"The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking."
— Albert Einstein

"I don't know if I continue, even today, always liking myself. But what I learned to do many years ago was to forgive myself. It is very important for every human being to forgive herself or himself because if you live, you will make mistakes- it is inevitable. But once you do and you see the mistake, then you forgive yourself and say, 'Well, if I'd known better I'd have done better,' that's all. So you say to people who you think you may have injured, 'I'm sorry,' and then you say to yourself, 'I'm sorry.' If we all hold on to the mistake, we can't see our own glory in the mirror because we have the mistake between our faces and the mirror; we can't see what we're capable of being. You can ask forgiveness of others, but in the end the real forgiveness is in one's own self. I think that young men and women are so caught by the way they see themselves. Now mind you. When a larger society sees them as unattractive, as threats, as too black or too white or too poor or too fat or too thin or too sexual or too asexual, that's rough. But you can overcome that. The real difficulty is to overcome how you think about yourself. If we don't have that we never grow, we never learn, and sure as hell we should never teach."
— Maya Angelou

"You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you."
— Maya Angelou

"We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library, whose walls are covered to the ceiling with books in many different languages. The child knows that someone must have written those books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the the languages in which they are written. The child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books, a mysterious order, which it does not comprehend but only dimly suspects."
— Albert Einstein

"Poetry puts starch in your backbone so you can stand, so you can compose your life."
— Maya Angelou

"The need for change bulldozed a road down the center of my mind. "
— Maya Angelou

"We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty."
— Maya Angelou

"It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"Without music, life would be a mistake."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"I would believe only in a God that knows how to dance."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"Art is the proper task of life. "
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfil themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. And every young farmboy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest, the ideal trees grow.

Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.

A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail.

A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy. Out of this trust I live.

When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. Let God speak within you, and your thoughts will grow silent. You are anxious because your path leads away from mother and home. But every step and every day lead you back again to the mother. Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.

A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one's suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother.

So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness."
— Hermann Hesse

"What is the seal of liberation? Not to be ashamed in front of oneself."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"Distrust in all whom the impulse to punish is powerful."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"True, we love life, not because we are used to living, but because we are used to loving. There is always some madness in love, but there is also always some reason in madness."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"They muddy the water, to make it seem deep."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"My dear friend, what is this our life? A boat that swims in the sea, and all one knows for certain about it is that one day it will capsize. Here we are, two good old boats that have been faithful neighbors, and above all your hand has done its best to keep me from "capsizing"! Let us then continue our voyage—each for the other's sake, for a long time yet, a long time! We should miss each other so much! Tolerably calm seas and good winds and above all sun—what I wish for myself, I wish for you, too, and am sorry that my gratitude can find expression only in such a wish and has no influence at all on wind or weather!"
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"Many are stubborn in pursuit of the path they have chosen. Few in pursuit of the goal."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"As long as you still experience the stars as something "above you", you lack the eye of knowledge."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"I assess the power of a will by how much resistance, pain, torture it endures and knows how to turn to its advantage"
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself. "
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away."
— Maya Angelou

"A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song."
— Maya Angelou

"I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it."
— Maya Angelou

"I've learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way (s)he handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights."
— Maya Angelou

"Still I Rise


You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise."
— Maya Angelou

"Courage: the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you can't practice any other virtue consistently."
— Maya Angelou

"Life is pure adventure, and the sooner we realize that, the quicker we will be able to treat life as art."
— Maya Angelou

"I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels, lifes a bitch. You've got to go out and kick ass."
— Maya Angelou

"Everything in the universe has a rhythm, everything dances. "
— Maya Angelou

"I believe that the most important single thing, beyond discipline and creativity is daring to dare."
— Maya Angelou

"If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform a million realities."
— Maya Angelou

"Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean."
— Maya Angelou

"Hate, it has caused a lot of problems in the world, but has not solved one yet"
— Maya Angelou

"The caged bird sings with a fearful trill,
of things unknown, but longed for still,
and his tune is heard on the distant hill,
for the caged bird sings of freedom.
"
— Maya Angelou

"You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it. "
— Maya Angelou

"Nothing can dim the light which shines from within.
"
— Maya Angelou

"My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. "
— Maya Angelou

"Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope"
— Maya Angelou

"Talent is like electricity. We don't understand electricity. We use it"
— Maya Angelou

""I've learned that you shouldn't go through life with a catcher's mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw some things back.""
— Maya Angelou