"I do like Christmas on the whole.... In its clumsy way, it does approach Peace and Goodwill. But it is clumsier every year."
— E.M. Forster

"A man is not called wise because he talks and talks again; but if he is peaceful, loving and fearless then he is in truth called wise."
— Siddhārtha Gautama (The Dhammapada: The Sayings of the Buddha)

"Too bad people can't always be playing music, maybe then there wouldn't be any more wars."
— Margot Benary-Isbert (Rowan Farm)

"I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.

I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.

I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,

and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
Like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue."
— Pablo Neruda

"Sonnet XVII

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

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 than this:

where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep. "
— Pablo Neruda

"Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips."
— Kahlil Gibrán (Love Letters in the Sand: The Love Poems of Khalil Gibran)

"... in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach."
— J.R.R. Tolkien (The Return of the King)

"May the sun
bring you new energy by day
May the moon
softly restore you by night
May the rain
wash away your worries
May the breeze
blow new strength into your being
May you walk
gently through the world and know
its beauty all the days of your life."
— Apache Blessing

"Develop an interest in life as you see it; the people, things, literature, music-the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself."
— Henry Miller

"Did my heart love till now? forswear it, sight! For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night."
— William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)

"With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful.
Strive to be happy."
— Max Ehrmann (Desiderata: A Poem for a Way of Life)

"People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within."
— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

"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)

"The world is indeed full of peril and in it there are many dark places.
But still there is much that is fair. And though in all lands, love is now
mingled with grief, it still grows, perhaps, the greater."
— J.R.R. Tolkien (The Lord of the Rings)

"You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope...I have loved none but you."
— Jane Austen (Persuasion)

"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

"When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, "I used everything you gave me"."
— Erma Bombeck

"I love you. I am who I am because of you. You are every reason, every hope, and every dream I've ever had, and no matter what happens to us in the future, everyday we are together is the greatest day of my life. I will always be yours. "
— Nicholas Sparks (The Notebook)

"to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you've held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again."
— Ellen Bass

"Passion makes a person stop eating, sleeping, working, feeling at peace. A lot of people are frightened because, when it appears, it demolishes all the old things it finds in its path.

No one wants their life thrown into chaos. That is why a lot of people keep that threat under control, and are somehow capable of sustaining a house or a structure that is already rotten. They are the engineers of the superseded.

Other people think exactly the opposite: they surrender themselves without a second thought, hoping to find in passion the solutions to all their problems. They make the other person responsible for their happiness and blame them for their possible unhappiness. They are either euphoric because something marvelous has happened or depressed because something unexpected has just ruined everything.

Keeping passion at bay or surrendering blindly to it - which of these two attitudes is the least destructive?

I don't know."
— Paulo Coelho (Eleven Minutes: A Novel)

"Hope is a waking dream."
— Aristotle

"Only once in your life, I truly believe, you find someone who can completely turn your world around. You tell them things that you’ve never shared with another soul and they absorb everything you say and actually want to hear more. You share hopes for the future, dreams that will never come true, goals that were never achieved and the many disappointments life has thrown at you. When something wonderful happens, you can’t wait to tell them about it, knowing they will share in your excitement. They are not embarrassed to cry with you when you are hurting or laugh with you when you make a fool of yourself. Never do they hurt your feelings or make you feel like you are not good enough, but rather they build you up and show you the things about yourself that make you special and even beautiful. There is never any pressure, jealousy or competition but only a quiet calmness when they are around. You can be yourself and not worry about what they will think of you because they love you for who you are. The things that seem insignificant to most people such as a note, song or walk become invaluable treasures kept safe in your heart to cherish forever. Memories of your childhood come back and are so clear and vivid it’s like being young again. Colours seem brighter and more brilliant. Laughter seems part of daily life where before it was infrequent or didn’t exist at all. A phone call or two during the day helps to get you through a long day’s work and always brings a smile to your face. In their presence, there’s no need for continuous conversation, but you find you’re quite content in just having them nearby. Things that never interested you before become fascinating because you know they are important to this person who is so special to you. You think of this person on every occasion and in everything you do. Simple things bring them to mind like a pale blue sky, gentle wind or even a storm cloud on the horizon. You open your heart knowing that there’s a chance it may be broken one day and in opening your heart, you experience a love and joy that you never dreamed possible. You find that being vulnerable is the only way to allow your heart to feel true pleasure that’s so real it scares you. You find strength in knowing you have a true friend and possibly a soul mate who will remain loyal to the end. Life seems completely different, exciting and worthwhile. Your only hope and security is in knowing that they are a part of your life."
— Bob Marley

"Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves."
— Carl Gustav Jung

"When your Spirit is strained, and you limit at the change,
The lyrics in your limericks a-change,
A different hook the way your sentences arranged
more dominate in your deliverance
more sinister in your slang
sounds more belligerent when its sang"
— Lupe Fiasco

"There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep Sea, and music in its roar;
I love not Man the less, but Nature more."
— George Gordon Byron (Childe Harold's Pilgrimage)

"EPITAPH

Now I'm not the brightest
knife in the drawer, but
I know a couple things
about this life: poverty
silence, impermanence
discipline and mystery

The world is not illusory, we are

From crimson thread to toe tag

If you are not disturbed
there is something seriously wrong with you, I'm sorry

And I know who I am
I'll be a voice
coming from nowhere,

inside--

be glad for me.
"
— Franz Wright (Walking to Martha's Vineyard)

"'I am sorry because there will never be enough time, not even in a hundred years from this day would be enough time for us to love’ "
— Celeste De Blasis (The Proud Breed)

"Sorry is hardest to say when it matters most."
— Ebehi Iyoha

"Droll thing life is -- that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself -- that comes too late -- a crop of inextinguishable regrets."
— Joseph Conrad (Heart of Darkness)

"In life we all have an unspeakable secret, and irreversible regret, an unreachable dream, and an unforgettable love."
— Diego Marchi

"The two most important phrases in the human language are "If only" and "Maybe someday". Our past mistakes and our unrequited longings. The things we regret and the things we yearn for. That's what makes us who we are."
— Will Ferguson (Happiness: A Novel)

"Regrets came up and asked me if I’d like to own them. Declined them for the most part but took a few just so I wouldn’t leave this relationship empty handed."
— Steve Toltz (A Fraction of the Whole)

"Forget the dead, the past? O yet there are ghosts that may take revenge for it, memories that make the heart a tomb, regrets which gild thro’ the spirit’s gloom, and with ghastly whispers tell that joy, once lost, is pain."
— Percy Bysshe Shelley

"In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."
— Martin Luther King Jr.

"What matters in life is not what happens to you but what you remember and how you remember it."
— Gabriel García Márquez

"You know that place between sleeping and awake, that place where you can still remember dreaming? That's where I'll always think of you."
— J.M. Barrie

"If I had a flower for every time I thought of you...I could walk through my garden forever."
— Alfred Lord Tennyson

"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

"Te amo como se aman ciertas cosa oscuras,
secretamente, entre la sombra y el alma.
(I love you as certain darks things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.)"
— Pablo Neruda (100 Love Sonnets/Cien Sonetos De Amor)

"Every heart has its secret sorrows which the world knows not, and oftentimes we call a man cold, when he is only sad."
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility."
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"Two things cannot be in one place. Where you tend a rose, a thistle cannot grow."
— Frances Hodgson Burnett (The Secret Garden)

"We dance round in a ring and suppose, / But the Secret sits in the middle and knows."
— Robert Frost

"And the curt truth is that, in a deep secret way, the state of being loved is intolerable to many."
— Carson McCullers (The Ballad of the Sad Café and Other Stories)

"The secret of joy is the mastery of pain."
— Anaïs Nin

"Children show scars like medals. Lovers use them as a secrets to reveal. A scar is what happens when the word is made flesh."
— Leonard Cohen (The Favorite Game)

"It is the peculiar nature of the world to go on spinning no matter what sort of heartbreak is happening."
— Sue Monk Kidd (The Secret Life of Bees)

"The secret was a hole in the middle of me that every happy thing fell into."
— Jonathan Safran Foer (Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close)

"For what is it to die, But to stand in the sun and melt into the wind? And when the Earth has claimed our limbs, Then we shall truly dance."
— Kahlil Gibrán

"To die, to sleep -
To sleep, perchance to dream - ay, there's the rub,
For in this sleep of death what dreams may come..."
— William Shakespeare (Hamlet)