Inspirational thoughts

“Hope was the wind that came from nowhere to fill your sails and carry you home.”
― King of Scars by Leigh Bardugo

“Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.” — Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

“If you don’t try at anything you can’t fail… it takes backbone to lead the life you want.”
– from Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates

“And that’s where the whole trouble is. We’re too much alike to understand each other because we don’t even understand our own selves.” – Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.”

               Thomas Merton, Thoughts In Solitude

“If I can stop one heart from breaking,

I shall not live in vain;

If I can ease one life the aching,

Or cool one pain,

Or help one fainting robin

Unto his nest again,

I shall not live in vain.”

—”If I Can Stop One Heart From Breaking,” by Emily Dickinson

“He soon felt that the fulfillment of his desires gave him only one grain of the mountain of happiness he had expected. This fulfillment showed him the eternal error men make in imagining that their happiness depends on the realization of their desires.”
― Leo Tolstoy 

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

“Ah, good conversation — there’s nothing like it, is there? The air of ideas is the only air worth breathing.”