Bold

“Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too.

All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way.”

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.”

- J. W. von Goethe

And...Amen

"I know I will never be liked by everyone, but I want to at least like myself in an authentic way that doesn't translate as smug."-Cjane here

My Kind of Style

"During my first year as a high school English teacher, my supervising teacher wanted me to implement a “check marks on the board” method of discipline (it worked for her), but I found it frankly exhausting and not in keeping with the kinds of interpersonal relationships I wanted to develop with my students. Instead, I adopted a kind of “Hey, let’s get to know each other and trust each other and respect each other and hopefully that will work, but if it doesn’t I reserve the right to briefly lose it, and then we can get back to trusting and respecting each other again.” For the most part, this strategy worked for me. Except when it didn’t." -Angela from here

Still point of the turning world

from Four Quartets

T.S. Eliot

Time past and time future
  What might have been and what has been
          Point to one end, which is always present...
          At the still point of the turning world 

           Where past and future are gathered.

Wheat

“If you could understand a single grain of wheat, you would die of wonder.” -Martin Luther

You Are

"Kids don't remember what you try to teach them. They remember what you are." – Jim Henson

Gloaming

"In Scotland they have a word for the limbic space between life and death—it’s the same word they use to describe that time when it’s not quite day… but it’s not quite night. It’s a word that describes the nether space that hovers in between any two things, neither one nor the other. They call it the gloaming." - Kerry Spencer , The Gloaming

A story

Hanif Kureishi, Intimacy and Midnight All Day

Heartbreak

There’s a loneliness that only exists in one’s mind. The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly.
- F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Walden

To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any exercise which the customs of the day esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object. Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.
- Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Whole

“I actually attack the concept of happiness. I don’t mind people being happy - but the idea that everything we do is part of the pursuit of happiness seems to me a really dangerous idea and has led to a contemporary disease in Western society, which is fear of sadness. It’s a really odd thing that we’re now seeing people saying 'write down 3 things that made you happy today before you go to sleep', and 'cheer up' and 'happiness is our birthright' and so on. We’re kind of teaching our kids that happiness is the default position - it’s rubbish. Wholeness is what we ought to be striving for and part of that is sadness, disappointment, frustration, failure; all of those things which make us who we are. Happiness and victory and fulfillment are nice little things that also happen to us, but they don’t teach us much. Everyone says we grow through pain and then as soon as they experience pain they say 'Quick! Move on! Cheer up!' I’d like just for a year to have a moratorium on the word 'happiness' and to replace it with the word 'wholeness'. Ask yourself 'is this contributing to my wholeness?' and if you’re having a bad day, it is.”

Hugh Mackay, psychologist and social researcher

Shame

"An addict needs shame like a man dying of thirst needs salt water."

Ask

"Asking is RAW and when something is raw, it is tender and when something is tender, it is delicate...so when we are in the place of asking we're admitting that we ourselves are fragile and that no matter what emotional facade we may build up around us, we are not made to be emotionally, physically or spiritually bulletproof."


Chelsea Talks Smack

Poetry

“We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.”

Dead Poets Society 

Flow

"Dwell as near as possible to the channel in which your life 
flows." --Henry David Thoreau

Smile

“He smiled understandingly—much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced—or seemed to face—the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.”

- The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald