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“The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear”
Aung San Suu Kyi
[ "civil-rights" ]
“I hope you will have a wonderful year, that you'll dream dangerously and outrageously, that you'll make something that didn't exist before you made it, that you will be loved and that you will be liked, and that you will have people to love and to like in return. And, most importantly (because I think there should be more kindness and more wisdom in the world right now), that you will, when you need to be, be wise, and that you will always be kind.”
Neil Gaiman
[ "kindness" ]
“It's the job that's never started as takes longest to finish.”
J.R.R. Tolkien,
[ "fellowship", "gamgee", "hobbit", "samwise", "tolkien" ]
“I am not proud, but I am happy; and happiness blinds, I think, more than pride.”
Alexandre Dumas,
[ "happiness", "pride" ]
“I don’t trust anybody. Not anybody. And the more that I care about someone, the more sure I am they’re going to get tired of me and take off.”
Rainbow Rowell,
[ "fear", "friendship", "tired", "trust" ]
“I can only note that the past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time. It expands later, and thus we don't have complete emotions about the present, only about the past.”
Virginia Woolf
[ "beauty", "emotion", "history", "memory", "recollection" ]
“It takes courage to love, but pain through love is the purifying fire which those who love generously know. We all know people who are so much afraid of pain that they shut themselves up like clams in a shell and, giving out nothing, receive nothing and therefore shrink until life is a mere living death.”
Eleanor Roosevelt
[ "love" ]
“Learn from the mistakes of others. You can never live long enough to make them all yourself.”
Groucho Marx
[]
“Great heroes need great sorrows and burdens, or half their greatness goes unnoticed. It is all part of the fairy tale.”
Peter S. Beagle,
[ "heroes", "inspirational" ]
“I have faith that God will show you the answer. But you have to understand that sometimes it takes a while to be able to recognize what God wants you to do. That's how it often is. God's voice is usually nothing more than a whisper, and you have to listen very carefully to hear it. But other times, in those rarest of moments, the answer is obvious and rings as loud as a church bell.”
Nicholas Sparks,
[ "god" ]
“There's nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be...”
John Lennon
[ "beatles", "destiny", "fate", "life" ]
“Everything must be made as simple as possible. But not simpler.”
Albert Einstein
[ "einstein", "paraphrased", "science", "systems" ]
“I guess that’s just part of loving people: You have to give things up. Sometimes you even have to give them up.”
Lauren Oliver,
[ "give", "love", "sacrifice" ]
“They say I'm old-fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast!”
Dr. Seuss
[ "life", "time" ]
“Words dazzle and deceive because they are mimed by the face. But black words on a white page are the soul laid bare.”
Guy de Maupassant
[ "books" ]
“When God Created Mothers" When the Good Lord was creating mothers, He was into His sixth day of "overtime" when the angel appeared and said. "You're doing a lot of fiddling around on this one." And God said, "Have you read the specs on this order?" She has to be completely washable, but not plastic. Have 180 moveable parts...all replaceable. Run on black coffee and leftovers. Have a lap that disappears when she stands up. A kiss that can cure anything from a broken leg to a disappointed love affair. And six pairs of hands." The angel shook her head slowly and said. "Six pairs of hands.... no way." It's not the hands that are causing me problems," God remarked, "it's the three pairs of eyes that mothers have to have." That's on the standard model?" asked the angel. God nodded. One pair that sees through closed doors when she asks, 'What are you kids doing in there?' when she already knows. Another here in the back of her head that sees what she shouldn't but what she has to know, and of course the ones here in front that can look at a child when he goofs up and say. 'I understand and I love you' without so much as uttering a word." God," said the angel touching his sleeve gently, "Get some rest tomorrow...." I can't," said God, "I'm so close to creating something so close to myself. Already I have one who heals herself when she is sick...can feed a family of six on one pound of hamburger...and can get a nine year old to stand under a shower." The angel circled the model of a mother very slowly. "It's too soft," she sighed. But tough!" said God excitedly. "You can imagine what this mother can do or endure." Can it think?" Not only can it think, but it can reason and compromise," said the Creator. Finally, the angel bent over and ran her finger across the cheek. There's a leak," she pronounced. "I told You that You were trying to put too much into this model." It's not a leak," said the Lord, "It's a tear." What's it for?" It's for joy, sadness, disappointment, pain, loneliness, and pride." You are a genius, " said the angel. Somberly, God said, "I didn't put it there.”
