""My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style" "
— Maya Angelou

"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

"12080
"Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson "
— — Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square hole. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do."
— Apple Computer Inc.

"In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on."
— Robert Frost

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."
— Oscar Wilde (Lady Windermere's Fan)

"Be yourself; everyone else is already taken."
— Oscar Wilde

"Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Our deepest 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, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And 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."
— Marianne Williamson (A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of a Course in Miracles)

"You don't have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body."
— C.S. Lewis

"Listen to the mustn'ts, child. Listen to the don'ts. Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the won'ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me... Anything can happen, child. Anything can be."
— Shel Silverstein

"...we accept the love we think we deserve."
— Stephen Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower)

"Life is an opportunity, benefit from it.
Life is beauty, admire it.
Life is a dream, realize it.
Life is a challenge, meet it.
Life is a duty, complete it.
Life is a game, play it.
Life is a promise, fulfill it.
Life is sorrow, overcome it.
Life is a song, sing it.
Life is a struggle, accept it.
Life is a tragedy, confront it.
Life is an adventure, dare it.
Life is luck, make it.
Life is too precious, do not destroy it.
Life is life, fight for it."
— Mother Teresa

"I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride; so I love you because I know no other way."
— Pablo Neruda (100 Love Sonnets/Cien Sonetos De Amor)

"One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain."
— Bob Marley

"The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference."
— Robert Frost

"I'm the one that has to die when it's time for me to die, so let me live my life, the way I want to."
— Jimi Hendrix

"i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart)i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear no fate (for you are my fate,my sweet)i want no world (for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)"
— e.e. cummings

"Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living"
— Jonathan Safran Foer (Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close)

"Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing."
— Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird)

"Don't Panic"
— Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)

"If you are going through hell, keep going."
— Winston S. Churchill

"It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything. "
— Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)

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

"Listen. To live is to be marked. To live is to change, to acquire the words of a story, and that is the only celebration we mortals really know. In perfect stillness, frankly, I've only found sorrow."
— Barbara Kingsolver (The Poisonwood Bible)

"... every crack in my soul could be chinked with a book."
— Barbara Kingsolver

"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 see it through no matter what.-Atticus Finch"
— Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird)

"And so it goes..."
— Kurt Vonnegut

"We loved with a love that was more than love."
— Edgar Allan Poe

"We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down."
— Kurt Vonnegut

"I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can't see from the center."
— Kurt Vonnegut

"These woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep."
— Robert Frost

"Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no to-morrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace."
— Sylvia Plath (The Bell Jar)

"That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet."
— Emily Dickinson

"When it is dark enough, you can see the stars."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

"He's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same."
— Emily Brontë

"And in that moment, I swear we were infinite."
— Stephen Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower)

"Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt."
— Kurt Vonnegut (Slaughterhouse-Five)

"Alice laughed. 'There's no use trying,' she said. 'One can't believe impossible things.'

'I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. 'When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. There goes the shawl again!'"
— Lewis Carroll

"Time is very slow for those who wait
Very fast for those who are scared
very long for those who lament
Very short for those who celebrate
But for those who love time is eternal"
— William Shakespeare

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?"
— Mary Oliver (New and Selected Poems)

"Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

"May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't to forget make some art -- write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself."
— Neil Gaiman

"Stop wearing your wishbone where your backbone ought to be."
— Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia)

"I think it's perfectly possible to explain how the universe came about without bringing God into it, but I don't know everything, and there may well be a God somewhere, hiding away. Actually, if he is keeping out of sight, it's because he's ashamed of his followers and all the cruelty and ignorance they're responsible for promoting in his name. If I were him, I'd want nothing to do with them."
— Philip Pullman

"Love is a temporary madness, it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides, you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion, it is not the desire to mate every second minute of the day, it is not lying awake at night imagining that he is kissing every cranny of your body. No, don't blush, I am telling you some truths. That is just being "in love", which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident."
— Louis de Bernières (Captain Corelli's Mandolin)

"Our lives are not as limited as we think they are; the world is a wonderfully weird place; consensual reality is significantly flawed; no institution can be trusted, but love does work; all things are possible; and we all could be happy and fulfilled if we only had the guts to be truly free and the wisdom to shrink our egos and quit taking ourselves so damn seriously."
— Tom Robbins

"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

"Promise me you'll always remember: You're braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think."
— A.A. Milne

"Be with me always - take any form - drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I can not live without my life! I can not live without my soul!"
— Emily Brontë