Acting is a question of absorbing other people's personalities and adding some of your own experience.


Jean-Paul Sartre

The friend who declines to sacrifice himself for his friend's faults is still a good friend, it's the friend that puts him in that position who's not a great friend.- BW Compton

Life is an echo. What you send out, comes back. What you sow, you reap. What you give, you get. What you see in others, exists in you.- Zig Ziglar

You can’t build a reputation on what you’re going to do.- Henry Ford

It's a tough love kind of day......
 

compassion
 

“Compassionate action involves working with ourselves as much as working with others.” -Pema Chodron

“If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.”- Dalai Lama

“In seperateness lies the world's great misery, in compassion lies the world's true strength.”- Buddha

“The dew of compassion is a tear.” -Lord Byron

“I came upon a doctor who appeared in quite poor health. I said, 'There's nothing that I can do for you that you can't do for yourself.' He said, 'Oh yes you can. Just hold my hand. I think that that would help.' So I sat with him a while then I asked him how he felt. He said, 'I think I'm cured.'” -Conor Oberst

To be swayed neither by your opponent nor his sword is the essence of victory.-Samurai philosophy


If you're nobody untill somebody loves you, love yourself, it guarantees your ability to be somebody. -Unknown


Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.- Mahatma Ghandi

(was looking for an oscar wilde quote, but ran across these instead)
 

“It is better to be hated for what you are than loved for what you are not.”

― André Gide

“I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.”

― Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

“Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.”

― Dr. Seuss

“Sometimes people are beautiful.
Not in looks.
Not in what they say.
Just in what they are.”

― Markus Zusak, I am the Messenger

“I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next.
Delicious Ambiguity.”

― Gilda Radner

“Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living.”

― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

“We're all human, aren't we? Every human life is worth the same, and worth saving.”

― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

This poem made me grin...to me reflects the magic and power of a femme
 

Phenomenal Woman

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I'm telling lies.
I say,
It's in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say,
It's the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can't touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them
They say they still can't see.
I say,
It's in the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I'm a woman

Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Now you understand
Just why my head's not bowed.
I don't shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It's in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
the palm of my hand,
The need of my care,
'Cause I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

~Maya Angelou

Still I Rise
 

Still I Rise

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

~Maya Angelou

silence
 

“I no longer believe that we can keep silent. We never really do, mind you. In one way or another we articulate what has happened to us through the kind of people we become.”
― Azar Nafisi, Things I've Been Silent About

“Silence is the ultimate weapon of power.”
― Charles de Gaulle

“I was going to die, sooner or later, whether or not I had even spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silences will not protect you.... What are the words you do not yet have? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence? We have been socialized to respect fear more than our own need for language." Audre Lorde

“Allowing ourselves to become a nation of silent, secretive, timid citizens is likely to result in a system of democracy and justice that is neither very democratic nor very just.”
― Dahlia Lithwick

“Sometimes, to remain silent is to lie, since silence can be interpreted as assent.”
― Miguel de Unamuno

The world needs men and women... who cannot be bought; whose word is their bond; who put character above wealth; who possess opinions and a strong will; who are larger than their vocations; who do not hesitate to take risks; who will not lose their individuality in a crowd; who will be as honest in small affairs as in greater; who will make no compromise with wrong; whose ambitions are not confined to their own selfish desires; who will not say they do it "because everybody else does it;" who are true to their friends through good and bad, in adversity as well as in prosperity; who do not believe that shrewdness, cunning, and hardheadedness are the best qualities for winning success; who are not ashamed or afraid to stand for the truth when it is unpopular; who can say "no" with emphasis, although all the rest of the world says "yes".- Anonymous


Life is only as good as the memories we make.-Unknown

Sometimes the strongest emotions and feelings we experience, and want to tell the ones we love, are so overwhelming we do not know how to say them. So speak with your heart. If the feelings are true, you will find how to express it. And they will understand you.- Philip Oprean II

phenomenal woman makes me think of this, too...
 

I Knew A Woman by Theodore Roethke


I knew a woman, lovely in her bones,
When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them;
Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one:
The shapes a bright container can contain!
Of her choice virtues only gods should speak,
Or English poets who grew up on Greek
(I'd have them sing in chorus, cheek to cheek.)

How well her wishes went! She stroked my chin,
She taught me Turn, and Counter-turn, and stand;
She taught me Touch, that undulant white skin:
I nibbled meekly from her proffered hand;
She was the sickle; I, poor I, the rake,
Coming behind her for her pretty sake
(But what prodigious mowing did we make.)

Love likes a gander, and adores a goose:
Her full lips pursed, the errant note to seize;
She played it quick, she played it light and loose;
My eyes, they dazzled at her flowing knees;
Her several parts could keep a pure repose,
Or one hip quiver with a mobile nose
(She moved in circles, and those circles moved.)

Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay:
I'm martyr to a motion not my own;
What's freedom for? To know eternity.
I swear she cast a shadow white as stone.
But who would count eternity in days?
These old bones live to learn her wanton ways:
(I measure time by how a body sways.)

“If you need something from somebody, always give that person a way to hand it to you.”
― Sue Monk Kidd

“So many believe that it is love that grows, but it is the knowing that grows, and love simply expands to contain it.”
― William P. Young

“The first kiss is never just a kiss, but a beautiful place you get to go only once.”
― Colin Tegerdine

“Remember, remember, this is now, and now, and now. Live it, feel it, cling to it. I want to become acutely aware of all I’ve taken for granted.”
― Sylvia Plath