Forge

“How do you move on? You move on when your heart finally understands that there is no turning back.”

- J.R.R. Tolkien 

Grow

“No one warns you about the amount of mourning in growth.”

- Té V. Smith Releasing & Recieving 

Fly Again

“One day, your heart will learn to fly again, and you will see such beautiful things. I hope you have the patience to wait for that day, to know that the lonely hours are not spent in vain, but that you are just slowly gaining the strength and courage to use your wings again.”

- T.B. LaBerge // Unwritten Letters to You 

Iceland Eve

"In Iceland, books are exchanged on Christmas Eve, and you spend the rest of the night reading. People generally take their books to bed along with some chocolate. How cozy and wonderful does that sound?

(More fun facts: Iceland publishes more books per capita than any other country, and new books are typically published only during the Christmas season—the frenzy is called Jólabókaflóð, or the Christmas Book Flood.)"

Work it out

“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.”

- C.S. Lewis (a grief observed)

This is not a breakdown

"I promise you. 

The way you feel right now? This is where the magic happens.

When finally the tears come, that is your genesis. You gotta smash a few things to let the light in, you know? And in the ruins, in the discarded shards of what you thought you wanted, something will glimmer. It will catch your eye and you’ll focus on that: the tiny bit of beautiful in the mess that you’ve made. It will be enough to make you think, okay. One more shot. You’ll rebuild, focusing on that one thing that made you believe you could. It will be a new focal point. A new reason. And what you make the second time around will be stronger, better, more you than ever before.

The same goes for the third, fourth, and ninety-ninth time too.

When you’re face down in the dirt, at the bottom of the proverbial hole, you cannot believe that it will ever be better. But I promise: this has an end point. This will not last forever.

It might, though, go on a little longer than you’d like....

Call your best friend, dress a little fancier than usual, and be brave. 

Know that you might not have the answers, but that you’re prepared to listen: to the people who love you, to the people you respect, to your own heart. Listen.

Slow down, cancel some plans, be with yourself. When you’re at the very bottom, when you can’t see where you should put your next step, stand still. Take stock of what you’ve got, how far you’ve come, if this thing that eludes you – do you actually, really, genuinely want it? Or is desiring it habit from the old you who you no longer are, now that you know this pain?

Complete a task. It doesn’t matter what it is – pick something from your list that can be executed now. You’ll feel better for doing something, even if it is simply collecting your prescription or getting a food shop done. Keep breathing. Go to bed early after a hot bath and tomorrow will be – no matter how imperceptibly – better.

Imagine how you’ll feel in another six months. Will you even remember this?

Use this hurt, this frustration, to inform your next decisions. Focus on what feels good, and lean, unapologetically, into that. 

Wrestle for your happiness, but know that the best people aren’t happy, they’re whole. 

That means fighting the good fight, knowing what you can change and what you can’t – and having the good grace to know the difference.

This is your becoming. If flowers can teach themselves how to bloom after winter passes, says Noor Shirazie, then so can you."

-Laura Jane Williams 

Unknown Known

"Making your unknown known is the important thing."

-Georgia O'Keeffe

Things are never just one thing

"Things are never one thing. Life is like the organs of the human body: it all connects, it all serves a purpose... The thing about life is that every aspect of it runs together. Each tangent is like a river but eventually it all pools together into the same body of water. There’s no separating out one thing from another. You can’t compartmentalize no matter how hard you try to. How you feel about yourself is how you will show up in your life. That’s just how it goes. And how one part of your life is faring informs how another part is faring. Job stress leaks into relationship dissatisfaction leaks into snips at friends leaks into frustrated conversations with parents leaks into judgments of others on social media leaks into... You see? It all leaks. It all pools."

-Jamie Varon via Thought Catalog

Life is about seasons

"You are strong. Even though it feels like you’ve lost the right words, you have stuff to say. You have a voice, and you were meant to use it. We don't always get to see the next step, but TRUST that it is there. Life is about seasons, and you will have new ones soon. Trust your discernment. It’s going to be hard, so hard for a while, but you are resilient and you will emerge with a boldness and vibrancy, a clarity and life like you've never known it. There is a hope and a future greater than you could ever ask for or imagine."

Ali Nelson via the Everygirl

Things I had no words for

"Georgia O’Keeffe has this stunning quote that just nails it. She says, 'I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way…things I had no words for." '

#thingsihadnowordsfor

-Ali Nelson via Everygirl

Emptiness

"Every sin is an attempt to fly from emptiness."

-Simon Weil, Gravity and Grace, via 1000 Gifts by Ann VanKamp

Love is a Fruit

"Love is a fruit in season at all times, and within reach of all hands."

-Mother Teresa

Fields of Uncertainty

"I believe my own voice continues to be found wherever I am being present and responding from my heart, moment by moment. My voice is born repeatedly in the fields of uncertainty."

-Terry Tempest Williams

I open every door

"Not knowing when the dawn will come
I open every door...."

