“Black chaos comes, and the fettered gods of earth say let there be light.” – Thomas Hardy, The Return of the Native

“One may smile and smile and be a villain.” – William Shakespeare, Hamlet

“Tomorrow all will be won or lost and no one can help me, not even you.” – Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“And your very flesh shall be a great poem.” – Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

“Each has his past shut inside him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart and his friends can only read the title.” – Virginia Woolf, Jacob’s Room

“The only gift is a portion of thyself.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays and Lectures

“Always do what you are afraid to do.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson, Works

“As in the soft and sweet eclipse
When soul meets soul on lover’s lips.”
- Shelley, Prometheus Unbound

“We always condemn most in others, he thought, that which we fear most in ourselves.” – Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

“We read to know we are not alone.” – C.S. Lewis, Shadowlands

“The best way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.” – Oscar Wilde

“But the body is deeper than the soul and its secrets inscrutable.” – E.M. Forster, Maurice

“They were so strong in their beliefs that there came a time when it hardly mattered what exactly those beliefs were; they all fused into a single stubbornness.” – Louise Erdrich, Love Medicine

“I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand.  It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what.” – Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.” – Edgar Allen Poe, Eleonora

“Nothing is easier than to denounce the evil doer; nothing is more difficult than to understand him.” – Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Possessed

“Love is or it ain’t. Thin love ain’t no love at all.” – Toni Morrison, Beloved

“In times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.” – George Orwell, 1984

“What is to give light must endure the burning.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

“It is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners.” – Albert Camus

“But peace does not exist in the charters and covenants alone.  It lies in the hearts and minds of all people.  So let us not rest all our hopes on parchment and on paper, let us strive to build peace, a desire for peace, a willingness to work for peace in the hearts and minds of all of our people.  I believe that we can. I believe that the problems of human destiny are not beyond the reach of human beings.” – John F. Kennedy, Speaking of Peace

“Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade, neither persons nor property will be safe.” – Frederick Douglass

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best day and night to make you everybody else, means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting. – ee cummings

It is in the shelter of each other that the people live. – Irish Proverb

If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility. – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Some things you must always be unable to bear. Injustice and outrage and dishonor and shame… – William Faulkner

Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad. – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. – James Baldwin

Properly, we should read for power.  Man reading should be man intensely alive.  The book should be a ball of light in one’s hand. – Ezra Pound

Develop interest in life as you see it: in people, things, literature, music — the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself. – Henry Miller

Imagination is the beginning of creation.  You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will. – Bernard Shaw

Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. – Ben Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania

To know what you prefer, instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive. – Alexander Stevenson, An Inland Voyage

The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, hell of heaven. – John Milton, Paradise Lost

Yet each man kills the thing he loves,
by each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword.
- Oscar Wilde

Disappointments are to the soul what a thunderstorm is to the air. – Friedrich Schiller

Tears, idle tears,
I know not what they mean.
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart and gather in the eyes,
In looking on the happy autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.
- Alfred Lord Tennyson

It is the things I might’ve said that fester – Clemmence Dane

Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength; loving someone deeply gives you courage. – Lao-Tzu

Those who restrain their desires, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained. – William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again. – Willa Cather, My Antonia

If you would be a real seeker after truth, you must at least once in your life doubt, as far as possible, all things. – Descartes

A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us. – W.H. Auden

There is no despair so absolute as that which comes with the first moments of our first great sorrow, when we have not yet known what it is to have suffered and healed, to have despaired and have recovered hope. – George Elliott , Adam Bede

“Only connect.” – E.M. Forster, Howards End

At the side of the everlasting why, is a yes, and a yes, and a yes. – E.M. Forster

The mind can assert anything and pretend it has proved it. My beliefs I test on my body, on my intuitional consciousness, and when I get a response there, then I accept. – D.H. Lawrence, Selected Critical Writings, “Introduction to These Paintings”

It is a curious thing that every creed promises a paradise which will be absolutely uninhabitable for anyone of civilized taste. – Evelyn Waugh

Nobody is as powerful as we make them out to be. – Alice Walker, In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens

Yes, Mother.  I can see you are flawed.  You have not hidden it.  That is your greatest gift to me. – Alice Walker, Possessing the Secret of Joy

The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any. – Alice Walker

To make us feel small in the right way is a function of art; men can only make us feel small in the wrong way. – E.M. Forster, Two Cheers for Democracy

It is this, if there is any rule, that we ought to die — neither as a victim nor as a fanatic, but as the seafarer who can greet with an equal eye the deep that he is entering, and the shore that he must leave. – E.M. Forster, Howard’s End

It is surprising how much of memory is built around things unnoticed at the time. – Barbara Kingsolver

The only thing about masturbation to be ashamed of is doing it badly. – Sigmund Freud

The highest compact we can make with our fellow is — “Let there be truth between us two forevermore.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Have you ever been hurt and the place tries to heal a bit and you just pull the scar off of it over and over again? – Rosa Parks

The cruelest lies are often told in silence. – Adlai Stevenson

The only real mistake is that from which we learn nothing. – John Powell

I didn’t want my picture taken because I was going to cry, but I knew that if anybody spoke to me or looked at me too closely the tears would fly out of my eyes and sobs would fly out of my throat and I’d cry for a week. I could feel the tears brimming and sloshing in me like water in a glass that is unsteady and too full. – Sylvia Plath

I am inhabited by a cry.
Nightly it flaps out
Looking, with its hooks, for something to love.
I am terrified by this dark thing
That sleeps in me;
All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.
- Sylvia Plath

If we have no peace it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other. – Mother Theresa

I have found the paradox that if I love until it hurts, then there is no hurt, but only more love. – Mother Theresa

Do not wait for leaders.  Do it alone, person to person. – Mother Theresa

We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless.  The poverty of being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own houses to remedy this kind of poverty. – Mother Theresa

Once I took your face into
my hands. Moonlight fell on it.
Most incomprehensible object
under overflowing tears.
- Rainer Maria Rilke

Forget, forget and let us live now
only this, how the stars pierce through
cleared nocturnal sky; how the moon’s whole disk
surmounts the gardens. We’ve sensed so long already
how the darkness breeds many mirrors: how a gleam
takes shape, a white shadow in the radiance
of night. But let us now cross over
and invest this world where
everything is lunar-
-Rainer Maria Rilke

You don’t know nights of love? Don’t
petals of soft words float upon your blood?
Are there no places on your dear body
that keep remembering like eyes?
- Rainer Maria Rilke

We made up for everything there was never time for. I matured strongly in every impulse of unperformed youth and you, love, somehow had wildest childhood over my heart. – Rainer Maria Rilke

When the gods want to punish us, they answer our prayers. – Oscar Wilde

I ask for so little. Just fear me, love me, do as I say and I will be your slave. – Labyrinth

Painting is just another way of keeping a diary. – Pablo Picasso

The painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through. – Jackson Pollock

What I dream of is an art of balance. – Henri Matisse

For one human being to love another; that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation. – Rainer Maria Rilke

Art does not reproduce the visible, rather, it makes visible. – Paul Klee

The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness. – Joseph Conrad

Perhaps the feelings we experience when we are in love represent a normal state. Being in love shows a person who he should be. – Anton Chekhov

It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues. – Abraham Lincoln

Though force can protect in an emergency, only justice, fairness, consideration and cooperation can finally lead man to the dawn of eternal peace. – Dwight Eisenhower

All faults will be forgiven of him who has perfect candor. – Walt Whitman

Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakens. – Karl Jung

The world is not respectable; it is mortal, tormented, confused, deluded forever; but it is shot through with beauty, with love, with glints of courage and laughter; and in these, the spirit blooms timidly, and struggles to the light amid thorns. – George Santayana

Who said that tenderness will turn the heart to stone? – Louisa Simpson

Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures. – Henry Ward Beecher

Argue for your limitations and sure enough they’re yours. – Richard Bach

When you have once seen the glow of happiness on the face of a beloved person, you know that a man can have no vocation but to awaken that light on the faces surrounding him; and you are torn by the thought of the unhappiness and night you cast, by the mere feat of living, in hearts you encounter. – Albert Camus

