlyle. "You can call it courage, but your courage is really built, after all, on a pride of birth. You were bred to that defiant attitude. On my gray days even courage is one of the things that's gray and lifeless."
She was sitting near the edge, hugging her knees and gazing abstractedly at the white moon; he was farther back, crammed like a grotesque god into a niche in the rock.
"I don't want to sound like Pollyanna," she began, "but you haven't grasped me yet. My courage is faith—faith in the eternal resilience of me—that joy'll come back, and hope and spontaneity. And I feel that till it does I've got to keep my lips shut and my chin high, and my eyes wide—not necessarily any silly smiling. Oh, I've been through hell without a whine quite often—and the female hell is deadlier than the male."
"But supposing," suggested Carlyle, "that before joy and hope and all that came back the curtain was drawn on you for good?"
Ardita rose, and going to the wall climbed with some difficulty to the next ledge, another ten or fifteen feet above.
"Why," she called back, "then I'd have won!
”
”
F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Offshore Pirate)
“
The people who are made larger by suffering go on to stage two small rebellions. First, they rebel against their ego ideal. When they were on their first mountain, their ego had some vision of what it was shooting for—some vision of prominence, pleasure, and success. Down in the valley they lose interest in their ego ideal. Of course afterward they still feel and sometimes succumb to their selfish desires. But, overall, they realize the desires of the ego are never going to satisfy the deep regions they have discovered in themselves. They realize, as Henri Nouwen put it, that they are much better than their ego ideal.
Second, they rebel against the mainstream culture. All their lives they’ve been taking economics classes or living in a culture that teaches that human beings pursue self-interest—money, power, fame. But suddenly they are not interested in what other people tell them to want. They want to want the things that are truly worth wanting. They elevate their desires. The world tells them to be a good consumer, but they want to be the one consumed—by a moral cause. The world tells them to want independence, but they want interdependence—to be enmeshed in a web of warm relationships. The world tells them to want individual freedom, but they want intimacy, responsibility, and commitment. The world wants them to climb the ladder and pursue success, but they want to be a person for others. The magazines on the magazine rack want them to ask “What can I do to make myself happy?” but they glimpse something bigger than personal happiness.
”
”
David Brooks
“
i paid in blood to be here. i paid with a childhood littered with bigger
monsters than you. i’ve been beaten into a silence more times than i’ve been
embraced on this earth. you haven’t seen what i’ve seen. my rock bottom
went so deep i’m pretty sure it was hell. i spent a decade climbing out of it.
my hands blistered. my feet swelled. my mind said i can’t take it anymore. i
told my mind you better get yourself together. we came here for joy. and we
are going to feel all of it. i’ve been hunted. killed. and walked back to earth. i
snapped the neck off every beast that thought it could. and you want to take
my seat. the one i built with the story of my life. honey. you won’t fit. i
juggle clowns like you. i pick my teeth with fools like you for fun. i have
played and slept and danced with bigger devils
”
”
Rupi Kaur (Home Body)
“
Good writing is always a breaking of the soil, clearing away prejudices, pulling up of sour weeds of crooked thinking, stripping the turf so as to get at what is fertile beneath. It would be amusing to carry the simile further. Those bulbs that flower in the sand and wither! The gay fiction annual that has to be planted again every year! Those experimental plants from Russia, France, and Greenwich Village that are always getting winter killed—confound 'em!—is it worth while planting them again? The stocky perennial that keeps coming up and coming up—so easy to grow and so ugly. Scarlet sage that gives a touch of fiery sin to the edge of the suburbanite's concrete walk! And then the good flowers—as honest as they are beautiful! The well-ordered gar den! The climbing rose that escapes and is the most beautiful of all!
”
”
Henry Seidel Canby
“
Luke pulls me to him and crushes his mouth to mine.
“I said I wasn’t going to do this,” he whispers on a kiss.
“’S’okay.” I pull him closer, my hands snaking up his back. “Don’t mind.”
His hands move up to cup my face, to tilt my head, to move his lips over mine again. “Bella?”
“Hmmm?”
I stifle a groan as Luke pulls away.
Still holding my face in one hand, he runs his finger down my nose. Over my cheek. I lean into his palm and just try to breathe. “What?”
“Do you know what this was?” he asks, his mouth near my ear.
“The warm-up?”
“A test.”
My cozy smile drops. I step away.
“You’re lying to yourself if you think you don’t want to be with me.”
“I—I”—am so mad—“it was the moonlight. It was the popcorn at nine o’clock.”
Luke reaches out and brushes a piece of hair behind my ear. “Face it—you’re totally into your editor.” He sighs dramatically. “I hope whatever is keeping us apart is worth it.”
I stand there motionless, my tongue glued to the roof of my mouth as Luke climbs into his 4Runner. I should say something. I should yell—or maybe throw a shoe? What would Ruthie do? No. I can’t moon him.
”
”
Jenny B. Jones (So Over My Head (The Charmed Life, #3))
“
Christian peace comes not from thinking less but from thinking more, and more intensely, about the big issues of life. Paul gives a specific example of this in Romans 8:18, where he uses the same word, logizdomai, and speaks directly to sufferers. He says, “I reckon that our present sufferings are not worth comparing to the glory that shall be revealed in us.” To “reckon” is to count up accurately, not to whistle in the dark. It is not to get peace by jogging or shopping. It means “Think it out! Think about the glory coming until the joy begins to break in on you.” Someone reading this might say, “You are talking about doctrine but what I really need is comfort.” But think! Is Jesus really the Son of God? Did he really come to earth, die for you, rise again, and pass through the heavens to the right hand of God? Did he endure infinite suffering for you, so that someday he could take you to himself and wipe away every tear from your eyes? If so, then there is all the comfort in the world. If not—if none of these things are true—then we may be stuck here living for seventy or eighty years until we perish, and the only happiness we will ever know is in this life. And if some trouble or suffering takes that happiness away, you have lost it forever. Either Jesus is on the throne ruling all things for you or this is as good as it gets. See what Paul is doing? He is saying that if you are a Christian today and you have little or no peace, it may be because you are not thinking. Peace comes from a disciplined thinking out of the implications of what you believe. It comes from an intentional occupation of a vantage point. There is nothing more thrilling than climbing up to some high point on a mountain and then turning around and viewing from there all the terrain you have just traversed. Suddenly, you see the relationships—you see the creek you crossed, the foothills, the town from which you have journeyed. Your high vantage point gives you perspective, clarity, and a sense of beauty. Now this is what Paul is calling us to do. Think big and high. Realize who God is, what he has done, who you are in Christ, where history is going. Put your troubles in perspective by remembering Christ’s troubles on your behalf, and all his promises to you, and what he is accomplishing. Let
”
”
Timothy J. Keller (Walking with God through Pain and Suffering)
“
I'll tell you this,though, Frankie makes me happy. So does Sadie. I don't want to canoodle with either of them, but I love them to death."
"Must you use those words in my presence?"
"Sorry.But.Truth:You are dead as the spat."
Edward sighed. "You're right.You're absolutely right. So I suppose you'd best go to sleep, darling Ella. It's late. And,as was famously said, 'tomorrow-'"
"-is another day? Thank you, Scarlett O'Hara."
"Actually-" -he scowled at me- "I was going to say, 'Tomorrow comes. Tomorrow brings, tomorrow brings love, in the shape of things.'"
"Shakespeare?" I asked.
"Queen," he shot back. "Not nearly as good as 'Bohemian Rhapsody' or 'Fat Bottomed Girls,' but certainly poetic."
"Good night, Edward."
"Good night, lovely girl."
I turned off the light and climbed into bed. "Oh.By the way."
"Yes?"
"I think I figured out why you called Diana all those nicknames. 'Spring,' 'Cab,' 'Post'..."
"Yes?"
"They're all things you wait for. I think Diana was making you wait, and it was making you crazy. Am I right?"
"Oh,Ella. You know I can't tell you that. I will,however, leave you with one more lovely old chestnut-"
"'All good things are worth waiting for?'"
"I really wish you would let me finish a thought tonight. I was going to say, 'Ain't nothing like the real thing, baby.'"
"Marvin Gaye," I said.
"The one and only.
”
”
Melissa Jensen (The Fine Art of Truth or Dare)
“
Their attention was caught by the increasingly animated conversation between Beatrix and Annandale. “…I can climb a tree as well as any of the Ramsay estate woodsmen,” Beatrix was telling him.
“I don’t believe you,” the earl declared, tremendously entertained.
“Oh, yes. Off with the skirts, off with the corset, I put on a pair of breeches, and--”
“Beatrix,” Audrey interrupted, before this scandalous discussion of intimate apparel progressed any further. “I just caught a glimpse of Poppy in the next room. It’s been ages since I’ve seen her. And I’ve never been introduced to her husband.”
“Oh.” Reluctantly Beatrix turned her attention away from Annandale. “Shall I take you to them?”
“Yes.” Audrey seized her arm.
Annandale looked disgruntled, his black brows lowering as Audrey propelled Beatrix away.
Christopher bit back a grin. “What do you think of her?” he asked.
Annandale replied without hesitation. “I would marry her myself, were I five years younger.”
“Five?” Christopher repeated skeptically.
“Ten, damn you.” But a slight smile had appeared on the earl’s time-weathered face. “I commend you on your choice. She’s a spirited girl. Fearless. Lovely in her own way, and with her charm she has no need of true beauty. You’ll need to keep a firm hand on the reins, but the trouble will be worth it.” He paused, looking wistful. “Once you’ve had a woman like that, you can never be content with the ordinary kind.”
Christopher had been about to argue over the question of Beatrix’s beauty, which in his opinion was unequaled.
”
”
Lisa Kleypas (Love in the Afternoon (The Hathaways, #5))
“
An old man wearing a red seed cap was saying, "Little lady, one day you'll remember the days people told you that you had nice legs as a good memory."
Adam braced for the explosion.
It was nails and dynamite. "Good--memory? Oh, I wish I were as ignorant as you! What happiness! There are girls who kill themselves over negative body image and you--"
"Is there a problem here?" Adam broke in.
The man seemed relieved. People were always pleased to see clean, muted Adam, the deferential Southern voice of reason. "Your girlfriend's quite a firecracker."
Adam stared at the man. Blue stared at Adam.
He wanted to tell her it wasn't worth it--that he'd grown up with this sort of man and knew they were untrainable--but then she'd throw the thermos at Adam's head and probably slap the guy in the mouth. It was amazing that she and Ronan didn't get along better, because they were different brands of the same impossible stuff.
