Jan > Jan's Quotes

“There are years that ask questions and years that answer.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

“Love is the extremely difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.”
― Iris Murdoch, Existentialists and Mystics: Writings on Philosophy and Literature

“I know how much you grieve over those who are under your care: those you try to help and fail, those you cannot help. Have faith in God and remember that He will is His own way and in His own time complete what we so poorly attempt. Often we do not achieve for others the good that we intend but achieve something, something that goes on from our effort. Good is an overflow. Where we generously and sincerely intend it, we are engaged in a work of creation which may be mysterious even to ourselves - and because it is mysterious we may be afraid of it. But this should not make us draw back. God can always show us, if we will, a higher and a better way; and we can only learn to love by loving. Remember that all our failures are ultimately failures in love. Imperfect love must not be condemned and rejected but made perfect. The way is always forward, never back.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Bell

“Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it.”
― Edmund Burke

“No book can be appreciated until it has been slept with and dreamed over.”
― Eugene Field

“You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them. Try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud. Do not complain. Make every effort to change things you do not like. If you cannot make a change, change the way you have been thinking. You might find a new solution.”
― Maya Angelou, Letter to My Daughter

“For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Destiny is not a matter of chance; it is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.”
― William Jennings Bryan

“The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.”
― Soren Kierkegaard

“People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.”
― Søren Kierkegaard

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
― Howard Thurman

“Remember that everyone you meet is afraid of something, loves something and has lost something.”
― H. Jackson Brown

“The best portion of a good man's life: his little, nameless unremembered acts of kindness and love.”
― William Wordsworth, Lyrical Ballads

“If someone is not treating you with love and respect, it is a gift if they walk away from you. If that person doesn't walk away, you will surely endure many years of suffering with him or her. Walking away may hurt for a while, but your heart will eventually heal. Then you can choose what you really want. You will find that you don't need to trust others as much as you need to trust yourself to make the right choices.”
― Don Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom

“It is the same woman, I know, for she is always creeping, and most women do not creep by daylight.”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”
― Marcel Proust

“You can't test courage cautiously, so I ran hard and waved my arms hard, happy.”
― Annie Dillard, An American Childhood: A Poignant Memoir About Parents and Passion in 1950s Pittsburgh

“Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.”
― Voltaire

“Inch by inch, life's a cinch. Yard by yard, life's hard.”
― John Bytheway

“The conflict between the will to deny horrible events and the will to proclaim them aloud is the central dialectic of psychological trauma.”
― Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror

“Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass...It's about learning to dance in the rain.”
― Vivian Greene

“Vulnerability is not winning or losing; it’s having the courage to show up and be seen when we have no control over the outcome. Vulnerability is not weakness; it’s our greatest measure of courage.”
― Brené Brown, Rising Strong: The Reckoning. The Rumble. The Revolution.

“The opposite of recognizing that we’re feeling something is denying our emotions. The opposite of being curious is disengaging. When we deny our stories and disengage from tough emotions, they don’t go away; instead, they own us, they define us. Our job is not to deny the story, but to defy the ending—to rise strong, recognize our story, and rumble with the truth until we get to a place where we think, Yes. This is what happened. This is my truth. And I will choose how this story ends.”
― Brené Brown, Rising Strong: The Reckoning. The Rumble. The Revolution.

“Wrong will be right, when Aslan comes in sight,
At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more,
When he bares his teeth, winter meets its death,
And when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

“If there is failure in a relationship, it's because there was no LOVE.”
― Coletha Albert, Situations - A Book of Poems on Life