There is no witness so dreadful, no accuser so terrible, as the conscience that dwells in the heart of every man. – Polybius

There is always some madness in love. But there is always some reason in madness. – Friedrich Nietzsche

At the height of laughter, the universe is flung into a kaleidoscope of new possibilities. – Jean Houston

To believe in God or in a guiding force because someone tells you to is the height of stupidity. We are given senses to receive our information with.  With our own eyes we see, and with our own skin we feel.  With our intelligence, it is intended that we understand.  But each person must puzzle it out for him or herself. – Sophy Burnham

Take away our right to say “fuck” and you take away our right to say “fuck the government.” – Lenny Bruce

To love and be loved is to feel the sun from both sides. – David Viscott

Kisses are a better fate than wisdom. – ee cummings

Never a lip is curved in pain
That can’t be kissed into smile again.
-Brete Harte

Don’t be afraid to dream, for out of such fragile things come miracles.

Many of us stay walled because we are afraid of being hurt. We are afraid to care too much, for fear that the other person does not care at all. – Eleanor Roosevelt

Although he had no inkling of where his future would lead him; he did feel strongly, often with anguishing clarity, that is destiny was shaping itself, that this respite of innocence and calm was coming to an end, that all within him was taut and ready. These premonitions were often blissful, kept him awake half the night like a sweet infatuation; at other times they were full of darkness and suffocation. – Hermann Hesse

Only the life within him was real, the anguished beating of his heart, the nostalgic sting of longing, the joys and fears of his dreams.  To them he belonged, to them he abandoned himself. – Hermann Hesse

But I do wish that if ever the time comes and it proves to be necessary, that I too will be able to free myself and leap, only not backward into something inferior, but forward into something higher. – Hermann Hesse

In retrospect, it seemed she had only been a flower in full bloom when she was thoroughly violated by the will of another, that in suffering for the will of another she had discovered her true self. – Anne Rice, Beauty’s Release

Sending those away who could not master her, longing for someone who would know and understand what it is to adore and yet master another and what it means to need that. – Anne Rice, Beauty’s Release

I confess I find more ecstasy in passion than in prayer. Such passion is prayer.  I confess I pray still to feel the touch of my lover’s lips; his hands upon me, his arms enfolding me. Such surrender has been mine. I confess I pray still to be filled and inflamed; to melt into the dream of us, beyond this troubled place, to where we are not even ourselves. To know that always, this is mine. – Dangerous Beauty

He who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser, sees newly every time he looks at the object beloved, drawing from it with his eyes and his mind those virtues which it possesses. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

America’s greatest strength, and it’s greatest weakness, is our belief in second chances, our belief that we can always start over, that things can be made better. – Anthony Wilson

peace. it does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble or hard work. it means to be in the midst of these things and still be calm in your heart.

Love is strong yet delicate.
It can be broken.
To truly love is to understand this.
To be in love is to respect this.
-Stephen Packer

One thing I know: the only ones among you who will really be happy are those who will have sought and found how to serve. – Albert Schweitzer

Guard within yourself that treasure, kindness. Know how to give without hesitation, know how to lose without regret, how to acquire without meanness. Know how to replace in your heart, by the happiness of those you love, the happiness that may be wanting in yourself. – George Sand

Love is the earth and sky and warmth and light.

What am I to say about the caverns of my soul?  Those caverns that frighten you so — I take refuge there when I grow weary of the ways of man, of their rankly blossoming fields and overgrown forests. I retreat into the caverns of my soul when I can find no other place to rest my head; and if some of those whom I love possessed the courage to enter those caverns they would find nothing but a man on his knees saying her prayers. – Kahlil Gibran

At the end of a life man notices that he has spent years becoming sure of a single truth.  But a single truth, if it is obvious, is enough to guide an existence. – Albert Camus

The best and safest thing is to keep a balance in your life, acknowledge the great powers around and in us. If you can do that, and live that way, you are really a wise man. – Euripides

So divinely is the world organized that every one of us, in our time and place, is in balance with everything else. – Johan Wolfgang Von Goethe

The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. – George Bernard Shaw

There is no mistaking a real book when one meets it. It is like falling in love. – Christopher Marley

There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered. – Nelson Mandela

If you greatly desire something, have the guts to stake everything on obtaining it. – Brendan Francis

People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use. – Søren Kierkegaard

Victory attained by violence is tantamount to a defeat, for it is momentary. – Mahatma Ghandi

Only passions, great passions, can elevate the soul to great things. – Denis Diderot

My house has many rooms. I occupy but a few. The rest go unvisited.

