“In a time of drastic change one can be too preoccupied with what is ending or too obsessed with what seems to be beginning. In either case one loses touch with the present and with its obscure but dynamic possibilities. You do not need to know what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and embrace them with courage, faith and hope. In such an event, courage is the authentic form taken by love.”

- Thomas Merton

"Don’t expect others to treat you better than they treat themselves. If you choose to deal with them (or must), it is best to come from a place of compassion toward their ignorance and lack of love. Be solid enough to deal with it or step back to work on yourself first." —Danielle Marie Crume
Photograph "As You Walk Away": http://www.bardamuphotography.com/

‎"Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it." 
"Be of good cheer. Do not think of today's failures, but of the success that may come tomorrow. You have set yourself a difficult task, but you will succeed if you persevere; and you will find a joy in overcoming obstacles."

--Helen Keller

"Perhaps we don’t like what we see: our hips, our loss of hair, our shoe size, our dimples, our knuckles too big, our eating habits, our disposition. We have disclosed these things in secret, likes and dislikes, behind doors with locks, our lonely rooms, our messy desks, our empty hearts, our sudden bursts of energy, our sudden bouts of depression. Don’t worry. Put away your mirrors and your beauty magazines and your books on tape. There is someone right here who knows you more than you do, who is making room on the couch, who is fixing a meal, who is putting on your favorite record, who is listening intently to what you have to say, who is standing there with you, face to face, hand to hand, eye to eye, mouth to mouth. There is no space left uncovered. This is where you belong."
Sufjan Stevens
(via CarrollBlog)

"We are here to laugh at the odds 
and live our lives so well
that Death will tremble to take us."
-Charles Bukowski

"We die containing a richness of lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we have plunged into and swam up as if rivers of wisdom, characters we have climbed into as if trees, fears we have hidden in as if caves. I wish for all this to be marked on my body when I am dead."  -Michael Ondaatje

The irregularity, that is to say, the unexpected thing, the surprise or the stupor are essential and characteristic elements of Beauty.
-Charles Baudelaire
(Portrait by Emile Deroy)

‎"A boat is safe in the harbor, but this is not the purpose of a boat." -Paulo Coelho
(Artwork by Nicolas Ferrand)

‎"One day the sun admitted, I am just a shadow.
I wish I could show you The Infinite Incandescence...
That has cast my brilliant image!
I wish I could show you,
When you are lonely or in darkness,
The astonishing Light of your own Being!" - Hafiz

‎"Ones philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes." -Eleanor Roosevelt

Out of your whole life give but a moment!
All of your life that has gone before,
All to come after it,--so you ignore
So you make perfect the present,--condense,
In a rapture of rage, for perfection's endowment,
Thought and feeling and soul and sense--
Merged in a moment which gives me at last
You around me for once, you beneath me, above me--
Me--sure that despite of time future, time past,--
This tick of our life-time's one moment you love me!
How long such suspension may linger? Ah, Sweet--
The moment eternal--just that and no more--
When ecstasy's utmost we clutch at the core
While cheeks burn, arms open, eyes shut and lips meet!
- Robert Browning
(photo: Close-up by David Terrazas)

As we sail thru life, don't avoid rough waters, sail on because calm waters won't make a skillful sailor. — Mang Kepweng
via Kind Over Matter

‎"People will do anything, no matter how
absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls. They will practice 
Indian yoga and all its exercises, observe a strict regimen of diet, 
learn the literature of the whole world—all because they cannot get on 
with themselves and have not the slightest faith that anything useful 
could ever come out of their own souls. Thus the soul had gradually been
turned into a Navareth from which nothing good can come. Therefore let
us fetch it from the four corners of the earth—the more far-fetched and
bizarre it is the better!" — C.G. Jung

‎"Travelers, it is late.

Life's sun is going to set.

During these brief days that you have strength,

be quick and spare no effort of your wings."
-Rumi

The finest gift you can give anyone is encouragement. Yet, almost no one gets the encouragement they need to grow into their full potential. If everyone received the encouragement they need to grow, the genius in most everyone would blossom and the world would produce abundance beyond our wildest dreams. - Sidney Madwed

Love is invisible except here, in us.
Sometimes I praise love,
sometimes love praises me.
Love, a little shell somewhere
on the ocean floor,
open its mouth.
You and I and we, those imaginary beings,
enter that shell as a single sip of seawater.
-Rumi

‎"I want to work in revelations, not just spin silly tales for money. I want to fish as deep down as possible into my own subconscious in the belief that once that far down, everyone will understand because they are the same that far down." —Jack Kerouac in a letter to Ed White (July 5th 1950)