90 “Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.”

Ben Franklin

91 “Give a girl the right shoes, and she can conquer the world.” – Rupaul

92 “Haters are confused admirers who can’t understand why everybody loves you!”

- Paulo Coelho

93 “So many books, so little time.”

— Frank Zappa

94 “If you don’t stand for something you will fall for anything.”

— Malcolm X

95 “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”

— Albert Einstein

96 “I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.”

— Douglas Adams

97 “Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.”

— Mark Twain

98 “It is better to be hated for what you are than loved for what you are not.”

— André Gide

99 “All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn’t hurt.”

— Charles M. Schulz

100 “Life is an opportunity, benefit from it.

Life is beauty, admire it.
Life is a dream, realize it.
Life is a challenge, meet it.
Life is a duty, complete it.
Life is a game, play it.
Life is a promise, fulfill it.
Life is sorrow, overcome it.
Life is a song, sing it.
Life is a struggle, accept it.
Life is a tragedy, confront it.
Life is an adventure, dare it.
Life is luck, make it.
Life is too precious, do not destroy it.
Life is life, fight for it.”
— Mother Teresa 17 months ago

76 “I haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on my list.”— Susan Sontag

77 “Dreamers are not content with being mediocre.”— Rick Pitino

78 “A room without books is like a body without a soul.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

79 “I’m selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can’t handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don’t deserve me at my best.”

— Marilyn Monroe

80 “To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

81 “For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

82 “Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.”

— Laozi

83 “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”

— Ernest Hemingway

84 “Do one thing everyday that scares you.”

— Eleanor Roosevelt

85 “The inner fire is the most important thing mankind possesses.”

— Edith Södergran

86 “Do stuff. be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration’s shove or society’s kiss on your forehead. Pay attention. It’s all about paying attention. attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. stay eager.”

— Susan Sontag

87 “The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.”

— Ayn Rand

88 “Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.”

— Dr. Seuss

89 “You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.”

— Mae West 17 months ago

“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind.”— Anonymous 17 months ago

“Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square hole. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.” APPLE COMPUTER, INC. 17 months ago

1.”A lot of people chase fame and popularity. I’m not intrested in being famous. I do what I love, and if people hate me for it there’s not much I can do. I’m not going to change who I am to please the public.” – Kristen Stewart

2. “The number one rule of writing to to write what you know- or something like that. So I wrote about my expirences.”- Nikki Reed

3.I wanted to be one of those people who have streaks to maintain, who scorch the ground with their intensity. But for now, at least I knew such people, and they needed me, just like comets need tails.
- Looking For Alaska
I ran out of the room like I’d never smoked a cigarette, like I ran with Takumi on Barn Night, across the dorm circle to his room, but Takumi was gone. His bunk was bare vinyl; his desk was empty; an outline of dust where his stereo had been. He was gone, and I did not have time to tell him what I had just now realised: that I forgave him, and that she forgave us, and that we had to forgive to survive in the labyrinth. There were so many of us that would have to live with things done and things left undone that day. Things that did not go right, things that seemed okay at the time because we could not see the future. If only we could see the endless string of consequences that result from our smallest actions. But we can’t know better until knowing better is useless.
- Looking For Alaska
4.

And as I walked back to give Takumi’s note to the Colonel, I saw that I would never know. I would never know her well enough to know her thoughts in those last minutes, would never know if she left us on purpose. But the not-knowing would not keep me from caring, and I would always love Alaska Young, my crooked neighbour, with all my crooked heart.

I got back to Room 43, but the Colonel wasn’t home yet, so I left the note on the top bunk and sat down at the computer, and I wrote my way out of the labyrinth:

Before I got here, I thought for a long time that the way out of the labyrinth was to pretend that it did not exist, to build a small, self-sufficient world in a back corner of the endless maze and to pretend that I was not lost, but home. But that only led to a lonely life accompanied only by the last words of the already-dead, so I came here looking for a Great Perhaps, for real friends and a more-than-minor life. And then I screwed up and the Colonel screwed up and Takumi screwed up and she slipped through our fingers. And there’s no sugar-coating it: she deserved better friends.

