5 Inspiring Quotes to Wrap Up the Year

David McCord wrote poetry for children. This quote is from one of those poems and is a favorite amongst librarians:

Books Fall Open
Books fall open, you fall in,
delighted where you've never been;
hear voices not once heard before,
reach world on world through door on door;
find unexpected keys to things locked up beyond imaginings.

What might you be, perhaps become,
because one book is somewhere?
Some wise delver into wisdom, wit,
and wherewithal has written it.
True books will venture, dare you out,
whisper secrets, maybe shout
across the gloom to you in need,
who hanker for a book to read.

This quote is often misattributed to Galileo, but it is actually from a poem titled The Old Astronomer by English poet Sarah Williams. The full couplet is also beautiful:

Though my soul may set in darkness,
it will rise in perfect light.
I have loved the stars too fondly
to be fearful of the night.

Read the entire poem here.

A beautiful piece of wisdom from the inimitable Maya Angelou, who died this year at age 86. This quote comes from an episode of Oprah Winfrey's Master Class series, in which Angelou discusses the importance of kindness. Watch an excerpt here.

Novelist and playwright William Nicholson won a Tony for his first Broadway production, Shadowlands, about the deep friendship and eventual love between C.S. Lewis and Joy Gresham, who wrote under the name Joy Davidman—this quote comes from Nicholson's script. After Gresham's death, Lewis wrote a powerful meditation on his sorrow, titled A Grief Observed, which includes this touching description:

"She was my daughter and my mother, my pupil and my teacher, my subject and my sovereign; and always, holding all these in solution, my trusty comrade, friend, shipmate, fellow-soldier. My mistress; but at the same time all that any man friend (and I have good ones) has ever been to me. Perhaps more."

Creepy-cute pioneer Edward Gorey was a true lover of cats. They often showed up in his illustrations—perhaps most memorably in his work for T.S. Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, which was the inspiration for the blockbuster musical Cats. (Listen to Eliot reading one of his poems here!) Here Gorey says it all, in just five short words.