I love quotes and I love being reminded of my passions and what is important. I hope this place serves as a common ground for myself and others to gather inspiration from them and see more of how I view the world in the glimpses of perspectives I’ve gathered.

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Advice & Anecdotes

“Any time you put expectations on your life, you reduce the compassion and appreciation you’ll have for the experiences you live” — Anonymous

“Learn from your mistakes or die trying.” — Anonymous

“A ship in a harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.” — John Shedd

“Problems that remain persistently insoluble should always be suspected as questions asked in the wrong way.” — Alan Watts

“There is literally nothing in nature that blooms all year long, so do not expect yourself to do so.” — liryae

“If being hard on yourself worked, it would have worked by now.” — Anonymous

“If you only give charity to people who ‘deserve’ it, then that’s not charity–it’s a transaction.” –Anonymous

“Saints need sinners.” – Alan Watts

“When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.” — C.S Lewis

“How not to lose? It is impossible not to. The world is balanced on the edge of a knife. It’s a game of frayed nerves. You’re pushed on by numbers and punitive measures: pain, rejection, and unpaid bills. You can either play or you can crawl under a boat and waste away – turn into salt or a flock of seagulls. Your enemies would love that. Or you can fight. The only way to load the dice is to keep on fighting.” — The Precarious World, Disco Elysium

Love

“The more you love your friends, the more their features start to blur until all you remember is a pair of warm, welcoming eye and laughter that feels like home.” — Anonymous

“Tell me every terrible thing you ever did, and let me love you anyways.” — Edgar Allen Poe

“Maybe you were put on this earth to be tender and loving during a time when you are expected to be cruel and calloused.” — lonestarboyfriend

“I’ve chosen the people who were committed to choosing me, dedicated to finding something to adore even on the ugliest days. I no longer fear the day someone who swore I was their universe can no longer see the stars in my eyes as long as they still choose to look until they find them again.” — acutelesbian

Meaning & Will of Life

“The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.” — Alan Watts

“When I am feeling dreary, annoyed, and generally unimpressed by life, I imagine what it would be like to come back to this world for just a day after having been dead. I imagine how sentimental I would feel about the very things I once found stupid, hateful, or mundane. Oh, there’s a light switch! I haven’t seen a light switch in so long! I didn’t realize how much I missed light switches! Oh! Oh! And look–the stairs up to our front porch are still completely cracked! Hello, cracks! Let me get a good look at you. And there’s my neighbor, standing there, fantastically alive, just the same, still punctuating her sentences with… You know what I’m saying? Why did that used to bother me? It’s so…endearing.” — Amy Krouse Rosenthal

“Life is just humiliating yourself over and over and learning to live with the inherent shame of being alive!! Do what makes you happy!! It is impossible to live life without embarrassment, so why bother trying!!” — taboovithehomecoming

“How can I be of use in the world?” — Vincent van Gogh (In answer: “To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.” — Mary Oliver)

“This is the real secret of life — to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.” — Alan Watts

“To love life, to love it even when you have no stomach for it.” — Ellen Bass

“As a child, I was always searching for the meaning of it all, the big Why; and my father always said that there is no one big purpose, but I had the most ripe orange today and kissed my cat goodnight, I think that’s enough purpose for a day.” — Ritika Jyala

“Subdue the regret. Dust yourself off, proceed. You’ll get it in the next life, where you don’t make mistakes. Do what you can with this one, while you’re alive.” — Volition, Disco Elysium

Motivation

“I ask god to send a swordsman, and god says, ‘look at your hands’.” — Melissa Broder

“You don’t look out there for God, something in the sky, you look in you.” – Alan Watts

“I’ll live my life if it kills me.” — E.E. Cummings

“I suppose I love this life, in spite of my clenched fist.” — Andrea Gibson

“We’re so busy watching out for what’s just ahead of us that we don’t take time to enjoy where we are.” — Bill Watterson

“What we have forgotten is that thoughts and words are conventions, and that it is fatal to take conventions too seriously. A convention is a social convenience, as, for example, money … but it is absurd to take money too seriously, to confuse it with real wealth … In somewhat the same way, thoughts, ideas and words are ‘coins’ for real things.” — Alan Watts

“You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the praries and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting–over and over announcing your place in the family of things.” — Wild Geese, by Mary Oliver

“This is somewhere to be. This is all you have, but it’s still something. Streets and sodium lights. The sky, the world.” — Volition, Disco Elysium

“You got up from the floor because of a holy vow. You need to keep it together in the face of unrelenting terror.” — Volition, Disco Elysium

“In honour of your will…that kept you from falling apart, in the face of sheer, inescapable terror. Day after day.” — Volition, Disco Elysium

“No, you got up at 7:30, because YOU PROMISED YOURSELF TO DO THIS EVERY DAY 15 YEARS AGO.” — Volition, Disco Elysium

“The urge is strong, but you are stronger.” — Volition, Disco Elysium

“The road to healing is going to be a long one. Stay the course. You will make it, some day. Just remember: You’ve made it this far…and it’s a bit farther now. Let’s finish this.” — Volition, Disco Elysium

“You’re not an idiot. Don’t say that. This is a really big mess, and being a[n adult] is hard. No. Not a disaster. Weave this into the story of you. Walk out of its…ruins. Save those who still can be saved. I’m on your side.” — Volition, Disco Elysium

“You do have something better to do. Stay strong.” — Volition, Disco Elysium

“No, you CAN wade through the hell. Month after month. Year after year. You, against the nothingness. It’s possible, because time, is possible.” — Volition, Disco Elysium

“Get a hold of yourself. This is just one little thing. You still have everything else. Go on, finish [it]!” — Volition, Disco Elysium

“In times of darkness, should the stars, too, go out?” — Disco Elysium

Personality & Wit

“It is not that I am mad, it only that my head is different from yours.” — Diogenes

“Touching people’s lives in a positive way is as close as I can get to an idea of religion.” — Keith Haring

“God put me on this earth to accomplish a number of things. I am so far behind that I will never die.” — Bill Watterson

“I am so busy. I am practicing my new hobby of watching me become someone else. There is so much violence in reconstruction. Every minute is grisly, but I have to participate. I am building what I cannot break.” — Jennifer Willoughby

“The world is cruel; therefore I won’t be.” — Anonymous

“Among the cooks, I am the best engineer, and among the engineers, I am the best cook.” — papaya-inspiration

“The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.” — Alan Watts