Emily Dickinson (from #89)

Something that you are

"True happiness resides within you. Most people are searching for happiness outside of themselves. That's a fundamental mistake. Happiness is something that you are, and it comes from the way that you think."

-Wayne Dyer

Seeds for Dreams

"Dreams are born when God breathes on our hearts in a place of intimacy. However, if we do not understand the journey of a dream as a seed to a tree of life, we may get disheartened and stop pursuing them. The reality is that if we were to step into the fullness of God's plan for our life all at once, it would crush us. God mercifully takes us through a maturing process so that we will develop the kind of character necessary to fulfill those dreams..."

-Marisa Albrecht

A Small God of Miracles

"Perhaps the good that can come from this terrifying experience is a more complex understanding of what God means to you so the next time you need spiritual solace you’ll have something sturdier to lean on than the rickety I’ll-believe-he-exists-only-if-he-gives-me-what-I-want fence. What you learned is that your idea of God as a possibly non-existent spirit man who may or may not hear your prayers and may or may not swoop in to save your ass when the going gets rough is a losing prospect.

So It’s up to you to create a better one. A bigger one. Which is really, almost always, something smaller.

What if you allowed your God to exist in the simple words of compassion others offer to you? What if faith is the way it feels to lay your hand on your daughter’s sacred body? What if the greatest beauty of the day is the shaft of sunlight through your window? What if the worst thing happened and you rose anyway? What if you trusted in the human scale? What if you listened harder to the story of the man on the cross who found a way to endure his suffering than to the one about the impossible magic of the Messiah? Would you see the miracle in that?"

-Dear Sugar Advice Column

Geography of Your Soul

"Your soul knows the geography of your destiny. Your soul alone has the map of your future, therefore you can trust this indirect, oblique side of yourself. If you do, ti will take you where you need to go, but more important it will teach you a kindness of rhythm in your journey."

-John O'Donohue

Choice

"I do believe in fate and destiny, but I also believe we are only fated to do the things that we’d choose anyway. "

-The Chaos of Stars

Thief of Life

“We waste so many days waiting for weekend. So many nights wanting morning. Our lust for future comfort is the biggest thief of life.”

- Joshua Glenn Clark 

Calm

“When thinking about life, remember this: no amount of guilt can change the past, and no amount of anxiety can change the future.”

- This is so important. 

Brave is Not a Pleaser

"I think we like to talk a lot about being brave because the actual doing of it is so freaking terrifying. And tiring. And ordinary. It’s my belief that true fearlessness comes from living loved. When we find our worth and our value in Christ, then, as the Psalmist wrote, what can man do to us? I don’t think we can be a people-pleaser or an approval-addict AND be brave with our lives. Perhaps that’s why fearlessness or bravery starts with our identity first, it’s the deep well from which we draw living water, enough for today. I believe that bravery is born in the quiet and ordinary moments long before it’s seen by anyone else. Sometimes it’s as simple and devastating as the moments no one else will ever see – the moments of daring to be honest with our own self, of laying down our excuses or justifications or disguises, of asking ourselves what we really want, of forgiveness, of honesty, of choosing the hard daily work of restoration, of staying resolutely alive when every one else is just numbing themselves against life. These are why our friends matter so deeply: they are witness to the sacred secrets. Not all secrets are terrifying things, some of them are beautiful and transformative.”

- Sarah Bessey

Movement

“This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never all dried at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal sunset, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls.”

- John Muir

Love Don't Fall

“What is commonly called ‘falling in love’ is in most cases an intensification of egoistic wanting and needing. You become addicted to another person, or rather to your image of that person. It has nothing to do with true love, which contains no wanting whatsoever.”

- Eckhart Tolle

Action Packed

"Never mistake motion for action."

-Ernest Hemingway

Too Much

"You will always be too much of something for someone: too big, too loud, too soft, too edgy. If you round out your edges, you lose your edge."

-Danielle LaPorte

About to get real

I love you

For putting your hand
Into my heaped-up heart
And passing over
All the foolish, weak things
That you can't help
Dimly seeing there,
And for drawing out
Into the light
All the beautiful belongings
That no one else had looked
Quite far enough to find...

-Erich Fried

Bud to Bloom

"If there is no struggle, there is no progress."

-Frederick Douglas

And then covers them snug

"I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says 'Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again.'"

-Lewis Carrol

Simplify

“When things aren’t adding up in your life, start subtracting.”

Forests

“Listen to me, your body is not a temple. Temples can be destroyed and desecrated. Your body is a forest — thick canopies of maple trees and sweet scented wildflowers sprouting in the underwood. You will grow back, over and over, no matter how badly you are devastated.”

- Beau Taplin || T e m p l e s  

November

“It was November - the month of crimson sunsets, parting birds, deep, sad hymns of the sea, passionate wind-songs in the pines.”

- L.M. Montgomery 

Self Respect

“Truly powerful women don’t explain why they want respect. They simply don’t engage those who don’t give it to them.”

-Sherry Argov

Seeds

“Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.”

- Martin Luther King, Jr. 

