How much evil throughout history could have been avoided had people exercised their moral acuity with convictional courage and said to the powers that be, 'No, I will not. This is wrong, and I don't care if you fire me, shoot me, pass me over for promotion, or call my mother, I will not participate in this unsavory activity.' Wouldn't world history be rewritten if just a few people had actually acted like individual free agents rather than mindless lemmings? - Joel Salatin, Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal: War Stories from the Local Food Front

Now you people have names. That's because you don't know who you are. We know who we are, so we don't need names. - Neil Gaiman, Coraline

A beautiful thing happens when we start paying attention to each other. It is by participating more in your relationship that you breathe life into it. - Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience

The world is filled with love-play, from animal lust to sublime compassion. - Alan W. Watts

We do not create life, we create death. - Marie Symeou

I am the captain of my soul. - Nelson Mandela

Of all the trees we could've hit, we had to get one that hits back. - J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day. - E.B. White

Life… For some it is battle for others its dance...For rich it is party for poor it is chance! - Nino Varsimashvili

Undisturbed calmness of mind is attained by cultivating friendliness toward the happy, compassion for the unhappy, delight in the virtuous, and indifference toward the wicked. - Patañjali, The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

You just gotta tell her, man,’ I said. ‘You just gotta say, “Angela, I really like you, but there’s something you need to know: when we go to my house and hook up, we’ll be watched by the twenty-four hundred eyes of twelve hundred black Santas. - John Green, Paper Towns

The great Sufi poet and philosopher Rumi once advised his students to write down the three things they most wanted in life. If any item on the list clashes with any other item, Rumi warned, you are destined for unhappiness. Better to live a life of single-pointed focus, he taught. But what about the benefits of living harmoniously among extremes? What if you could somehow create an expansive enough life that you could synchronize seemingly incongruous opposites into a worldview that excludes nothing? - Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

Sometimes I arrive just when God's ready to have somone click the shutter. - Ansel Adams

Yes, I have tricks in my pocket, I have things up my sleeve. But I am the opposite of a stage magician. He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion. - Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie

It's probably a bad indicator of your lifestyle when you miss your ex-boyfriend because he's absolutely lethal. - Charlaine Harris, Dead to the World

It is impossible to manufacture or imitate love. - J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Philosophy is the highest music. - Plato

The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater. - J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

No matter how long you train someone to be brave, you never know if they are or not until something real happens. - Veronica Roth, Insurgent

Maybe we should go on lots of double dates,” Cath said, “and then we can get married on the same day in a double ceremony, in matching dresses, and the four of us will light the unity candle all at the same time.”“Pfft,” Levi said, “I’m picking out my own dress. - Rainbow Rowell, Fangirl