"Sir," Adam started--Blue's eyebrows spiked--"I think maybe your mama didn't teach you how to talk to women."
The old man shook his head at Adam, like in pity.
Adam added, "And she's not my girlfriend."
Blue flashed him a brilliant look of approval, and then she got into the car with a dramatic door slam Ronan would have approved of.
"Look, kid," the old man started.
Adam interrupted, "Your fuel door's open, by the way."
He climbed back into his little, shitty car, the one Ronan called the Hondayota. He felt heroic for no good reason. Blue simmered righteously as they pulled out of the station. For a few moments, there was nothing but the labored sounds of the little car's breathing.
Then Noah said, "You do have nice legs, though."
Blue swung at him. A helpless laugh escaped Adam, and she hit his shoulder too.
”
”
Maggie Stiefvater (Blue Lily, Lily Blue (The Raven Cycle, #3))
“
In order for once to get a glimpse of our European morality from a distance, in order to compare it with other earlier or future moralities, one must do as the traveller who wants to know the height of the towers of a city: for that purpose he leaves the city. "Thoughts concerning moral prejudices," if they are not to be prejudices concerning prejudices, presuppose a position outside of morality, some sort of world beyond good and evil, to which one must ascend, climb, or fly―and in the given case at any rate, a position beyond our good and evil, an emancipation from all "Europe," understood as a sum of inviolable valuations which have become part and parcel of our flesh and blood. That one does want to get outside, or aloft, is perhaps a sort of madness, a peculiar, unreasonable "thou must" - for even we thinkers have our idiosyncrasies of "unfree will"―: the question is whether one can really get there. That may depend on manifold conditions: in the main it is a question of how light or how heavy we are, the problem of our "specific gravity." One must be very light in order to impel one’s will to knowledge to such a distance, and as it were beyond one’s age, in order to create eyes for oneself for the survey of millenniums, and a pure heaven in these eyes besides! One must have freed oneself from many things by which we Europeans of today are oppressed, hindered, held down, and made heavy. The man of such a "Beyond," who wants to get even in sight of the highest standards of worth of his age, must first of all "surmount" this age in him self - it is the test of his power - and consequently not only his age, but also his past aversion and opposition to his age, his suffering caused by his age, his unseasonableness, his Romanticism...
”
”
Friedrich Nietzsche (The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs)
“
Sometimes it takes a knock in life to make us sit up and grab life. And I had just undergone the mother of all knocks.
But out of that despair, fear, and struggle came a silver lining--and I didn’t even know it yet.
What I did know was that I needed something to give me back my hope. My sparkle. My life. I found that something in my Christian faith, in my family, and also in my dreams of adventure.
My Christian faith says that I have nothing ever to fear or worry about. All is well.
At that time, in and out of hospital, it reminded me that, despite the pain and despair, I was held and loved and blessed--my life was secure through Jesus Christ.
That gift of grace has been so powerful to me ever since.
My family said something very similar: “Bear, you are an idiot, but we love you anyway, forever and always.”
That meant the world to me and gave me back some of the confidence that I was struggling to find again.
Finally, I had my not insubstantial dreams of adventure. And those dreams were beginning to burn bright once more.
You see, I figure that life is a gift. I was learning that more than anyone.
My mum always taught me to be grateful for gifts. And as I slowly began to recover my strength and confidence, I realized that what mattered was doing something bold with that present.
A gift buried under a tree is wasted.
Alone one night in bed, I made a verbal, out-loud, conscious decision, that if I recovered well enough to be able to climb again, then I would get out there and follow those dreams to the max.
Cliché? To me it was my only hope.
I was choosing to live life with both arms open--I would grab life by the horns and ride it for all it was worth.
Life doesn’t often give us second chances. But if it does, be bloody grateful.
I vowed I would always be thankful to my father in heaven for having somehow helped me along this rocky road.
”
”
Bear Grylls (Mud, Sweat and Tears)
“
His father looks to Marcus again. “Your brother will come home with us,” he decrees. And since any guts that Marcus now has have been paid for by their father’s money, he won’t have much of a choice.
“And me?”
Again, his father won’t look at him. “My son was tithed a year ago,” he says. “That’s the son I choose to remember. As for you, you can do as you please. It’s not my concern.” And he says no more.
“When Marcus wakes up, tell him I forgive him,” Lev says.
“Forgive him for what?”
“He’ll know.”
And Lev leaves without saying good-bye.
Farther down the hallway, he spots his mother again, and other members of his family, in the fourth-floor waiting room. A brother, two sisters, and their husbands. In the end, they came for Marcus. None of them are there for him. He hesitates, wondering if he should go in there. Will they behave like his father, bitter, rigid, and cold—or like his mother, offering a pained hug, yet refusing to look at him?
Then, in that moment of indecision, he sees one of his sisters bend down and pick up a baby. It’s a new nephew Lev never even knew he had.
And the baby is dressed all in white.
Lev races back to his room, but even before he gets there, he feels the eruption begin. It starts deep in his gut, sobs rising with such unexpected fury, his abdomen locks in a cramp. He must struggle the last few feet to his room doubled over, barely able to catch his breath as the tears burst from his eyes.
