c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
See? See what you can do? Never mind you can’t tell one letter from another, never mind you born a slave, never mind you lose your name, never mind your daddy dead, never mind nothing. Here, this here, is what a man can do if he puts his mind to it and his back in it. Stop sniveling,’ [the land] said. ‘Stop picking around the edges of the world. Take advantage, and if you can’t take advantage, take disadvantage. We live here. On this planet, in this nation, in this county right here. Nowhere else! We got a home in this rock, don’t you see! Nobody starving in my home; nobody crying in my home, and if I got a home you got one too! Grab it. Grab this land! Take it, hold it, my brothers, make it, my brothers, shake it, squeeze it, turn it, twist it, beat it, kick it, kiss it, whip it, stomp it, dig it, plow it, seed it, reap it, rent it, buy it, sell it, own it, build it, multiply it, and pass it on – can you hear me? Pass it on!
— Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon
I went to the school and put it to William, particularly, that if you find someone you love in life, you must hang onto it, and look after it, and if you were lucky enough to find someone who loved you, then you must protect it.
— Diana, Princess of Wales
He who defends with love will be secure; Heaven will save him, and protect him with love.
— Lao Tzu
I believe that life is a prize, but to live doesn't mean you're alive.
— Nicki Minaj
I am striving to give back the Divine in myself to the Divine in the All.
— Plotinus
Who we are in the present includes who we were in the past.
— Fred Rogers, Life's Journeys According to Mister Rogers: Things to Remember Along the Way
Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. what a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.
— Henry David Thoreau
Humans have come into being for the sake of each other, so either teach them, or learn to bear them.
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
Arise, awake, stop not till the goal is reached.
— Swami Vivekananda, Meditation and Its Methods According to Swami Vivekananda
But as I have noticed on more than one occaision, life itself is unfair, and there is no complaint department, so we might as well accept things the way they happen, clean up the mess, and move on.
— Jeff Lindsay, Dexter in the Dark
It is when you lose sight of yourself, that you lose your way. To keep your truth in sight you must keep yourself in sight and the world to you should be a mirror to reflect to you your image; the world should be a mirror that you reflect upon.
— C. JoyBell C.
Anyone who is steady in his determination for the advanced stage of spiritual realization and can equally tolerate the onslaughts of distress and happiness is certainly a person eligible for liberation.
— A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda, The Bhagavad-gita
Nothing like a nighttime stroll to give you ideas.
— J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
The creatures that inhabit this earth--be they human beings or animals--are here to contribute, each in its own particular way, to the beauty and prosperity of the world.
— Dalai Lama XIV
Everytime I plant a seed,he say kill it before it grow, he say kill it before they grow.
— Bob Marley
When you become the image of your own imagination, it's the most powerful thing you could ever do.
— RuPaul
Always Remember to take your Vitamins: Take your Vitamin A for ACTION, Vitamin B for Belief, Vitamin C for Confidence ,Vitamin D for Discipline, Vitamin E for Enthusiasm!!
— Pablo
In imagination she sailed over storied seas that wash the distant shining shores of "faëry lands forlorn," where lost Atlantis and Elysium lie, with the evening star for pilot, to the land of Heart's Desire. And she was richer in those dreams than in realities; for things seen pass away, but the things that are unseen are eternal.
— L.M. Montgomery, Anne of the Island
Dreams are the language of God.
— Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
Abandon the urge to simplify everything, to look for formulas and easy answers, and to begin to think multidimensionally, to glory in the mystery and paradoxes of life, not to be dismayed by the multitude of causes and consequences that are inherent in each experience -- to appreciate the fact that life is complex.
— M. Scott Peck
Better to illuminate than merely to shine to deliver to others contemplated truths than merely to contemplate.
— Thomas Aquinas
Blessed are the weird people: poets, misfits, writersmystics, painters, troubadoursfor they teach us to see the world through different eyes.
— Jacob Nordby, Pearls of Wisdom: 30 Inspirational Ideas to live your best life now
And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
— Martin Luther King Jr.
The important thing is not the object of love, but the emotion itself.
— Gore Vidal
I ended my first book with the words 'no answer.' I know now, Lord, why you utter no answer. You are yourself the answer. Before your face questions die away. What other answer would suffice? Only words, words; to be led out to battle against other words.
— C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces
There will always be people who say it does not exist because they cannot have it. But I tell you it is true and that you have it and that you are lucky even if you die tomorrow.
— Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls
Better not to give in to it. It takes ten times as long to put yourself back together as it does to fall apart.
— Finnick Odair Mockingjay
I've never quite believed that one chance is all I get
— Anne Tyler
Change isn't easy. Changing the way you live means changing the way you think, means changing what you believe about life. That's hard.
— Dean Koontz, One Door Away from Heaven
To accomplish great things, we must not only act but also dream, not only plan, but also believe!
— Anatole France
We must pass through the darkness, to reach the light.
— Albert Pike
Mutual caring relationships require kindness and patience, tolerance, optimism, joy in the other's achievements, confidence in oneself, and the ability to give without undue thought of gain.
