February

"And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year: Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown. And he replied: Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God. That shall be to you better than light, and safer than a known way." Minnie L. Haskins

Confidence

"Once you accept the fact that you're not perfect, then you develop some confidence." - Rosalynn Carter

Defining

"If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive." - Audre Lorde

"When I look at ugliness, I see beauty. When I am far from home, I see old
friends. When there is noise, I hear a robin's song instead. When I am
in a crowd, it is the mountain's peace I feel. In the winter of my
sorrow, I remember the summer of my joy.
In the nighttime of my loneliness, I breathe the day of my thanksgiving. But when the sadness spreads its blanket and that is what I see, I take my eyes to some high place until I find a reflection of what lies deep inside of me."-- Navajo saying

Feed Thy Soul

If of thy mortal goods thou art bereft,
And from thy slender store two loaves alone to thee are left,
Sell one, and with the dole
Buy hyacinths to feed thy soul.

Moslih Eddin Saadi

Kurt Vonnegut's MIT Graduation Speech

In actuality written by Mary Schmich and first appearing in the Chicago Tribune

"If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it.
Wear sunscreen.
If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now.
Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they've faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine.
Don't worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 pm on some idle Tuesday.
Do one thing every day that scares you.
Sing.
Don't be reckless with other people's hearts. Don't put up with people who are reckless with yours.
Floss.
Don't waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind. The race is long and, in the end, it's only with yourself.
Remember compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.
Keep your old love letters. Throw away your old bank statements.
Stretch.
Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don't.
Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees. You'll miss them when they're gone.
Maybe you'll marry, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll have children, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll divorce at 40, maybe you'll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don't congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else's.
Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. Don't be afraid of it or of what other people think of it. It's the greatest instrument you'll ever own.
Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room.
Read the directions, even if you don't follow them.
Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly.
Get to know your parents. You never know when they'll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings. They're your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.
Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young.
Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard. Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft. Travel.
Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you'll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble, and children respected their elders.
Respect your elders.
Don't expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund. Maybe you'll have a wealthy spouse. But you never know when either one might run out.
Don't mess too much with your hair or by the time you're 40 it will look 85.
Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it's worth.
But trust me on the sunscreen."

Quotes from Eat, Pray, Love

All quotes are from Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. Page notations are simply to help me find the context again.

". . . when you sense a faint potentiality for happiness after such dark times you must grab onto the ankles of that happiness and not let go until it drags you face-first out of the dirt -- that is not selfishness, but obligation. You were given life; it is your duty (and also your entitlement as a human being) to find something beautiful within life, not matter how slight."

"Before you realize this truth, say the Yogis, you will always be in despair, a notion nicely expressed in this exasperated line from the Greek stoic philosopher Epictetus: 'You bear God within you, poor wretch, and you know it not.'"

"'Our whole business therefore in this life,' wrote Saint Augustine, rather yogically, 'is to restore to health the eye of the heart whereby God may be seen.'"

". . . you should never give yourself a chance to fall apart because, when you do, it becomes a tendency and it happens over and over again."

"'I've already given it twelve months, Richard.'
'Then give it six more. Just keep throwin' six months at it till it goes away. Stuff like this takes time.'"

"'Someday you're gonna look back on this moment of your life as such a sweet time of grieving. You'll see that you were in mourning and your heart was broken, but your life was changing and you were in the best possible place for it -- in a beautiful place of worship, surrounded by grace. Take this time, every minute of it. Let things work themselves out . . . '"

"'People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that's holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life. A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you , and then they leave. And thank God for it.'"

"'See, now that's your problem. You're wishin' too much, baby. You gotta stop wearing your wishbone where your backbone oughtta be.'"

"'. . . nothing pisses off a control freak more than life not goin' her way.'"

"Life, if you keep chasing it so hard, will drive you to death. Time -- when pursued like a bandit -- will behave like one; always remaining one county or one room ahead of you, changing its name and hair color to elude you, slipping out the back door of the motel just as you're banging through the lobby with your newest search warrant, leaving only a burning cigarette in the ashtray to taunt you."

"Letting go, of course, is a scary enterprise for those of us who believe that the world revolves only because it has a handle on the top of it which we personally turn, and that if we were to drop this handle for even a moment, well -- that would be the end of the universe."

"'There are only two questions that human beings have ever fought over, all through history. How much do you love me? and Who's in charge?' Everything else is somehow manageable."

"God isn't interested in watching you enact some performance of personality in order to comply with some crackpot notion you have about how a spiritual person looks or behaves."

". . . people universally tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will maybe descend upon you like fine weather if you're fortunate enough. But that's not how happiness works. Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it. If you don't, you will leak away your innate contentment."

"The karmic philosophy appeals to me on a metaphorical level because eve in one lifetime it's obvious how often we must repeat our same mistakes, banging our heads agains the same old addictions and compulsions, generating the same old miserable and often catastrophic consequences, until we can finally stop and fix it. This is the supreme lesson of karma (and also Western psychology, by the way) -- take care of the problems now, or else you'll just have to suffer again later when you screw everything up the next time. "

"'I know cure from broken heart.'. . . 'Vitamin E, get much sleep, drink much water, travel to a place far away from the person you loved, meditate and teach your hear that this is destiny.'"

'"So what can we do about the craziness of the world?" "Nothing." Ketut laughed, but with a dose of kindness. "This is nature of world. This is destiny. Worry about your craziness only -- make you in peace."'

"I watched them, thinking that little girls who make their mothers live grow up to be such powerful women."

"'It's still two human beings trying to get along, so it's going to become complicated. And love is always complicated. But still humans must try to love each other, darling. We must get our hearts broken sometimes. This is a good sign, having a broken heart. It means we have tried something.'"

"'To lose balance sometimes in love is part of living a balanced life.'"

"Naked in the morning sun, with nothing but a light blanket wrapped over my shoulders, I disappear in grace, hovering over the void like a tiny seashell balanced on a teaspoon."

"In the end, though, maybe we must all give up trying to pay back the people in this world who sustain our lives. In the end, maybe it's wiser to surrender before the miraculous scope of human generosity and to just keep saying thank you, forever and sincerely, for as long as we have voices."

"There is no greater commandment than this: Love your neighbor as yourself."

Earth Day

"Everything in nature has a trademark, God's trademark: the stripes on a shell and the stripes on a zebra; the grain of the wood and the veins of the dry leaf; the markings on the dragonfly's wings and the pattern of stars on a photographic plate; the panther's coat and the epidermal cells of the lily petal; the structure of atoms and galaxies. All bear God's fingerprints." --Ernesto Cardenal, Abide In Love

"My God, what a world. There is no accounting for one second of it." -- Annie Dillard

Paine, Thomas

"An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself." -- Thomas Paine

The Great Collection of Wonderous Quotes

"It's not cheap, honey. It's free. That's what makes it grace." -- Camille

"Religion is for the people who don't want to go to Hell. Christianity is for people who've already been there." -- Lee Clower

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.