Somewhere deep, deep down in the most irrational corner of Lev’s mind—perhaps the place where childhood dreams go—he held out a secret hope that he might actually be taken back. That he might one day be welcomed home. Marcus had told him to forget about it—that it would never happen, but nothing could wipe out that stubborn hope that hid within him. Until today.
He climbs into his hospital bed and forces his face into his pillow as the sobs crescendo into wails. A full year’s worth of suppressed heartache pours forth from his soul like Niagara, and he doesn’t care if he drowns in the killing whiteness of its churning waters.
”
”
Neal Shusterman (UnWholly (Unwind, #2))
“
The best advice came from the legendary actor the late Sir John Mills, who I sat next to backstage at a lecture we were doing together. He told me he considered the key to public speaking to be this: “Be sincere, be brief, be seated.”
Inspired words. And it changed the way I spoke publicly from then on. Keep it short. Keep it from the heart.
Men tend to think that they have to be funny, witty, or incisive onstage. You don’t. You just have to be honest. If you can be intimate and give the inside story--emotions, doubts, struggles, fears, the lot--then people will respond.
I went on to give thanks all around the world to some of the biggest corporations in business--and I always tried to live by that. Make it personal, and people will stand beside you.
As I started to do bigger and bigger events for companies, I wrongly assumed that I should, in turn, start to look much smarter and speak more “corporately.” I was dead wrong--and I learned that fast. When we pretend, people get bored.
But stay yourself, talk intimately, and keep the message simple, and it doesn’t matter what the hell you wear.
It does, though, take courage, in front of five thousand people, to open yourself up and say you really struggle with self-doubt. Especially when you are meant to be there as a motivational speaker.
But if you keep it real, then you give people something real to take away.
“If he can, then so can I” is always going to be a powerful message. For kids, for businessmen--and for aspiring adventurers.
I really am pretty average. I promise you. Ask Shara…ask Hugo.
I am ordinary, but I am determined.
I did, though--as the corporation started to pay me more--begin to doubt whether I was really worth the money. It all seemed kind of weird to me. I mean, was my talk a hundred times better now than the one I gave in the Drakensberg Mountains?
No.
But on the other hand, if you can help people feel stronger and more capable because of what you tell them, then it becomes worthwhile for companies in ways that are impossible to quantify.
If that wasn’t true, then I wouldn’t get asked to speak so often, still to this day.
And the story of Everest--a mountain, like life, and like business--is always going to work as a metaphor. You have got to work together, work hard, and go the extra mile. Look after each other, be ambitious, and take calculated, well-timed risks.
Give your heart to the goal, and it will repay you.
Now, are we talking business or climbing?
That’s what I mean.
”
”
Bear Grylls (Mud, Sweat and Tears)
“
As he gazed at the sun-darkened, battle-worn warriors before him, he decided that he would rather fight a hundred enemies by himself than have to stand up in public and risk the disapproval of others.
Until the moment he opened his mouth, Eragon was not sure what he was going to say. Once he started, the words seemed to pour out of their own accord, but he was so tense, he could not remember much of what he said. The speech passed in a blur; his main impressions were of heat and sweat, the groans of the warriors when they learned of Nasuada’s fate, the ragged cheers when he exhorted them to victory, and the general roar from the crowd when he finished. With relief, he jumped down from the back of the wagon to where Arya and Orik were waiting next to Saphira.
As he did, his guards formed a circle around the four of them, shielding them from the crowd and holding back those who wished to speak with him.
“Well done, Eragon!” said Orik, clapping him on the arm.
“Was it?” Eragon asked, feeling dazed.
“You were most eloquent,” said Arya.
Eragon shrugged, embarrassed. It intimidated him to remember that Arya had known most of the leaders of the Varden, and he could not help but think that Ajihad or his predecessor, Deynor, would have done a better job with the speech.
Orik pulled on his sleeve. Eragon bent toward the dwarf. In a voice barely loud enough to be heard over the crowd, Orik said, “I hope that whatever you find is worth the trip, my friend. Take care you don’t get yourselves killed, eh?”
“I’ll try not to.”
To Eragon’s surprise, Orik grabbed him by the forearm and pulled him into a rough embrace. “May Gûntera watch over you.” As they separated, Orik reached over and slapped the palm of his hand against Saphira’s side. “And you as well, Saphira. Safe journeys to the both of you.”
Saphira responded with a low hum.
Eragon looked over at Arya. He suddenly felt awkward, unable to think of anything but the most obvious things to say. The beauty of her eyes still captivated him; the effect she had on him never seemed to lessen.
Then she took his head in her hands, and she kissed him once, formally, on the brow.
Eragon stared at her, dumbstruck.
“Guliä waíse medh ono, Argetlam.” Luck be with you, Silverhand.
As she released him, he caught her hands in his own. “Nothing bad is going to happen to us. I won’t let it. Not even if Galbatorix is waiting for us. If I have to, I’ll tear apart mountains with my bare hands, but I promise, we’re going to make it back safely.”
Before she could respond, he let go of her hands and climbed onto Saphira’s back.
