To pursue wisdom is to live in such a way that one is prepared to face death when it comes. (247) - Gregory Bassham, The Ultimate Harry Potter and Philosophy: Hogwarts for Muggles

make a radical change in your lifestyle and begin to boldly do things which you may previously never have thought of doing, or been too hesitant to attempt. So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservation, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun. If you want to get more out of life, you must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life that will at first appear to you to be crazy. But once you become accustomed to such a life you will see its full meaning and its incredible beauty. - Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild

The shell must break before the bird can fly. - Alfred Tennyson

Education is meaningless without manners - Benny Bellamacina, Piddly Poems for Children, v.2

When you grow up as a girl, the world tells you the things that you are supposed to be: emotional, loving, beautiful, wanted. And then when you are those things, the world tells you they are inferior: illogical, weak, vain, empty. - Stevie Nicks

I'm told there's no going back. So I'm choosing forward. - David Levithan, Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

Dream your own dreams, achieve your own goals. Your journey is your own and unique. - Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart

No other success can compensate for failure in the home. - J. E. McCulloch

Don't cry over someone who wouldn't cry over you. - Lauren Conrad

Criticism - however valid or intellectually engaging - tends to get in the way of a writer who has anything personal to say. A tightrope walker may require practice, but if he starts a theory of equilibrium he will lose grace (and probably fall off). - J.R.R. Tolkien, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien

I read once that the ancient Egyptians had fifty words for sand & the Eskimos had a hundred words for snow. I wish I had a thousand words for love, but all that comes to mind is the way you move against me while you sleep & there are no words for that. - Brian Andreas, Story People: Selected Stories & Drawings of Brian Andreas

I know what I have given you... I do not know what you have received. - Antonio Porchia

Life was not to be sitting in hot amorphic leisure in my backyard idly writing or not writing, as the spirit moved me. It was, instead, running madly, in a crowded schedule, in a squirrel cage of busy people. Working, living, dancing, dreaming, talking, kissing- singing, laughing, learning. - Sylvia Plath

Normalness leads to sadness. - Phil Lester

In love, one and one are one. - Jean-Paul Sartre

Change the way you look at things and the things you look at change. - Wayne W. Dyer

Death ends a life, not a relationship. - Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie

Start each day with a positive thought and a grateful heart. - Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart

But how could you live and have no story to tell? - Fyodor Dostoyevsky, White Nights

Each time you happen to me all over again. - Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence