Height

"You cannot stay on the summit forever; you have to come down again. So why bother in the first place? Just this: What is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above. One climbs, one sees. One descends, one sees no longer, but on has seen. There is an art of conducting oneself in the lower regions by the memory of what one saw higher up. When one can no longer see, one can at least still know."

~Rene Daumal, Mount Analogue

Beliefs

"A belief which leaves no place for doubt is not a belief; it is a superstition."
-Jose Bergamin

Beauty

"A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely."
-Roald Dahl

Friends

 "You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you."
-Dale Carnegie

Literature

"The study of literature has had what I believe to be a salutary effect on my own character, making me less self-conscious and vain, more empathic and imaginative, maybe even kinder. Perhaps it's an oversimplification, but as I've gotten older I've come to wonder if maybe this is what reading all those great books is really for - to engender and promote charity. Sure, literature entertains and instructs, but to what end, of not compassion?"
-Richard Russo 2007 edition of The Best American Short Stories

Truth

"You can't get to truth by sitting in a field smiling beatifically, avoiding your anger and damage and grief. Your anger and damage and grief are the way to the truth. We don't have much truth to express unless we have gong into these rooms and closets and woods and abysses that we were told not to go into."
-Anne Lamont Bird by Bird

Speak

"I realized then and know now that the reason God wanted me to speak wasn't because he had grand plans for me to become a rich and famous author. No, God wanted me to speak for the same rason that I believe he wants all of us to speak, in whatever way that "speaking" expresses itself in our lives: because our world needs truth, and honesty, and beauty, and when human beings speak and other human beings listen, we all devlop charity. And God is a big fan of charity."
-Anglea Hallstrom