If I discover within myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. – C.S. Lewis

Better than a thousand hollow words, is one word that brings peace. – Buddha

He must look deeply into his own soul and plumb its depths. – Hermann Hesse

To live is to battle with trolls in the vaults of heart and brain.
To write: that is to sit in judgment over one’s self.
-Henrik Ibsen

The truth is that life is hard and dangerous; that he who seeks his own happiness does not find it; that he who is weak must suffer; that he who demands love will be disappointed; that he who is greedy will not be fed; that he who seeks peace will find strife; that truth is only for the brave; that joy is only for him who does not fear to be alone; that life is only for one who is not afraid to die. – Joyce Cary

The desire of the moth for the star,
Of the night for the morrow,
The devotion to something afar
From the sphere of our sorrow.
-Perce Bysse Shelley

Be of love a little more careful than anything. – ee cummings

Love is the voice under all silences, the hope which has no opposite in fear; the strength so strong more force is feebleness: the truth more first than sun, more last than star. – ee cummings

We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us something is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch. Once we believe n ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit. – ee cummings

The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone. – Harriet Beecher Stowe

We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey. – Kenji Miyazawa

As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live. – Goethe

Footfalls echo in the memory, down the passage which we did not take, towards the door we never opened into the rose-garden. – T.S. Eliot

I hated him with a passion so deep, sometimes it felt like love. – Terri Guillemets

It is not sex that gives the pleasure, but the lover. – Marge Piercy

We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter. – Denis Diderot

A man without tattoos is invisible to the gods. – Iban Proverb

Tattooing is about personalizing the body, making it a true home and fit temple for the spirit that dwells inside it…Tattooing, therefore, is a way of keeping the spiritual and material needs of my body in balance. – Michelle Delio

Never look down on anybody unless you’re helping him up. – Jesse Jackson

When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not. – Mark Twain

In the hearts of people there is a deep longing for peace. When the true spirit of peace is thoroughly dominant, it becomes an inner experience with unlimited possibilities. Only when this really happens – when the spirit of peace awakens and takes possession of men’s hearts, can humanity be saved from perishing. – Albert Schweitzer

In India, when we meet and part, we often say “Namaste,” which means: I honor the place in you where the entire universe resides; I honor the place in you of love, of light, of truth, of peace. I honor the place within you where if you are in that place in you and I am in that place in me, there is only one of us. – Ram Dass

If you see good in people, you radiate a harmonious loving energy which uplifts those who are around you. If you can maintain this habit, this energy will turn into a steady flow of love. – Amamalai Swami

What lies lurk in kisses. – Heinrich Heine

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom the emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed. – Albert Einstein

Once he drew
With one long kiss my whole soul thro’
My lips, as sunlight drinketh dew.
-Tennyson

Yes, I am a dreamer.  For a dreamer is one who can find his way by moonlight, and see the dawn before the rest of the world. – Oscar Wilde

Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once. – Shakespeare

Sometimes, when one person is missing, the whole world seems depopulated. – Alphonse de Lamartire

Beauty is the lovers’ gift. – William Congrave

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed and digested. – Francis Bacon

For each ecstatic instant we must anguish pay in keen and quivering ratio to the ecstasy. – Emily Dickinson

There are no days in life so memorable as those which vibrated to some stroke of the imagination. – Fitzgerald

She was no longer wrestling with the grief, but could sit down with it as a lasting companion and make it a sharer in her thoughts. – George Eliot

To me, gender is not physical at all, but is altogether insubstantial. It is soul, perhaps it is talent, it is taste, it is environment, it is how one feels, it is light and shade, it is inner music. – Jan Morris

You can have anything you want if you want it desperately enough. You must want it with an inner exuberance that erupts through the skin and joins the energy that created the world. – Sheila Graham

Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly. – Langston Hughes

Either life entails courage or it ceases to be life. E.M. Forster

Blessed are the curious for they shall have adventures. – Louelle Drachman

I’ve dreamt in my life dreams that stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas: they’ve gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the color of my mind. – Emily Bronte

The light of love, the purity of grace, the mind, the music breathing from her face, the heart whose softness harmonized the whole, and, oh! the eye was in itself a soul! – Byron

Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind work, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around. – Leo Buscaglia

A tattoo is a true poetic creation, and is always more than meets the eye.  As a tattoo is grounded on living skin, so its essence evokes a poignancy unique to the mortal human condition. – V. Vale and Andrea Ino

Tearless grief bleeds inwardly. – Christian Nevell Bovee

Dreams are illustrations…from the book your soul is writing about you. – Marsha Norman

Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. – Edna St. Vincent Millay

If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country. – E.M. Forster

To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead. – Bertrand Russell

Loneliness is never more cruel than when it is felt in close proximity with someone who has ceased to communicate. – Germaine Greer

From childhood’s hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen as others
See; I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I loved, I loved alone.
-Edgar Allen Poe

When I’m walkin’ in the dark I’m free to covet all I want. You’ve made it all so very dangerous. I can’t stay away. – Neko Case, Tightly

There is no trust more sacred than the one the world holds with children. There is no duty more important than ensuring that their rights are respected, that their welfare is protected, that their lives are free from fear and want and that they grow up in peace. – Kofi Annan

Peace, in the sense of the absence of war, is of little value to someone who is dying of hunger or cold. It will not remove the pain of torture inflicted on a prisoner of conscience. It does not comfort those who have lost their loved ones in floods caused by senseless deforestation in a neighboring country. Peace can only last where human rights are respected, where people are fed, and where individuals and nations are free. – XIVth Dalai Lama

We will not build a peaceful world by following a negative path. It is not enough to say we must not wage war.  It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it. We must concentrate not merely on the negative expulsion of war, but on the positive affirmation of peace.  We must see that peace represents a sweeter music, a cosmic melody, that is far superior to the discords of war. Somehow, we must transform the dynamics of the world power struggle from the negative nuclear arms race, which no one can win, to a positive contest to harness humanity’s creative genius for the purpose of making peace and prosperity a reality for all the nations of the world. In short, we must shift the arms race into a peace race. If we have a will — and determination — to mount such a peace offensive, we will unlock hitherto highly sealed doors of hype and transform our imminent cosmic elegy into a psalm of creative fulfillment. – Martin Luther King, Jr.

Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence, but also internal violence or spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him. – Martin Luther King, Jr.

The ultimate measure of a person is not where one stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where one stands in times of challenge and controversy. – Martin Luther King, Jr.

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.  And when you look into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you. – Friedrich Nietzsche

Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind…War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today. – John F. Kennedy, Jr.

When we treat a man as he is, we make him worse than he is; when we treat him as if he already were what he potentially could be, we make him what he should be. – Goethe

Nonviolence is not a garment to be put on and off at will. Its seat is in the heart, and it must be an inseparable part of our being. – Ghandi

We may never be strong enough to be entirely nonviolent in thought, word and deed. But we must keep nonviolence as our goal and make strong progress towards it. The attainment of freedom, whether from a person, a nation or a world, must be in exact proportion to the attainment of nonviolence for each. – Ghandi

What we become depends largely on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books. – Thomas Carlyle

The sudden disappointment of hope leaves a scar which the ultimate fulfillment of that hope never entirely removes. – Thomas Hardy

There is no coming to consciousness without pain. – Jung

Man could not live if he were entirely impervious to sadness. Many sorrows can be endured only by being embraced, and the pleasure taken in them naturally ahs a somewhat melancholy character. – Druckheim

Beware of him that is slow to anger: for when it is long coming, it is the stronger when it comes, and the longer kept.  Abused patience turns to fury. – Francis Quarks

