Because I'm so known as a meat-chef, when I talk about Meatless Monday some people look at me like I've lost my mind. I'm like, look, I'm not saying beef and pork is bad, I love it and I eat it six days a week. --Michael Symon

"Let the minds clash, but keep the fists down."

Martin Luther

One evening I sat beauty on my knees
and I found her bitter
and I reviled her.

Arthur Rimbaud, A Season in Hell

“Because being with you makes perfect sense” ― Tim McGraw


“...when two opposite points of view are expressed with equal intensity, the truth does not necessarily lie exactly halfway between them. It is possible for one side to be simply wrong.” -Robert Dawkins


“If you believe you can, you might. If you know you can, you will.” ― Steve Maraboli

“everybody's scared, but if you don't let your fears stop you, that's bravery!”
― Leslie Feinberg,

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting. ~e.e. cummings, 1955

Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else. ~Judy Garland


We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others that in the end we become disguised to ourselves. ~François Duc de La Rochefoucauld

A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest,
remembers it most obsessively,
wrenches it from itself,
shapes it,
renders it,
loves it so radically that he remakes it into his own image.


>*Joan Didion

'there is no truer gift than the trust of a woman when you have earned it through patience, compassion and the choice to stand resolute while her fear and doubt cries out her terror into the space between you '

Pablo Neruda

" Real love stories never have endings. " -Brian Bauch

“Excellence is not a singular act, but a habit. You are what you repeatedly do.”- Unknown

"Mediocrity, low esteem, self loathing, all have one thing in common... laziness." - Unknown

Chaos in the midst of chaos isn't funny,
but chaos in the midst of order is.

~Steve Martin

I agree, true abiding love is not shaken with the challenges of everyday living..you can't imagine your life without it, like the sunrise in the morning..anything else, so called, is just vanity

“Life is short, Break the Rules.
Forgive quickly, Kiss SLOWLY.
Love truly. Laugh uncontrollably
And never regret ANYTHING
That makes you smile.”

― Mark Twain

“You can't just wish change; you have to live the change in order for it to become a reality.” ― Steve Maraboli

“Are you going to allow the world around you to change while you remain stagnant? Make this the time you throw away old habits that have hindered your happiness and success and finally allow your greatest self to flourish.”
― Steve Maraboli

“Accepting oneself does not preclude an attempt to become better.” -Fannery O'Connor

I still close my eyes and go home...I can always draw from that.

~Dolly Parton

“You may choose to look the other way, but you can never say again that you did not know.” ― William Wilberforce


“We don't get to chose what is true. We only get to choose what we do about it ― Kami Garcia


“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."― Benjamin Franklin

Common sense to an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom.

~Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“Good men are often more practical than pretty , you just happen to be both.” ― Ruta Sepetys

“Come to think of it, she did not speak a word. Yet I could have sworn she had the most beautiful voice.”― Julie Klassen


“My love for you won't stop with my leaving. Come an evening over the years, when you step outside your door and hear the wind blowing through the cottonwoods, that'll be me, thinking of you, whispering your name, and loving you.” ― Penelope Williamson

Some people push you away because they don't want to get hurt. Some people push you away because they got hurt. Anna Moosun

Good instincts tell you what to do long before your head has figured it out. Michael Burke

Relax. Let every moment be what it's going to be. What's meant to be will come your way, what's not will fall away. Mandy Hale

"Be the light that helps others see."

We never know, believe me, when we have succeeded best. ~Miguel de Unamuno, Essays and Soliloquies, 1925

" 'Where should one use perfume?' a young woman asked. 'Wherever one wants to be kissed,' I said."

Coco Chanel

Flowers always make people better, happier, and more helpful; they are sunshine, food and medicine for the soul.--Luther Burbank

“Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.” ―Arthur Ashe

"Life is not always fair. Sometimes you get a splinter even sliding down a rainbow. " ~Terri Guillemets

He who has a why to live can bear almost any how. ~Friedrich Nietzsche

You can clutch the past so tightly to your chest that it leaves your arms too full to embrace the present. ~Jan Glidewell

“It is always the false that makes you suffer, the false desires and fears, the false values and ideas, the false relationships between people. Abandon the false and you are free of pain; truth makes you happy, truth liberates.”
― Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

“It isn't what you have or who you are or where you are or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about it.”
― Dale Carnegie

“Find a way to live your life, that it doesn't make a mockery of your values.”― Bill Ayers

Maybe Christmas, the Grinch thought, doesn't come from a store.
--Dr. Seuss

Christmas, my child, is love in action. Every time we love, every time we give, it's Christmas.
--Dale Evans

Christmas, children, is not a date. It is a state of mind.
--Mary Ellen Chase

"The Journey" --- by Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice—
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.

“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.

It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do—
determined to save
the only life you could save.

cant give up this man...
 

"Hallelujah" by Leonard Cohen

I've heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, do you?
It goes like this
The fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty in the moonlight overthrew you
She tied you to a kitchen chair
She broke your throne, and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Baby I have been here before
I know this room, I've walked this floor
I used to live alone before I knew you.
I've seen your flag on the marble arch
Love is not a victory march
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

There was a time when you let me know
What's really going on below
But now you never show it to me, do you?
And remember when I moved in you
The holy dove was moving too
And every breath we drew was Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Maybe there’s a God above
But all I’ve ever learned from love
Was how to shoot at someone who outdrew you
It’s not a cry you can hear at night
It’s not somebody who has seen the light
It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

You say I took the name in vain
I don't even know the name
But if I did, well, really, what's it to you?
There's a blaze of light in every word
It doesn't matter which you heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

I did my best, it wasn't much
I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch
I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you
And even though it all went wrong
I'll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

“What is given to you is what is needed; what you want, requires giving up what you don't need.” ― George Alexiou

"Happiness lies in the seeds of independence." Unknown

“Some people would rather live in a hell they've got used to than in a paradise they've never experienced before. ” ― Urania Sarri

Christmas is a necessity. There has to be at least one day of the year to remind us that we're here for something else besides ourselves.
~Eric Sevareid

Isn't it funny that at Christmas something in you gets so lonely for - I don't know what exactly, but it's something that you don't mind so much not having at other times. ~Kate L. Bosher

“I do not trust people who don't love themselves and yet tell me, 'I love you.' There is an African saying which is: Be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt.” ― Maya Angelou

“Have enough courage to trust love one more time and always one more time.” ― Maya Angelou