• “I never wish to offend, but I am so foolishly shy, that I often seem negligent, when I am only kept back by my natural awkwardness … Shyness is only the effect of a sense of inferiority in some way or other. If I could persuade myself that my manners were perfectly easy and graceful, I should not be shy.”

— Jane Austen (via misswallflower)

• Wherever my travel may lead, paradise is where I am. ~Voltaire
• God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh. ~Voltaire
• It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop. ~Confucius
• Few people know how to take a walk. The qualifications are endurance, plain clothes, old shoes, an eye for nature, good humor, vast curiosity, good speech, good silence, and nothing too much. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
• To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong. ~ Joseph Chilton Pearce
• Love is space and time measured by the heart. ~ Marcel Proust