"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 in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit."
— e.e. cummings

"Believe there is a great power silently working all things
for good, behave yourself and never mind the rest.

"
— Beatrix Potter

"Living with integrity means: Not settling for less than what you know you deserve in your relationships. Asking for what you want and need from others. Speaking your truth, even though it might create conflict or tension. Behaving in ways that are in harmony with your personal values. Making choices based on what you believe, and not what others believe."
— Barbara De Angelis

"Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit"
— e.e. cummings

"...But it gradually seemed to me that I'd made myself believe something that wasn't true. I'd made myself believe that I was fine and happy and fulfilled on my own without the love of anyone else. Being in love was like China: you knew it was there, and no doubt it was very interesting, and some people went there, but I never would. I'd spend all my life without ever going to China, but it wouldn't matter, because there was all the rest of the world to visit... And I thought: am I really going to spend the rest of my life without feeling that again? I thought: I want to go to China. It's full of treasures and strangeness and mysteries and joy."
— Philip Pullman (The Amber Spyglass)

"Do I believe in Heaven and Hell? I do, we have them here; the world is nothing else."
— John Davidson

"I wonder if the reason I tend to say yes to everything is because I deeply believe that I can survive anything."
— Scarlett Thomas (The End of Mr. Y)

"Believe that you can do it, under any circumstances. Because if you believe you can, then you really will. That belief just keeps you searching for the answers, then pretty soon you get it."
— Wally Amos

"Christopher Robin, to Pooh Bear: You're braver than you believe, stronger than you seem and smarter than you think."
— A.A. Milne

"I believe the risks I take are justified by the sheer love of the life I lead."
— Charles Lindbergh

"We are what we believe we are."
— Benjamin N. Cardozo

"Wherever you are, be all there! Live to the hilt every situation you believe to be the will of God."
— Jim Elliot

"No man is happy unless he believes he is."
— Publilus Syrus

"Not to abide in Jesus’ love would mean that we stop believing that we are loved by Jesus. We look at our circumstances - perhaps persecution or disease or abandonment - and we conclude that we are not loved by Jesus anymore. That’s the opposite of abiding in the love of Jesus. So abiding in his love means continuing to believe, moment by moment, that we are loved."
— John Piper (What Jesus Demands from the World)

"You have to believe in yourself when no one else will. "
— Sugar Ray Robinson

"When a man is in despair, it means that he still believes in something."
— Shostakovich

""Believing you are worthy of love means that you believe I deserve to be treated well - with respect and dignity. I deserve to be cherished and adored by someone. I am worthy of an intimate and fulfilling relationship. I won't settle for less than I deserve. I will do whatever it takes to create that for myself.""
— Suze Orman

"Change isn't easy... changing the way you live means changing what you believe about life. That's hard... When we make our own misery, we sometimes cling to it even when we want so bad to change because the misery is something we know. The misery is comfortable."
— Dean Koontz

"You are unhappy because you believe in such a thing as happy."
— Lorrie Moore

"Sometimes it takes a while to recognize that someone has a special ability to get us to believe in ourselves, to tie that belief to our highest ideals, and to imagine that together we can do great things.

In those rare moments, when such a person comes along, we need to put aside our plans and reach for what we know is possible. "
— Caroline Kennedy

"When someone doesn't show up, the people who wait sometimes tell stories about what might have happened and come to half believe the desertion, the abduction, the accident. Worry is a way to pretend that you have knowledge or control over what you don't--and it surprises me, even in myself, how much we prefer ugly scenarios to the pure unknown. Perhaps fantasy is what you fill up maps with rather than saying that they too contain the unknown."
— Rebecca Solnit (A Field Guide to Getting Lost)

"... But he believed that every great love was in some measure a terrible mistake."
— Michael Chabon (A Model World and Other Stories)

"You are the most dangerous kind of female the world can ever know. You carry the seeds for your own destruction and the destruction of everyone who loves you. And a great many will love you for your beautiful face for your seductive body; but you will fail them all because you will believe they all fail you first. You are an idealist of the worst kind - the romantic idealist. Born to destroy and self destruct."
— V.C. Andrews

"If we commit ourselves to one person for life, this is not, as many people think, a rejection of freedom; rather, it demands the courage to move into all the risks of freedom, and the risk of love which is permanent; into that love which is not possession but participation."
— Madeleine L'Engle

"Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone
won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You
have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth.
You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And
when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or hurt, or death
brushes near, you let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the
apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell
yourself that you tasted as many as you could.
"
— Louise Erdrich (The Painted Drum: A Novel)

"It seems to me that people have vast potential. Most people can do extraordinary things if they have the confidence or take the risks. Yet most people don't. They sit in front of the telly and treat life as if it goes on forever."
— Philip Adams

