When you're in love you never really know whether your elation comes from the qualities of the one you love, or if it attributes them to her; whether the light which surrounds her like a halo comes from you, from her, or from the meeting of your sparks. - Natalie Clifford Barney

Humility is perfect quietness of heart. It is to expect nothing, to wonder at nothing that is done to me, to feel nothing done against me. It is to be at rest when nobody praises me, and when I am blamed or despised. It is to have a blessed home in the Lord, where I can go in and shut the door, and kneel to my Father in secret, and am at peace as in a deep sea of calmness, when all around and above is trouble. - Andrew Murray

Spirituality is not to be learned by flight from the world, or by running away from things, or by turning solitary and going apart from the world. Rather, we must learn an inner solitude wherever or with whomsoever we may be. We must learn to penetrate things and find God there. - Meister Eckhart

For, after all, every one who wishes to gain true knowledge must climb the Hill Difficulty alone, and since there is no royal road to the summit, I must zigzag it in my own way. I slip back many times, I fall, I stand still, I run against the edge of hidden obstacles, I lose my temper and find it again and keep it better, I trudge on, I gain a little, I feel encouraged, I get more eager and climb higher and begin to see the widening horizon. Every struggle is a victory. One more effort and I reach the luminous cloud, the blue depths of the sky, the uplands of my desire. - Helen Keller, The Story of My Life

The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You trade in your sense for an act. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask. There can't be any large-scale revolution until there's a personal revolution, on an individual level. It's got to happen inside first. - Jim Morrison

To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless. - G.K. Chesterton

A love story can never be about full possession. The happy marriage, the requited love, the desire that never dims--these are lucky eventualites but they aren't love stories. Love stories depend on disappointment, on unequal births and feuding families, on matrimonial boredom and at least one cold heart. Love stories, nearly without exception, give love a bad name.We value love not because it's stronger than death but because it's weaker. Say what you want about love: death will finish it. You will not go on loving in the grave, not in any physical way that will at all resemble love as we know it on earth. The perishable nature of love is what gives love its importance in our lives. If it were endless, if it were on tap, love wouldn't hit us the way it does.And we certainly wouldn't write about it. - Jeffrey Eugenides, My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead: Great Love Stories from Chekhov to Munro

People aren't either wicked or noble. They're like chef's salads, with good things and bad things chopped and mixed together in a vinaigrette of confusion and conflict. - Lemony Snicket, The Grim Grotto

An Assassin, a real Assassin, had to look like one - black clothes, hood, boots, and all. If they could wear any clothes, any disguise, then what could anyone do but spend all day in a small room with a loaded crossbow pointed at the door? - Terry Pratchett, Night Watch

I admire those who do good and expect nothing in return. - Roy T. Bennett

Challenges are gifts that force us to search for a new center of gravity. Don't fight them. Just find a new way to stand. - Oprah Winfrey

Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little. - Edmund Burke

Here's a rule I recommend: Never practice two vices at once. - Tallulah Bankhead

Goodbyes are only for those who love with their eyes. Because for those who love with heart and soul there is no such thing as separation. - Jalaluddin Rumi

Friendship often ends in love. But love in friendship never. - Charles Caleb Colton

Such a simple concept, yet so true: that which we manifest is before us; we are the creators of our own destiny. Be it through intention or ignorance, our successes and our failures have been brought on by none other than ourselves. - Garth Stein, The Art of Racing in the Rain

Love can change a person the way a parent can change a baby- awkwardly, and often with a great deal of mess. - Lemony Snicket, Horseradish

Just in case you ever foolishly forget - I'm never not thinking of you.

We can never judge the lives of others, because each person knows only their own pain and renunciation. - Paulo Coelho, By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other. - Mother Teresa