When she fucked up, all those years ago, just a little girl terrified into paralysis, she collapsed into the enigma of herself. And I could have done that, but I saw where it led for her. So I still believe in the Great Perhaps, and I can believe it in spite of having lost her.

Because I will forget her, yes. That which came together will fall apart imperceptibly slowly, and I will forget, but she will forgive my forgetting, just as I forgive her for forgetting me and the Colonel and everyone but herself and her mom in those last moments she spent as a person. I know now that she forgives me for being dumb and scared and doing the dumb and scared thing. I know she forgives me, just as her mother forgives her. And here’s how I know:

I thought at first that she was just dead. Just darkness. Just a body being eaten by bugs. I thought about her a lot like that, as something’s meal. What was her - green eyes, half a smirk, the soft curves of her legs - would soon be nothing, just the bones I never saw. I thought about the slow process of becoming bone and then fossil and then coal that will, in millions of years, be mined by humans of the future, and how they would heat their homes with her, and then she would be smoke billowing out of a smokestack, coating the atmosphere. I still think that, sometimes, think that maybe “the afterlife” is just something we made up to ease the pain of loss, to make our time in the labyrinth bearable. Maybe she was just matter, and matter gets recycled.

But ultimately I do not believe that she was only matter. The rest of her must be recycled, too. I believe now that we are greater than the sum of our parts. If you take Alaska’s genetic code and you add her life experiences and the relationships she had with people, and then you take the size and shape of hre body, you do not get her. There is something else entirely. There is a part of her greater than the sum of her knowable parts. And that part has to go somewhere, because it cannot be destroyed.

Although no one will ever accuse me of being much of a science student, one thing I learned from science classes is that energy is never created and never destroyed. And if Alaska took her own life, that is the hope I wish I could have given her. Forgetting her mother, failing her mother and her friends and herself - those are awful things, but she did not need to fold into herself and self-destruct. Those awful things are survivable, because we ARE as indestructible as we believe ourselves to be. When adults say, 'Teenagers think they are invincible' with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, they don't know how right they are. We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think that we are invincible because we are. We cannot be born, we cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestations. They forget that when they get old. They get scared of losing and failing. But that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, as so it cannot fail.

So, I know that she forgives me, just as I forgive her. Thomas Edison’s last words were: “It’s very beautiful over there.” I don’t know where there is, but I believe it’s somewhere, and I hope it’s beautiful

5. Sometimes you lose a battle. But mischief always wins the war- Looking For Alaska 2 years ago

“Where ever you go, go with all your heart.”

-Confucious 5 years ago

“Don’t let the problems of the world,
Drive you out of your mind.
Just smile and say
It has to be that way sometimes.” 5 years ago

“Life moves on, whether we act as cowards or as heroes. Life has no other discipline to impose if we would but realize it, then to accept life unquestioningly.

Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful and evil can become a source of beauty, joy and strength if faced with an open mind.

Every moment is a golden one for someone who has the vision to recognize it as such.”

“Tropic of Cancer”

Henry Miller 1934 5 years ago

67. Other things may change, but we start and end with family.
Anthony Brandt

68. The family is one of nature’s masterpieces.
George Santayana

69. Families are like fudge…mostly sweet with a few nuts.
Unknown

70. Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe,
call it a family. Whatever you call it, whoever you are,
you need one.
Jane Howard5 years ago