Tiny Love Stars

“So you protected yourself and loved small. Picked the tiniest stars out of the sky to own; lay down with head twisted in order to see the loved one over the rim of the trench before you slept.”

- Beloved by Toni Morrison 

Stress

“Stress is caused by being here but wanting to be there.”

- Eckhart Tolle 

Edit

“Edit your life frequently and ruthlessly. It’s your masterpiece after all.”

- Nathan W. Morris 

Like Water

“She is free in her wildness, she is a wanderess, a drop of free water. She knows nothing of borders and cares nothing for rules or customs. ‘Time’ for her isn’t something to fight against. Her life flows clean, with passion, like fresh water.”

- 

Chains and Expectations

"That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But, it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been. Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day."

-Charles Dickens, Great Expectations,  ch. 9

Chambers of a Quivering Heart

"Words are much stronger than I am. I take a deep breath and sidestep my fear and begin speaking from the place where beauty and bravery meet--within the chambers of a quivering heart."

-Terry Tempest Williams

Questions Questions

"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart, and try to love the questions themselves."

-Rainer Maria Rilke

You are the stars

"Many people feel small because they're small and the universe is big, but I feel big, because my atoms came from those stars. There's a level of connectivity. That's really what you want in life: you want to feel connected, you want to feel relevant, you want to feel like you're a participant. … That's precisely what we are, just by being alive.”

-Neil deGrasse Tyson

Dark and Light

"Having avowed over much of Wuthering Heights, there 'broods a horror of great darkness'; that, in its storm-heated and electrical atmosphere we seem at times to breathe lightning, let me point out to those spots where clouded day-light and the eclipsed sun still attest their existence."

-Charlotte Bronte when discussing the darkness of her sister's book, Wuthering Heights

Bland is Easy

"There was a moment where I realized that playing it safe was hurting me. It’s easy to be bland and inoffensive as a brand, to not want to offend people. "

-Anni Cee Photographie

Go Toward the Dark

"People who deny the existence of dragons are often eaten by dragons from within."

-Ursula K. LeGuin

Be Real

"Authenticity doesn't mean airing out all your dirty laundry, but it does mean really and truly living in your own skin. Your skin has bruises. It has imperfections. There are parts of it that you probably don't like and you might be worried that other people might not like them either. Authenticity isn't perfect or safe, but it is REAL. There is intrinsic value in who you really are, not who you want to be, or wish you were, but who you really are and how you really feel. The real you is where passion happens. It's where progress happens. It's where compassion and truth and adventure happen."

-Lindsey Saletta, columnist  @limitlessgeneration

Be Like Trees

"Around me the trees stir in their leaves and call out 'stay awhile'..The light flows from their branches. And they call again, 'It's simple,' they say, 'And you too have come into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled with light, and to shine."

-Mary Oliver

October, Stay

"October is the fallen leaf, but it is also a wider horizon more clearly seen. It is the distant hills once more in sight, and the enduring constellations above them once again."

-Hal Borland

Silence and Love

“If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more.”

- Jane Austen, Emma 

October

“It’s so strange that autumn is so beautiful; yet everything is dying.”

- ?

Reflections

"He glanced back at the wall. How like a mirror, too, her face. Impossible; for how many people did you know who reflected your own light to you? People were more often—he searched for a simile, found one in his work—torches, blazing away until they whiffed out. How rarely did other people’s faces take of you and throw back to you your own expression, your own innermost trembling thought?”

- Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 

October

“Rain on roof outside window, gray light, deep covers and warm blankets. Rain and nip of autumn in air; nostalgia, itch to work better and bigger. That crisp edge of autumn.”

- The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, 26 August 1956 in Paris 

October & Harry

“October arrived, spreading a damp chill over the grounds and into the castle. Madam Pomfrey, the nurse, was kept busy by a sudden spate of colds among the staff and students. Raindrops the size of bullets thundered on the castle windows for days on end; the lake rose, the flower beds turned into muddy streams, and Hagrid’s pumpkins swelled to the size of garden sheds.”

- J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets  

Well, Crap

“Better to be at the bottom of a ladder you want to climb than in the middle of some ladder you don’t, right?”

- Dave Eggers, The Circle 

Sundowner's Cure

“Take long walks in stormy weather or through deep snows in the fields and woods, if you would keep your spirits up. Deal with brute nature. Be cold and hungry and weary.”

- Henry David Thoreau 

Fruits of Theology

"I am more interested in your fruit than I am your theology. If your knowledge doesn’t better equip you to love, it’s worthless."

Mattie Montgomery

Common Uncommon

via Sycamore Street Press

Simplify!

"Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify.

-Henry David Thoreau

Letter to Self

"A story is a letter that the author writes to himself, to tell himself things that he would be unable to discover otherwise."

-Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Just Jump

"I always did something I was a little not ready to do. I think that's how you grow." 

– Mariska Mayer, CEO of Yahoo 

Poetry Patterns

 "Poetry isn't one thing that serves one purpose. It's a way of making patterns that put emotions into words."

Stephen Burt

Poisonwood Bible

"Don't try to make life a mathematics problem with yourself in the center and everything coming out equal. When you're good, bad things can still happen. And if you're bad, you can still be lucky."

-Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible

Look Hard

"In my own worst seasons I've come back from the colorless world of despair by forcing myself to look hard, for a long time, at a single glorious thing: a flame of red geranium outside my bedroom window. And then another: my daughter in a yellow dress. And another: the perfect outline of a full, dark sphere behind the crescent moon. Until I learned to be in love with my life again. Like a stroke victim retraining new parts of the brain to grasp lost skills, I have taught myself joy, over and over again."

-Barbara Kingsolver

Imagine Unimaginable

"Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable."

-Mary Oliver

Saved by Woman

‘THE WORLD WILL BE SAVED BY THE WESTERN WOMAN.’

- His Holiness the Dalai Lama

No is Ok

"Many Mormon women do not have clear boundaries for themselves. They feel a sense of confusion about who they are, because many competing voices lay claim to them and they try to accommodate them all. For example, when I became a member of the Relief Society general presidency, I was appalled at how many women were tormented by guilt about their responsibilities as mothers. They seemed unable to see a boundary between themselves and their children. If a child deviated from what was expected, it became a burden that the mother bore. . . .

It is a strength for women to be able to cross their own boundaries easily when they are meeting the needs of their children and serving others, but it is a great disadvantage when they feel every call for service as an imperative which they are obligated to meet. Remember, a boundary has “yes” on one side and “no” on the other. A woman who never feels that she can say “no” is lacking an important element of personal identity and, hence, personal safety.” 

--Chieko Okazaki

Busy as an Ant

"It's not enough to be busy: so are the ants. The question is: what are you busy about?

-Henry David Thoreau

Soul Resume

"Don't ever confuse the two, your life and your work. That's what I have to say. The second is only a part of the first...There are thousands of people out there with the same degree you have; when you get a job, there will be thousands of people doing what you want to do for a living. But you are the only person alive who has sole custody of your life. Your particular life. Your entire life. Not just your life at a desk, or your life on the bus, or in the car, or at the computer. Not just the life of your mind, but the life of your heart. Not just your bank account, but your soul...People don’t talk about the soul very much anymore. It’s so much easier to write a résumé than to craft a spirit. But a résumé is cold comfort on a winter night, or when you’re sad, or broke, or lonely, or when you’ve gotten back the chest X ray and it doesn’t look so good, or when the doctor writes “prognosis, poor.”

—Anna Quindlen

No Kardashian Slang

"Speak in statements instead of apologetic questions. No one wants to go to a doctor who says, “I’m going to be your surgeon? I’m here to talk to you about your procedure? I was first in my class at Johns Hopkins, so?” Make statements, with your actions and your voice."

—Tina Fey

Teach me to Heal

I am here only to be truly helpful.

I am here to represent Him Who sent me.

I do not have to worry about what to say or what to do, because He Who sent me will direct me.

I am content to be wherever He wishes, knowing He goes there with me.

I will be healed as I let Him teach me to heal.

-A Course in Miracles, ch. 2

Ignorance

"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”

-Isaac Asimov, Newsweek "A Cult of Ignorance" 

Secret Gardens and a Look in Someone's Eyes

"One of the strange things about living in the world is that it is only now and then one is quite sure one is going to live forever and ever and ever. One knows it sometimes when one gets up at the tender solemn dawn-time and goes out and stands alone and throws one's head far back and looks up and up an watches the pale sky slowly changing and flushing and marvelous unknown thing happening until the East almost makes one cry out and one's heart stands still at the strange unchanging majesty of the rising of the sun - which has been happening every morning for thousands and thousands and thousands of years. One knows it then, for a moment or so. And one knows it sometimes when one stands by oneself in a wood at sunset and the mysterious deep gold stillness slanting through and under the branches seems to be saying slowly again and again something one cannot quite hear, however much one tries. Then sometimes the immense quiet of the dark blue at night with the millions of stars waiting and watching makes one sure; and sometime a sound of far-off music makes it true; and sometimes a look in someone's eyes."

-Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden (pg. 268)

Simple Depth

"I photograph to find out what something will look like photographed."

-Garry Winogrand

Reality

“There are people who think that things that happen in fiction do not really happen. These people are wrong.”

- Neil Gaiman 

And then I listened

“She had authentic magnetism. The way she listened was more eloquent than speech.”

- unknown

Waves Crash Hearts

"The person you think of when you stand in front of the ocean."

-Colleen Michele

Rise in Love

“In fact a mature person does not fall in love, he rises in love. The word ’fall’ is not right. Only immature people fall; they stumble and fall down in love. Somehow they were managing and standing. They cannot manage and they cannot stand – they find a woman and they are gone, they find a man and they are gone. They were always ready to fall on the ground and to creep. They don’t have the backbone, the spine; they don’t have that integrity to stand alone.
A mature person has the integrity to be alone. And when a mature person gives love, he gives without any strings attached to it: he simply gives. And when a mature person gives love, he feels grateful that you have accepted his love, not vice versa. He does not expect you to be thankful for it – no, not at all, he does not even need your thanks. He thanks you for accepting his love. And when two mature persons are in love, one of the greatest paradoxes of life happens, one of the most beautiful phenomena: they are together and yet tremendously alone; they are together so much so that they are almost one. But their oneness does not destroy their individuality, in fact, it enhances it: they become more individual.

