Beth > Beth's Quotes

“Why Bother? Because right now, there is someone out there with a wound in the exact shape of your words.”
― Sean Thomas Dougherty

“I cannot endure to waste anything so precious as autumnal sunshine by staying in the house."

[Notebook, Oct. 10, 1842]”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne, The American Notebooks: The Centenary Edition

“Anyone who imagines that bliss is normal is going to waste a lot of time running around shouting that he’s been robbed. The fact is that most putts don’t drop, most beef is tough, most children grow up to just be people, most successful marriages require a high degree of mutual toleration, most jobs are more often dull than otherwise. Life is like an old time rail journey…delays…sidetracks, smoke, dust, cinders and jolts, interspersed only occasionally by beautiful vistas and thrilling burst of speed. The trick is to thank the Lord for letting you have the ride.”
― Jenkin Lloyd Jones

“Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.”
― William Morris

“Letter writing is the only device combining solitude with good company.”
― Lord Byron

“Dude, suckin’ at something is the first step to being sorta good at something.”
― Jake the Dog

“study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you.”
― Frank Lloyd Wright

“If you want a golden rule that will fit everything, this is it: Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.”
― William Morris

“...I do not want art for a few; any more than education for a few; or freedom for a few... ”
― William Morris

“Elaine: Ugh, I hate people.
Jerry: Yeah, they're the worst. ”
― Jerry Seinfeld

“Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”
― Maya Angelou

“I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.”
― Maya Angelou

“If someone is able to show me that what I think or do is not right, I will happily change, for I seek the truth, by which no one was ever truly harmed. It is the person who continues in his self-deception and ignorance who is harmed.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“hope is not an emotion; it’s a way of thinking or a cognitive process. Emotions play a supporting role, but hope is really a thought process made up of what Snyder calls a trilogy of goals, pathways, and agency.4 In very simple terms, hope happens when We have the ability to set realistic goals (I know where I want to go). We are able to figure out how to achieve those goals, including the ability to stay flexible and develop alternative routes (I know how to get there, I’m persistent, and I can tolerate disappointment and try again). We believe in ourselves (I can do this!).”
― Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are

“Art is how we decorate space;
Music is how we decorate time.”
― Jean Michel Basquiat

“[T]here are two races of men in this world, but only these two -- the "race" of the decent man and the "race" of the indecent man. Both are found everywhere; they penetrate into all groups of society. No group consists entirely of decent or indecent people.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“Doubt can only be removed by action.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“I was quiet, but I was not blind.”
― Jane Austen, Mansfield Park

“Never cut a tree down in the wintertime. Never make a negative decision in the low time. Never make your most important decisions when you are in your worst moods. Wait. Be patient. The storm will pass. The spring will come.”
― Robert H. Schuller

“If I had a flower for every time I thought of you...I could walk through my garden forever.”
― Alfred Tennyson

“When you learn, teach, when you get, give.”
― Maya Angelou

“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
― Maya Angelou

“When someone shows you who they are believe them the first time.”
― Maya Angelou

“Courage is the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you can't practice any other virtue consistently.”
― Maya Angelou

“I don't love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as certain dark things are loved,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that doesn't bloom and carries
hidden within itself the light of those flowers,
and thanks to your love, darkly in my body
lives the dense fragrance that rises from the earth.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you simply, without problems or pride:
I love you in this way because I don't know any other way of loving
but this, in which there is no I or you,
so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand,
so intimate that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that close.”
― Pablo Neruda

“Hell is empty and all the devils are here.”
― William Shakespeare, The Tempest

“Your enemy is not the refugee. Your enemy is the one who made him a refugee.”
― Tariq Ramadan

“You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.”
― Mary Oliver

“The difference between friends and pets is that friends we allow into our company; pets we allow into our solitude.”
― Robert Brault