Then I did the simplest thing in the world. I leaned down…and kissed him. And the world cracked open. – Agnes de Mille

Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place. – Zora Neale Hurston

Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same. – Bronte

I thank god I was raised Catholic, so sex will always be dirty. – John Waters

It was if all of the happiness, all of the magic of this blissful hour had flowed together into these stirring, bittersweet tones and flowed away, becoming temporal and transitory once more. – Hermann Hesse

Courage is not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. – Mandela

The best of a book is not the thought which it contains, but the thought which it suggests; just as the charm of music dwells not in the tones, but in the echoes of our hearts! – Oliver Wendell Holmes

Those who don’t know how to weep with their whole heart don’t know how to laugh either. – Golda Meir

I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education. – Wilson Mizner

Now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates. – Mark Twain

When I do good, I feel good; When I do bad, I feel bad, and that is my religion. – Abraham Lincoln

Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of overcoming it. – Helen Keller

The words “I am” are potent words; be careful what you hitch them to. The thing you’re claiming has a way of reaching back and claiming you. – A.L. Kitgelman

Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see. – Arthur Schopenhauer

Life can be found only in the present moment. The past is gone, the future is not yet here, and if we do not go back to ourselves in the present moment, we cannot be in touch with life. – Thich Nhat Hahn

Disobedience, in the eyes of those who read history, is a man’s original virtue. It is though disobedience and rebellion that progress has been made. – Oscar Wilde

“When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.” – Mark Twain

“It’s spring fever. That is what the name of it is: And when you’ve got it, you want – oh, you don’t quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!” – Mark Twain

“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” – Anais Nin

“One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.” – Nietzsche

Ever finger is touching and searching
Until your secrets come out
In the dance, as it endlessly circles
I linger close to your mouth.

“Our worst fear is not that we are inadequate; our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves: “Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?” Actually, who are you not to be? Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. As we let our own light shine we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” – Nelson Mandela

“Love is a high inducement for individuals to ripen, to strive to mature in the inner self, to manifest maturity in the outer world, to become that manifestation for the sake of another.” – Rainer Maria Rilke

“Once we are lost unto ourselves, everything else is lost to us.” – Ibid

“Without doubt, the only thing that makes man’s life on earth essential and necessary, is love.” – Ibid

“How singular is the thing called pleasure, and how curiously related to pain, which might be thought to be the opposite of it; for they never come to a man together, and yet he who pursues either of them is generally compelled to take the other.” – Socrates

“Courage does not always roar. Sometimes, it is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, ‘I will try again tomorrow.’”

“But whether or not one can live with one’s passions, whether or not one can accept their law, which is to burn the heart they simultaneously exalt, that is the whole question.” – Albert Camus

“There can be no knowledge without emotions. We may be aware of the truth, yet until we have felt its force, it is not ours. To the cognition of the brain must be added the experience of the soul.” – Arnold Bennett

“What is your kiss? The lick of a flame…” – Victor Hugo

“For an instant our lives met and our souls flowered.” – Oscar Wilde

“It is extremely beautiful to belong to a woman, to give yourself. But to love a woman, you see, to abandon yourself to her, to absorb her completely and feel absorbed by her, that is not what you call “being in love,” which you mock a little. For me it is the road to life, the way toward the meaning of life.” – Herman Hesse

“Again and again you say words to me or pose questions that shine a light into me and make me clear to myself…You’ve said so many words that I didn’t quite grasp when I heard them, but that became so important to me afterwards.” – Herman Hesse

“When in love, the sight of the beloved has a completeness which no words and no embrace can match:  a completeness which only the act of making love can temporarily accommodate.”

“It was your kiss, love, that made me immortal.” – Ibid

“Love consists of this: that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other.”