Two mature persons in love help each other to become more free. There is no politics involved, no diplomacy, no effort to dominate. How can you dominate the person you love? Just think over it. Domination is a sort of hatred, anger, enmity. How can you think of dominating a person you love? You would love to see the person totally free, independent; you will give him more individuality. That’s why I call it the greatest paradox: they are together so much so that they are almost one, but still in that oneness they are individuals. Their individualities are not effaced – they have become more enhanced. The other has enriched them as far as their freedom is concerned.

Immature people falling in love destroy each other’s freedom, create a bondage, make a prison. Mature persons in love help each other to be free; they help each other to destroy all sorts of bondages. And when love flows with freedom there is beauty. When love flows with dependence there is ugliness."

- Osho

Raining

“Sunshine all the time makes a desert”

-Arab proverb 

Fancy

“She has often felt that her outsides were too dull for her insides, that deep within her there was something better than what everyone else could see.”

- Myla Goldberg, Bee Season 

No Pressure

“I love those mornings when you wake to darkness and no one is asking anything of you. You’re under no pressure to exist. This is something of which I am in constant need.”

- C.R.

The Plainest Weeds

"The fastidious habits of polished life generally incline us to reject, as incapable of interesting us, whatever does not present itself in a graceful shape of its own, and a ready-made suit of ornaments. But some of the plainest weeds become beautiful under the microscope. it is the benevolent provision of nature, that in proportion as you feel the necessity of extracting interest from common things, you are enabled to do so."

Leigh Hunt "On Washerwomen"

Harry!

“Autumn seemed to arrive suddenly that year. The morning of the first September was crisp and golden as an apple…”

- JK Rowling, Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows 

The Infinite Suggestiveness

"The essay-writer has no lack of subject-matter. He has the day that is passing over his head; and, if unsatisfied with that, he has the world's six thousand years to depasture his gay or serious humour upon. I idle away my time here, and I am finding new subjects every hour. Everything I see of hear is an essay in bud. The world is everywhere whispering essays, and one need only be the world's amanuensis."

-Alexander Smith, trepverter,l'esprit de l'escalier (The Infinite Suggestiveness)
Taken from Patrick Madden's essay in Quotidiana

Yellow

Nature rarer uses Yellow

Than another Hue.

Saves she all of that for Sunsets 

Prodigal of Blue

Spending Scarlet, like a Woman
Yellow she affords
Only scantly and selectly
Like a Lover’s Words.

- Emily Dickinson, “J:1045”

Books

“So often, a visit to a bookshop has cheered me and reminded me that there are good things in the world.”

- Vincent Van Gogh  

Coincidences and Miracles

“This was love: a string of coincidences that gathered significance and became miracles.”

- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun 

I no longer

“I no longer have patience for certain things, not because I’ve become arrogant, but simply because I reached a point in my life where I do not want to waste more time with what displeases me or hurts me. I have no patience for cynicism, excessive criticism and demands of any nature. I lost the will to please those who do not like me, to love those who do not love me and to smile at those who do not want to smile at me. I no longer spend a single minute on those who lie or want to manipulate. I decided not to coexist anymore with pretense, hypocrisy, dishonesty and cheap praise. I do not tolerate selective erudition nor academic arrogance. I do not adjust either to popular gossiping. I hate conflict and comparisons. I believe in a world of opposites and that’s why I avoid people with rigid and inflexible personalities. In friendship I dislike the lack of loyalty and betrayal. I do not get along with those who do not know how to give a compliment or a word of encouragement. Exaggerations bore me and I have difficulty accepting those who do not like animals. And on top of everything I have no patience for anyone who does not deserve my patience.”

- Meryl Streep  

Something to do

“I had to do something. I couldn’t just sit and wait for life to happen to me any longer.”

- Julia Quinn, To Sir Phillip, With Love 

Autumn

“I notice that Autumn is more the season of the soul than of nature.”

- Friedrich Nietzsche 

Places in the Heart

"Man has places in his heart which do not yet exist, and into them enters suffering, in order that they may have existence."

Léon Bloy

Depth

"Consider the circumvolutions of the human mind, where no short or direct routes exist."

Jose Saramago Essay on Blindness

The Ordinary

"The most common actions - a walk, a talk, solitude in one's own orchard - can be enhanced and lit up by the association of the mind."

-Virginia Woolf

Seeing in the Proper Light

"From the most ordinary, commonplace, familiar things, if we could put them in their proper light, can be formed the greatest miracles of nature and the most wondrous examples."

