John Lewis

 "Ordinary people with extraordinary vision can redeem the soul of America."

Posthumous message from John Lewis

Freedom is Connection

 "The way I’ve come to understand it, freedom is both an individual and collective endeavor—a multilayered process, not a static state of being. Being free is, in part, achieved through being connected." Mia Birdsong puts it

New Old Summer

…and she tried to discover wherein this summer had been different from any and every other summer of her life. She could only realize that she herself—her present self—was in some way different from the other self.
 

— Kate Chopin

Respect is and is not about authority

"Sometimes people use “respect” to mean “treating someone like a person” and sometimes they use “respect” to mean “treating someone like an authority”
and sometimes people who are used to being treated like an authority say “if you won’t respect me I won’t respect you” and they mean “if you won’t treat me like an authority I won’t treat you like a person”
and they think they’re being fair but they aren’t, and it’s not okay."

Celeste Porter?

Beauty was not simply something to behold

"Beauty was not simply something to behold; it was something one could do.” —Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye

And I Am Quite Free

"I have already settled it for myself so flattery and criticism go down the same drain and I am quite free." Georgia O'Keefe

New Yorks

"E.B. White said there were three New Yorks: the city of those who were born here, the city of those who commute in daily, and the city of those who come here 'in quest of something.' To this list, we may now add a fourth: The New York of those who stayed."

Do the thing or dont do it. Either is fine.

"Honestly, there is a lot to be said for tooling about all day, looking up recipes and not making them, not bothering to paint the living room and failing to write a novel. In the middle of the messy, non-event called your mid-afternoon, you might get something—a thought to jot down, a good paragraph, a piece of gossip to text a pal. Boredom is a productive state so long as you don't let it go sour on you. Try not to confuse the urge to get something done with the idea that you are useless. Try not to confuse the urge to contact someone with the thought that you are unloved. Do the thing or don't do it. Either is fine." —Ann Enright

Close and Open Like a Hinge

I wanted
The past to go away, I wanted
To leave it, like another country; I wanted
My life to close, and open
Like a hinge, like a wing, like the part of the song
Where it falls
Down over the rocks: an explosion, a discovery;
I wanted
To hurry into the work of my life; I wanted to know,
Whoever I was, I was

Alive
For a little while.

…mostly, I want to be kind.
And nobody, of course, is kind,
Or mean,
For a simple reason.

And nobody gets out of it, having to
Swim through the fires to stay in
This world.”

― Mary Oliver

Being Passive

"“The purgatory of passivity is resentment. It will form the way a puddle does, drop by drop. Then, as the drops accumulate, the puddle of resentment becomes a stream.”
-Barbara Pachter

Successful Mothers

 "Somehow I know that women who stay home all the time have the most unpleasant homes there are. You give me a woman who thinks about something besides cook stoves and wash tubs and baby flannels, and I'll show you, nine times out of ten, a successful mother."

-Martha Hughes Cannon

Busy Nothings

1. "Life seems but a quick succession of busy nothings" 

   
   

   -Jane Austen's Mansfield Park

   
   

Axis of the Soul

"...the stilling of the soul within the activities of the mind and body so that it might be still as the axis of a revolving wheel is still."

Charles Morgan (via Gifts from the Sea)

On Something We Cannot Control

"Our self worth should never be given away or depend on something that we cannot control. It should rest in ourhands and our hearts. When we choose a life and the rituals that have us feeling amazing, we will naturally attract great love. The trick, is to not then give our heart away, but rather, share it."

Mark Groves

Clues

"The final answer, I know, is always inside. But the outside can give a clue, can help one to find the inside answer. One is free, like the hermit crab, to change one's shell."

Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea

Reactions

"How you react to people and situations, especially when challenges arise, is the best indicator of how deeply you know yourself."

Eckhart Tolle

It Listens to Brave

"She was never quite ready. But she was brave. And the universe listens to brave."

Rebecca Ray

Participate Relentlessly

"You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestation of your own blessings."

Elizabeth Gilbert

What Remains

"Oh what we could be if we stopped carrying the remains of who we were."

Tyler Knott Gregson

Escape

"In order to understand the world one has to turn away from it on occasion."

Albert Camus