— Fred Rogers, The World According to Mister Rogers: Important Things to Remember
The difference between false memories and true ones is thesame as for jewels: it is always the false ones that look themost real, the most brilliant.
— Salvador Dalí
Christ is not valued at all, unless he is valued above all.
— Augustine of Hippo
To get what you want, you have to know exactly how much you are willing to give up.
— C.S. Pacat, Captive Prince: Volume Two
Real love never fails.
— Karen Kingsbury, Forever
Great acts are made up of small deeds.
— Lao Tzu
Great spirits have always encountered opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly.
— Albert Einstein
I have never felt that anything really mattered but knowing that you stood for the things in which you believed and had done the very best you could.
— Eleanor Roosevelt
A brother is like gold and a friend is like diamond. If gold cracks you can melt it and make it just like it was before. If a diamond cracks, it can never be like it was before.
— Hazrat Ali Ibn Abu-Talib A.S
It is foolish to tear one’s hair in grief, as though sorrow would be made less by baldness.
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
When a good man is hurt, all who would be called good must suffer with him.
— Euripides
No other success can compensate for failure in the home.
— J. E. McCulloch
Sometimes God makes better choices for us than we could have ever made for ourselves.
— Jennifer Hudson Taylor, Highland Blessings
take what you can from your dreamsMake them real as anythingIt takes the work out of the courage
— Dave Matthews Band
For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but of power and of love and of calm and well balanced mind and discipline and self-control.
— Anonymous, Holy Bible: King James Version
Our great human adventure is the evolution of consciousness. We are in this life to enlarge the soul, liberate the spirit, and light up the brain.
— Tom Robbins, Wild Ducks Flying Backward
Once time is lit, it will burn whether or not you're breathing it in. Even after smoke becomes air, there is the memory of smoke. I am seeing as if by the light of a match, a glimpse of my life and having it feel right.
— David Levithan, The Realm of Possibility
Every day God invites us on the same kind of adventure. It's not a trip where He sends us a rigid itinerary, He simply invites us. God asks what it is He's made us to love, what it is that captures our attention, what feeds that deep indescribable need of our souls to experience the richness of the world He made. And then, leaning over us, He whispers, "Let's go do that together.
— Bob Goff
It always helps to think about other people instead of ourselves.
— Ellen DeGeneres, Seriously... I'm Kidding
The moral of the story is even though that seemed like the end of the world back then, right now I can look back on it and laugh. And if anyone is going through something similar right now just know it will get better.
— Phil Lester
What is she to you anyway?""Here's my answer captain. She's the thing that made this all okay-the threadbare coats and the old boots and the guns that jams when you most need them to fire, the loneliness of knowing that you don't matter, that you will never matter, the fact that you're just another body, another uniform to be sent into the fold or the frost, another good boy who knows his place, who does his job, who doesn't ask questions, who will lie down and die and be forgotten. What is she? She's everything, you dumb son of a bitch.
— Leigh Bardugo, Shadow and Bone
God's extraordinary work is most often done by ordinary people in the seeming obscurity of a home and family.
— Neal A. Maxwell
The universe is a million billion light-years wide, and every inch of it would kill you if you went there. This is the position of the universe with regards to human life.
— Martin Amis
I used to think the world was broken down by tribes,' I said. 'By Black and White. By Indian and White. But I know this isn't true. The world is only broken into two tribes: the people who are assholes and the people who are not.
— Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
Love me or hate me, i swear it won't make or break me.
— Lil Wayne
To make real friends you have to put yourself out there. Sometimes people will let you down, but you can't let that stop you. If you get hurt, you just pick yourself up, dust off your feelings, and try again.
— Kristin Hannah, Firefly Lane
Education is experience, and the essence of experience is self-reliance.
— T.H. White, The Once and Future King
Life is 10 percent what happens to you and ninety percent how you respond to it.
— Lou Holtz
follow your heart! (sppotedleafs motto)
— Erin Hunter, Into the Wild
Approval is overrated...Approval and disapproval alike satisfy those who deliver it more than those who receive it. I don't care for approval, and I don't mind doing without.
— Gregory Maguire
You would have made a fine warrior, you know that?"I am one. Death is my enemy."Yeah, it is, isn't it." God, it made such sense that he'd bonded with her. She was a fighter… like him. "Your scalpel's your dagger."Yup.
— J.R. Ward, Lover Unbound
Painful as it may be, a significant emotional event can be the catalyst for choosing a direction that serves us - and those around us - more effectively. Look for the learning.
— Louisa May Alcott
Dancing in all its forms cannot be excluded from the curriculum of all noble education; dancing with the feet, with ideas, with words, and, need I add that one must also be able to dance with the pen?
— Friedrich Nietzsche
No matter how safe and beautiful it is, a cage is still a cage.
— Jessica Spotswood, Born Wicked
In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can't build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery and death.
— Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl
As you walk through forestsor the meadows of your mind,Stop and talk to those you fearGood friendships you may find
— Stephen Cosgrove, Buttermilk Bear
What affects one in a major way, affects all in a minor way.
— Martin Luther King Jr.
Everyone has a hidden agenda. Except me!
— Michael Crichton
Too many people spend too much time trying to perfect something before they actually do it. Instead of waiting for perfection, run with what you go, and fix it along the way…
— Paul Arden
If I were given the opportunity to present a gift to the next generation, it would be the ability for each individual to learn to laugh at himself.
— Charles M. Schulz
I want you to go back into the barrack and tell the men to come out after the storm. Tell them to look up at me tied here. Tell them I’ll open my eyes and look back at them, and they’ll know hat I survived.
— Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings
A sense of calm came over me. More and more often I found myself thinking, "This is where I belong. This is what I came into this world to do.
— Jane Goodall
Her burdens were her own and burdens were for shoulders strong enough to bear them.
— Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind
It is necessary to hope... for hope itself is happiness.
— Samuel Johnson
The truth was this: Love is a decision.
— Karen Kingsbury, Redemption
Revenge is not sweet
—  it is gloomy and a waste of time.
In order to know who you are you need to know God is.
— Annette Hoggs-Jackson
I learned a lot from the stories my uncle, aunts and grandparents told me: that no one is perfect but most people are good; that people can’t be judged by their worst or weakest moments; that harsh judgements can make hypocrites of us all; that a lot of life is just showing up and hanging on; that laughter is often the best, and sometimes the only response to pain.Perhaps most important, I learned that everyone has a story – of dreams and nightmares, hope and heartache, love and loss, courage and fear, sacrifice and selfishness. All my life I’ve been interested in other people’s stories. I wanted to know them, understand them, feel them. When I grew up into politics, I always felt the main point of my work was to people a chance to have better stories. - Page 15, Paragraph 5, ‘My Life’ by Bill Clinton. –Hard cover version-
— Bill Clinton, My Life
There isn't time, so brief is life, for bickerings, apologies, heartburnings, callings to account. There is only time for loving, and but an instant, so to speak, for that.
— Mark Twain
Some people come into our lives and quickly go. Some people move our souls to dance. They awaken us to a new understanding with the passing whisper of their wisdom. Some people make the sky more beautiful to gaze upon. They stay in our lives for awhile, leave footprints on our hearts, and we are never, ever the same.
— Flavia Weedn
We carry about us the burden of what thousands of people have said and the memories of all our misfortunes. To abandon all that is to be alone, and the mind that is alone is not only innocent but young -- not in time or age, but young, innocent, alive at whatever age -- and only such a mind can see that which is truth and that which is not measurable by words.
— Jiddu Krishnamurti
You are doing God's work. You are doing it wonderfully well. He is blessing you, and He will bless you, --even--no, -especially--when your days and your nights may be most challenging. Like the woman who anonymously, meekly, perhaps even with hesitation and some embarrassment, fought her way through the crowd just to touch the hem of the Master's garment, so Christ will say to the women who worry and wonder and weep over their responsibility as mothers, `Daughter, be of good comfort; thy faith hath made thee whole.' And it will make your children whole as well.
— Jeffrey R. Holland
We all have same beginning (BIRTH), and we will have same ending (DEATH). So how different can we be?
— Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie
You will make all kinds of mistakes
—  but as long as you are generous and true and also fierce you cannot hurt the world or even seriously distress her. She was meant to be wooed and won by youth.
living eulogy.she danced.she sang. she took.she gave.she loved.she created.she dissented. she enlivened.she saw. she grew. she sweated.she changed.she learned. she laughed.she shed her skin.she bled on the pages of her days,she walked through walls,she lived with intention.
— Mary Anne Radmacher
just remember: i love you, and love yourselves. 'cause, little monsters, you were born that way baby.
— Lady Gaga, Lady Gaga: The Fame music book
You are stronger than you know.
— Lori Osterman
Work is a blessing. God has so arranged the world that work is necessary, and He gives us hands and strength to do it. The enjoyment of leisure would be nothing if we had only leisure. It is the joy of work well done that enables us to enjoy rest, just as it is the experiences of hunger and thirst that make food and drink such pleasures.
— Elisabeth Elliot, Discipline: The Glad Surrender
That's what you want to do? Then nothing beats a trial but a failure. Give it everything you've got. I've told you many times, 'Cant do is like Dont Care.' Neither of them have a home.
— Maya Angelou
There are few sources of energy so powerful as a procrastinating college student.
— Paul Graham, Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age
We Greeks believe that a man who takes no part in public affairs is not merely lazy, but good for nothing
— Thucydides
Read books. Care about things. Get excited. Try not to be too down on youself. Enjoy the ever present game of knowing.
— Hank Green
Forget about self-image and self-judgment. It's about self-love, and no one teaches you that at school. No one teaches you that if you accept and love yourself, nothing and no one can touch you. This is the only face and body you're ever going to get, so be comfortable and happy in it. Own it. Own every aspect of who you are and present it to the world with the utmost pride.