-Montaigne 'Of Experience'

Ug to Pinning

"So. I'm a planner and a thinker and a wanter and a wisher and, OHMYGOSH, I'm a Pinterester. I want a new watch and a kilim rug and a hairut and a really great leather tote and to be a better cook. But here's the thing: 'He said to me, My grace is sufficient for you.' Did you catch that? Not, my grace is almost enought for you or my grace will just about fill you up, but UFFICIENT. Totally, completely, watchless, rugless, toteless, ENOUGH. "

-Mattie Tiegreen, puddleduckpaper

Good vs. Wicked

"People aren't either wicked or noble. They're life chef's salads, with good things and bad things chopped and mixed together in a vinaigrette of confusion and conflict."

-Lemony Snicket

The Truth About Help

"None of us got where we are solely by pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps. We got here because somebody- a parent, a teacher, an Ivy League crony or a few nuns- bent down and helped us pick up our boots."

-Thurgood Marshall
(confirmed 47 years ago today to the Supreme Court)

Turn it Off

"Every time you watch Jersey Shore, [insert any confrontational boobilicious reality show], a book commits suicide."

-Brene Brown

Universe Stitched Together

"We have everything we need to be happy but we aren’t happy. Something is missing…

It is not books you need, it’s some of the things that are in books. The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us.”

- Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 

August

"Some days in late August at home are like this, the air thin and eager like this, with something in it sad and nostalgic and familiar…”

-  William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury  

Borders

“I love borders. August is the border between summer and autumn; it is the most beautiful month I know. Twilight is the border between day and night, and the shore is the border between sea and land. The border is longing; when both have fallen in love but still haven’t said anything. The border is to be on the way. It is the way that is the most important thing.”

- Snufkin, Moominvalley in November

Ok JK

“Read as much as you can. Nothing will help you as much as reading.”

- J.K. Rowling 

Numbness

“When a man is getting better he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him. When a man is getting worse he understands his own badness less and less. A moderately bad man knows he is not very good: a thoroughly bad man thinks he is all right. This is common sense, really. You understand sleep when you are awake, not while you are sleeping. You can see mistakes in arithmetic when your mind is working properly: while you are making them you cannot see them. You can understand the nature of drunkenness when you are sober, not when you are drunk. Good people know about both good and evil: bad people do not know about either.”

- C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity 

This I Prefer

“Whatever energies I may or may not have, I know one thing for certain: that I could not
devote them to anything else I should think entirely worth doing. Indeed nothing else seems
interesting enough, nothing to repay the labor, but the telling of my fellow-men about the one
man who is the truth, and to know whom is the life. Even if there be no hereafter, I would live
my time believing in a grand thing that ought to be true if it is not. No facts can take the place
of truths; and if these be not truths, then is the loftiest part of our nature a waste. Let me hold
by the better than the actual, and fall into nothingness off the same precipice with Jesus and
John and Paul and a thousand more, who were lovely in their lives, and with their death make
even the nothingness into which they have passed like the garden of the Lord. I will go
farther, and say I would rather die forevermore believing as Jesus believed, than live
forevermore believing as those that deny him.”

From “Telling Secrets” by Frederick Buechner, *Thomas Wingfold, Curate, by George MacDonald (New York, George Routledge, 1876, pp. 490-91)

Artists

"Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up."

-Pablo Picasso

Sigh

"If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging,that would be o 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

Lighten

"The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter."

-Mark Twain

Broken Heart

❝ I imagine my heart was being broken to make it bigger in order to embrace something I couldn’t have other wise. ❞

CATHE LAURIE 

Not Things

"We are not nouns, we are verbs. I am not a thing - an actor, a writer - I am a person who does things - I write, I act- and I never know what I'm going to do next. I think you can be imprisoned if you think of yourself as a noun."

-Stephen Fry

Trail of Thinking

"Keep a notebook. Travel with it, eat with it, sleep with it. Slap into it every stray thought that flutters up into your brain. Cheap paper is less perishable than gray matter, and lead pencil markings endure longer than memory."

Jack London

Good Pep Talk

"Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original; whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it."

-C.S. Lewis

If, Then, Now

"If, then, I were asked for the most important advice I could give, that which I considered to be the most useful to the men of our century, I should simply say: in the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you."

-Leo Tolstoy

Melting Stars

“By watching, I know that the stars are not going to last. I have seen some of the best ones melt and run down the sky. Since one can melt, they can all melt; since they can all melt, they can all melt the same night. That sorrow will come — I know it. I mean to sit up every night and look at them as long as I can keep awake. And I will impress those sparkling fields on my memory so that by and by when they are taken away, I can by my fancy restore those lovely myriads to the black sky and make them sparkle again. And double them by the blur of my tears.”

- Mark Twain 

The Very Edge

"Here I came to the very edge 

where nothing at all needs saying, 
everything is absorbed through weather and the sea, 
and the moon swam back, 
its rays all silvered, 
and time and again the darkness would be broken 
by the crash of a wave, 
and every day on the balcony of the sea, 
wings open, fire is born, 
and everything is blue again like morning.”

- Pablo Neruda 

Be Joyful

“Be joyful because it is humanly possible.”