Erma Bombeck,
[ "children", "family", "humor", "love", "mothers", "mothers-day", "sadness" ]
“Sorrow is how we learn to love. Your heart isn't breaking. It hurts because it's getting larger. The larger it gets, the more love it holds.”
Rita Mae Brown,
[ "love" ]
“
Loneliness is the human condition. Cultivate it. The way it tunnels into you allows your soul room to grow. Never expect to outgrow loneliness. Never hope to find people who will understand you, someone to fill that space. An intelligent, sensitive person is the exception, the very great exception. If you expect to find people who will understand you, you will grow murderous with disappointment. The best you'll ever do is to understand yourself, know what it is that you want, and not let the cattle stand in your way.”
Janet Fitch,
[ "loneliness" ]
“The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.”
George Orwell
[ "history", "propaganda", "rewriting-history" ]
“You do have a story inside you; it lies articulate and waiting to be written — behind your silence and your suffering.”
Anne Rice
[ "anne-rice", "pandora" ]
“We sit silently and watch the world around us. This has taken a lifetime to learn. It seems only the old are able to sit next to one another and not say anything and still feel content. The young, brash and impatient, must always break the silence. It is a waste, for silence is pure. Silence is holy. It draws people together because only those who are comfortable with each other can sit without speaking. This is the great paradox.”
Nicholas Sparks,
[ "perception", "silence" ]
“Trains are great dirty smoky things," said Will. "You won't like it." Tessa was unmoved. "I won't know if I like it until I try it, will I?" "I've never swum naked in the Thames before, but I know I wouldn't like it." "But think how entertaining for sightseers," said Tessa, and she saw Jem duck his head to hide the quick flash of his grin.”
Cassandra Clare,
[ "clockwork-prince", "humor", "jem-carstairs", "teasing", "tessa-gray", "will-herondale" ]
“When we're incomplete, we're always searching for somebody to complete us. When, after a few years or a few months of a relationship, we find that we're still unfulfilled, we blame our partners and take up with somebody more promising. This can go on and on--series polygamy--until we admit that while a partner can add sweet dimensions to our lives, we, each of us, are responsible for our own fulfillment. Nobody else can provide it for us, and to believe otherwise is to delude ourselves dangerously and to program for eventual failure every relationship we enter.”
Tom Robbins
[ "relationships" ]
“Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another.”
Toni Morrison,
[ "freedom", "self" ]
“Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before.”
Mae West
[ "evil", "temptation" ]
“When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies but the pack survives.”
George R.R. Martin,
[ "friendship", "loneliness" ]
“An Unbreakable Vow?" said Ron, looking stunned. "Nah, he can’t have.... Are you sure?""Yes I’m sure," said Harry. "Why, what does it mean?""Well, you can’t break an Unbreakable Vow...""I’d worked that much out for myself, funnily enough.”
J.K. Rowling,
[ "harry-potter", "humor", "malfoy", "ron-weasley", "snape", "unbreakable-vow" ]
“Curiouser and curiouser!”
Lewis Carroll,
[ "alice-in-wonderland" ]
“Your silence will not protect you.”
Audre Lorde,
[ "protection", "silence", "speech" ]
“The past is always tense, the future perfect.”
Zadie Smith
[ "future", "grammar", "language", "past" ]
“It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”
Charles Dickens,
[ "last-words", "self-sacrifice" ]
“Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts. I was better after I had cried, than before--more sorry, more aware of my own ingratitude, more gentle.”
Charles Dickens,
[ "crying", "heartfelt", "shame", "sorrow", "tears" ]
“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”
Nelson Mandela
[ "bravery", "courage", "fear" ]
“Atticus, he was real nice.""Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them.”
