Small and Simple

"I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief 
duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble."  
— Helen Keller 

Thanksgiving

"We can spend our entire lives in scarcity . . . just waiting for for the other shoe to drop and wondering when it will all fall apart. Or, we can lean into the uncertainty and be thankful for what we have in that precious moment. When I'm standing at the crossroads of fear and gratitude, I've learned that I must choose vulnerability and practice gratitude if want to know joy. I'm not sure that it will ever be easy for me, but I have learned to trust this practice. For that, I give thanks!" -Brene Brown 

Rare

“Appreciate how rare and full of potential your situation is in this world, then take joy in it, and use it to your best advantage.”

- Dalai Lama

Joy

“Sorrow prepares you for joy. It violently sweeps everything out of your house, so that new joy can find space to enter. It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place. It pulls up the rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow. Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things will take their place.””

- Rumi

Yes

“I love quotations because it is a joy to find thoughts one might have, beautifully expressed with much authority by someone recognized wiser than oneself.”

- Marlene Dietrich

Roots

"Leaving feels good and pure only when you leave something important, something that mattered to you. Pulling life out by the roots. But you can’t do that until your life has grown roots."

John Green (Paper Towns)

Knowing

"I felt stuck in the bottom of a wishing well. I was desperate to shout what I wanted, but I didn’t know what that was. I knew only what it wasn’t."

The Hundred Secret Senses by Amy Tan

Truth

Pretty much all the honest truth telling in the world is done by children.

-Oliver Wendell Holmes

Perspective

“The world only exists in your eyes. You can make it as big or as small as you want.”

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

Kids

"I believe that a good children's book should appeal to all people who have not completely lost their original joy and wonder in life. The fact is that I don't make books for children at all. I make them for that part of us, of myself and of my friends, which has never changed - which is still a child." - Leo Lionni

Will

“A friend is one that knows you as you are, understands where you have been, accepts what you have become, and still, gently allows you to grow.”

- William Shakespeare

Everywhere

I do believe in an everyday sort of magic — the inexplicable connectedness we sometimes experience with places, people, works of art and the like; the eerie appropriateness of moments of synchronicity; the whispered voice, the hidden presence, when we think we’re alone. -Charles de Lint

Try Try Try

Try a thing you haven’t done three times. Once, to get over the fear of doing it. Twice, to learn how to do it. And a third time, to figure out whether you like it or not. ~Virgil Garnett Thomson

Same Different

There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged
to find the ways in which you yourself have altered. - Nelson Mandela

22

“If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.”

- E. B. White

Move

“Nothing happens until something moves.” -Albert Einstein

Was

“It’s impossible to say a thing exactly the way it was, because what you say can never be exact, you always have to leave something out, there are too many parts, sides, crosscurrents, nuances; too many gestures, which could mean this or that, too many shapes which can never be fully described, too many flavors, in the air or on the tongue, half-colors, too many.”

Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale.

Times

“Remember then that there is only one important time, and that time is now. The most important one is always the one you are with. And the most important thing is to do good for the one who is standing as your side. For these, my dear boy(s), are the answers to what is most important in this world. This is why we are here.”

-
The Three Questions - bases on a story by Leo Tolstoy

History

"I used to feel so alone in the city. All those gazillions of
people and then me, on the outside. Because how do
you meet a new person? I was stunned by this for many
years. And then I realized, you just say, 'Hi.'
They may ignore you. Or you may marry
them. And that possibility is worth that one word."

Augusten Burroughs

Simplify

"As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be 
simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be 
poverty, nor weakness weakness." -Henry David Thoreau

Grand

"Picture that the Grand Canyon is your life--your past, present and future. Start picturing the various parts of your life within the canyon: Over there is the day you were born, your third-grade choir performance, your job as a babysitter. Picture your present: Over there is your apartment, your friends, your mom, the book you're reading right now. Picture your future: Over there is your next vacation, the love of your life, the Top Chef finale.

Now, ...picture the enormous Grand Canyon and drop your worry into it. Whatever you're worrying about--your cranky boss, your dating life, a salty comment from a friend--will be barely visible. "See how tiny it looks?" she says. Suddenly your problem will seem much, much smaller in comparison to the grand course of your huge, rich, long life."
-from here

Be

“If you would create something, you must be something.”  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 

Look

"We looked at each other for the last time; nothing we could say was as eloquent as nothing."
-David Mitchell Cloud Atlas