Sandra Gassner > Sandra's Quotes

“I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration, I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person is humanized or de-humanized. If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming.”
― Haim G. Ginott, Teacher and Child: A Book for Parents and Teachers

“If I ever go looking for my heart's desire again, I won't look any further than my own back yard. Because if it isn't there, I never really lost it to begin with.”
― Noel Langley, The Wizard of Oz Screenplay

“This is why the home you build yourself, in many ways, is the most rewarding one of all. You can fill it, and populate it, with whatever and whoever you wish. It can be whatever you want it to be, whether it’s the place you share with your partner, or your partner plus the colorful chaos of children (or the furry and malodorous chaos of pets), or just the solitary peace of your sofa, a good book and a big glass of wine. This home is the one you fill with your own family, whoever you choose them to be—but the peace is in the choosing.”
― Bethany Chase, The One That Got Away

“All that I am or ever hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother.”
― Theodore Hesburgh

“My mother... she is beautiful, softened at the edges and tempered with a spine of steel. I want to grow old and be like her.”
― Jodi Picoult

“Youth fades, love droops, the leaves of friendship fall; A mother's secret hope outlives them all. ”
― Oliver Wendell Holmes

“Children are the anchors that hold a mother to life.”
― Sophocles

“If you go through life picking and choosing, if you don’t recognize that “the perfect is the enemy of the good,”
― Lori Gottlieb, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed

“If you go through life picking and choosing, if you don’t recognize that “the perfect is the enemy of the good,” you may deprive yourself of joy.”
― Lori Gottlieb, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed

“There’s a popular saying, a paraphrase of a Robert Frost poem: “The only way out is through.”
― Lori Gottlieb, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed

“In idiot compassion, you avoid rocking the boat to spare people’s feelings, even though the boat needs rocking and your compassion ends up being more harmful than your honesty. People do this with teenagers, spouses, addicts, even themselves. Its opposite is wise compassion, which means caring about the person but also giving him”
― Lori Gottlieb, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed

“Before you speak, ask yourself, What is this going to feel like to the person I’m speaking to? ”
― Lori Gottlieb, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed

“What have I told you about death?” Old Lady said sharply into the phone, her voice sounding stronger than it had at the beginning of their conversation. Marjorie tugged at the cord. Old Lady said that only bodies died. Spirits wandered. They found Asamando, or they didn’t. They stayed with their descendants to guide them through life, to comfort them, sometimes to scare them into waking from their fog of unloving, unliving.”
― Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing

“Whenever you feel afraid, just remember. Courage is the root of change - and change is what we're chemically designed to do. So when you wake up tomorrow, make this pledge. No more holding yourself back. No more subscribing to others' opinions of what you can and cannot achieve. And no more allowing anyone to pigeonhole you into useless categories of sex, race, economic status, and religion. Do not allow your talents to lie dormant, ladies. Design your own future. When you go home today, ask yourself what YOU will change. And then get started.”
― Bonnie Garmus, Lessons in Chemistry