"It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt."
— Abraham Lincoln

"To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

"If you judge people, you have no time to love them."
— Mother Teresa

"We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are."
— Anaïs Nin

"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."
— Anaïs Nin

"It is better to be hated for what you are than loved for what you are not."
— André Gide

"I believe that everything happens for a reason. People change so that you can learn to let go, things go wrong so that you appreciate them when their right, you believe lies so you eventually learn to trust noone but yourself, and sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together."
— Marilyn Monroe

"All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages."
— William Shakespeare

"You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit."
— Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray and Three Stories)

"I, with a 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 naïve or innocent, who has the courage to treat me like a woman."
— Anaïs Nin

"I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."
— Mahatma Gandhi

"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind."
— Dr. Seuss

"We have to dare to be ourselves, however frightening or strange that self may prove to be."
— May Sarton

"In the end
these things matter most:
How well did you love?
How fully did you live?
How deeply did you let go?"
— Siddhārtha Gautama

"Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people we personally dislike."
— Oscar Wilde (An Ideal Husband)

"I know that pain is the most important thing in the universes. Greater than survival, greater than love, greater even than the beauty it brings about. For without pain, there can be no pleasure. Without sadness, there can be no happiness. Without misery there can be no beauty. And without these, life is endless, hopeless, doomed and damned.
Adult. You have become adult.
-- From the title story "Paingod"
— Harlan Ellison (Paingod and Other Delusions)

"We need, in love, to practice only this: letting each other go. For holding on comes easily; we do not need to learn it."
— Rainer Maria Rilke (Translations from the Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke)

"For one human being to love another human being: that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been given to us, the ultimate, the final problem and proof, the work for which all other work is merely preparation."
— Rainer Maria Rilke (The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke)

"Do not assume that he who seeks to comfort you now, lives untroubled among the simple and quiet words that sometimes do you good. His life may also have much sadness and difficulty, that remains far beyond yours. Were it otherwise, he would never have been able to find these words"
— Rainer Maria Rilke

"It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.

It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain! I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it, or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul; if you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see beauty even when it's not pretty, every day, and if you can source your own life from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, “Yes!”

It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up, after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done to feed the children.

It doesn't interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.

It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you, from the inside, when all else falls away.
I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments."
— Oriah Mountain Dreamer (L'Invitation)

"What is that you express in your eyes? It seems to me more than all the words I have read in my life."
— Walt Whitman

"When I give, I give myself."
— Walt Whitman

"I don't want to go on being a root in the dark,
vacillating, stretched out, shivering with sleep,
downward, in the soaked guts of the earth,
absorbing and thinking, eating each day."
— Pablo Neruda

""Give me your hand
out of the depths
sown by your sorrows.""
— Pablo Neruda

"Cuando estamos lejos de la patria nunca la recordamos en sus inviernos. La distancia borra las penas del invierno, las poblaciones desamparadas, los niños descalzos en el frío. El arte del recuerdo sólo nos trae campiñas verdes, flores amarillas y rojas, el cielo azulado del himno nacional."
— Pablo Neruda (Confieso Que He Vivido)

"From childhood's hour I have not been. As others were, I have not seen. As others saw, I could not awaken. My heart to joy at the same tone. And all I loved, I loved alone."
— Edgar Allan Poe

"Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence– whether much that is glorious– whether all that is profound– does not spring from disease of thought– from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect."
— Edgar Allan Poe (Complete Tales and Poems)

"There are some secrets which do not permit themselves to be told."
— Edgar Allan Poe

"The true genius shudders at incompleteness - and usually prefers silence to saying something which is not everything it should be."
— Edgar Allan Poe

"To elevate the soul, poetry is necessary."
— Edgar Allan Poe

"When I discover who I am, I’ll be free"
— Ralph Ellison

"I was never really insane except upon occasions when my heart was touched."
— Edgar Allan Poe