”
”
Christopher Paolini (Inheritance (The Inheritance Cycle, #4))
“
And if you wish to receive of the ancient city an impression with which the modern one can no longer furnish you, climb—on the morning of some grand festival, beneath the rising sun of Easter or of Pentecost—climb upon some elevated point, whence you command the entire capital; and be present at the wakening of the chimes. Behold, at a signal given from heaven, for it is the sun which gives it, all those churches quiver simultaneously. First come scattered strokes, running from one church to another, as when musicians give warning that they are about to begin. Then, all at once, behold!—for it seems at times, as though the ear also possessed a sight of its own,—behold, rising from each bell tower, something like a column of sound, a cloud of harmony. First, the vibration of each bell mounts straight upwards, pure and, so to speak, isolated from the others, into the splendid morning sky; then, little by little, as they swell they melt together, mingle, are lost in each other, and amalgamate in a magnificent concert. It is no longer anything but a mass of sonorous vibrations incessantly sent forth from the numerous belfries; floats, undulates, bounds, whirls over the city, and prolongs far beyond the horizon the deafening circle of its oscillations.
Nevertheless, this sea of harmony is not a chaos; great and profound as it is, it has not lost its transparency; you behold the windings of each group of notes which escapes from the belfries. You can follow the dialogue, by turns grave and shrill, of the treble and the bass; you can see the octaves leap from one tower to another; you watch them spring forth, winged, light, and whistling, from the silver bell, to fall, broken and limping from the bell of wood; you admire in their midst the rich gamut which incessantly ascends and re-ascends the seven bells of Saint-Eustache; you see light and rapid notes running across it, executing three or four luminous zigzags, and vanishing like flashes of lightning. Yonder is the Abbey of Saint-Martin, a shrill, cracked singer; here the gruff and gloomy voice of the Bastille; at the other end, the great tower of the Louvre, with its bass. The royal chime of the palace scatters on all sides, and without relaxation, resplendent trills, upon which fall, at regular intervals, the heavy strokes from the belfry of Notre-Dame, which makes them sparkle like the anvil under the hammer. At intervals you behold the passage of sounds of all forms which come from the triple peal of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Then, again, from time to time, this mass of sublime noises opens and gives passage to the beats of the Ave Maria, which bursts forth and sparkles like an aigrette of stars. Below, in the very depths of the concert, you confusedly distinguish the interior chanting of the churches, which exhales through the vibrating pores of their vaulted roofs.
Assuredly, this is an opera which it is worth the trouble of listening to. Ordinarily, the noise which escapes from Paris by day is the city speaking; by night, it is the city breathing; in this case, it is the city singing. Lend an ear, then, to this concert of bell towers; spread over all the murmur of half a million men, the eternal plaint of the river, the infinite breathings of the wind, the grave and distant quartette of the four forests arranged upon the hills, on the horizon, like immense stacks of organ pipes; extinguish, as in a half shade, all that is too hoarse and too shrill about the central chime, and say whether you know anything in the world more rich and joyful, more golden, more dazzling, than this tumult of bells and chimes;—than this furnace of music,—than these ten thousand brazen voices chanting simultaneously in the flutes of stone, three hundred feet high,—than this city which is no longer anything but an orchestra,—than this symphony which produces the noise of a tempest.
”
”
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre Dame)
“
The slightly musky scent of his skin mingled with the crisp smell of starch from his necktie, a blend so alluring that she inched closer to inhale deeply.
Nick stopped by the end of the street. His head turned, his shaven cheek brushing hers and making her skin tingle. "What are you doing?"
"Your smell..." she said dreamily. "It's wonderful. I noticed it the first time we met, when you nearly knocked me off the wall."
A laugh stirred in his throat. "I saved you from falling, you mean."
Intrigued by the scratchy texture of his skin, Lottie pressed her lips beneath his jaw. She felt him swallow hard, the movement rippling against her mouth. It was the first time she had ever made an advance to him, and the small gesture was surprisingly effective. He stood there holding her tightly, his chest rising and falling in increasingly labored breaths. Intrigued by the notion that she could arouse him so easily, Lottie tugged at the knot of his necktie and kissed the side of his throat.
"Don't, Lottie."
She drew the tip of her fingernail over the hair-roughened skin, scraping delicately.
"Lottie..." he tried again. Whatever he had intended to say was forgotten as she kissed his ear and took the lobe between her teeth in a soft bite.
The carriage stopped before them, and the footman busied himself with seeing out the removable step. Schooling his features into a blank mask, Nick thrust Lottie inside the carriage and climbed in after her.
