Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.
Viktor E. Frankl

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.
--Soren Kierkegaard

The years teach much which the days never know.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

These days it's cool to be ethnic and to be different, but when I was a kid, it was not cool - at all. My friends would come over and my mom would make crepes with eggs, stuffed with mozzarella cheese, tomatoes and spinach. And they'd be like, 'What is this?' --Giada De Laurentiis

Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.


George Bernard Shaw

Some lose all mind and become soul, insane.
Some lose all soul and become mind, intellectual.
Some lose both and become accepted.

-Charles Bukowski

Anais Nin
 

we don't see things as they are. we see them as we are.

I saw that.

~Karma

One who is injured ought not to return the injury, for on no account can it be right to do an injustice; and it is not right to return an injury, or to do evil to any man, however much we have suffered from him.


Socrates

:rubberducky: "Take these sunken eyes and learn to see; you were always waiting for the moment to be free." - Blackbird, The Beatles

"You need some grandeur, some magnificence in your life - you can only eat so much of the bread of humility. You need passion and music and grace."

- Garrison Keillor

no body wants to admit the truth about love. the truth is that love is hell and when you're doing it right you're gonna experience some pain. we tolerate all sorts of crappy moods and bad decisions and we hand over the keys to our shame and our dirty secrets knowing that they're gonna get used eventually, at least by accident or in a moment of weakness because human beings are frail, you know? really fucking frail.

the other thing no one wants to admit is that sometimes love isn't enough to keep things together and anyone who says different is a liar or hasnt been in love yet. all relationships end. whether someone walks away or somebody dies, it's gonna be over one day. when you're face down in the dirt because you left someone or they left you and you're blaming God for not inventing some kind of temporary death so you can check out for a few months and avoid all that crazy pain and cursing your stupidity for losing everything you paid for in blood...well...that's when we realize we're...you know...just the most desperate we can be to believe that the love was real. right? because if you cant believe then you spend the rest of your life terrified that everything else is gonna be a lie too. if you cant believe it was all real, right there when you're pathetic and naked and in the gutter, you sure as hell dont wanna step up for another fist in the mouth. and that's what love is; it's a fist in the mouth and people spend their lives waiting for the chance at a knuckle sandwich.

listen, at the end of the day, every human being has to understand that the love they feel is real even when they're at the end of their rope and cant hang on anymore. i mean, come on! that's how love works man! you hang on and hang on because it is real and not some fucking anemic copy of love that disintegrated the first time you got angry at each other or hurt one another! see? because that's what human beings do - we hurt one another and we do a fucking good job of it. that doesnt mean it isnt love. as a matter of fact, it's probably the best indicator that it is. it really is. it really, really is.

Steven Tyler

Take joy!


There is nothing I can give you, which you have not; But there is much, while I cannot give, you can take. No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in it today. Take heaven! No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this present instant. Take peace! The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet within our reach, is joy. Take joy! There is a radiance and glory in the darkness, could we but see, and to see we have only to look. I beseech you to look. Life is so generous a giver, but we, judging its gifts by their covering, cast them away as ugly, or heavy or hard. Remove the covering, and you will find beneath it a living splendor, woven of love, by wisdom, with power. Welcome it, grasp it, and you touch the angel's hand that brings it to you. Everything we call a trial, a sorrow, or a duty, believe me that angel's hand is there; the gift is there, and the wonder of an overshadowing presence. Our joys too: be not content with them as joys. They, too, conceal diviner gifts. And so, at this time, I greet you. With the prayer that for you now and forever, the day breaks, and the shadows flee away.
--Fra Giovanni 1513


Katniss~~ (ran across this while looking at Tasha Tudor illustrations and wanted to share)

You must not only aim right>>:heartbeat:
but draw the bow with all of your might.


~Henry David Thoreau