"And even if you take my sun, I will yet have the moon and the sparkling stars and the lamp on a dark winter's eve. There is so much beautiful light in the world!" Wilhelm Rabe
"When we fall into the water, we learn to swim." Goethe
"Even from those stones thrown in your way as to make you stumble, you can yet build something beautiful." Goethe
"This too, shall pass." King Solomon
"On ne voit bien qu'avec le coeur. L'essential est invisible pour les yeux." Le Petit Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"When we walk to the edge of the light we have and take a step into the darkness of the unknown we must believe one of two things will happen: there will be something solid for us to stand on or we will be taught to fly." Claire Morris
"The purpose of life, after all, is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience." Eleanor Roosevelt
Somebody Else
If I was not myself, I would be somebody else.
But actually I am somebody else.
I have been somebody else all my life.
It's no laughing matter going about the place
all the time being somebody else:
people mistake you; you mistake yourself.
-Jackie Kay
Love After LoveThe time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome.
And say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread, give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
-Derek Walcott
Newly Born Twins
The strong twin, the one with nothing
pulling her back, she slung
her newly born arm over
the one who was wanting to leave,
and stabilised her heart beat, made everything
regular in the body of the one who'd already
had enough.
The strong one, she will think
She is God, that she can pull back
life from where it was wanting to go.
It will be harder for her
than for the one who already knows
about separation, loneliness, where
they can make you want to go.
-Helen Farish
"The most beautiful people we know are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These people have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep, loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen." Elizabeth Kubler Ross
"There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom." Anais Nin
"Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says 'I'll try again tomorrow.'" Mary Ann Radmacher
"Look at a stone cutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without so much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred-and-first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not the last blow that did it, but all that had gone before." Jacob A. Riis
"I have heard there are troubles of more than one kind.
Some come from ahead and some come from behind.
But I've bought a big bat. I'm all ready you see.
Now my troubles are going to have troubles with me!" Dr. Suess
"I don't like the term 'victim'. One has 'survived' and is therefore a 'survivor'. If we view ourselves as victims, we remain victims. If we view ourselves as survivors, we become those who surpass such adversity." Sia Jane Lloyd
"They say 'impossible',
They say it can't be done,
Can't break us down 'cause we're unstoppable.
They say 'too difficult',
That it could never work.
They think that we've been trying far too long,
But I know better." Impossible - Kate Earl
