"“If you love somebody, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours. And if they don't, they never were.”"
— Gibran Khalil Gibran

"It is wrong to think that love comes from long companionship and persevering courtship. Love is the offspring of spiritual affinity and unless that affinity is created in a moment, it will not be created for years or even generations."
— Kahlil Gibrán

"Hearts united in pain and sorrow
will not be separated by joy and happiness.
Bonds that are woven in sadness
are stronger than the ties of joy and pleasure.
Love that is washed by tears
will remain eternally pure and faithful."
— Kahlil Gibrán (Love Letters in the Sand: The Love Poems of Khalil Gibran)

"When love beckons to you, follow him, though his ways are hard and steep. And when his wings enfold you, yield to him, though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you. And when he speaks to you, believe in him, though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden.
"
— Kahlil Gibrán

"Love one another,
but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between
the shores of your souls."
— Kahlil Gibrán (Love Letters in the Sand: The Love Poems of Khalil Gibran)

"If your heart is a volcano, how shall you expect flowers to bloom?"
— Kahlil Gibran

"Be to her virtues very kind,
Be to her faults a little blind."
— Matthew Prior (The poetical works of Matthew Prior)

"Sometimes you wake up. Sometimes the fall kills you. And sometimes, when you fall, you fly."
— Neil Gaiman (The Sandman Vol. 6: Fables and Reflections)

"I like the stars. It's the illusion of permanence, I think. I mean, they're always flaring up and caving in and going out. But from here, I can pretend...I can pretend that things last. I can pretend that lives last longer than moments. Gods come, and gods go. Mortals flicker and flash and fade. Worlds don't last; and stars and galaxies are transient, fleeting things that twinkle like fireflies and vanish into cold and dust. But I can pretend...""
— Neil Gaiman (The Sandman Vol. 7: Brief Lives)

"Have you ever spent days and days and days making up flavors of ice cream that no one's ever eaten before? Like chicken and telepone ice cream? Green mouse ice cream was the worst. I didn't like that at all."
— Neil Gaiman (The Sandman Vol. 7: Brief Lives)

"Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up."
— Neil Gaiman (The Sandman Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones)

"I've been making a list of the things they don't teach you at school. They don't teach you how to love somebody. They don't teach you how to be famous. They don't teach you how to be rich or how to be poor. They don't teach you how to walk away from someone you don't love any longer. They don't teach you how to know what's going on in someone else's mind. They don't teach you what to say to someone who's dying. They don't teach you anything worth knowing."
— Neil Gaiman (The Sandman Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones)

"Everybody has a secret world inside of them. All of the people of the world, I mean everybody. No matter how dull and boring they are on the outside, inside them they've all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds. Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands maybe."
— Neil Gaiman (The Sandman Vol. 5: A Game of You)

"People want you to be happy.
Don't keep serving them your pain!

If you could untie your wings
and free your soul of jealousy,

you and everyone around you
would fly up like doves."
— Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi

"Be like the sun for grace and mercy. Be like the night to cover others' faults. Be like running water for generosity. Be like death for rage and anger. Be like the Earth for modesty. Appear as you are. Be as you appear."
— Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi

"My soul is from elsewhere, I'm sure of that, and I intend to end up there."
— Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi

"One thing I've learned: you can know anything, it's all there, you just have to find it."
— Neil Gaiman

"People think dreams aren't real just because they aren't made of matter, of particles. Dreams are real. But they are made of viewpoints, of images, of memories and puns and lost hopes."
— Neil Gaiman

"A good friend will always stab you in the front."
— Oscar Wilde

"Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth."
— Oscar Wilde

"To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance."
— Oscar Wilde (An Ideal Husband)

"Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean - except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be."
— J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)

"He who kisses joy as it flies by will live in eternity's sunrise."
— William Blake

"If a thing loves, it is infinite."
— William Blake

"HAPPINESS [is] ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED"
— Jon Krakauer (Into the Wild)

"To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
An eternity in an hour."
— William Blake

"I am incapable of conceiving infinity and yet I do not accept finity."
— Simone de Beauvoir

"In itself, homosexuality is as limiting as heterosexuality: the ideal should be to be capable of loving a woman or a man; either, a human being, without feeling fear, restraint, or obligation."
— Simone de Beauvoir

"I am the lover's gift; I am the wedding wreath;
I am the memory of a moment of happiness;
I am the last gift of the living to the dead;
I am a part of joy and a part of sorrow."
— Gibran Kahlil Gibran

"She poured out the liquid music of her voice to quench the thirst of his spirit. "
— Nathaniel Hawthorne

"Our Creator would never have made such lovely days, and have given us the deep hearts to enjoy them, above and beyond all thought, unless we were meant to be immortal."
— Nathaniel Hawthorne