”
”
Lisa Kleypas (Worth Any Price (Bow Street Runners, #3))
“
Do recall how you behaved as a child: Maybe your child is just like you once were. (The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree!) Ask yourself what you would have liked to make your childhood easier and more pleasurable. More trips to the playground, free time, or cuddling? Fewer demands? Lower expectations? Try saying, “When I was a kid and life got rough, I liked to climb trees. How about you?” Do respect your child’s needs, even if they seem unusual: “You sure do like a tight tuck-in! There, now you’re as snug as a bug in a rug.” Or, “I’ll stand in front of you while we’re on the escalator. I won’t let you fall.” Do respect your child’s fears, even if they seem senseless: “I see that your ball bounced near those big kids. I’ll go with you. Let’s hold hands.” Your reassurances will help her trust others. Do say “I love you”: Assure your child that you accept and value who she is. You cannot say “I love you” too often! Do follow your instincts: Your instincts will tell you that everyone needs to touch and be touchable, to move and be movable. If your child’s responses seem atypical, ask questions, get information, and follow up with appropriate action. Do listen when others express concerns: When teachers or caregivers suggest that your child’s behavior is unusual, you may react with denial or anger. But remember that they see your child away from home, among many other children. Their perspective is worth considering. Do educate yourself about typical child development: Read. Take parent education classes. Learn about invariable stages of human development, as well as variable temperaments and learning styles. It’s comforting to know that a wide variety of behaviors falls within the normal range. Then, you’ll find it easier to differentiate between typical and atypical behavior. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and a six-year-old is just a six-year-old! Do seek professional help: SPD is a problem that a child can’t overcome alone. Parents and teachers can’t “cure” a child, just as a child can’t cure himself. Early intervention is crucial. Do keep your cool: When your child drives you crazy, collect your thoughts before responding, especially if you are angry, upset, or unpleasantly surprised. A child who is out of control needs the calm reassurance of someone who is in control. She needs a grown-up. Do take care of yourself: When you’re having a hard day, take a break! Hire a babysitter and go for a walk, read a book, take a bath, dine out, make love. Nobody can be expected to give another person undivided attention, and still cope.
”
”
Carol Stock Kranowitz (The Out-of-Sync Child: Recognizing and Coping with Sensory Processing Disorder)
“
The incarnation is God leaving the sanitary zone and climbing down to swim in the sewage, looking for people of infinite less worth than He. The incarnation is wonderfully horrible. It stuns and amazes us.
”
”
Dick Brogden (Live Dead Joy: 365 Days of Living and Dying with Jesus)
“
It's something I've repeated to myself a million times already. And even now, after saying it one million and one times, it doesn't make me feel one iota better. Trujillo is a wild card. He's unpredictable and I never know what he's going to do, let alone what he’s thinking. He very well could decide that I’m more trouble than it’s worth. That he'll eat the money I owe him just to wash his hands of me. I just don't know. And it's that uncertainty that has my balls climbing up into my throat. The black SUV pulls into the rest stop, as I’m trying to avoid comparing the sound of gravel crunching beneath the tires with the sound my bones would make beneath those same tires. The SUV pulls to a stop in front of me and the driver cuts the lights. After being nearly blinded by the headlights, it takes my eyes a minute to re-adjust to the darkness.
”
”
R.R. Banks (Accidentally Married (Anderson Brothers, #1))
“
Serving God isn't easy. It is gut-wrenching, difficult work. It is not for the faint of heart. But if you listen for his voice, are open to his leading, and obey his will, you will experience adventures beyond your wildest imagination and climb mountains you never dreamed possible.
”
”
Michele Rigby Assad (Breaking Cover: My Secret Life in the CIA and What It Taught Me about What's Worth Fighting For)
“
That trip was epic. Every day was an adventure. Bindi sat down for her formal schooling at a little table under the big trees by the river, with the kookaburras singing and the occasional lizard or snake cruising through camp. She had the best scientists from the University of Queensland around to answer her questions.
I could tell Steve didn’t want it to end. We had been in bush camp for five weeks. Bindi, Robert, and I were now scheduled for a trip to Tasmania. Along with us would be their teacher, Emma (the kids called her “Miss Emma”), and Kate, her sister, who also worked at the zoo. It was a trip I had planned for a long time. Emma would celebrate her thirtieth birthday, and Kate would see her first snow.
Steve and I would go our separate ways. He would leave Lakefield on Croc One and go directly to rendezvous with Philippe Cousteau for the filming of Ocean’s Deadliest. We tried to figure out how we could all be together for the shoot, but there just wasn’t enough room on the boat.
Still, Steve came to me one morning while I was dressing Robert. “Why don’t you stay for two more days?” he said. “We could change your flight out. It would be worth it.”
When I first met Steve, I made a deal with myself. Whenever Steve suggested a trip, activity, or project, I would go for it. I found it all too easy to come up with an excuse not to do something. “Oh, gee, Steve, I don’t feel like climbing that mountain, or fording that river,” I could have said. “I’m a bit tired, and it’s a bit cold, or it’s a bit hot and I’m a bit warm.”
There always could be some reason. Instead I decided to be game for whatever Steve proposed. Inevitably, I found myself on the best adventures of my life.
For some reason, this time I didn’t say yes. I fell silent. I thought about how it would work and the logistics of it all. A thousand concerns flitted through my mind. While I was mulling it over, I realized Steve had already walked off.
It was the first time I hadn’t said, “Yeah, great, let’s go for it.” And I didn’t really know why.
”
”
Terri Irwin (Steve & Me)
“
Steve and I would go our separate ways. He would leave Lakefield on Croc One and go directly to rendezvous with Philippe Cousteau for the filming of Ocean’s Deadliest. We tried to figure out how we could all be together for the shoot, but there just wasn’t enough room on the boat.
Still, Steve came to me one morning while I was dressing Robert. “Why don’t you stay for two more days?” he said. “We could change your flight out. It would be worth it.”
When I first met Steve, I made a deal with myself. Whenever Steve suggested a trip, activity, or project, I would go for it. I found it all too easy to come up with an excuse not to do something. “Oh, gee, Steve, I don’t feel like climbing that mountain, or fording that river,” I could have said. “I’m a bit tired, and it’s a bit cold, or it’s a bit hot and I’m a bit warm.”