— Connor Franta, A Work in Progress
And to all this she must yet add something more substantial, in the improvement of her mind by extensive reading.
— Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
Bunkum and tummyrot! You'll never get anywhere if you go about what-iffing like that. Would Columbus have discovered America if he'd said 'What if I sink on the way over? What if I meet pirates? What if I never come back?' He wouldn't even have started.
— Roald Dahl
The moment you stop worrying about success is when success will happen.
— Glenn Beck
When one flower blooms spring awakens everywhere
— John O'Donohue
The warrior is Here, Now.
— Dan Millman, Way of the Peaceful Warrior: A Book That Changes Lives
Wise men put their trust in ideas and not in circumstances.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
Trust men and they will be true to you
—  treat them greatly and they will show themselves great.
If you are a writer you locate yourself behind a wall of silence and no matter what you are doing, driving a car or walking or doing housework you can still be writing, because you have that space.
— Joyce Carol Oates
No one invites you to the top - you have to claw your way up. When you get there, you will sit with the others who were also uninvited - giggling. 
— Staness Jonekos
As I go clowning my sentimental way into eternity, wrestling with all my problems of estrangement and communion, sincerity and simulation, ambition and acquiescence, I shuttle between worrying whether I matter at all and whether anything else matters but me.
— Stephen Fry, Moab Is My Washpot
Nothing is so much calculated to lead people to forsake sin as to take them by the hand and to watch over them in tenderness. When persons manifest the least kindness and love to me, O what pow'r it has over my mind.
— Joseph Smith Jr.
‎"What does it mean if i'm afraid? Does it mean something bad is going to happen?" "No, it doesn't mean something bad is going to happen. It just means that you have the chance to be brave.
— C. JoyBell C.
We often think of peace as the absence of war, that if powerful countries would reduce their weapon arsenals, we could have peace. But if we look deeply into the weapons, we see our own minds- our own prejudices, fears and ignorance. Even if we transport all the bombs to the moon, the roots of war and the roots of bombs are still there, in our hearts and minds, and sooner or later we will make new bombs. To work for peace is to uproot war from ourselves and from the hearts of men and women. To prepare for war, to give millions of men and women the opportunity to practice killing day and night in their hearts, is to plant millions of seeds of violence, anger, frustration, and fear that will be passed on for generations to come. 
— Thich Nhat Hanh, Living Buddha, Living Christ
Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men.
— John F. Kennedy
Dear Human:You've got it all wrong.You didn't come here to master unconditional love. This is where you came from and where you'll return.You came here to learn personal love.Universal love.Messy love.Sweaty Love.Crazy love.Broken love.Whole love.Infused with divinity.Lived through the grace of stumbling.Demonstrated through the beauty of... messing up.Often.You didn't come here to be perfect, you already are.You came here to be gorgeously human. Flawed and fabulous.And rising again into remembering.But unconditional love? Stop telling that story.Love in truth doesn't need any adjectives.It doesn't require modifiers.It doesn't require the condition of perfection.It only asks you to show up.And do your best.That you stay present and feel fully.That you shine and fly and laugh and cry and hurt and heal and fall and get back up and play and work and live and die as YOU.Its enough.It's Plenty.
— Courtney A. Walsh
[Fireheart]mewed,"It's not my place to judge you." Greystripe looked up as Fireheart went on." Greystripe, whatever you decide to do, I will always be your friend.
— Erin Hunter, Fire and Ice
Every individual has a place to fill in the world and is important in some respect, whether he chooses to be so or not.
— Nathaniel Hawthorne
Now, five years is nothing in a man's life except when he is very young and very old...- Wang Lung
— Pearl S. Buck, The Good Earth
You become mature when you become the authority of your own life.
— Joseph Campbell, A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living
When you're good at something, you'll tell everyone. When you're great at something, they'll tell you.
— Walter Payton
Be creative, be useful, be practical, be generous and finish big
— Lisa Genova, Still Alice
Too many people realize at the end of their lives that they've taken for granted those who really love them. 
— Lesley M.M. Blume, Cornelia and the Audacious Escapades of the Somerset Sisters
He who jumps into the void owes no explanation to those who stand and watch.
— Jean-Luc Godard
Let them call me a rebel and welcome. I feel no concern from it. But should I suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul.
— Thomas Paine
People need not fear the unknown if they are capable of achieving what they need and want.
— Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
Sometimes you've got to be able to listen to yourself and be okay with no one else understanding.
— Christopher Barzak, One for Sorrow
I have something that I call my Golden Rule. It goes something like this: 'Do unto others twenty-five percent better than you expect them to do unto you.' … The twenty-five percent is for error.
— Linus Pauling
Champions are made from something they have deep inside of them-a desire, a dream, a vison.
— Mahatma Gandhi
Given a choice between life and death, choose life. Given a choice between right and wrong, choose what's right. And given a choice between a terrible truth and a beautiful lie, choose the truth every time.
