“It could be Paris. It could be Rio de Janeiro. It could be anywhere but home: someplace, anyplace, disorienting enough to make him notice what he wouldn’t otherwise see. (The medicinal benefits of disorientation can never be overestimated.)”
—Bill Buford, Introduction to The Best American Travel Writing 2010
December 2011
66 posts
“Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. That is not our business and, in fact, it is nobody’s business. What we are asked to do is to love, and this love itself will render both ourselves and our neighbors worthy.”
—Thomas Merton
“No one who claims this to be a small world has ever flown across the Pacific.”
—J. Maarten Troost, The Sex Lives of Cannibals
“Some days you must learn a great deal. But you should also have days when you allow what is already in you to swell up and touch everything. If you never let that happen, then you just accumulate facts, and they begin to rattle around inside of you.”
—E.L. Konigsburg
“Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
“But who can say what’s best? That’s why you need to grab whatever chance you have of happiness where you find it, and not worry about other people too much. My experience tells me that we get no more than two or three such chances in a life time, and if we let them go, we regret it for the rest of our lives.”
—Haruki Murakami (Norweigan Wood)
“Experience: the most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my god do you learn.”
—C.S. Lewis
“Let gratitude be the pillow upon which you kneel to say your nightly prayer. And let faith be the bridge you build to overcome evil and welcome good.”
—Maya Angelou
“She had a way of seeing the beauty in others, even, and perhaps most especially, when that person couldn’t see it in themselves.”
—J.K. Rowling
“Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.”
—Leonardo da Vinci
“Whether you like it or not, read and pray daily. It is for your life; there is no other way; else you will be a trifler all your days, and a pretty, superficial preacher. Do justice to your own soul; give it time and means to grow. Do not starve yourself any longer.”
—John Wesley
“This is the true joy in life - being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.”
—George Bernard Shaw
“We’re making a point to give a shit, because in this world, it’s just crazy enough to work.”
—Patrick Stickles
“Hardship may dishearten at first, but every hardship passes away. All despair is followed by hope; all darkness is followed by sunshine.”
—Rumi
“Character is what emerges from all the little things you were too busy to do yesterday, but did anyway.”
—Mignon McLaughlin
“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.”
—Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
“I’m not sure if I can write a love poem while it’s still just a prospect pirouetting on the horizon, but when I do find that love, like a five dollar bill resurfacing from folds of denim, you’ll be the first to know.”
—Simone Stolzoff
“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.”
—Louise Erdrich
“I have to say that although it broke my heart, I was, and still am, glad I was there.”
—Markus Zusak, The Book Thief
“I want your sun to reach my raindrops, so your heat can raise my soul upward like a cloud.”
—Rumi