“Devil, don’t you know you are as beautiful as an angel?” – B. Leopardi

“People who don’t know how to ask rarely get what they want.” – Stephen Elliott, My Girlfriend Comes to the City and Beats Me Up

“Children show scars like medals. Lovers use them as secrets to reveal. A scar is what happens when the word is made flesh.” – Leonard Cohen

“It was very dangerous, though, having this man so near, now that she could smell him — and she liked the way he smelled — now that she could feel his touch — and she liked his touch — now that she realized she had been waiting for him — she did not like that.” – Paulo Coelho, Eleven Minutes

“Anyone who is observant, who discovers the person they have always dreamed of, knows that sexual energy comes into play before sex even takes place. The greatest pleasure isn’t sex, but the passion with which it is practiced. When the passion is intense, the sex joins in to complete the dance, but it is never the principle aim.” – Paulo Coelho, Eleven Minutes

“Anyone who is in love is making love the whole time, even when they’re not. When two bodies meet, it is just the cup overflowing. They can stay together for hours, even days. They can begin the dance one day and finish it the next, or — such is the pleasure they experience — they may never finish it. No eleven minutes for them.” – Paulo Coelho, Eleven Minutes

“Walking away at the end of the day she will measure and break like a habit.” – Iron and Wine, “Swans and the Swimming”

“I do not want to be the leader. I refuse to be the leader. I want to live darkly and richly in my femaleness. I want a man lying over me, always over me. His will, his pleasure, his desire, his life, his work, his sexuality the touchstone, the command, my pivot.  I don’t mind working, holding my ground intellectually, artistically; but as a woman, oh, God as a woman I want to be dominated. I don’t mind being told to stand on my own feet, no to cling, be all that I am capable of doing, but I am going to be pursued, fucked, possessed by the will of a male at his time, his bidding.” – Anais Nin

“Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.” – Anais Nin

“Life is truly know only to those who suffer, lose, endure adversity and stumble from defeat to defeat.” – Anais Nin

“Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don’t know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.” – Anais Nin

“I, with deeper instinct, choose a man who compels my strength, who makes enormous demands on me, who does not doubt my courage or my toughness, who does not believe me naive or innocent, who has the courage to treat me like a woman.” – Anais Nin

“If we must part forever, give me but one kind word to think upon, and please myself with, while my heart’s breaking.” – Thomas Otway, The Orphan

“How did it happen that their lips came together? How does it happen that birds sing, that snow melts, that the rose unfolds, that the dawn whitens behind the stark shapes of trees on the quivering summit of the hill? A kiss and all was said.” – Victor Hugo

“Thou art to me a delicious torment.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The simple lack of her is more to me than others’ presence.” – Edward Thomas

“I’m on my knees, what I have wanted for so long has come to visit me.” – Rose Polenzani, “Blue Angel”

“I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.” – Douglas Adams

“When we ask for advice we are usually looking for an accomplice.” – Marquis de la Grange, Pensées

“The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.” – Thomas Paine

“Communication through respect and love is the whole key to keeping the love alive and never getting bored in your relationship. It’s about finding your voice and stating your needs. It’s about trusting yourself and trusting your partner.” – Don Miguel Ruiz, A Calendar for Wisdom and Personal Freedom

“In one way or another I have always suffered. I didn’t know why exactly.  But I do know that I’m not so scared of suffering now.  I feel more than I’ve ever felt and I’ve found someone to feel with, to play with.  To love in a way that feels right for me. I hope he knows that I can see that he suffers too.  And that I want to love him.” – “Secretary”

“Give yourself over to absolute pleasure. Swim in the warm waters of sins of the flesh – erotic nightmares beyond any measure, and sensual daydreams to treasure forever.  Can’t you just see it? Don’t dream it, believe it.” – Rocky Horror Picture Show

“All human beings should try to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why.”  – James Thurber (Birthday Quote Gift from Brian)

“No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.”  -  Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams

“Tell me, will you make me sad or happy and will you settle for love?” – Rufus Wainwright, Want

“Every tomorrow has two handles. We can take hold of it with the handle of anxiety or the handle of faith.” – Henry Ward Beecher

“Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother.” – Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

“Why are we so full of restraint? Why do we not give in all directions? Is it fear of losing ourselves? Until we do lose ourselves there is no hope of finding ourselves.” -  Henry Miller, The World of Sex

“Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.” – Sydney J Harris

“The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.”  – Flannery O’Connor

“It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.” – Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Some people are like Slinkies – not really good for anything, but they bring a smile to your face when pushed down the stairs.”