Tag: Quotes

Simple Sundays

Simple Sunday- Relaxation

LSiehLeave a comment

“We will be more successful in all our endeavors if we can let go of the habit of running all the time, and take little pauses to relax and re-center ourselves. And we’ll also have a lot more joy in living.”-Thich Nhat Hanh

“Stop a minute, right where you are. Relax your shoulders, shake your head and spine like a dog shaking off cold water. Tell that imperious voice in your head to be still.”-Barbara Kingsolver

“Meditation is to be aware of every thought and of every feeling, never to say it is right or wrong, but just to watch it and move with it. In that watching, you begin to understand the whole movement of thought and feeling. And out of this awareness comes silence.”-Jiddu Krishnamurti

“You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.” —Maya Angelou

“Tension is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who you are.” —Chinese Proverb

Simple Sundays

Simple Sunday- Stars Above

LSiehLeave a comment

“In these countless stars, in their clusters and colors and constellations, in the “shooting” showers of blazing dust and ice, we have always found beauty. And in this beauty, the overwhelming size of the universe has seemed less ominous, earth’s own beauty more incredible. If indeed the numbers and distances of the night sky are so large that they become nearly meaningless, then let us find the meaning under our feet.”
― Paul Bogard, The End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light

“Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition.”
― Isaac Asimov

“I have looked further into space than ever human being did before me. I have observed stars of which the light, it can be proved, must take two million years to reach the earth.[Having identified Uranus (1781), the first planet discovered since antiquity.]”
― William Herschel

“Few of us have seen the stars as folk saw them then – our cities and towns cast too much light into the night – but, from the village of Wall, the stars were laid out like worlds or like ideas, uncountable as the trees in a forest or the leaves on a tree.”
― Neil Gaiman, Stardust

“Winter is the time for stories, staying fast by the glow of fire. And outside, in the darkness, the stars are brighter than you can possibly imagine.”
― Isabel Greenberg, The Encyclopedia of Early Earth

Simple Sundays

Simple Sunday- Woman’s Suffrage

LSiehLeave a comment

“The young women of today, free to study, to speak, to write, to choose their occupation, should remember that every inch of this freedom was bought for them at a great price. It is for them to show their gratitude by helping onward the reforms of their own times, by spreading the light of freedom and of truth still wider. The debt that each generation owes to the past it must pay to the future.”-Abigail Scott Duniway, suffragist  1834-1915

”Life is a hard battle anyway. If we caught and sing a little as we fight the  good fight of freedom, it makes it all go easier. I will not allow my life’s light be determined by the darkness around me.”-Soujourner Truth

“If Congress refuse to listen to and grant what women ask, there is but one course left then to pursue. What is there left for women to do but to become the mothers of the future government?”― Victoria Claflin Woodhull

“The vote is the emblem of your equality, women of America, the guaranty of your liberty. That vote of yours has cost millions of dollars and the lives of thousands of women. Women have suffered agony of soul which you never can comprehend, that you and your daughters might inherit political freedom. That vote has been costly. Prize it! The vote is a power, a weapon of offense and defense, a prayer. Use it intelligently, conscientiously, prayerfully. Progress is calling to you to make no pause. Act!”― Carrie Catt

“So close is the bond between man and woman that you can not raise one without lifting the other. The world can not move ahead without woman’s sharing in the movement, and to help give a right impetus to that movement is woman’s highest privilege.”-Frances Harper

Simple Sundays

Simple Sunday- Fear

LSiehLeave a comment

“Hate is the consequence of fear; we fear something before we hate it; a child who fears noises becomes a man who hates noise.”-Cyril Connolly

“The moment we begin to fear the opinions of others and hesitate to tell the truth that is in us, and from motives of policy are silent when we should speak, the divine floods of light and life no longer flow into our souls.”-Elizabeth Cady Stanton

“Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts… perhaps the fear of a loss of power.”-John Steinbeck

“I write for those women who do not speak, for those who do not have a voice because they were so terrified, because we are taught to respect fear more than ourselves. We’ve been taught that silence would save us, but it won’t.”-Audre Lorde

“What I fear most is power with impunity. I fear abuse of power, and the power to abuse.”-Isabel Allende

Simple Sundays

Simple Sunday- Anniversary Edition

LSiehLeave a comment

“There is nothing nobler or more admirable than when two people who see eye to eye keep house as man and wife, confounding their enemies and delighting their friends.”-Homer

“I love being married. It’s so great to find that one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life.”-Rita Rudner

“Happy is the man who finds a true friend, and far happier is he who finds that true friend in his wife.”-Franz Schubert

“The critical period of matrimony is breakfast-time.”-A. P. Herbert

“Marriage is the alliance of two people, one of whom never remembers birthdays and the other who never forgets them.”-Ogden Nash

