Inspirational thoughts

“No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself.”

—Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

“When people are insulting you, there is nothing so good for them as not to say a word—just to look at them and think. When you will not fly into a passion people know you are stronger than they are, because you are strong enough to hold in your rage, and they are not, and they say stupid things they wished they hadn’t said afterward. There’s nothing so strong as rage, except what makes you hold it in—that’s stronger. It’s a good thing not to answer your enemies.”

—Frances Hodgson Burnett, A Little Princess

“Be curious, not judgmental.” – Walt Whitman

“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, The Painted Drum

“The time to relax is when you don’t have time for it.” Amish proverb

“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.” -Mark Twain

“… To know and love one other human being is the root of all wisdom.”
— Evelyn Waugh

“The difference between the old ballplayer and the new ballplayer is the jersey. The old ballplayer cared about the name on the front. The new ballplayer cares about the name on the back.” Steve Garvey, former MLB player and business leader

“Bend the branch while it is young.” Amish proverb