- Beware of destination addiction: The idea that happiness is in the next place, the next job, or even with the next partner. Until you give up the idea that happiness is somewhere else, it will never be where you are.
- Once a soul chooses to awaken and evolve, there can be no going back to an outgrown state of consciousness. A person cannot go back asleep once he begins to awaken to deeper truths. The only way through is forward.
- We can sit in our corners mute forever while our sisters and our selves are wasted, while our children are distorted and destroyed, while our earth is poisoned; we can sit in our safe corners mute as bottles, and we still will be no less afraid… We have been socialized to respect fear more than our own needs for language and definition, and while we wait in silence for that final luxury of fearlessness, the weight of that silence will choke us. Audre Lorde, quoted in Loving to Survive
- If it’s darkness we’re having, let it be extravagant.
- Do not whine. Do not complain. Spend more time alone. ~Joan Didion, from Companionship in Grief: Love and Loss; “Blue Nights,”
- I am not composing poetry. I am trying to get out of the flames. ~Ted Hughes, from an uncompleted poem written c. May 1969
- I live as I choose or I will not live at all. ~Dolores O'Riordan
- “Slow down, you’re doing fine. You can’t be everything you want to be before your time” ~Billy Joel, Vienna
- and after the earth dies, some 5 billion years from now, after it’s burned to a crisp, or even swallowed by the sun, there will be other worlds and stars and galaxies coming into being — and they will know nothing of a place once called earth. ~carl sagan, pale blue dot
- I didn’t know what to say. I felt like crying, Goddammit everybody in the world wants an explanation for your acts and for your very being. ~Jack Kerouac
- Why do you think Plath’s quote “I am, I am, I am” is so iconic? Because she felt it. She meant it. It’s palpable like that.
- One of the most courageous decisions you’ll ever make is to finally let go of what is hurting your heart and soul. ~Brigitte Nicole
- Why didn’t I learn to treat everything like it was the last time? My greatest regret was how much I believed in the future. ~Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
- Stay close to anything that makes you glad that you’re alive. ~Hafiz
- I’m not telling you to make the world better, because I don’t think that progress is necessarily part of the package. I’m just telling you to live in it. Not just to endure it, not just to suffer it, not just to pass through it, but to live in it. To look at it. To try to get the picture. To live recklessly. To take chances. ~Joan Didion, from a commencement address at the University of California, Riverside 1975
- To understand oneself requires patience, tolerant awareness; the self is a book of many volumes which you cannot read in a day, but when once you begin to read, you must read every word, every sentence, every paragraph for in them are the intimations of the whole. The beginning of it is the ending of it. If you know how to read, supreme wisdom is to be found. ~JIDDU KRISHNAMURTI
- I didn’t think about it, and I don’t want to think about it, because I am living this moment and I don’t want to go back ~Evgenia Medvedeva, when she’s been asked if things would have turned out differently had she not been injured
- Ultimately, what we need in order to be happy is at some level pretty simple. It requires doing something that you find meaningful, that you can kind of get lost in on a daily basis. When you observe children, they are very good at this. They don’t get distracted by all those extrinsic yardsticks. They go for things that really bring them a lot of enjoyment.
- “Go so far away that you stop being afraid of not coming back.” ~Eve Ensler, I am an Emotional Creature
- Every struggle you have known has shaped and made you the person you are. Be thankful that you are stronger today.
- "wastes my entire day daydreaming" - there’s nothing wasteful about daydreaming
- Slow down. Calm down. Don’t worry. Don’t hurry. Trust the process. ~Alexandra Stoddard
- Thinking is peaceful and without risk. Saying bursts the peace into violence and unpredictability. ~Hélène Cixous, from Rootprints: Memory and Life Writing; “Poetry, Passion and History,”
- “The real difficulty is to overcome how you think about yourself.” ~Maya Angelou
- “I think, after this life leaves me, I’ll need to be alone for a while. Maybe wake as the only prairie tree for miles; one of those great, twisting, green trees in a farmer’s field. This soul needs rest. This mind needs silence. And maybe, for years, I will stand under a sky that flows from gray in the winter and cracking with lightning in the summer. I will know each branch from the beginning. I will grow wiser with each ring. I will stand alone, but also in such great company.” ~Schuyler Peck, Prairie Tree
- The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. ~Lao Tzu
- I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world. ~Albert Einstein
- When you dance to your own rhythm, people may not understand you; they may even hate you. But mostly they’ll wish they had the courage to do the same. ~Sue Fitzmaurice
- Then you walk away from it and let it ferment. You ignore it and pretend you don’t care. Next thing you know, the answer comes.
- Pour the magic of passion and attention into everything you do. Don’t think of anything and just be here now while doing every single little action you do. Talking, writing, art, poetry, sex, dreams, love, world, yourself — everything. If you are listening to a song, listen to the high notes, the low notes, the variation the singer took while singing, listen to the instruments playing in the background, make a picture of the song in your mind by listening to it or if you are bathing do it mindfully, feel each drop of water touching your body or if you are breathing, observe it, feel the sensation and observe how air comes into your body and exhaled out. This is true meditation — to do things with full attention and passion. ~Qasim Chauhan
- You must love in such a way that the person you love feels free. ~Thich Nhat Hanh
- Despite how open, peaceful, and loving you attempt to be, people can only meet you as deeply as they’ve met themselves. ~Matt Kahn
- wake up about four in the morning: most places, you can usually be free
- mindset. it’s all about mindset. from the moment you wake up to the moment you rest your head at night. everything is up to you. your emotions, your thoughts, your perceptions, your reactions, every moment.
- My devil had been long caged, he came out roaring. ~Robert Louis Stevenson
- One is never so strong as when one is broken. ~Hazrat Inayat Khan, Thinking Like The Universe: The Sufi Path Of Awakening
- “I went to sleep somewhat sad. But I awoke happy, purely animal. When I opened the bedroom windows and looked out onto the cool, calm garden in the first rays of sunlight, I was certain there was nothing to do but live.” ~Clarice Lispector, from “Jimmy and I,” The Complete Stories
- “Do not find peace. Find passion.”
- “By letting go it all gets done.”
jan 11 2018 ∞
jan 6 2021 +
jan 6 2021 +