— Mira Grant, Blackout
It is better to fill your head with useless knowledge than no knowledge at all.
— Jim Hinckley, Route 66 Backroads: Your Guide to Scenic Side Trips & Adventures from the Mother Road
It's daring to be curious about the unknown, to dream big dreams, to live outside prescribed boxes, to take risks, and above all, daring to investigate the way we live until we discover the deepest treasured purpose of why we are here.
— Luci Swindoll, I Married Adventure: Looking at Life Through the Lens of Possibility
When you grow up as a girl, the world tells you the things that you are supposed to be: emotional, loving, beautiful, wanted. And then when you are those things, the world tells you they are inferior: illogical, weak, vain, empty.
— Stevie Nicks
It seems that a profound, impartial, and absolutely just opinion of our fellow-creatures is utterly unknown. Either we are men, or we are women. Either we are cold, or we are sentimental. Either we are young, or growing old. In any case life is but a procession of shadows, and God knows why it is that we embrace them so eagerly, and see them depart with such anguish, being shadows. And why, if this -- and much more than this is true -- why are we yet surprised in the window corner by a sudden vision that the young man in the chair is of all things in the world the most real, the most solid, the best known to us--why indeed? For the moment after we know nothing about him.Such is the manner of our seeing. Such the conditions of our love.
— Virginia Woolf, Jacob's Room
A book series is never truly over. The story lives on, even when the final page has been turned.
— Richard P. Denney
Plus there’s the fact,” he went on, making it clear he didn’t need me to reply anyway, “that music is a total constant. That’s why we have such a strong visceral connection to it, you know? Because a song can take you back instantly to a moment, or a place, or even a person. No matter what else has changed in you or the world, that one song stays the same, just like that moment. Which is pretty amazing, when you actually think about it.
— Sarah Dessen, Just Listen
And if you think you're alone. Put on my music. Because I'm going to be there for you.
— Demi Lovato
Dupa ce iti omori demonii, daca ai curajul sa o faci, e musai sa te intorci pe acelasi drum.
— Tudor Chirilă, Exerciţii de echilibru
A beautiful thing happens when we start paying attention to each other. It is by participating more in your relationship that you breathe life into it.
— Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
I was halfway across America, at the dividing line between the East of my youth and the West of my future.
— Jack Kerouac, On the Road
If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always gotten. 
— Anthony Robbins
Differences are not intended to separate, to alienate. We are different precisely in order to realize our need of one another.
— Desmond Tutu
When those you love die, the best you can do is honor their spirit for as long as you live. You make a commitment that you're going to take whatever lesson that person or animal was trying to teach you, and you make it true in your own life... it's a positive way to keep their spirit alive in the world, by keeping it alive in yourself.
— Patrick Swayze, The Time of My Life
In the name of the best within you, do not sacrifice this world to those who are at its worst. In the name of the values that keep you alive, do not let your vision of people be distorted by the ugly, the cowardly, the mindless in those who have never achieved integrity. Do not lose your knowledge that our proper estate is an upright posture,an intransigent mind and a step that travels unlimited roads. Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it's yours.
— Ayn Rand
Man made God in his own image...
— Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose
Be compassionate ... and take responsibility for each other. If we only learned those lessons, this world would be a better place.
— Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie
Temptation is not to be feared, but controlled.
— Deborah Brodie
A woman could be as beautiful as she felt herself to be.
— Laura Lee Guhrke, Guilty Pleasures
People don't believe what you tell them.They rarely believe what you show them.They often believe what their friends tell them.They always believe what they tell themselves.
— Seth Godin
The trouble with fiction," said John Rivers, "is that it makes too much sense. Reality never makes sense.
— Aldous Huxley, The Genius And The Goddess
Hurl yourself at goals above your head and bear the lacerations that come when you slip and make a fool of yourself. Try always, as long as you have breath in your body, to take the hard way–and work, work, work to build yourself into a rich, continually evolving entity.
— Sylvia Plath
All paths are the same: they lead nowhere. ... Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn't, it is of no use. Both paths lead nowhere; but one has a heart, the other doesn't. One makes for a joyful journey; as long as you follow it, you are one with it. The other will make you curse your life. One makes you strong; the other weakens you.
— Carlos Castañeda, The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge
Words are tears that have been written down. Tears are words that need to be shed. Without them, joy loses all its brilliance and sadness has no end.
— Paulo Coelho, Aleph
Rich People plan for three generationsPoor people plan for Saturday night
— Gloria Steinem
Somehow difficulties are easier to endure when you know your dream is waiting for you at the end.
— Lisa Mangum, The Golden Spiral
If you don't feel as close to God today as you did yesterday, who moved?
— Chris Heimerdinger, Feathered Serpent, Part 1
It is wisdom to recognize necessity when all other courses have been weighed, though as folly it may appear to those who cling to false hope.
— J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
I shrug, trapped. I don’t want to lose him. In spite of all his demands, his need to control, his scary vices. I have never felt as alive as I do now. It’s a thrill to be sitting here beside him. He’s so unpredictable, sexy, smart, and funny. But hismoods… oh – and he wants to hurt me. He says he’ll think about my reservations, but it still scares me. I close my eyes. What can I say? Deep down I would just like more, more affection, more playful Christian, more… love.
— E.L. James, Fifty Shades of Grey
I don’t ever remember being afraid of “oldness”.There are things I miss about being younger - chiefly the ability to pull all-nighters and keep working and working well; and being smiled at by girls I didn’t know who thought I was cute; and I wish I had the eyesight I had even five years ago… but that stuff feels pretty trivial. I’m happier than I’ve been at any time in my life these days. I have a wonderful wife whom I adore, watched three amazing kids grow into two delightful adults and my favourite teenager, an astonishing number of grand life experiences, I’ve made art I’m proud of, I have real, true, glorious friends, and I’ve been able to do real good for things I care about, like freedom of speech, like libraries.Sometimes I’ll do something like An Evening With Neil and Amanda, or the 8 in 8 project, and completely surprise myself.I miss friends who have died, but then, I’m glad that time gave them to me, to befriend, even for a while, and that I was alive to know them. I knew Douglas Adams, and I knew Roger Zelazny, and I knew John M Ford, and I knew Diana Wynne Jones… do you know how lucky that makes me?Ah, I’m rabbiting on, and I sound a bit more Pollyannaish than I’m intending to sound: I know the downside of age and the downside of time, and I am sure that the view from age 51 is not the view from age 71.I wish the time hadn’t gone so fast, though. And sometimes I wish I’d enjoyed it more on the way, and worried about it less.
— Neil Gaiman
Courage comes from a heart that is CONVINCED it is loved.
— Beth Moore
The paths to liberation are numerous, but the bank along the way is always the same, the Bank of Karma, where the liberation account of each of us is credited or debited depending on our actions.
— Yann Martel, Life of Pi
Just because you refuse to acknowledge something, refuse to look at it or think about it, doesn’t mean it’s not there, that it doesn’t affect you and the choices you make in your life.
— Rachel Gibson, Tangled Up In You
Kaladin screamed, reaching the end of the bridge. Finding a tiny surge of strength somewhere, he raised his spear and threw himself off the end of the wooden platform, launching into the air above the cavernous void.	Bridgemen cried out in dismay. Syl zipped about him with worry. Parshendi looked up with amazement as a lone bridgeman sailed through the air toward them.	His drained, worn-out body barely had any strength left. In that moment of crystallized time, he looked down on his enemies. Parshendi with their marbled red and black skin. Soldiers raising finely crafted weapons, as if to cut him from the sky. Strangers, oddities in carapace breastplates and skullcaps. Many of them wearing beards.	Beards woven with glowing gemstones.	Kaladin breathed in.	Like the power of salvation itself—like rays of sunlight from the eyes of the Almighty—Stormlight exploded from those gemstones. It streamed through the air, pulled in visible streams, like glowing columns of luminescent smoke. Twisting and turning and spiraling like tiny funnel clouds until they slammed into him.	And the storm came to life again.
— Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings
Today, many will choose to live free of conditions and rules governing their own happiness. Why not you? Do not let another day go by where your dedication to other people's opinions is greater than your dedication to your own emotions! Today's a new day!
— Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free
You’re not a bad person, you’re just a little bit different and I’m a sucker for that.
— Robert M. Drake
A respectable appearance is sufficient to make people more interested in your soul
— Karl Lagerfeld
The two of you, there's something uncanny about the way you two are with each other. I mean everything--the way you look at each other, the way she relaxes when you put your hand on her back, the way you both seem to know what the other is always thinking, it's always struck me as extraordinary. That's another reason I keep putting marriage off. I know I want something like what you two share, and I'm not sure I've found it yet. I'm not sure I ever will. And with love like that, they say anything's possible, right?
— Nicholas Sparks, The Choice
I know. It’s all wrong. By rights we shouldn’t even be here. But we are. It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going, because they were holding on to something.
— J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers
You shouldn't judge someone until you've walk a mile through an underground tunnel in her uncomfortable shoes
— Ally Carter, I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You
Confidence is like a dragon where, for every head cut off, two more heads grow back.
— Criss Jami, Venus in Arms
Sometimes you can learn, even from a bad experience. By coping you become stronger. The pain does not go away, but it becomes manageable.
— Somaly Mam, The Road of Lost Innocence: The True Story of a Cambodian Heroine
America is too great for small dreams.
— Ronald Reagan
She might be pointing to a doorway, or a person, or the sky. But such things were so common to my eyes, so undistinguished, that they would register as "nothing" I walked in a gray world of nothing.
— Jerry Spinelli, Stargirl
Though my work may be menial, though my contribution may be small, I can perform it with dignity and offer it with unselfishness. My talents may not be great, but I can use them to bless the lives of others.... The goodness of the world in which we live is the accumulated goodness of many small and seemingly inconsequential acts.
