Julie > Julie's Quotes

“We each have words for "love" in our languages. What would the world look like if we acted on that one word for humanity's sake?”
― Julie Saffrin, BlessBack: Thank Those Who Shaped Your Life

“I could have told you that the reason a lot of people never do anything, or go anywhere, or move to the place they've always wanted to move to or go after the things they always talked about, rarely boils down to other people's not believing in them. I believe now that we're the enemy to the things we really want for our lives. We get really good at telling ourselves ugly lies on repeat every day. "You're unworthy." "You're ugly." "You're inadequate.”
― Hannah Brencher, If You Find This Letter: My Journey to Find Purpose Through Hundreds of Letters to Strangers

“Good-byes hurt. And they happen too much. The only thing I know for certain about this whole good-bye thing? You have to say it sometimes. You have to get real brave, and bite your bottom lip, and let people go sometimes. Fully, fully. Whether you feel ready or not, you're still going to grow up and use that word a lot more than you ever expected to.”
― Hannah Brencher, If You Find This Letter: My Journey to Find Purpose Through Hundreds of Letters to Strangers

“I needed to witness what it looked like when you eventually stopped asking questions and just started living the answers out loud.”
― Hannah Brencher, If You Find This Letter: My Journey to Find Purpose Through Hundreds of Letters to Strangers

“BlessBacks: Souvenirs for those who express their gratitude to their illuminators.”
― Julie Saffrin

“We'll always have Paris.”
― Howard Koch

“Like why do we even have to go through meeting people when we know they aren't going to stay in our lives?”
― Hannah Brencher, If You Find This Letter: My Journey to Find Purpose Through Hundreds of Letters to Strangers

“Agape" is loving a person for exactly who they are - not who we hope they'll become with enough fixing. It's this idea that every person has their layers, so you can never confine a person to only what you know about them from the first glance. It's stacked on the premise that to love anyone is to hope in them always.”
― Hannah Brencher, If You Find This Letter: My Journey to Find Purpose Through Hundreds of Letters to Strangers

“Even though love covers all things, fear is what keeps us silent and keeps words unsaid. Fear keeps us standing in one place. Eventually, when it wins, it means we never got the courage to say what we needed to say.”
― Hannah Brencher, If You Find This Letter: My Journey to Find Purpose Through Hundreds of Letters to Strangers

“Life is not the way it's supposed to be, it's the way it is. The way you cope with that is what makes the difference.”
― Virginia Satir

“I don't know what actually goes down in heaven, if heaven has a grand staircase or a theater where you get to see your impact in a "Crash" kind of cinematic adventure, but I do know our stories work that way--the imprints of ourselves we press into the palms of others have the power to be passed and passed through the hands of many. That the smallest things we do, never thinking twice about them, might be the very things that keep a person alive, and breathing, and standing on that day. I've stopped doubting that kind of impact because believing in it - believing in miracles in the mud of the mundane - gives you so much more purpose than not believing in it at all.”
― Hannah Brencher, If You Find This Letter: My Journey to Find Purpose Through Hundreds of Letters to Strangers

“It's like he expected the hard stuff to come and yet he never gave himself an option to stay angry at the world. I still don't know how he did that. I think it's easy to stay angry at a world that never promises you invincibility but still manages to break your heart with the way some moments can make you feel so infinite.”
― Hannah Brencher, If You Find This Letter: My Journey to Find Purpose Through Hundreds of Letters to Strangers

“Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. The friends who listen to us are the ones we move toward. When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand.”
― Karl Menninger

“What's done to children, they will do to society.”
― Karl Menninger M.D.

“God is a lot of things to a lot of people but I don't think He is a cheap party host with limited grace to give out.”
― Hannah Brencher, If You Find This Letter: My Journey to Find Purpose Through Hundreds of Letters to Strangers

“It is hard for a free fish to understand what is happening to a hooked one.”
― Karl A. Menninger

“I had to take the first step for myself.”
― Hannah Brencher, If You Find This Letter: My Journey to Find Purpose Through Hundreds of Letters to Strangers

“What the teacher is, is more important than what he teaches.”
― Karl Menninger

“Love cures people, both the ones who give it and the ones who receive it.”
― Karl Menninger

“A day without sunshine is like, you know, night.”
― Steve Martin

“That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“Love is a temporary madness, it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides, you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion, it is not the desire to mate every second minute of the day, it is not lying awake at night imagining that he is kissing every cranny of your body. No, don't blush, I am telling you some truths. That is just being "in love", which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident.”
― Shawn Slovo, Captain Corelli's Mandolin filmscript

“I am a part of all that I have met.”
― Alfred Tennyson, The Complete Poetical Works of Tennyson

“We must see all scars as beauty. Okay? This will be our secret. Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, 'I survived'.”
― Chris Cleave, The Other Hand

“It is our tendency to look at people as opposed to looking into them.”
― Tobin Wilson

“Areté is a word that means excellence in character and life. It is the accumulation of virtue in one's life.”
― Tobin Wilson

“I think in threes.”
― Tobin Wilson

“Have you ever noticed that just before something big happens in life, there is a crisis of some sort?”
― Tobin Wilson

“. . .after the shadows comes light.”
― Tobin Wilson