Harper Lee,
[ "inspirational" ]
“He awoke each morning with the desire to do right, to be a good and meaningful person, to be, as simple as it sounded and as impossible as it actually was, happy. And during the course of each day his heart would descend from his chest into his stomach. By early afternoon he was overcome by the feeling that nothing was right, or nothing was right for him, and by the desire to be alone. By evening he was fulfilled: alone in the magnitude of his grief, alone in his aimless guilt, alone even in his loneliness. I am not sad, he would repeat to himself over and over, I am not sad. As if he might one day convince himself. Or fool himself. Or convince others--the only thing worse than being sad is for others to know that you are sad. I am not sad. I am not sad. Because his life had unlimited potential for happiness, insofar as it was an empty white room. He would fall asleep with his heart at the foot of his bed, like some domesticated animal that was no part of him at all. And each morning he would wake with it again in the cupboard of his rib cage, having become a little heavier, a little weaker, but still pumping. And by the midafternoon he was again overcome with the desire to be somewhere else, someone else, someone else somewhere else. I am not sad.”
Jonathan Safran Foer,
[ "sadness" ]
“Patience, grasshopper," said Maia. "Good things come to those who wait.""I always thought that was 'Good things come to those who do the wave,'" said Simon. "No wonder I've been so confused all my life.”
Cassandra Clare,
[ "maia", "patience", "simon", "wit" ]
“The Very first moment I beheld him, my heart was irrevocably gone.”
Jane Austen,
[ "romance" ]
“The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.”
J.K. Rowling,
[ "bible", "death", "enemy" ]
“To err is human, to forgive, divine.”
Alexander Pope,
[ "failure", "forgiveness", "humanity", "mistakes" ]
“I'd rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not.”
Kurt Cobain
[ "inspirational" ]
“I am too intelligent, too demanding, and too resourceful for anyone to be able to take charge of me entirely. No one knows me or loves me completely. I have only myself”
Simone de Beauvoir
[ "feminism" ]
“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.”
C.S. Lewis,
[ "fear", "grief", "sorrow" ]
“Whenever you feel like criticizing any one...just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald
[ "empathy", "thankful", "understanding", "understanding-others" ]
“So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep, even when they're busy doing things they think are important. This is because they're chasing the wrong things. The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.”
Mitch Albom,
[ "inspirational" ]
“All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
[ "belief", "experience", "faith", "judging-from-experience", "religion", "unseen" ]
“To be fully seen by somebody, then, and be loved anyhow - this is a human offering that can border on miraculous.”
Elizabeth Gilbert,
[ "acceptance", "being-loved", "love", "marriage", "relationships", "truth" ]
“In your light I learn how to love. In your beauty, how to make poems. You dance inside my chest where no-one sees you, but sometimes I do, and that sight becomes this art.”
Rumi
[ "love" ]
“The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword. If you would take a man's life, you owe it to him to look into his eyes and hear his final words. And if you cannot bear to do that, then perhaps the man does not deserve to die.”
George R.R. Martin,
[ "honor", "justice", "personal-responsibility", "responsibility" ]
“I don't know who invented high heels, but all women owe him a lot!”
Marilyn Monroe
[ "fashion" ]
“The major problem—one of the major problems, for there are several—one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them. To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.”
Douglas Adams,
[ "elections", "hg2g", "politics", "rulers" ]
“Let the improvement of yourself keep you so busy that you have no time to criticize others.”
Roy T. Bennett,
[ "improvement", "inspiration", "inspirational", "inspirational-attitude", "inspirational-life", "inspirational-quotes", "inspire", "inspiring", "leadership", "learning", "life", "life-and-living", "life-lessons", "life-quotes", "living", "motivation", "motivational", "optimism", "optimistic", "positive", "positive-affirmation", "positive-life", "positive-thinking", "success" ]
“What is family? They were the people who claimed you. In good, in bad, in parts or in whole, they were the ones who showed up, who stayed in there, regardless. It wasn't just about blood relations or shared chromosomes, but something wider, bigger. We had many families over time. Our family of origin, the family we created, and the groups you moved through while all of this was happening: friends, lovers, sometimes even strangers. None of them perfect, and we couldn't expect them to be. You can't make any one person your world. The trick was to take what each could give you and build your world from it.”
Sarah Dessen,
[ "ruby" ]
“Sometimes I wonder if there's something wrong with me. Perhaps I've spent too long in the company of my literary romantic heroes, and consequently my ideals and expectations are far too high.”