There always could be some reason. Instead I decided to be game for whatever Steve proposed. Inevitably, I found myself on the best adventures of my life.
For some reason, this time I didn’t say yes. I fell silent. I thought about how it would work and the logistics of it all. A thousand concerns flitted through my mind. While I was mulling it over, I realized Steve had already walked off.
It was the first time I hadn’t said, “Yeah, great, let’s go for it.” And I didn’t really know why.
Steve drove us to the airstrip at the ranger station. One of the young rangers there immediately began to bend his ear about a wildlife issue. I took Robert off to pee on a bush before we had to get on the plane. It was just a tiny little prop plane and there would be no restroom until we got to Cairns.
When we came back, all the general talk meant that there wasn’t much time left for us to say good-bye. Bindi pressed a note into Steve’s hand and said, “Don’t read this until we’re gone.” I gave Steve a big hug and a kiss. Then I kissed him again.
I wanted to warn him to be careful about diving. It was my same old fear and discomfort with all his underwater adventures. A few days earlier, as Steve stepped off a dinghy, his boot had gotten tangled in a rope.
“Watch out for that rope,” I said.
He shot me a look that said, I’ve just caught forty-nine crocodiles in three weeks, and you’re thinking I’m going to fall over a rope?
I laughed sheepishly. It seemed absurd to caution Steve about being careful.
Steve was his usual enthusiastic self as we climbed into the plane. We knew we would see each other in less than two weeks. I would head back to the zoo, get some work done, and leave for Tasmania. Steve would do his filming trip. Then we would all be together again.
We had arrived at a remarkable place in our relationship. Our trip to Lakefield had been one of the most special months of my entire life. The kids had a great time. We were all in the same place together, not only physically, but emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.
We were all there.
”
”
Terri Irwin (Steve & Me)
“
Don't try moving mountains God ordained you to climb.
”
”
Matshona Dhliwayo
“
As Landry came to a stop in front of her, she was suddenly reminded how big and muscular he was. He loomed over her by nearly a foot. She almost laughed as she had a vision of climbing up his body to kiss him. Not that she minded. Something told her it would be worth it.
”
”
Paige Tyler (To Love a Wolf (SWAT: Special Wolf Alpha Team, #4))
“
Finally, there are two specific objections to use of psychedelic drugs. First, use of these
drugs may be dangerous. However, every worth-while exploration is dangerous--climbing
mountains, testing aircraft, rocketing into outer space, skin diving, or collecting botanical
specimens in jungles. But if you value knowledge and the actual delight of exploration more
than mere duration of uneventful life, you are willing to take the risks. It is not really healthy
for monks to practice fasting, and it was hardly hygienic for Jesus to get himself crucified,
but these are risks taken in the course of spiritual adventures.
”
”
Alan W. Watts (Zen: A Lecture)
“
I watched the transformation in my father as he picked one winner after another, and I liked what I saw. As he watched the stock climb, he would break into a big, broad smile, until he was literally beaming. He was having a very good time. He was loosening up. He finally felt that he was getting ahead. This was why he had come to America, to make a life for his family. Often I would help him with his decisions. If he was interested in a particular company, I would research it for him, and we would discuss the possibility of buying a few shares. He treated me like an equal, like his partner. Together we learned about buying on margin, about options trading, about puts and calls. Before long I found myself leaping out of bed at the crack of dawn, pouring myself a bowl of cereal, and parking myself in front of the television. I had the morning newspaper to my left and a pad and pencil to my right. The fact is, anyone can do this. It’s just like homework, except it’s the real world. It takes time and effort to get an A, and the same rules apply here, but the difference is that this is worth taking very, very seriously. After all, we’re not talking about grades—we’re talking about serious money.
”
”
Gurbaksh Chahal (The Dream: How I Learned the Risks and Rewards of Entrepreneurship and Made Millions)
“
In October of 1991, on the day I met Steve, it was only by chance that I stopped at his wildlife park at all. I had been sleeping in the backseat of a car on the way back from a barbecue at a friend of a friend’s house. Up front, Lori’s friend knew I was interested in zoos. When he saw a sign for this one, he debated with himself whether he should wake me. Even when he did, I wasn’t sure if this reptile park was going to be much more than a few snakes in little glass tanks.
So it was only by chance that I was on that highway at all, and only chance that I stopped. And it was only by chance that Steve conducted the croc show that day. Some days, Wes did the show.
Chance. Fate. Destiny.
These were words I lived by. I believed my life had been shaped for a special purpose. But with Steve’s death my faith was tested. Was it pure chance that Steve, a man who cheated mortality almost every single day of his adult life, died in such a bizarre accident?
During the decade and a half that I knew him, I don’t think a week went by when he didn’t get a bite, blow, or injury of some kind. His knee and shoulder plagued him from years of jumping crocs. As Steve erected a fence at our Brigalow Belt conservation property, a big fence-post driver he was using slipped and landed directly on his head, compressing the fifth disk in his neck. Even injured, he still managed to push on--at the zoo, filming, and doing heavy construction. He went at work like a bull at a gate. He climbed trees with orangutans. He traversed the most remote deserts and the most impossible mountains. He packed his life chock-a-block full with risks of all kinds.
