A snake was hit by a car. A woman picks him up, feeds him, and gets him to a full state of health. But then he bites her, injecting her with his deadly poison. On her death bed, she asked “after all I did why me?” The snake responds “you knew I was a snake when you picked me up. Life Lesson You Should Always Remember

All great and precious things are lonely. Steinbeck

I am the sea and nobody owns me. Pippi Longstocking

It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them. So throw away your baggage and go forward. There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet, trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. That’s why you must walk so lightly. Lightly my darling… Huxley

Men are born soft and supple; dead they are stiff and hard. Plants are born tender and pliant; dead, they are brittle and dry. Thus whoever is stiff and inflexible is a disciple of death. Whoever is soft and yielding is a disciple of life. The hard and stiff will be broken. The soft and supple will prevail. Lao Tzu

Half gods are worshiped in wine and flowers. Real gods require blood. Zora Neale Hurston

There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self. Hemingway

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. Rumi

You wander from room to room hunting for the diamond necklace that is already around your neck. Rumi

There is no coming to consciousness without pain. People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own soul. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. Jung

No tree, it is said, can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell. Jung

The heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground. But in love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man’s body.The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life’s most intense fulfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become. Conversely, the absolute absence of burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant. What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness? Kundera

If you ask me, true religion is in the earth. It’s everything that grew or had wanted to grow. Not some room where the wicked can walk in unnoticed. Jack

Myth is not prehistory; it is timeless reality, which repeats itself in history. Ernst Jünger

…and so, with a few ornamental words, and a well timed gift, Odysseus managed to do what strong Diomedes could not, nor savage Achilles, nor ten years of warfare, nor a thousand ships. Homer

…remember, at bottom is where the living roots of psyche are. It is there that a woman’s wild underpinnings are. At bottom is the best soil to sow and grow something new again. In that sense, hitting bottom, while extremely painful, is also the sowing ground. Clarissa Pinkola Estés Pinkola Estes

Let there be no mistake, when a woman makes efforts to intervene and fight her demon, whatever that demon may be, it is one of the most worthy battles known, both archetypally and in consensual reality. Even though she might, as in the tale, hit ground-zero-minus-five bottom via famine, capture, injured instinct, destructive choices, and all the rest, remember, at bottom is where the living roots of psyche are. It is there that a woman’s wild underpinnings are. At bottom is the best soil to sow and grow something new again. In that sense, hitting bottom, while extremely painful, is also the sowing ground. Clarissa Pinkola Estés

“It will be a bit more difficult,” she said, “teaching men to see in the dark.” Tom Robbins

In some older versions of Persephone’s story, she was a young woman, not a young girl, and instead of accidentally wandering away, she had gone deliberately adventuring, when she fell, or was lured, or was kidnapped into Hell. Here Persephone’s adventurous spirit leads her into difficulty, instead of her being a passive victim of the wickedness of others. Her relationship with her mother gives her the courage to explore her world, and when events take a bad turn, their relationship gives her the strength to survive. In a still older version, Persephone heard the despairing cries of the dead and chose freely to go into the Underworld to comfort them. Hades does not appear at all, in this version. Here Persephone’s descent to hell illustrates inclusiveness for every being, whether in the Underworld or in our present one, and shows that mercy is integral to her nature. In the most ancient layer of myth, Persephone’s name means “She Who Destroys The Light.” She was the powerful Goddess of the Underworld long before anyone knew of Hades. Like the Indian Kali, the Irish Morrigan, and the Sumerian Ereshkegal, she was the Goddess of Death.

The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. Nietzsche