Quotes: Part One

I love quotes. Adore them. I always have.

I started a book on July 25, 2006 of some of my favorite quotes and have been adding to it for the past six years and will be for years to come, until it is finished and I begin a new book. They are from books, movies, songs, etc.

Here are some of my favorites, in the order that I wrote them. I am going to do several posts from this book, with all my favorite quotes that I loved enough to write down at some point. Enjoy!

"All endings are also beginnings...we just don't know it at the time."

"No story sits by itself. Sometimes stories meet at corners and sometimes they cover one another completely, like stones beneath a river."

"Of course, they lived happily ever after. The point, gentlemen, is that they lived."

"Dying is only one thing to be sad over. Living unhappily is something else."

"Put a daily limit on self-pity. Just a few tearful minutes, then on with the day."

"There will be lots of love passing between us...you don't need speech or hearing to feel that."

"Get into the habit of standing back and looking at your life and saying, Is this all? Is this all I want? Is something missing?"

"Sometimes you cannot believe what you see; you have to believe what you feel. And if you are ever going to have other people trust you, you must feel that you can trust them too--even when you're in the dark. Even when you're falling."

"Once you learn how to die, you learn how to live."

"Find the healing power in grieving."

"Love each other or perish."

"Without love, we are birds with broken wings."

"Don't cling to things, because everything is impermanent."

"Scenery without solace is meaningless."

"Each of us was in your life for a reason...you may not have known the reason at the time."

"One withers, another grows. Birth and death are part of a whole."

"All right, it's just fear. I don't have to let it control me. I see it for what it is."

"Forget what culture says. I am not going to be ashamed."

"Strangers are just family you have yet come to know."

"No life is a waste...the only time we waste is the time we spend thinking we are alone." 

"Deep down all lives intersect. Death doesn't just take someone, it misses someone else, and in the small distance between being taken and being missed, lives are changed."

"There are no random acts. We are all connected. You can no more separate one life from another than you can separate a breeze from the wind."

"Death ends a life, not a relationship."

"Make peace with living."

"You have to find what's good and true and beautiful in your life as it is now."

"But I gotta pay," he said. 
"To pay?"
"For my sin. That's why I'm here, right? Justice?"
He smiled. "You are here so I can teach you something. All the people you meet have one thing to teach you." 

"If you've found meaning in your life, you don't want to go back. You want to go forward. You want to see more, do more."

"We put our values in the wrong things. And it leads to very disillusioned lives."

"Giving to other people is what makes me feel alive."

"Each night, when I go to sleep, I die. And the next morning, when I wake, I am reborn."

"Status will get you nowhere. Only an open heart will allow you to float equally between everyone."

"Offering others what you have to give gives real satisfaction." 

"Don't let go too soon, but don't hold on too long."

"I know it hurts when you can't be with someone you love. But you need to be at peace with their desires." 

"It was so simple. So average. I was actually a little dissapointed--how could he find perfection in such an average day? Then I realized that was the whole point."

"No. You don't understand. You're not a wave; you're part of the ocean."

"I laughed until there were tears in my eyes."

"You want them back. You never want them to stop. But that's all part of being human. Stop, renew, stop, renew."

"The teaching goes on."

"Love is different. Love is when you're as concerned about someone else's situation as you are your own."

"Silence was his escape, but silence is rarely a refuge."

"Love takes many forms, and it is never the same for any man and woman."

"He found a certain love...a grateful love, a deep but quiet love, one that he knew, above all else, was irreplaceable."

"Silence is worse when you know it won't be broken."

"She smiled, and he smiled, and she was, to him, as beautiful as ever."

"Lost love is still love. It just takes a different form, that's all."

"Those who follow the crowd usually get lost in it."

"Being controlled by the opinions of others is a guaranteed way to miss God's purposes for your life."

"The greatest tragedy is not death, but life without purpose."

"It is impossible to do everything people want you to do."

"Circumstances cannot change the character of God."

"Knowing your purpose focuses your life."

"With a magnifying glass, the rays of the sun can be focused to set grass or paper on fire."

"Purpose always produces passion."

"The men and women who have made the greatest difference in history were the most focused."

"The way you see your life shapes your life."

"You must be the change you wish to see in the world."

"It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness."

"Happiness does not depend on outward things, but on the way we see them."

"The significance of a man is not what he attains, but in what he longs to attain." 

"The art of living lies less in eliminating our troubles than in growing with them."

"Every life has one true-love snapshot."

"My old friend," he whispered. "You've come back at last."

"She will hold his hand and tell him God is proud of him...and that will make him feel right-side up again."

"Morrie would walk that final bridge between life and death, and narrate the trip." 

"The word dying is not synonymous with useless."

"Accept what you are able to do and what you are not able to do."

"Accept the past as the past, without denying it or discarding it."

"Learn to forgive yourself, and to forgive others."

"Don't assume that it's too late to get involved."

"Which side wins?"
He smiles at me, the crinkled eyes, the crooked teeth. 
"Love wins. Love always wins."

"Have you found someone to share your heart with? Are you giving to your community? Are you at peace with yourself? Are you trying to be as human as you can be?"

"The culture we have does not make people feel good about themselves. And you have to be strong enough to say if the culture doesn't work, don't buy it."

"Am I going to withdraw from the world, like most people, or am I going to live the way I want--or at least try to live--with dignity, with courage, with humor, with composure?"

"The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in."

"Love is the only rational act."

"I give myself a good cry if I need it. But then I concentrate on all the good things still in my life."

"The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, to your community around you, and to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning."

"We don't see things are they are; we see them as we are."

"Keep the vision of eternity in your mind and the value of it in your heart."

"When you live in light of eternity, your values change."

"The closer you live to God, the smaller everything else appears."

"He must become greater; I must become less." (John 3:30)

"Find out who you are, and do it on purpose."

"The great and glorious masterpiece of man is to know how to live on purpose."

"He who hesitates is lost."

"The best way to prepare for life is to begin to live."

"Our greatest glory is not in falling, but in rising every time we fall."

"Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm." 

"The idea that you can trust Christ and not intend to obey Him is an illusion created by the prevalence of an unbelieving 'Christian culture'."

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit."

"Nothing contributes so much as to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose--a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye."

"The ultimate measure of man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy."

"Try not to be a man of success, but a man of value."

"A loving heart is the truest wisdom."