“I get called an adrenaline junkie every other minute,” Steve said. “I’m just fine with that.”
One crowded hour of glorious life is worth more than an age without a name. I had no regrets for Steve’s glorious life, and I know he couldn’t have lived any other way.
”
”
Terri Irwin (Steve & Me)
“
Love is like a drug that can either kill you, weaken you or make you stronger. Like a poison that finds it way through you body with each kiss, each touch and each look.
It makes you feel euphoric. Makes you feel like you can take on anything that comes on your path. Whether it walks behind, in front or beside you. No mountain is high enough, no ocean deep enough and the sky had no limit.
It can make you feel weak. Make you question everything around except the person who the love is for.
But it can also destroy you in a way you never would have imagined was even possible. It hurts like a thousand knives twisting against your spine, paralyzing you. It can make you feel like the world just caved in around you, beneath you.
You ask yourself if this is all worth it. Worth the euphoric feeling of someone loving you. Worth everything.
I can tell you that in the end, it is. Because now you may feel destroyed, but keep in mind that a feeling is something that can be changed. There is someone who will build you up. Who will climb the highest mountain or cross the deepest oceans. Who makes you feel alive all for the right reasons.
Someone who will not sugar coat his intentions. Who will not say he's someone he actually is not. Someone who wants you in his life. Who shows you off like a show pony to show everyone how proud he/she is to have you in his/her life.
The feeling of destruction will fade when you meet someone who is willing to build you up. Who doesn't care how deep your roots have rooted itself into the earth to keep yourself grounded. Who will find every last stone to make sure your as strong as ever when everything else came crumbling down.
”
”
Kim Pape
“
Do not confuse things that are hard with things that are valuable.
Many things in life are hard. Just because you are giving a great effort does not mean you are working toward a great result.
Make sure that mountain is worth climbing.
”
”
James Clear
“
Before we can attempt to love people who are hard to love, we need to understand the importance of love and to know what love is and is not. Loving and being loved make life worth living. Love is the energy of life, and it is what motivates people to get up each day and keep going. Some people are motivated by making money, so they get up each day to climb the ladder of worldly success. Even though they may think they love what they do, they are loving something that can never fulfill or satisfy them. Anything apart from God has no ability to make and keep us happy.
”
”
Joyce Meyer (Loving People Who Are Hard to Love: Transforming Your World by Learning to Love Unconditionally)
“
Mr. Jha was learning that in this neighborhood, your guard was a direct representation of how much was worth guarding in your home. Guards with guns meant bricks of gold somewhere in the house. Maybe he would also get a guard with a gun, Mr. Jha thought; it would be cheaper than buying bricks of gold.
”
”
Diksha Basu (The Windfall)
“
Deliver what others never expected and watch how you climb the ladder of success faster...
”
”
RJ Yolande Mendes
“
When it comes to overcoming obstacles, there are three kinds of people. The first kind sees most obstacles as insurmountable and walks away. The second kind sees an obstacle and says, I can overcome it, and starts to dig under, climb over, or blast through it. The third type of person, before deciding to overcome the obstacle, tries to find a viewpoint where what is on the other side of the obstacle can be seen. Then, only if the reward is worth the effort, does he attempt to overcome the obstacle.
”
”
W. Timothy Gallwey (The Inner Game of Tennis: The Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance)
“
The lack of much outside investment allowed Gates and Allen to hold the vast majority of their company’s stock through the mideighties. Jobs, while his net worth had climbed into a significant fortune with Apple’s rise, didn’t own enough to control his destiny and was fired. It was a cruel irony: For all his counterculture spirit and brilliance, he suffered the mercenary’s fate, left with money but no kingdom. Gates, however, remained reluctant to go public even ten years after Microsoft’s founding. Eventually, due to the number of Microsoft employees who owned shares, and U.S. securities laws obligating any company with more than 500 shareholders to be registered, which Microsoft expected to soon pass, Gates agreed to list his shares. But as a final symbol of resistance, he did try to fly coach during the IPO roadshow—one last ode to parsimony—until his underwriters insisted otherwise.
”
”
Bhu Srinivasan (Americana: A 400-Year History of American Capitalism)
“
The world is a hard place to live in, but along the way, you might just find someone, or several people, to travel the path with you, lightening your load and making it worthwhile. The climb is always the hardest, but the view from the top of the mountain is so worth
”
”
K.A. Knight (Court of Nightmares (Courts and Kings))
“
She pushed him out to the balcony, shut the doors, and made sure to lock them. Richard looked at her from behind the glass. He had the strangest look on his face, a kind of stunned amazement. “Go!” she mouthed at him. “I love you, too,” he mouthed, then jumped and climbed back up his rope. She crossed the room, fell on her bed, and put a pillow over her face. She felt hot and giddy. He loved her. It made everything worth it.
”
”
Ilona Andrews (Steel's Edge (The Edge, #4))
“
There is no immortality that is not built on friendship and work done with care. All the secrets in the world worth knowing are hiding in plain sight. It takes forty-one seconds to climb a ladder three stories tall. It’s not easy to imagine the year 3012, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. We have new capabilities now—strange powers we’re still getting used to. The mountains are a message from Aldrag the Wyrm-Father. Your life must be an open city, with all sorts of ways to wander in. After
”
”
Robin Sloan (Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, #1))