We don't receive wisdom - we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.

Not how the world is, but that it is, is the mystery. - Ludwig Wittgenstein

When someone tells you they’ve just bought a house, they might as well tell you they no longer have a personality. You can immediately assume so many things: that they’re locked into jobs they hate; that they’re broke; that they spend every night watching videos; that they’re fifteen pounds overweight; that they no longer listen to new ideas. It’s profoundly depressing. - Douglas Coupland, Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture

The Heart wants what it wants - or else it does not care - Emily Dickinson

Yes, terrible things happen, but sometimes those terrible things- they save you. - Chuck Palahniuk, Haunted

You can live to be a hundred if you give up all the things that make you want to live to be a hundred. - Woody Allen

I delete the picture of him from my phone; I delete his number. I think that if I just delete him enough, it will be like none of it ever happened and my heart won't hurt so badly - Jenny Han, To All the Boys I've Loved Before

You have to, take a deep breath. and allow the music to flow through you. Revel in it, allow yourself to awe. When you play allow the music to break your heart with its beauty. - Kelly White

It has been my philosophy of life that difficulties vanish when faced boldly. - Isaac Asimov

Productiveness is your acceptance of morality, your recognition of the fact that you choose to live--that productive work is the process by which man's consciousness controls his existence, a constant process of acquiring knowledge and shaping matter to fit one's purpose, of translating an idea into physical form, of remaking the earth in the image of one's values--that all work is creative work if done by a thinking mind, and no work is creative if done by a blank who repeats in uncritical stupor a routine he has learned from others--that your work is yours to choose, and the choice is as wide as your mind, that nothing more is possible to you and nothing less is human--that to cheat your way into a job bigger than your mind can handle is to become a fear-corroded ape on borrowed motions and borrowed time, and to settle down into a job that requires less than your mind's full capacity is to cut your motor and sentence yourself to another kind of motion: decay--that your work is the process of achieving your values, and to lose your ambition for values is to lose your ambition to live--that your body is a machine, but your mind is its driver, and you must drive as far as your mind will take you, with achievement as the goal of your road--that the man who has no purpose is a machine that coasts downhill at the mercy of any boulder to crash in the first chance ditch, that the man who stifles his mind is a stalled machine slowly going to rust, that the man who lets a leader prescribe his course is a wreck being towed to the scrap heap, and the man who makes another man his goal is a hitchhiker no driver should ever pick up--that your work is the purpose of your life, and you must speed past any killer who assumes the right to stop you, that any value you might find outside your work, any other loyalty or love, can be only travelers you choose to share your journey and must be travelers going on their own power in the same direction. - Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

Some people feel love in their hearts, Julie. Some of us feel it all way into our souls. We're the ones who can't forget. - Judith McNaught, Paradise

I love, because my love is not dependent on the object of love. My love is dependent on my state of being. So whether the other person changes, becomes different, friend turns into a foe, does not matter, because my love was never dependent on the other person. My love is my state of being. I simply love. - Osho

If you're gonna burn a bridge behind you, make sure you've crossed it first. - Quentin R. Bufogle

Expect nothing. Live frugallyOn surprise.become a strangerTo need of pityOr, if compassion be freelyGiven outTake only enoughStop short of urge to pleadThen purge away the need.Wish for nothing largerThan your own small heartOr greater than a star;Tame wild disappointmentWith caress unmoved and coldMake of it a parkaFor your soul.Discover the reason whySo tiny human midgetExists at allSo scared unwiseBut expect nothing. Live frugallyOn surprise. - Alice Walker

I think you can love a person too much.You put someone up on a pedestal, and all of a sudden, from that perspective, you notice what's wrong - a hair out of place, a run in a stocking, a broken bone. You spend all your time and energy making it right, and all the while, you are falling apart yourself. You don't even realize what you look like, how far you've deteriorated, because you only have eyes for someone else. - Jodi Picoult, Handle with Care

When we cannot bear to be alone, it means we do not properly value the only companion we will have from birth to death - ourselves. - Eda J. LeShan

Now Darkstripe,' Graypaw hissed to Firepaw under his breath, 'is neither young, nor pretty. - Erin Hunter

And I remembered something else that makes us human: faith, the only weapon in our arsenal to battle doubt. - Jodi Picoult, Change of Heart

The truth is, unless you let go, unless you forgive yourself, unless you forgive the situation, unless you realize that the situation is over, you cannot move forward. - Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience

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