photo by h-d-k

Being happy doesn’t mean that everything is perfect. It means that you’ve decided to look beyond the imperfections.

– anonymous

photo by badjonni

You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes
You can steer yourself
any direction you choose.
You’re on your own. And you know what you know.
And YOU are the guy who’ll decide where to go.

You’ll look up and down streets. Look ‘em over with care.
About some you will say, “I don’t choose to go there.”
With your head full of brains and your shoes full of feet,
you’re too smart to go down any not-so-good street.

from Oh The Places You’ll Go by Dr. Seuss

’cause i don’t want to be a container
or a bastard with a ten page disclaimer

I don’t just want to take up space in this life or be the person life happened to.  I really want to make a difference and leave my mark.

i was hanging upside down from the overpass
waiting to discover something about the world
i couldn’t get with the program and i couldn’t listen to them
it was like trying to think in reverse
and i don’t want to slide into apathy
and i don’t want to die in captivity
but these monsters follow me around
hunting me down, trying to wipe me out

wipe me out

i was hiding away under water
waiting for distance and buying some time
trying to be two hundred thousand years younger
so i could excuse myself from humankind
’cause i don’t want to be a container
or a bastard with a ten page disclaimer
but these monsters spin me around
get me down, just try and shut me out

shut me out

hold it in your head
believe and make believe and make believe

i was hiding away under water
waiting for distance, waiting for time
and i don’t want to slide into apathy and i don’t
and i don’t want to live in captivity

photo by ajawin

A friend is one to whom one can pour out all the contents of one’s heart, chaff and grain together, knowing that the gentlest of hands will take and sift it, keeping what is worth keeping, and, with the breath of kindness, blow the rest away.

-Arab proverb

photo by drp

Real generosity is doing something nice for someone who will never find it out.

Frank A. Clark

photo by extranoise

“Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.”

“We shouldn’t teach great books; we should teach a love of reading.”

B. F. Skinner, 1904-1990, psychologist

photo by 42126397@N00

Success

To laugh often and much;
To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children;
To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends;
To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others;
To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition;
To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived.
This is to have succeeded.

–Bessie Stanley

image by mindfulness

If women are supposed to be less rational and more emotional at the beginning of our menstrual cycle when the female hormone is at its lowest level, then why isn’t it logical to say that, in those few days, women behave the most like the way men behave all month long?

– Gloria Steinem

photo by Hamed Masoumi

“We accept the love that we think we deserve.”

–Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Thomas Jefferson said:

“In every free and deliberating society, there must, from the nature of man, be opposite parties, and violent dissensions and discords; and one of these, for the most part, must prevail over the other for a longer or shorter time.”

“It is the steady abuse of power in other governments which renders that of opposition always the popular party.”