Brave Enough: A Collection of Inspirational Quotes

by Cheryl Strayed

Love many, trust few, and always paddle your own canoe.

“Maybe you have to know the darkness before you can appreciate the light,

YOU don’t have to get a job that makes others feel comfortable about what they perceive as your success. You don’t have to explain what you plan to do with your life. You don’t have to justify your education by demonstrating its financial rewards. You don’t have to maintain an impeccable credit score. Anyone who expects you to do any of those things has no sense of history or economics or science or the arts. You have to pay your own electric bill. You have to be kind. You have to give it all you’ve got. You have to find people who love you truly and love them back with the same truth. But that’s all.

Don’t surrender all your joy for an idea you used to have about yourself that isn’t true anymore.

You remember that someone else’s success has no bearing on your own.

There isn’t a thing to eat down there in the rabbit hole of your bitterness except your own desperate heart.

Real love moves freely in both directions. Don’t waste your time on anything else.

the basic principles you identify for yourself that define the behaviors that you will tolerate from others, as well as the responses you will have to those behaviors. Boundaries teach people how to treat you and they teach you how to respect yourself.

We are all entitled to our opinions and religious beliefs, but we are not entitled to make shit up and then use the shit we made up to oppress other people.