Chains do not hold a marriage together. It is threads, hundreds of tiny threads, which sew people together through the years.”- Simone Signoret

“People always fall in love with the most perfect aspects of each other’s personalities. Who wouldn’t? Anybody can love the most wonderful parts of another person. But that’s not the clever trick. The really clever trick is this: Can you accept the flaws? Can you look at your partner’s faults honestly and say, ‘I can work around that. I can make something out of it.’? Because the good stuff is always going to be there, and it’s always going to pretty and sparkly, but the crap underneath can ruin you.”― Elizabeth Gilbert, Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage

“Love of music, of sunsets and sea; a liking for the same kind of people; political opinions that are not radically divergent; a similar stance as we look at the stars and think of the marvelous strangeness of the universe – these are what build a marriage. And it is never to be taken for granted.”― Madeleine L’Engle, Two-Part Invention: The Story of a Marriage

Simple Sundays

Simple Sunday- Random

LSiehLeave a comment

“Who judges the judge who judges wrong?”
― Gail Carson Levine, Fairest

“Supposed I don’t want to redeem myself? Why should I fight to uphold the system that cast me out? I shall take pleasure in seeing it smashed.”
― Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

“We teach people how to remember, we never teach them how to grow.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Critic as Artist

“Being against evil doesn’t make you good. Tonight I was against it and then I was evil myself. I could feel it coming just like a tide… I just want to destroy them. But when you start taking pleasure in it you are awfully close to the thing you’re fighting.”
― Ernest Hemingway, Islands in the Stream

“History was full of the bones of good men who’d followed bad orders in the hope that they could soften the blow. Oh, yes, there were worse things they could do, but most of them began right where they started following bad orders.”
― Terry Pratchett, Jingo

“It is better to be taught to think critically than to be told on what to believe.”
― Christopher Paolini, Eldest

“I want my spirituality to rid me of hate, not give me reason for it.”
― Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality

Simple Sundays

Simple Sunday- Wisdom From the Past

LSiehLeave a comment

“The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries. [Letter objecting to the use of government land for churches, 1803]” ― James Madison

“…legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church & State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.”
― Thomas Jefferson, Letters of Thomas Jefferson

“I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.”-James Madison

“Encourage free schools and resolve that not one dollar of money appropriated to their support no matter how raised, shall be appropriated to the support of any sectarian school…Leave the matter of religion to the family circle, the church & the private school support[ed] entirely by private contribution. Keep the church and state forever separate.”― Ulysses S. Grant

“For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged, by better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions, even on important subjects, which I once thought right but found to be otherwise.”-Benjamin Franklin

Simple Sundays

Simple Sunday- Fairies

LSiehLeave a comment

“This was not a fairy-tale castle and there was no such thing as a fairy-tale ending, but sometimes you could threaten to kick the handsome prince in the ham-and-eggs.”
― Terry Pratchett, Monstrous Regiment

“In a utilitarian age, of all other times, it is a matter of grave importance that fairy tales should be respected.”

(Frauds on the Fairies, 1853)”
― Charles Dickens, Works of Charles Dickens

“Once upon a time there was a fairy godmother, but the rest of the time there was none. This story is about one of those other times.”
― Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale

Everyone thinks of them in terms of poisoned apples and glass coffins, and forgets that they represent girls who walked into dark forests and remade them into their own reflections.”
― Seanan McGuire, Indexing

“Would you say that you’re a good man, Harry?” He had to think about that. “No,” he finally said. “In the fairy tale you mentioned last night, I would probably be the villain. But it’s possible the villain would probably treat you far better than the prince would have.”
― Lisa Kleypas, Tempt Me at Twilight

“We are all anthologies. We are each thousands of pages long, filled with fairy tales and poetry, mysteries and tragedy, forgotten stories in the back no one will ever read.”
― Marisha Pessl, Neverworld Wake

“I’ll tell you a secret about storytelling. Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty… were not perfect in the beginning. It’s only a happy ending on the last page, right? If the princess had everything from the beginning, there wouldn’t be a story. Anyone who is imperfect or incomplete can become the main character in the story.”
― PEACH－PIT, Shugo Chara!, Vol. 2: Friends in Need

Simple Sundays

Simple Sunday- Grief

LSiehLeave a comment

“There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love.”-Washington Irving

“The fact is that a man who wants to act virtuously in every way necessarily comes to grief among so many who are not virtuous.”-Niccolo Machiavelli

“Grief has limits, whereas apprehension has none. For we grieve only for what we know has happened, but we fear all that possibly may happen.“-Pliny the Elder

“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.”-C. S. Lewis

“When grief is deepest, words are fewest.”-Ann Voskamp