— Gordon B. Hinckley
If you can’t believe in miracles, then believe in yourself. When you want something bad enough, let that drive push you to make it happen. Sometimes you’ll run into brick walls that are put there to test you. Find a way around them and stay focused on your dream. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.
— Isabel  Lopez, Isabel's Hand-Me-Down Dreams
With time and perspective we recognize that such problems in life do come for a purpose, if only to allow the one who faces such despair to be convinced that he really does need divine strength beyond himself, that she really does need the offer of heaven’s hand. Those who feel no need for mercy usually never seek it and almost never bestow it. Those who have never had a heartache or a weakness or felt lonely or forsaken never have had to cry unto heaven for relief of such personal pain. Surely it is better to find the goodness of God and the grace of Christ, even at the price of despair, than to risk living our lives in a moral or material complacency that has never felt any need for faith or forgiveness, any need for redemption or relief.
— Jeffery R. Holland
Never let yourself be persuaded that any one Great Man, any one leader, is necessary to the salvation of America. When America consists of one leader and 158 million followers, it will no longer be America.
— Dwight D. Eisenhower
And then, despite everything, I smiled and looked at the note and knew that spring would come —it always does. so I stared out that cold window, watching my breath collect on the glass, trying not to think about my life after the thaw.
— Ally Carter, Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover
One must work and dare if one really wants to live.
— Vincent van Gogh
Speak when you are angry, and you'll make the best speech you'll ever regret.
— Laurence J. Peter
By reading the scriptures I am so renewed that all nature seems renewed around me and with me. The sky seems to be a pure, a cooler blue, the trees a deeper green. The whole world is charged with the glory of God and I feel fire and music under my feet. 
— Thomas Merton
So much for endings. Beginnings are always more fun. True connoisseurs, however, are known to favor the stretch in between, since it's the hardest to do anything with. That's about all that can be said for plots, which anyway are just one thing after another, a what and a what and a what.
— Margaret Atwood
I have a self-made quote: Celebrate diversity, practice acceptance and may we all choose peaceful options to conflict.
— Donzella Michele Malone
With a hint of good judgment, to fear nothing, not failure or suffering or even death, indicates that you value life the most. You live to the extreme; you push limits; you spend your time building legacies. Those do not die.
— Criss Jami, Venus in Arms
Convictions are prisons.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy/Seventy-five Aphorisms/The Anti-Christ
Jesus has now many lovers of the heavenly kingdom but few bearers of His cross.
— Thomas à Kempis, Imitation Of Christ
Enjoy every ounce of your life, get high and be sincere to anybody that comes around you.
— Salman Aditya, High in School
But she loves me. Me. Just the way I am.
— P.C. Cast, Destined
Maybe love was meant to save us from ourselves.
— Robert M. Drake
Concentration attracts luck factor.
— Amit Ray, Yoga and Vipassana: An Integrated Life Style
All shall be done, but it may be harder than you think.
— C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
It's up to you today to start making healthy choices. Not choices that are just healthy for your body, but healthy for your mind.
— Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
We may have all come on different ships, but we're in the same boat now.
— Martin Luther King Jr.
People aren't born good or bad. Maybe they're born with tendencies either way, but it's the way you live your life that matters. And the people you know. Valentine was Hodge's friend, and I don't think Hodge really had anyone else in his life to challenge him or make him be a better person. If I'd had that life, I don't know how I would have turned out. But I didn't. I have my family. And I have you.
— Cassandra Clare, City of Glass
When I begin to doubt my ability to work the word, I simply read another writer and know I have nothing to worry about. My contest is only with myself, to do it right, with power, and force, and delight, and gamble.
— Charles Bukowski
I will not die an unlived life.I will not live in fearof falling or catching fire.I choose to inhabit my days,to allow my living to open me,to make me less afraid,more accessible;to loosen my heartuntil it becomes a wing, a torch, a promise.I choose to risk my significance,to live so that which came to me as seedgoes to the next as blossom,and that which came to me as blossom,goes on as fruit.
— Dawna Markova, I Will Not Die an Unlived Life: Reclaiming Purpose and Passion
I liked things better when I didn't understand them.
— Bill Watterson
It is impossible to be both selfish and happy
— Joyce Meyer, Any Minute
If you want to be a writer, you have to write every day... You don't go to a well once but daily. You don't skip a child's breakfast or forget to wake up in the morning...
— Walter Mosley
Men take care not to make women weep, for God counts their tears.
— Thomas S. Monson
The purpose of life is to discover your gift. The meaning of life is to give your gift away.
— David Viscott
For he that diligently seeketh shall find; and the mysteries of God shall be unfolded unto them, by the power of the Holy Ghost, as well in these times as in times of old as in times to come; wherefore, the course of the Lord is one eternal round" - 1 Nephi 10:19
— Joseph Smith Jr., The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ
Respect for self is the beginning of cultivating virtue in men and women.
— Gordon B. Hinckley
It's what you learn after you know it all that counts.
