Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place.
— Kurt Vonnegut
Category: quote
Quote 00212
If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.
— Cicero
Quote 00199
Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
— Mark Twain
Quote 00195
Rather than thus consent to establish hell upon earth, — to be a party to this establishment, — I would touch a match to blow up earth and hell together. As I love my life, I would side with the Light and let Dark Earth roll from under me, calling my mother and my brother to follow me.
— Henry David Thoreau, Journals, May 29th, 1854
The Fierce Urgency of Now
We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood — it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, “Too late.”
— Martin Luther King Junior
Quote 00179
A strong nation, like a strong person, can afford to be gentle, firm, thoughtful, and restrained. It can afford to extend a helping hand to others. It is a weak nation, like a weak person, that must behave with bluster and boasting and rashness and other signs of insecurity.
— Jimmy Carter
Quote 00152
“Your goodness must have some edge to it, else it is none.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson – Self Reliance
Quote 00146
I heard somewhere that you are born with the face god gave you, but the face you have at sixty is the face you deserve.
— Sonya Park
Georgia O’Keeffe on Fear
“I’ve been absolutely terrified every moment of my life – and I’ve never let it keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do.”
— Georgia O’Keeffe
In The Dark Times
“In the dark times
Will there also be singing?
Yes, there will also be singing.
About the dark times.”
— Bertolt Brecht
(via my friend Alison)