“When we long for life without difficulties, remind us that oaks grow strong in contrary winds and diamonds are made under pressure.”
Peter Marshall
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Dare to Be
“We have to dare to be ourselves, however frightening or strange that self may prove to be.”
May Sarton
Easter
“Ye sleeping buds, break
Open your green cerements, and wake
To fragrant blossoming for His sweet sake.”
Margaret French Patton
Adversity
“The flower that blooms in adversity is the rarest and most beautiful of all.”
Emperor, Mulan
See Clearly
“Perhaps our eyes need to be washed by our tears once in a while, so that we can see Life with a clearer view again.”
Alex Tan
Understand More
“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.”
Marie Curie
No Obligation
“Life’s under no obligation to give us what we expect.”
Margaret Mitchell
No Ceasing
“Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.”
George Bernard Shaw
Soul
“Life beats down and imprisons the soul and art reminds you that you have one.”
Stella Adler
Why
“He who has a *why* to live can bear almost any *how*.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
Broken
“And then I felt sad because I realized that once people are broken in certain ways, they can’t ever be fixed, and this is something nobody ever tells you when you are young and it never fails to surprise you as you grow older as you see the people in your life break one by one. You wonder when your turn is going to be, or if it’s already happened.”
Douglas Coupland
Stand Out
“Why are you trying so hard to fit in, when you’re born to stand out.”
Oliver James
Friends
“A stranger stabs you in the front, a friend stabs you in the back, a boyfriend stabs you in the heart, but best friends only poke each other with straws.”
– Unknown
I Can
“There is so much about my fate that I cannot control, but other things do fall under the jurisdiction. I can decide how I spend my time, whom I interact with, ….. I can select what I can read and eat and study. I can choose how I’m going to regard unfortunate circumstances in my life-whether I will see them as curses or opportunities. I can choose my words and the tone of voice in which I speak to others. And most of all, I can choose my thoughts.”
Elizabeth Gilbert
Not by Halves
“There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends.
I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature.”
Jane Austen
Lie
“Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”
Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Brothers Karamazov
Love
“Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.”
Robert A. Heinlein
Stranger in a Strange Land
Hold life
“to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you’ve held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.”
Ellen Bass
Ideals
“It’s really a wonder that I haven’t dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.”
Anne Frank
The Diary of a Young Girl
I believe
“I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge. That myth is more potent than history. That dreams are more powerful than facts. That hope always triumphs over experience. That laughter is the only cure for grief. And I believe that love is stronger than death.”
Robert Fulghum
All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten
Listen, Child
“Listen to the mustn’ts, child. Listen to the don’ts. Listen to the shouldn’ts, the impossibles, the won’ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me… Anything can happen, child. Anything can be.”
Shel Silverstein
Fall Together
Rocky Fork, Unicoi County, TN
“I believe that everything happens for a reason. People change so that you can learn to let go, things go wrong so that you appreciate them when they’re right, you believe lies so you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself, and sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.”
Marilyn Monroe
You too?
“Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another:
“What! You too? I thought I was the only one.”
C.S. Lewis
Perfect Autumnal Day
Unicoi County, TN
“It was one of those perfect English autumnal days which
occur more frequently in memory than in life.”
P. D. James, 1920-
English writer of crime fiction
I’m back
Sorry about the long hiatus, friends. I’ve just finished three years of graduate school and a very heavy year of writing a dissertation. Happy to say I finished my doctorate in higher ed administration in May and am slowly recovering and regaining my life back. Hope to be posting more regularly and hopefully out soon replenishing my photos and my soul with the beauty of God’s creation. Thanks for hanging with me. Enjoy!
