What can you ever really know of other people's souls — of their temptations,
If there is a God, you are, in a sense, alone with Him.
their opportunities, their struggles? One soul in the whole creation you do know:
and it is the only one whose fate is placed in your hands.
You cannot put Him off with speculations about your next door neighbours
or memories of what you have read in books.
C. S. Lewis
It is a mistake to think that the past is dead.
You, too, are your past; often your face is your autobiography;
every man or woman that has met you, every book that you have read,
So with a city, a country, and a race; it is its past, and
Nothing that has ever happened is quite without influence at this moment.
The present is merely the past rolled up and concentrated in this second of time.
you are what you are because of what you have been; because of
your heredity stretching back into forgotten generations;
because of every element of environment that has affected you,
every experience that you have had; all these are accumulated in
your memory, your body, your character, your soul.
cannot be understood without it.
Will Durant
Everyone wants to be the sun to lighten up someone's life,
but why not be the moon, to brighten in the darkest hour?
"And once again I believe that nothing that's important really becomes lost.
I lost nothing but the illusion that everything could be mine forever."
We just delude ourselves, thinking that we own the things, the moments and
the others. Still with me are all the dead persons who I loved, all the friends
who turned away, all the happy days that faded.
Miguel Sousa Tavares
But real action is in silent moments.
The epochs of our life are not in the visible facts of our choice
of a calling, our marriage, our acquisition of an office, and the like,
but in a silent thought by the wayside as we walk; in a thought which
revises our entire manner of life and says,—
"Thus hast thou done, but it were better thus".
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Like a bird singing in the rain,
let grateful memories survive in time of sorrow.
Robert Louis Stevenson
But it is possible, it is possible: the old grief, by a great mystery
I bless the sun's rising each day and my heart sings to
of human life, gradually passes into quiet, tender joy;
instead of young, ebullient blood comes a mild, serene old age:
it as before, but now I love its setting even more, its long
slanting rays, and with them quiet, mild, tender memories,
dear images from the whole of a long and blessed life--and
over all is God's truth, moving, reconciling, all-forgiving!
Fyodor Dostoevsky
The essence of belief is doubt,
The essence of Time is Flow, not Fix.
The growing man is Man Alive, and his "philosophy"
The man too fixed today, unfixed tomorrow - and his body
the essence of reality is questioning.
The essence of faith is the knowledge that all flows
and that everything must change.
must grow, must flow, with him.
of beliefs is nothing but a series of fixations.
Thomas Wolfe
There are dreams of love, life, and adventure in all of us.
But we are also sadly filled with reasons why we shouldn’t try.
These reasons seem to protect us, but in truth they imprison us.
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
Listen my love, illumination is eternal.
As there are billions of stars,
As there are billions of souls,
Now is always evolving.
there are billions of steps.
there are billions of ways to grow.
Rumi
Do you know the reason why poetry and philosophy
It is because they have severed themselves from life.
Nowadays beauty no longer acts;
are nothing but dead-letter nowadays?
In Greece, ideas went hand-in-hand with life; so that the artist's
life was already a poetic realisation, the philosopher's life
a putting into action of his philosophy; in this way, as both philosophy
and poetry took part in life, instead of remaining unacquainted with each other,
philosophy provided food for poetry, and poetry gave expression to philosophy
- and the result was admirably persuasive.
action no longer desires to be beautiful;
and wisdom works in a sphere apart.
André Gide
Ideologies separate us.
Dreams and anguish bring us together.
Eugène Ionesco
Those with eyes to see
Avoid those who say: ‘That’s it, I’ll go no further.’
Avoid those who meet up to discuss, seriously and pretentiously,
Stay close to those who allow the light of Love to shine forth
Those with eyes to see will see your light
Paulo Coelho
Because what they have failed to grasp is that neither life
nor death has an end; they are merely stages of eternity.
Stay close to those who say: ‘Everything’s fine as it is,
but we still need to move on.’
Because they understand the need to keep going beyond
the known horizon.
any decisions that the community needs to take.
They understand about politics, they impress others and try to
show how wise they are.
What they don’t understand is that it is impossible to control
so much as the fall of a single hair on your head.
Discipline is important, but it needs to leave doors and windows
open to intuition and the unexpected.
Stay close to those who sing, tell stories, enjoy life
and whose eyes sparkle with happiness.
Because happiness is contagious and will always manage
to find a solution whereas logic can find only an explanation
for the mistake made.
without restrictions, judgements or rewards, without letting
it be blocked by the fear of being misunderstood.
No matter how you are feeling, get up every morning
and prepare to let your light shine forth.
and be enchanted by it.
I have a creed myself; and my creed is this.
Happiness is the only good. The time to be happy is now.
The place to be happy is here. The way to be happy is to
make others so. This creed is somewhat short, but it is
long enough for this life, strong enough for this world.
Robert Green Ingersoll
We do not grow absolutely, chronologically.
We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly.
We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm,
childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and
pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present.
We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.
Anais Nin
The value of things is not the time they last,
but the intensity with which they occur.
That is why there are
unforgettable moments and unique people!
Fernando Pessoa
Waiting
SERENE, I fold my hands and wait,
I stay my haste, I make delays,
The stars come nightly to the sky;
John Burroughs
Nor care for wind, or tide, or sea;
I rave no more ’gainst time or fate,
For, lo! my own shall come to me.
For what avails this eager pace?
I stand amid the eternal ways,
And what is mine shall know my face. 
Asleep, awake, by night or day,
The friends I seek are seeking me;
No wind can drive my bark astray,
Nor change the tide of destiny.
What matter if I stand alone?
I wait with joy the coming years;
My heart shall reap where it has sown,
And garner up its fruit of tears.
The waters know their own and draw
The brook that springs in yonder height;
So flows the good with equal law
Unto the soul of pure delight.
The tidal wave unto the sea;
Nor time, nor space, nor deep, nor high,
Can keep my own away from me.
Oh sun, how glad thy rays are shed;
How canst thou glory o’er the dead?
Ah, folly this of human pride,
What are the dead to one like thee,
Whose mirror is the mighty tide,
Where time flows to eternity?
A single race, a single age,
What are they in thy pilgrimage?
Elizabeth Landon
Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved!
Love is life. All, everything that I understand,
Everything is, everything exists, only because I love.
Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love,
That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly.
Leo Tolstoy
I understand only because I love.
Everything is united by it alone.
shall return to the general and eternal source.
Leo Tolstoy
Remember, today is the tomorrow you
Face the thing that seems overwhelming and you will
worried about yesterday.
be surprised how your fear will melt away.
If you are not in the process of becoming the person you
want to be, you are automatically engaged in becoming
the person you don't want to be.
George Bernard Shaw was right. He summed it all up when he said:
"The secret of being miserable is to have the leisure to bother
about whether you are happy or not." So don't bother to think
about it! Spit on your hands and get busy. Your blood will start
circulating; your mind will start ticking-and pretty soon this
whole positive upsurge of life in your body will drive worry
from your mind. Get busy. Keep busy. It's the cheapest kind
of medicine there is on this earth-and one of the best.
Dale Carnegie