- Wendell Berry 

When a Wave Comes, Go Deep

"When a wave comes, go deep. There's three things you can do when life sends a wave at you. You can run from it, but then it's going to catch up and knock you down. You can also fall back on your ego and try to stand your ground, but then it's still going to clobber you. Or you can use it as an opportunity to go deep, and transform yourself to match the circumstances. And that's how you get through the wave."

-Humans of NY

Convictions with Compassion

"Our culture has accepted two huge lies. The first is that if you disagree with someone's lifestyle, you must fear or hate them. The second is that to love someone means you agree with everything they believe or do. Both are nonsense.

You don't have to compromise convictions to be compassionate."

-Rich Warren

The Rut

"The rut. We humans have this annoying tendency to fall into habitual patterns. Remember those 60,000 daily thoughts I mentioned earlier? Well, all but 1,000 of those thoughts are the exact same thoughts you had yesterday. Scientists tell us that 98 percent of our 60,000 thoughts are repeats from the day before."

-Pam Grout, E-Squared

Thoreau

"We need the tonic of wildness...at the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea by indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature."

-Thoreau

Listen and Act

"I shall pass this way but once; any good that I can do or any kindness I can show to any human being; let me do it now. Let me not defer nor neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again."

-Etienne de Grellet

Book of Life

"Every book, every volume you see here, has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it and of those who read it and lived and dreamed with it. Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down its pages its spirit grows and strengthens."

-Carlos Ruiz Zafon, The Shadow of the Wind

Late Night Thoughts for Everything

"I used to be so afraid to perform on stage. I would often get a migraine heartache before a performance. I felt the pressure of singing just right, looking just right, making the right moves, saying the right things. I felt like I was under a microscope because I had not yet learned that performing music is an act of sharing. Not an act of showing. And also, there is no 'right.' When I remember to share and to forget myself on stage, it is the most energizing and joyful feeling. I find that I have to remind myself of this principle in other areas of my life that cause me anxiety. Sometimes I worry about eyes watching me and judging me through social media or even in person. It can get so exhausting at times that I want to throw in the towel and hide and live out my life where no one can see me and therefore, no one can judge me. What a load of garbage! Living in fear is not a way to live. If I can dance lie a fool, break all the rules of proper vocal technique, wear tutus and sneakers, and speak unscripted from a stage then I can certainly apply the metaphorically to the stage of my life."

-Mindy Gledhill

Sliding Door Ghost Ship

"I'll never know, and neither will you, of the life you don't choose. We'll only know that whatever that sister life was, it was important and beautiful and not ours. It was the ghost ship that didn't carry us.  There's nothing to do but salute it from the shore."

-Cheryl Strayed

Envious of the Gold

"We go through trials to get to where we are meant to be. It's why there is fire in refinement. And when people are envious of the gold without acknowledging the heat, it subtracts from the story that makes you who you are."

-Anonymous, but shared by Ruthie Lindsey

Now Now Now

"Let go of the old to make space for the new. Don't let your present be dictated by your past. What's done is done! Be grateful for where you are today and use the best of your abilities to manifest a beautiful tomorrow. Don't focus on what once was. Direct your attention towards the love that's present in your life today and tomorrow will bring more of the same. I guarantee it.

-Rachel Brathen

One Thing Needful

"I believe we can find our steady footing and stilling of the should by turning away from physical preoccupations, superwoman accomplishments, and endless popularity contests, and returning instead to the wholeness of our soul, that unity in our very being that balances the demanding and inevitable diversity of life."

-Patricia Holland  One Thing Needful

What Matters Most

"In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter yet with another human being."

-Albert Schweitzer

Strength

"Your strength is soft, indirect, delicate, tender, womanly. But it is strength just the same."

-Anais Nin

Go Outside for Air

"Over the hill she came, her long legs scarcely touching the ground, the cups of her ears listening, with obvious pleasure, to the wind as it stroked the dark arms of the pines; once or twice she lingered and browsed some moist patch of half-wrapped leaves, then came along to where I was-- or nearly--and then, among the thousand bodies of the trees, their splashes of light and their shadows, she was gone; and I, who was heavy that day with thoughts as small as my whole life would ever be, and especially compared to the thousand shining trees, have thanks to whatever sent her in my direction that I might see, and strive to be, as clearly as she was, beyond sorrow, careless, soft-lipped angel walking on air."

-Mary Oliver

Oh There You are Peter

“Second star to the right and straight on 'til morning. ” 
― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan


“Dreams do come true, if only we wish hard enough. You can have anything in life if you will sacrifice everything else for it.” 
― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan


“All the world is made of faith, and trust, and pixie dust.” 
― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan



“I'm not young enough to know everything.” 
― J.M. Barrie, The Admirable Crichton

The Deep Little

“Themes that are "too large for adult fiction can only be dealt with adequately in a children's book" 

- Philip Pullman

Just Be Still

“As Hagrid had said, what would come would come and he would have to meet it when it did.” 


― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Wordless

“…the moon is the very image of silence – and, as Charles Simic says, “The highest levels of consciousness are wordless.” The great lunacy of most lyric poems is that they attempt to use words to convey what cannot be put into words. On the other hand, stars were the first text, the first instance of gabbiness; connecting the stars, making a pattern out of them, was the first story, sacred to storytellers. But the moon was the first poem, in the lyric sense, an entity complete in itself, recognizable at a glance, one that played upon the emotions so strongly that the context of time and place hardly seemed to matter.”

- Mary Ruefle, Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures, (with thanks to Whiskey River)

Summer Sky

“Please, don’t worry so much. Because in the end, none of us have very long on this earth. Life is fleeting. And if you’re ever distressed, cast your eyes to the summer sky when the stars are strung across the velvety night. And when a shooting star streaks through the blackness, turning night into day… make a wish and think of me. Make your life spectacular. I know I did.”

- Robin Williams, Jack (1996)

Well Geez

“She buried her ears into the calm of his heartbeat, and in a matter of seconds: fell terribly in love with the way her loneliness fell softly and suddenly, asleep, in his chest.”

- Christopher Poindexter  

Preach

“Growth is painful. Change is painful.But nothing is as painful as staying stuck somewhere you don’t belong.”

- Mandy Hale 

Sad

 "I used to think the worst thing in life was to end up all alone. It's not. The worst thing in life is ending up with people who make you feel all alone."

-Robin Williams

Just Memorize It

“Always learn poems by heart. They have to become the marrow in your bones. Like fluoride in the water, they’ll make your soul impervious to the world’s soft decay.”

- Janet Fitch, White Oleander  

August

“August rain: the best of the summer gone, and the new fall not yet born. The odd uneven time.”

- Sylvia Plath  

On Less

“Frugality is one of the most beautiful and joyful words in the English language, and yet one that we are culturally cut off from understanding and enjoying. The consumption society has made us feel that happiness lies in having things, and has failed to teach us the happiness of not having things.”

- Elise Boulding

Slave Story

"Most of us are slaves of the stories we unconsciously tell ourselves about our lives. Freedom begins the moment we become conscious of the plot line we are living and, with this insight, recognize that we can step into another story altogether." 

—Carol S. Pearson, The Hero Within

Ain't that the Truth

“And now we’re supposed to go back to our normal lives. That’s what people do. They have these amazing experiences with another person, and then they just go home and clean the bathroom or whatever.”

- When It Happens (Susane Colasanti)

Left Unsaid

“A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.”

- Italo Calvino, The Uses of Literature 

Fear Not

"I don’t want to look back in five years time and think, ‘We could have been magnificent, but I was afraid.’ In 5 years I want to tell of how fear tried to cheat me out of the best thing in life, and I didn’t let it."

Risk

“You have this one life. How do you wanna spend it? Apologizing? Regretting? Questioning? Hating yourself? Dieting? Running after people who don’t see you? Be brave. Believe in yourself. Do what feels good. Take risks. You have this one life. Make yourself proud.”

-?

Radical

“Make a radical change in your lifestyle and begin to boldly do things which you may previously never have thought of doing, or been too hesitant to attempt. So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservation, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun. If you want to get more out of life, you must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life that will at first appear to you to be crazy. But once you become accustomed to such a life you will see its full meaning and its incredible beauty.”

-

Jon Krakauer

Just Eat the Piece of Cake

❝ Cakes have gotten a bad rap. People equate virtue with turning down dessert. There is always one person at the table who holds up her hand when I serve the cake. No, really, I couldn’t she says, and then gives her flat stomach a conspiratorial little pat. Everyone who is pressing a fork into that first tender layer looks at the person who declined the plate, and they all think, That person is better than I am. That person has discipline. But that isn’t a person with discipline; that is a person who has completely lost touch with joy. A slice of cake never made anybody fat. You don’t eat the whole cake. You don’t eat a cake every day of your life. You take the cake when it is offered because the cake is delicious. You have a slice of cake and what it reminds you of is someplace that’s safe, uncomplicated, without stress. A cake is a party, a birthday, a wedding. A cake is what’s served on the happiest days of your life. This is a story of how my life was saved by cake, so, of course, if sides are to be taken, I will always take the side of cake. ❞

JEANNE RAY 

Risk and Eyelashes

Jay McInerney, “Invisible Fences”

I love this kind of Grace

❝ I meet Christians who are super-glossy, picture-perfect, law-abiding people, but they are absolutely miserable and difficult to be near. Their every movement is dictated by a strict rigid ruleset that is motivated by a desperate fear. If your efforts are not driven by grace — that God absolutely loves you no matter what — then you will punish yourself towards an invisible standard that looks like success but feels like slavery. Such a standard might work for a little while to conform your behavior, but it will never become a part of you: it’s just an apparatus that imprisons you. Only grace can truly be internalized to melt your heart, and though it can take longer, a truly tenderized heart follows God with all joy and perseverance. This is motivation by grace and grace alone. ❞

J.S. 

Heart Broken

❝ I imagine my heart was being broken to make it bigger in order to embrace something I couldn’t have other wise. ❞

CATHE LAURIE