— John Wooden
The best way to prepare for death is to live life to its fullest. 
— John Bytheway
Advice to friends. Advice to fellow mothers in the same boat. "How do you do it all?" Crack a joke. Make it seem easy. Make everything seem easy. Make life seem easy and parenthood and marriage and freelancing for pennies, writing a novel and smiling after a rejection, keeping the faith after two, reminding oneself that four years of work counted for a lot, counted for everything. Make the bed. Make it nice. Make the people laugh when you sit down to write and if you can't make them laugh make them cry. Make them want to hug you or hold you or punch you in the face. Make them want to kill you or fuck you or be your friend. Make them change. Make them happy. Make the baby smile. Make him laugh. Make him dinner. Make him proud.Hold the phone, someone is on the other line. She says its important. People are dying. Children. Friends. Press mute because there is nothing you can say. Press off because you're running out of minutes. Running out of time. Soon he'll be grown up and you'll regret the time you spent pushing him away for one more paragraph in the manuscript no one will ever read. Put down the book, the computer, the ideas. Remember who you are now. Wait. Remember who you were. Wait. Remember what's important. Make a list. Ten things, no twenty. Twenty thousand things you want to do before you die but what if tomorrow never comes? No one will remember. No one will know. No one will laugh or cry or make the bed. No one will have a clue which songs to sing to the baby. No one will be there for the children. No one will finish the first draft of the novel. No one will publish the one that's been finished for months. No one will remember the thought you had last night, that great idea you forgot to write down.
— Rebecca Woolf
You will see that the things you desire most are the very things that bring you the greatest sorrow.
— Christopher Pike, Phantom
If you can control your behavior when everything around you is out of control, you can model for your children a valuable lesson in patience and understanding...and snatch an opportunity to shape character.
— Jane Clayson Johnson, I Am a Mother
A real scientist solves problems, not wails that they are unsolvable.
— Anne McCaffrey, Acorna: The Unicorn Girl
It is possible for the human spirit to win after all.
— Jack Kerouac
Guilt starts as a feeling of failure.
— Frank Herbert
That which we persist in doing becomes easier to do, not that the nature of the thing has changed, but our power to do so is increased.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
Fear is a natural emotion in life, but you cannot let it dictate your actions. When you act out of fear, you will only meet failure. But act out of determination to conquer that fear, and you will succeed at anything. Maybe not the first time, or the second or third, but eventually—as long as you keep trying—you can conquer your fears and succeed.
— Tiana Dalichov, Purification
I don’t need any plastic in my body to validate me as a woman.
— Courtney Love
It was the moment I realized what music can do to people, how it can make you hurt and feel so good all at once.
— Nina LaCour, Hold Still
Listen to what you know instead of what you fear.
— Richard Bach
Do the kind of things that come from the heart, When you do, you won't be dissatisfied, you won't be envious, you won't be longing for somebody else's things. On the contrary, you'll be overhelmed with what comes back
— Morrie Schwartz
Live life as though nobody is watching, and express yourself as though everyone is listening.
— Nelson Mandela
One of the best guides to how to be self-loving is to give ourselves the love we are often dreaming about receiving from others. There was a time when I felt lousy about my over-forty body, saw myself as too fat, too this, or too that. Yet I fantasized about finding a lover who would give me the gift of being loved as I am. It is silly, isn't it, that I would dream of someone else offering to me the acceptance and affirmation I was withholding from myself. This was a moment when the maxim "You can never love anybody if you are unable to love yourself" made clear sense. And I add, "Do not expect to receive the love from someone else you do not give yourself.
— bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions
Today is the oldest you've ever been, and the youngest you'll ever be again.
— Eleanor Roosevelt
I have met some highly intelligent believers, but history has no record to say that [s]he knew or understood the mind of god. Yet this is precisely the qualification which the godly must claim—so modestly and so humbly—to possess. It is time to withdraw our 'respect' from such fantastic claims, all of them aimed at the exertion of power over other humans in the real and material world.
— Christopher Hitchens, The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever
Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.
— William Faulkner
Read. Read 1000 pages for every 1 page that you write.
— Sherman Alexie
We can never know what might have been but what is to come is another matter entirely
— C.S. Lewis
Buy or borrow self-improvement books, but don't read them. Stack them around your bedroom and use them as places to rest bowls of cookies.Watch exercise shows on television, but don't do the exercises. Practice believing that the benefit lies in imagining yourself doing the exercises.Don't power walk. Saunter slowly in the sun, eating chocolate, and carry a blanket so you can take a nap.
— S.A.R.K.
You're water. We're the millstone.You're wind. We're dust blown up into shapes.You're spirit. We're the opening and closing of our hands. You're the clarity.We're the language that tries to say it.You're joy. We're all the different kinds of laughing.
— Jalaluddin Rumi, The Essential Rumi
Look in the mirror and say, 'There is none other like you and for that reason alone you are beautiful.
— Miranda Hart, Is It Just Me?