E.L. James,
[ "romance" ]
“If the real world were a book, it would never find a publisher. Overlong, detailed to the point of distraction-and ultimately, without a major resolution.”
Jasper Fforde,
[ "life", "world" ]
“It's going to be all right, sir," Harry said over and over again, more worried by Dumbledore's silence than he had been by his weakened voice. "We're nearly there ... I can Apparate us both back ... don't worry ...""I am not worried, Harry," said Dumbledore, his voice a little stronger despite the freezing water. "I am with you.”
J.K. Rowling,
[ "dumbledore", "harry-potter", "hope" ]
“Second star to the right and straight on 'til morning. ”
J.M. Barrie,
[ "childhood-memory" ]
“You're the first Shadowhunter I've ever met." “That’s too bad,â€� said Jace, “since all the others you meet from now on will be a terrible letdown.”
Cassandra Clare,
[ "city-of-fallen-angels", "jace-lightwood", "jordan-kyle" ]
“When will you learn that there isn't a word for everything?”
Nicole Krauss,
[ "power-of-words" ]
“Alec looked at her and shook his head. "How do you manage never to get mud on your clothes?"Isabelle shrugged philosophically. "I'm pure at heart. It repels the dirt.”
Cassandra Clare,
[ "alec-lightwood", "city-of-ashes", "clean", "dirt", "humor", "isabelle-lightwood", "sarcasm" ]
“Evil is always possible. And goodness is eternally difficult.”
Anne Rice,
[ "good-evil" ]
“When you have lost hope, you have lost everything. And when you think all is lost, when all is dire and bleak, there is always hope.”
Pittacus Lore,
[ "hope" ]
“What a blessing it is to love books as I love them;- to be able to converse with the dead, and to live amidst the unreal!”
Thomas Babington Macaulay,
[ "books", "reading" ]
“Why are you worrying about YOU-KNOW-WHO, when you should be worrying about YOU-NO-POO? The constipation sensation that's gripping the nation!”
J.K. Rowling,
[ "humor" ]
“Words, I think, are such unpredictable creatures. No gun, no sword, no army or king will ever be more powerful than a sentence. Swords may cut and kill, but words will stab and stay, burying themselves in our bones to become corpses we carry into the future, all the time digging and failing to rip their skeletons from our flesh.”
Tahereh Mafi,
[ "adam", "ignite-me" ]
“Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken.”
Albert Camus
[ "beatitudes", "blessed", "unbreakable" ]
“Magnus, standing by the door, snapped his fingers impatiently. "Move it along, teenagers. The only person who gets to canoodle in my bedroom is my magnificent self.""Canoodle?" repeated Clary, never having heard the word before."Magnificent?" repeated Jace, who was just being nasty. Magnus growled. The growl sounded like "Get out.”
Cassandra Clare,
[ "canoodle", "city-of-bones", "clary-fray", "humor", "jace-wayland", "magnificent", "magnus-bane" ]
“Man only likes to count his troubles; he doesn't calculate his happiness.”
Fyodor Dostoevsky,
[ "happiness", "man", "trouble" ]
“I'm killing time while I wait for life to shower me with meaning and happiness.”
Bill Watterson
[ "calvin-and-hobbes", "humor", "life" ]
“The best way to cheer yourself is to try to cheer someone else up.”
Mark Twain
[ "happiness" ]
“I was dead until you found me, though I breathed. I was sightless, though I could see. And then you came...and I was awakened.”
J.R. Ward,
[ "zsadist" ]
“You’re dangerous,â€� he says.“Why?â€�“Because you make me believe in the impossible”
Simone Elkeles,
[ "romance" ]
“Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.”
Aristotle
[ "education", "ethics" ]
“The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.”
Plato
[ "philosophy" ]
“Once you have read a book you care about, some part of it is always with you.”
Louis L'Amour,
[ "books", "inspirational", "reading" ]
“Ignore those that make you fearful and sad, that degrade you back towards disease and death.”
Rumi Jalalud-Din
[ "inspiration" ]
“And then something invisible snapped insider her, and that which had come together commenced to fall apart.”
John Green,
[ "depressing", "wise" ]
“The two hardest tests on the spiritual road are the patience to wait for the right moment and the courage not to be disappointed with what we encounter.”
Paulo Coelho,
[ "appreciation", "courage", "patience", "trials-of-life" ]
“Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.”
Voltaire
[ "absurdities", "atheism", "atrocities", "barbarity", "injustice", "religion", "skepticism" ]
“I write to give myself strength. I write to be the characters that I am not. I write to explore all the things I'm afraid of. ”
Joss Whedon
[ "writing" ]
“Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new after all.”
Abraham Lincoln
[ "books", "originality", "unique" ]
“You might want to lie down," Magnus advised. "I find that it helps when the crushing sense of horrible realization sets in.”
Cassandra Clare,
[ "humorous" ]
“The world was collapsing, and the only thing that really mattered to me was that she was alive.”
Rick Riordan,
[ "infatuation", "love", "obsession" ]
“Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands.”
Anne Frank
[ "growing-up", "innocence", "inspirational", "parenting", "personal-responsibility", "right-of-passage", "self-determination", "self-responsibility" ]
“Um...is that thing tame?" Frank said.The horse whinnied angrily."I don't think so," Percy guessed. "He just said, 'I will trample you to death, silly Chinese Canadian baby man'.”
Rick Riordan,
[ "funny", "silly-chinese-canadian-baby-man" ]
“This is how you do it: you sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until its done. It's that easy, and that hard.”
Neil Gaiman
[ "writing" ]
“They're certainly entitled to think that, and they're entitled to full respect for their opinions... but before I can live with other folks I've got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.”
Harper Lee,
[ "integrity" ]
“In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since."Whenever you feel like criticizing any one," he told me, "just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald,
[ "f-scott-fitzgerald", "narrator", "the-great-gatsby" ]
“You should write because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different words on a page. Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write.”
Annie Proulx
[ "reading", "words", "writing" ]
“People tend to complicate their own lives, as if living weren't already complicated enough.”
Carlos Ruiz Zafón,
[ "life-lessons" ]
“make a radical change in your lifestyle and begin to boldly do things which you may previously never have thought of doing, or been too hesitant to attempt. So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservation, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun. If you want to get more out of life, you must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life that will at first appear to you to be crazy. But once you become accustomed to such a life you will see its full meaning and its incredible beauty.”
Jon Krakauer,
[ "conformity", "life", "novelty", "security" ]
“Maybe our girlfriends are our soulmates and guys are just people to have fun with.”
Candace Bushnell,
[ "dating", "humor", "relationships", "soulmates" ]
“The earth has its music for those who will listen”
Reginald Vincent Holmes,
[ "misattributed-george-santayana" ]
“When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one's self, and one always ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.”
Oscar Wilde,
[ "romance" ]
“A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.”
Charles Darwin,
[ "dare", "inspirational", "life", "science", "time", "value", "waste" ]
“We do not need magic to transform our world. We carry all of the power we need inside ourselves already.”
J.K. Rowling,
[ "magic" ]
“When I say it's you I like, I'm talking about that part of you that knows that life is far more than anything you can ever see or hear or touch. That deep part of you that allows you to stand for those things without which humankind cannot survive. Love that conquers hate, peace that rises triumphant over war, and justice that proves more powerful than greed.”
Fred Rogers
[ "friends", "friendship", "love", "peace" ]
“I wonder how many people don't get the one they want, but end up with the one they're supposed to be with.”
Fannie Flagg,
[ "couples", "deep", "dissapointment", "fate", "heart", "inspirational", "love", "people", "romance" ]
“When we are young, the words are scattered all around us. As they are assembled by experience, so also are we, sentence by sentence, until the story takes shape.”
Louise Erdrich,
[ "athe-plague-of-dives" ]
“All happiness depends on courage and work.”
Honoré de Balzac
[ "courage", "happiness", "work" ]
“Be thankful for what you have; you'll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don't have, you will never, ever have enough.”
Oprah Winfrey
[ "appreciation", "contentment", "dissatisfaction", "life", "perception", "positivity", "thankfulness", "thanksgiving" ]