Elizabeth Gilbert
People tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will descend like fine weather if you're fortunate, but happiness is the result of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly.
Laurell K. Hamilton
- Mercy Gentry
My father had taught me to be nice first, because you can always be mean later, but once you've been mean to someone they won't believe the nice anymore. So be nice, be nice until it's time to stop being nice, then destroy them.
anonymous
The cognitive dissonance caused by a society that tells its children to "follow their dreams" through messages in films, literature etc. and then punishes them for not choosing safe, money making careers in adulthood is fascinating, to say the least.
Pshab
Go to work, send your kids to school, follow fashion, act normal, walk on the pavement, watch TV, save for your old age, obey the law. Repeat after me: I am free.
Steve Jobs
Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: everything around you that you call life was made up by people who were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use. Once you learn that, you'll never be the same again.
Eric Thomas
Don't think about what can happen in a month. Don't think about what can happen in a year. Just focus on the 24 hours in front of you and do what you can to get closer to where you want to be.
Kim Mc Millen
When I loved myself enough, I began leaving whatever wasn't healthy. This meant people, jobs, my own beliefs and habits - anything that kept me small. My judgement called it disloyal; now I see it as self-loving.
Marcus Aurelius
- The Meditations
Don't try to picture everything bad that could possibly happen. Stick with the situation at hand and ask "Why is this so unbearable? Why can't I endure it?" You'll be embarrassed to answer. Then remind yourself that the past and future have no power over you; only the present does.
Inio Asano
- Oyasumi Pun Pun
I am okay with being alone; it is my only stubbornness. It is very comfortable, even if it is similar to living as a ghost. If I am carefree and without pain. I will move forward spontaneously, but I am not interested in where I am heading. One day I will quietly pass away; and I would prefer it if I could vanish from people's memories as well.
Charles Bukowski
The best thing about the bedroom was the bed. I liked to stay in bed for hours, even during the day with covers pulled up to my chin. It was good in there, nothing ever occurred in there, no people, nothing.
Shahvee
What's the point in being miserable all the time? Sometimes life puts you in difficult circumstances you didn't choose, but being happy or unhappy is a choice you make, and I've chosen to make the best of things that I can.
Maurice Sendak
A little boy sent me a charming card with a little drawing on it. I loved it. I sent him a card and I drew a picture of a wild thing on it. I wrote, "Dear Jim, I loved your card." Then I got a letter back from his mother and she said, "Jim loved your card so much he ate it." That to me was one of the highest compliments I've ever received. He didn't care that it was an original Maurice Sendak drawing or anything. He saw it, he loved it, he ate it.
Jessica Valenti
As different as we all are, there's one thing most young women have in common: we're all brought up to feel like there's something wrong with us. We're too fat. We're dumb. We're too smart. We're not ladylike enough - stop cursing, chewing with your mouth open, speaking your mind. You're not too fat. You're not too loud. You're not too smart. You're not unladylike. There is nothing wrong with you.
John Wyndham
- The day of the Triffids
It must be, I thought, one of the race's most persistent and comforting hallucinations to trust that 'It can't happen here'; that one's own little time and place is beyond cataclysms.
T.E Lawrence
Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that all was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes and make it possible.
Randy Pausch
The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something, because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don't want it badly enough. They're there to stop the "other" people.
Daniel Quinn
- Ishmael
A few years ago - you must have been a child at the time, so you may not remember it - many young people of this country had the same impression. They made an ingenuous and disorganised effort to escape from captivity but ultimately failed, because they were unable to find the bars of the cage. If you can't discover what's keeping you in, the will to get out soon becomes confused and ineffectual.
Janet Frame
We cling to our names because we think they emphasise our separateness and completeness and importance, but deep down we know that we are neither separate nor complete, nor very important, nor are we terribly happy.
Radclyffe Hall
- The Well of Loneliness
You're neither unnatural, nor abominable, nor mad; you're as much a part of what people call nature as anyone else; only you're unexplained as yet - you've not got your niche in creation.
Margery Williams
- The Velveteen Rabbit
Generally, by the time you are real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby. But those things don't matter at all, because once you are real you can't be ugly, except to those who don't understand.