"A fall from the third floor hurts as much as a fall from the hundredth. If I have to fall, may it be from a high place."
— Paulo Coelho

"Generally speaking, the most miserable people I know are those who are obsessed with themselves; the happiest people I know are those who lose themselves in the service of others...By and large, I have come to see that if we complain about life, it is because we are thinking only of ourselves."
— Gordon B. Hinckley

"try and expect nothing,
but be OPEN for anything.
Don't look far for happiness,
but never settle for anything less.
"
— C. S

"Now and then it's good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy."
— Guillaume Apollinaire

"Children are happy because they don't have a file in their minds called "All the Things That Could Go Wrong."
— Marianne Williamson

"The sense of unhappiness is so much easier to convey than that of happiness. In misery we seem aware of our own existence, even though it may be in the form of a monstrous egotism: this pain of mine is individual, this nerve that winces belongs to me and to no other. But happiness annihilates us: we lose our identity."
— Graham Greene

"Until you make peace with who you are, you'll never be content with what you have."
— Doris Mortman

"Most people would rather be certain they're miserable, than risk being happy."
— Robert Anthony

"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."
— Elizabeth Gilbert

"The reason people find it so hard to be happy is that they always see the past better than it was, the present worse than it is, and the future less resolved than it will be. "
— Marcel Pagnol

"There you go...let it all slide out. Unhappiness can't stick in a person's soul when it's slick with tears [p. 173]."
— Shannon Hale (Princess Academy)

"Happiness is not the absence of problems but the ability to deal with them. "
— Jack Brown

"If you want to be happy, you have to believe in the possibility of happiness...Let the dead bury the dead, but while ever there is life,you must live and be happy."
— Leo Tolstoy (War and Peace)

"I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge. That myth is more potent than history. That dreams are more powerful than facts. That hope always triumphs over experience. That laughter is the only cure for grief. And I believe that love is stronger than death."
— Robert Fulghum (All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten)

"The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance, but live right in it, under its roof."
— Barbara Kingsolver (Animal Dreams)

"Things like that happen all the time in this great big world of ours. It's like taking a boat out on a beautiful lake on a beautiful day and thinking both the sky and lake are beautiful. So stop eating yourself alive. Things will go where they're supposed to go if you just let them take their natural course."
— Haruki Murakami

"It isn't the big troubles in life that require character. Anybody can rise to a crisis and face a crushing tragedy with courage, but to meet the petty hazards of the day with a laugh - I really think that requires spirit.
It's the kind of character that I am going to develop. I am going to pretend that all life is just a game which I must play as skillfully and fairly as I can. If I lose, I am going to shrug my shoulders and laugh - also if I win."
— Jean Webster (Daddy Long Legs)

"It's just that I don't want to be somebody's crush. If somebody likes me, I want them to like the real me, not what they think I am. And I don't want them to carry it around inside. I want them to show me, so I can feel it too."
— Stephen Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower)

"There are shortcuts to happiness and dancing is one of them!"
— Vicki Baum (Ballerina)

"Now today, moment by moment, realize that each person and event that happens is life for you. Life is not somewhere else. See how fully you can accept the life that presents itself to you now."
— Brenda Shoshanna

""God is life. God is life in action. The best way to say, "I love you, God," is to live your life doing your best. The best way to say, "Thank you, God," is by letting go of the past and living in the present moment, right here and now. Whatever life takes away from you, let it go. When you surrender and let go of the past, you allow yourself to be fully alive in the moment. Letting go of the past means you can enjoy the dream that is happening right now.""
— Miguel Ruiz (The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom, A Toltec Wisdom Book)

"if we are not fully ourselves, truly in the present, we miss everything."
— Thich Nhat Hanh

"Do not waste the precious moments of this, your present reality, seeking to unveil all of life's secrets. Those secrets are a secret for a reason. Grant your God the benefit of the doubt. Use your NOW moment for the Highest Purpose- the creation and the expression of WHO YOU REALLY ARE. Decide who you are- who you want to be-and then do everything in your power to be that.

It is not nearly so important how well a message is received as how well it is sent. You cannot take responsibility for how well another accepts your truth; you can only ensure how well it is communicated. And by how well, I don't mean merely how clearly; I mean how lovingly, how compassionately, how sensitively, how courageously, and how completely.

If you think your life is about DOINGNESS, you do not understand what you are about. Your soul doesn't care what you do for a living-and when your life is over, neither will you. Your soul cares only about what you're BEING while you're doing whatever you're doing. It is a state of BEINGNESS the soul is after, not a state of doingness."
— Neale Donald Walsch

"Sugar, it's no parade but you'll get down the street one way or another, so you'd just as well throw your shoulders back and pick up the pace."
— Barbara Kingsolver (The Poisonwood Bible)