That proves you are unusual,” returned the Scarecrow; “and I am convinced that the only people worthy of consideration in this world are the unusual ones. For the common folks are like the leaves of a tree, and live and die unnoticed.
Love the trees until their leaves fall off, then encourage them to try again next year.
And that’s when I understand that I have been stained. Whether I’m still in love with him, whether he was ever in love with me, and no matter who he’s in love with now, Willem changed my life. He showed me how to get lost, and then I showed myself how to get found.
Would you rather live one perfect day over and over or live your life with no perfect days but just decent ones?
We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people.
You need to find a way to live your life, that it doesn’t make a mockery of your values.
The value of things is not the time they last, but the intensity with which they occur. That is why there are unforgettable moments and unique people!
As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.
To truly laugh, you must be able to take your pain, and play with it.
Conquer the angry one by not getting angry; conquer the wicked by goodness; conquer the stingy by generosity, and the liar by speaking the truth.
[Verse 223]
Don’t limit a child to your own learning, for she was born in another time.
Your time is way too valuable to be wasting on people that can’t accept who you are.
If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem. It is true that you may fool all of the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all of the time; but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time. -Speech at Clinton, Illinois, September 8, 1854.
I hate to say it, but shit really does happen. You just have to get over it. Beat the hell out of it by doing things that make you happy.
In times of stress, the best thing we can do for each other is to listen with our ears and our hearts and to be assured that our questions are just as important as our answers.
Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or lose.
Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.
A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.
It is not the failure of others to appreciate your abilities that should trouble you, but rather your failure to appreciate theirs.
Yes, I understand why things had to happen this way. I understand his reason for causing me pain. But mere understanding does not chase away the hurt. It does not call upon the sun when dark clouds have loomed over me. Let the rain come then if it must come! And let it wash away the dust that hurt my eyes!
When you judge another, you do not define them, you define yourself.
If you enter this world knowing you are loved and you leave this world knowing the same, then everything that happens in between can be dealt with.
Looking at beauty in the world, is the first step of purifying the mind.
Nothing’s perfect, the world’s not perfect. But it’s there for us, trying the best it can; that’s what makes it so damn beautiful.
It is not a daily increase, but a daily decrease. Hack away at the inessentials.
…Next time you’re faced with a choice, do the right thing. It hurts everyone less in the long run.
Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only those who can leave behind everything they have ever believed in can hope to escape.
Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not come, and, when death is come, we are not.
When you have exhausted all possibilities, remember this – you haven’t.
Challenge and adversity are meant to help you know who you are. Storms hit your weakness, but unlock your true strength.
She was a beautiful dreamer. The kind of girl, who kept her head in the clouds, loved above the stars and left regret beneath the earth she walked on.
Be silent and safe — silence never betrays you;
Be true to your word and your work and your friend;
Put least trust in him who is foremost to praise you,
Nor judge of a road till it draw to the end.
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it.
Here is a rule to remember in future, when anything tempts you to feel bitter: not “This is misfortune,” but “To bear this worthily is good fortune.
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
All I ask is one thing, and I’m asking this particularly of young people: please don’t be cynical. I hate cynicism, for the record, it’s my least favorite quality and it doesn’t lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen.
We should not judge people by their peak of excellence; but by the distance they have traveled from the point where they started.
If you haven’t the strength to impose your own terms upon life, then you must accept the terms it offers you.
Hope is important because it can make the present moment less difficult to bear. If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today.
Re-examine all you have been told. Dismiss what insults your soul.
He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying.
Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.
People have only as much liberty as they have the intelligence to want and the courage to take.
And if my heart be scarred and burned,
The safer, I, for all I learned.
I would rather make mistakes in kindness and compassion than work miracles in unkindness and hardness.
The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.
Do you really want to be happy? You can begin by being appreciative of who you are and what you’ve got.
Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let the pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place
Be yourself; no base imitator of another, but your best self. There is something which you can do better than another. Listen to the inward voice and bravely obey that. Do the things at which you are great, not what you were never made for.
A creative life cannot be sustained by approval any more than it can be destroyed by criticism.
Darling, when things go wrong in life, you lift your chin, put on a ravishing smile, mix yourself a little cocktail…
See, as much as you want to hold on to the bitter sore memory that someone has left this world, you are still in it
To write well, express yourself like the common people, but think like a wise man.
The world is so empty if one thinks only of mountains, rivers & cities; but to know someone who thinks & feels with us, & who, though distant, is close to us in spirit, this makes the earth for us an inhabited garden.
If my mind can conceive it, and my heart can believe it – then I can achieve it.