A Brave and Startling Truth

by Maya Angelou

We, this people on a small and lonely planet
Traveling through causal space
Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns
To a destination where all signs tell us
It is possible and imperative that we discover
A brave and startling truth
And when we come to it
To the day of peacemaking
When we release our fingers
From fists of hostility
And allow the pure air to cool our palms
When the curtain falls on the minstrel show of hate
And faces sooted with scorn are scrubbed clean
When battlefields and coliseum
No longer rake our unique and particular sons and daughters
Up with the bruised and bloody grass
To lie in identical plots in foreign lands
When the pennants are waving gaily
When the banners of the world tremble
Stoutly in the good, clean breeze
When we come to it
When we let the rifles fall from our shoulders
And children dress their dolls in flags of truce
When land mines of death have been removed
And the aged may walk into evenings of peace
When religious ritual is not perfumed
By the incense of burning flesh
And childhood dreams are not kicked awake
By nightmares of abuse
When we come to it
Then we will confess that not the Pyramids
With their stones set in mysterious perfection
Not the Garden of Babylon
Hanging as eternal beauty
In our collective memory
Not the Grand Canyon
Kindled in delicious color
By Western sunsets
Not the Danube flowing in its blue soul into Europe
Not the sacred peak of Mount Fuji
Stretching to the rising sun
Neither Father Amazon nor Mother Mississippi who, without favor,
Nurture all creatures in the depths and on the shores
These are not the only wonders of the world
When we come to it
We, this people, on this minuscule and kithless globe
Who reach daily for the bomb, the blade, the dagger
yet who petition in the dark for tokens of peace
We, this people on this moat of matter
in whose mouths abide cantankerous words
Which challenge our existence
Yet out of those same mouths
Can come songs of such exquisite sweetness
That the heart falters in its labor
And the body is quieted into awe
We, this people, on this small and drifting planet
Whose hands can strike with such abandon
That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living
Yet those same hands can tough with such healing, irresistible tenderness
That the haughty neck is happy to bow
And the proud back is glad to bend
Out of such chaos, of such contradiction
We learn that we are neither devils or divines
When we come to it
We, this people, on this wayward, floating body
Created on this earth, of this earth
have the power to fashion for this earth
A climate where every man and every woman
Can live freely without sanctimonious piety
And without crippling fear
When we come to it
We must confess that we are the possible
We are the miraculous, the true wonders of this world
That is when, and only when
We come to it. 5 years ago

61. Some people come into our lives and quickly go. Some stay for awhile and leave footprints on our hearts. And we are never, ever the same.
_Anonymous

62. How rare and wonderful is that flash of a moment when we realize we have discovered a friend.
_{William E. Rothschild}

63. Our friends should be companions who inspire us, who help us rise to our best.
_{Joseph B. Wirthlin}

64. Friends are the ones who lift us from our feet when our wings forget how to fly.
_Anonymous

65. Friends are treasures.
_{Horace Burns}5 years ago

1. “I’ve learned that no matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow.”

2. “I’ve learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he/she handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.”

3. “I’ve learned that regardless of your relationship with your parents, you’ll miss them when they’re gone from your life.”

4. “I’ve learned that “making a living” is not the same thing as ‘making a life’.”

5. “I’ve learned that life sometimes gives you a second chance.”

6. “I’ve learned that you shouldn’t go through life with a catcher’s mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw some things back.”

7. “I’ve learned that whenever I decide something with an open heart, I usually make the right decision.”

8. “I’ve learned that even when I have pains, I don’t have to be one.”

9. “I’ve learned that every day you should reach out and touch someone. People love a warm hug, or just a friendly pat on the back.”

10. “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” 5 years ago

A tribute to the number one woman on my list of 43 women young girls should look up to. Margaret Mead taught the value of looking openly and carefully at other cultures to understand the complexities of being human.

1. I must admit that I personally measure success in terms of the contributions an individual makes to her or his fellow human beings.

2. Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.

3. Never believe that a few caring people can’t change the world. For, indeed, that’s all who ever have.

4. I was brought up to believe that the only thing worth doing was to add to the sum of accurate information in the world.

5. Prayer does not use up artificial energy, doesn’t burn up any fossil fuel, doesn’t pollute. Neither does song, neither does love, neither does the dance.

6. Anthropology demands the open-mindedness with which one must look and listen, record in astonishment and wonder that which one would not have been able to guess.

7. One of the oldest human needs is having someone to wonder where you are when you don’t come home at night.

8. Women want mediocre men, and men are working to be as mediocre as possible.

9. We won’t have a society if we destroy the environment.

10. Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else.5 years ago

I just recently finished two great books from Lonely Planet, “Unpacked” and “On the Edge.” I couldn’t resist sharing some of my favorite modern travel writer quotes.

31. Never journey without something to eat in your pocket. If only to throw to dogs when attacked.
—E.S. Bates

32. In traveling: a man must carry knowledge with him, if he would bring home knowledge.
—James Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson

33. The glamour of the East had cast its spell upon him; the mystery of lands in which no white man had set foot since the beginning of things had fired his imagination; the itch of travel was upon him, goading him to restlessness.
—Hugh Clifford, The Story of Exploration

34. I prefer mythology to history because history starts from the truth and goes towards lies and mythology starts from lies-fantasy-and goes toward truth.
—Jean Cocteau

35. There are only three things which make life worth living: to be writing a tolerably good book, to be in a dinner party for six, and to be traveling south with someone whom your conscience permits you to love.
—Cyril Connolly, A Romantic Friendship

36. Pico Iyer: Words are the way we complicate the simple. The deepest aspects of life are about wordlessness. Something you can’t articulate.

37. Pico Iyer on the purpose of travel: Travel is not about collecting passport stamps, but keeping your eyes open.

38. Travel is glamorous only in retrospect.
—Paul Theroux

39. It is almost axiomatic that as soon as a place gets a reputation for being paradise it goes to hell.
—Paul Theroux

40. I haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on my list.
—Susan Sontag 5 years ago

These quotes are for my brother.

1. The greatest test of courage on the earth is to bear defeat without losing heart.
—R. G. Ingersoll.

2. Courage is not defined by those who fought and did not fall, but by those who fought, fell and rose again.
—Unknown.

3. A man can be destroyed but not defeated.
—Ernest Hemingway.

4. Courage is doing what you’re afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you’re scared.
—Eddie Rickenbacker.

5. Extraordinary people survive under the most terrible circumstances and they become more extraordinary because of it.
—Robertson Davies.

6. You will face many defeats in your life, but never let yourself be defeated.
—Maya Angelou.

7. Courage is not the lack of fear. It is acting in spite of it.
—Mark Twain.

8. A journey of a thousand miles always begins with one step.
—Ancient Egyptian Proverb.

9. Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has courage to lose sight of the shore.
—Unknown.

10. Dream what you want to dream; go where you want to go; be what you want to be, because you have only one life and one chance to do all the things you want to do.
—Unknown. 5 years ago

1. “Life is not measured by the
number of breaths we take,
but by the number of moments
that take our breath away.”
....anonymous

2. “Learn as if you were going to live forever. Live as if you were going to die tomorrow.”
Mahatma Gandhi

3. “Love absolutely everything that ever happens in your life.”
Paul Cantalupo, MD

4. “We are the hero of our own story.”
Mary McCarthy

5. “Obstacles cannot crush me. Every obstacle yields to stern resolve. He who is fixed to a star does not change his mind.”
Leonardo da Vinci

6. “I would rather live in a world where my life is surrounded by mystery than live in a world so small that my mind could comprehend it.”
Henry Emerson Fosdick

7. ” Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
Martin Luther King

8. “Every life has a story.”
A&E Biography

9. “All stories teach us something, and promise us something,
whether they’re true or invented, legend or fact.”
Stewart O’Nan

10. “When people search for “Life Quotes” they are often looking for quotes about life. Why do the major search engines only give them hundreds of pages of commercial garbage about Life Insurance Quotes?”
-Bill Austin

PHOTO: Time and Life Pictures, Bob Landry
www.timelifepictures.com 5 years ago

These are ten of my favorite quotes about traveling and I’m sure that I will post a few more as traveling is a central part of my life. The picture I have posted with this entry is of the Egyptian god, Anubis. He is the patron deity of travelers, and acts as the go-between between this world and the next.

1. “For my part, I travel not to go anywhere but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.”
- Robert Louis Stevenson

2 “Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

3. “Through travel I first became aware of the outside world; it was through travel that I found my own introspective way into becoming a part of it.”
- Eudora Welty

4. “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.
So throw off the bowlines.
Sail away from the safe harbor.
Catch the trade winds in your sails.
Explore.
Dream.
Discover.”
– Mark Twain

5. “Wheresoever you go, go with all your heart.”
- Confucius

6. “NOT I, NOT ANYONE else can travel that road for you. You must travel it for yourself.”
– Walt Whitman

7. “Heroes take journeys, confront dragons and discover the treasure of their true selves.”

- Carol Pearson

8. “The world is a book and those who do not travel read only a page.”
– St. Augustine

9. “A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving.”
- Lao Tzu (570-490 B.C.)

10. “Tourists don’t know where they’ve been; travelers don’t know where they’re going.”
- Paul Theroux 5 years ago