"It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

""You said you didn't want to get involved with me,that one of us would get hurt and how you couldn't bear it. Well that just isn't good enough..Look what happens to people just living their lives. They get hurt, it's not fair they get hurt but they do, all the time, no matter how careful they are. Somebody can just just come along and hurt them, for no stupid reason..""
— Julian Gough (Juno & Juliet: A Novel)

"Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for."
— Epicurus

"But what is Hope? Nothing but the paint on the face of Existence; the least touch of truth rubs it off, and then we see what a hollow-cheeked harlot we have got hold of. "
— Lord Byron

""By what standards of reason are you calling people 'adjusted' these days? Happy? Contented? Hopeful? If people have adjusted to a society that seems hell-bent on destroying itself in the next couple of decades, just what does that prove about the people.""
— case No. 47 (1946)

"When you don't know where you're going, you drive on the highway."
— Roger Hedden (Bodies, Rest and Motion.)

"I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close."
— Gabriel García Márquez (One Hundred Years of Solitude)

"Let me tell you this: if you meet a loner, no matter what they tell you, it's not because they enjoy solitude. It's because they have tried to blend into the world before, and people continue to disappoint them."
— Jodi Picoult (My Sister's Keeper)

"It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson (The Complete Prose Works Of Ralph Waldo Emerson)

"The point of marriage is not to create a quick commonality by tearing down all boundaries; on the contrary, a good marriage is one in which each partner appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude, and thus they show each other the greatest possible trust. A merging of two people is an impossibility, and where it seems to exist, it is a hemming-in, a mutual consent that robs one party or both parties of their fullest freedom and development. But once the realization is accepted that even between the closest people infinite distances exist, a marvelous living side-by-side can grow up for them, if they succeed in loving the expanse between them, which gives them the possibility of always seeing each other as a whole and before an immense sky."
— Rainer Maria Rilke (Letters to a Young Poet)

"Guard well your spare moments. They are like uncut diamonds. Discard them and their value will never be known. Improve them and they will become the brightest gems in a useful life."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Love consists of this: two solitudes that meet, protect and greet each other. "
— Rainer Maria Rilke

"There are days when solitude is a heady wine that intoxicates you with freedom, others when it is a bitter tonic, and still others when it is a poison that makes you beat your head against the wall."
— Colette (Oeuvres complètes en seize volumes)

"Loneliness is black coffee and late-night television; solitude is herb tea and soft music. Solitude, quality solitude, is an assertion of self-worth, because only in the stillness can we hear the truth of our own unique voices."
— Pearl Cleage (Deals With the Devil: And Other Reasons to Riot)

"Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love."
— Rainer Maria Rilke

"Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depth of your heart; confess to yourself you would have to die if you were forbidden to write."
— Rainer Maria Rilke

"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)

"The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things."
— Rainer Maria Rilke

"I hold this to be the highest task of a bond between two people: that each should stand guard over the solitude of the other. "
— 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

"There are no classes in life for beginners: right away you are always asked to deal with what is most difficult."
— Rainer Maria Rilke

"Perhaps the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything terrible is, in its deepest essence, something that feels helpless and needs our love."
— Rainer Maria Rilke

"Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue, a wonderful living side by side can grow, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky."
— Rainer Maria Rilke

"Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depth of your heart; confess to yourself you would have to die if you were forbidden to write."
— Rainer Maria Rilke

"If your everyday life seems poor, don't blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is no poverty and no indifferent place.""
— Rainer Maria Rilke

"I am a house gutted by fire where only the guilty sometimes sleep before the punishment that devours them hounds them out in the open. "
— Rainer Maria Rilke (Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God)

"That is the principal thing-not to remain with the dream, with the intention, with the being-in-the-mood, but always forcibly to convert it all into things."
— Rainer Maria Rilke (Cartas A Un Joven Poeta)

".... most people come to know only one corner of their room, one spot near the window, one narrow strip on which they keep walking back and forth."
— Rainer Maria Rilke (Letters to a Young Poet)

"How could we forget those ancient myths that stand at the beginning of all races, the myths about dragons that at the last moment are transformed into princesses? Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage."
— Rainer Maria Rilke (Letters to a Young Poet)

"Perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is, in its deepest being, something helpless that wants help from us."
— Rainer Maria Rilke

"Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible to see the other whole against the sky."
— Rainer Maria Rilke

""A picture is a secret about a secret, the more it tells you the less you know." "
— Diane Arbus

"You don't make a photograph just with a camera. You bring to the act of photography all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved."
— Ansel Adams

"Above all, life for a photographer cannot be a matter of indifference"
— Robert Frank

"A portrait is not a likeness. The moment an emotion or fact is transformed into a photograph it is no longer a fact but an opinion. There is no such thing as inaccuracy in a photograph. All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth. "
— Richard Avedon

"We are working guys, not artists."
— Jack Lenahan

"Für mich besteht die Photographie im gleichzeitigen blitzschnellen Erkennen der inneren Bedeutung der Tatsache einerseits, und auf der anderen Seite des strengen und rückhaltlosen Aufbaus der optisch erfaßbaren Formenwelt, die jede Tatsache zum Ausdruck bringt. Indem wir leben, entdecken wir uns selbst und gleichzeitig die Außenwelt, die auf uns einwirkt, auf die wir aber auch unsererseits einwirken können. Zwischen dieser inneren und äußeren Welt muß ein Gleichgewicht geschaffen werden, die beiden Welten bilden in einem immerwährenden Dialog ein einziges Ganzes, und den Begriff davon müssen wir mitzuteilen suchen."
— Henri Cartier-Bresson (The Mind's Eye: Writings on Photography and Photographers)

"Landscape photography is the supreme test of the photographer - and often the supreme disappointment. "
— Ansel Adams

"[S]chon seit der Erfindung der Fotografie wird um deren Echtheit gestritten, weil die Fotografie wohl nie eine Abbildung der Wirklichkeit war, sondern allenfalls ein Vorschlag, wie die Welt zu sehen ist."
— Henning Sussebach

"There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature."
— Jane Austen (Northanger Abbey)

"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)

"I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't any Narnia."
— C.S. Lewis (The Silver Chair)

"Everyone, at some point in their lives, wakes up in the middle of the night with the feeling that they are all alone in the world, and that nobody loves them now and that nobody will ever love them, and that they will never have a decent night's sleep again and will spend their lives wandering blearily around a loveless landscape, hoping desperately that their circumstances will improve, but suspecting, in their heart of hearts, that they will remain unloved forever. The best thing to do in these circumstances is to wake somebody else up, so that they can feel this way, too."
— Lemony Snicket (Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid)

"There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well. The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of merit or sense."
— Jane Austen

"It takes courage to love, but pain through love is the purifying fire which those who love generously know. We all know people who are so much afraid of pain that they shut themselves up like clams in a shell and, giving out nothing, receive nothing and therefore shrink until life is a mere living death."
— Eleanor Roosevelt

"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)

"If you gave someone your heart and they died, did they take it with them? Did you spend the rest of forever with a hole inside you that couldn't be filled?"
— Jodi Picoult (Nineteen Minutes)

"I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it."
— Jack Handey

"The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them; that's the essence of inhumanity. "
— George Bernard Shaw

"I hate a Roman named Status Quo!" he said to me. "Stuff your eyes with wonder," he said, "live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories. Ask no guarantees, ask for no security, there never was such an animal. And if there were, it would be related to the great sloth which hangs upside down in a tree all day every day, sleeping its life away. To hell with that," he said, "shake the tree and knock the great sloth down on his ass.""
— Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451)