End of Comfort

“Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.”

Beale Donald Walsch

Deeply Known

“We cultivate love when we allow our most vulnerable and powerful selves to be deeply seen and known, and when we honor the spiritual connection that grows from that offering with trust, respect, kindness and affection.”

― Brené Brown

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,
Life After God (1994)

Best & Better

“First best is falling in love. Second best is being in love. Least best is falling out of love. But any of it is better than never having been in love.”

Maya Angelou

Quirks

“Like most people, I’m afraid to be weird, so I’m always concealing my quirks, which is a shame. Our quirks are the very things that draw people to us. Our quirks make us who we are. Our quirks are all we have. Without them, we’re boring. Hide your quirks and you’re a Volvo.”

Josh Riebock,
Heroes and Monsters (2012)

I Am For You

“time is a tree (this life one leaf)

but love is the sky and i am for you

just so long and long enough”

ee cummings

No Excuses, No Regrets

“Live with no excuses and love with no regrets.”

Montel

Real Love

“Friends can help each other. A true friend is someone who lets you have total freedom to be yourself — and especially to feel. Or, not feel. Whatever you happen to be feeling at the moment is fine with them. That’s what real love amounts to — letting a person be what he really is.”

Jim Morrison

A Hell of Heaven

“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.”

John Milton, Paradise Lost

Into The Past

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

As Long As the Heart Beats

“As long as the heart beats, as long as body and soul keep together, I cannot admit that any creature endowed with a will has need to despair of life.”

Jules Verne, Journey to the Center of the Earth

More Readily Than It Hates

“It is to the credit of human nature that, except where its selfishness is brought into play, it loves more readily than it hates.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

As The Day Gets On

“The sun himself is weak when he first rises, and gathers strength and courage as the day gets on.”

Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop

Go With Others

“Compassion is hard because it requires the inner disposition to go with others to the place where they are weak, vulnerable, lonely, and broken.”

Henri Nouwen

Odd Reality

“Besides being complicated, reality, in my experience, is usually odd.”

C.S. Lewis

Hunger After

“We can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them.”

George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss

Comfort Zone

“Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.”

Beale Donald Walsch

In Touch

“Our achievements grow according to the size of our dreams and the degree to which we are in touch with our mission.”

Keith Ferrazzi
Never Eat Alone

Blessing

“There is no conflict man can endure that will not produce a blessing.”

Donald Miller,
A Million Miles in a Thousand Years

Imagine

“Imagine loving yourself. Imagine being able to enjoy who you are. Imagine not having to compare yourself to other people…And imagine being able to celebrate others! Imagine…doing your job not to prove your identity or worth but as an expression of it! Imagine knowing you have value!”

Josh Riebock
Heroes and Monsters (2012)

A Friend

Pink Lady Slipper – Appalachian Trail, Iron Mountain NC/TN

“A friend is someone who will die to keep us from becoming anyone else, someone who fights for us against a world that is constantly trying to shrink us into shelved canisters labeled ‘how you’re supposed to be.’ A friend does everything possible to make sure we become who we are made to be — nothing less, nothing more.”

Josh James Riebock
Heroes and Monsters (2012)

Humor

“A sense of humor is part of the art of leadership,
of getting along with people, of getting things done.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1890-1969

Suffer

“The truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering the more you suffer because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you in proportion to your fear of being hurt.”

Thomas Merton

Contrary

“When we long for life without difficulties, remind us that oaks grow strong in contrary winds and diamonds are made under pressure.”

Peter Marshall

Dare to Be

“We have to dare to be ourselves, however frightening or strange that self may prove to be.”

May Sarton