When you feel like giving up, remember why you held on for so long in the first place.
~ Unknown

The soul should always stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience.
Emily Dickinson

We travel, some of us forever, to seek other states, other lives, other souls.
~ Anias Nin

"In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit. "

~Albert Schweitzer

.

kick-ass
 

Dave: How do I get a hold of you?

Hit Girl: You just contact the mayor's office. He has a special signal he shines in the sky; it's in the shape of a giant cock!

An insincere and evil friend is more to be feared than a wild beast; a wild beast may wound your body, but an evil friend will wound your mind.
--Buddha

Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.
--C. S. Lewis

All change is not growth, as all movement is not forward.
--Ellen Glasgow

Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are.
--Bertolt Brecht

Forgiveness is the final form of love.
--Reinhold Niebuhr

From "A Note On Vocabulary In the Cardiometabolic Field"
 

If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world, and that his heart is no island cut off from other lands, but a continent that joins to them. -- Francis Bacon

Ten years ago, I was a social worker in Tennessee, doing crisis intervention work with delinquent kids and their families. I was hundreds of miles away from loved ones or anyone remotely close to me, I was lonely, struggling with coming out of the closet to my family, and my personal life was a general mess. One morning, I was at the courthouse for the hearing of one of the kids on my caseload, and in the middle of the crowded a lobby, an elderly gentleman stopped me and handed me a business card before continuing to pass through and exit the courthouse. The card was pink and had roses on it. On one side was a bible verse. On the other, it read:

You will never leave where you are until you decide where you would rather be.

I don't know who the man was or why he gave me that card. I've held onto it ever since, and as a matter of fact, it has a permanent place on my desk and is sitting here right in front of me. I've looked at it many times over the years and considered tossing it, but I knew that with my tendency to be an impulsive and leaping-without-looking kind of girl, I needed to hold onto it as a reminder, and it's served that very purpose. I've read it and have even repeated those words to myself out loud on numerous occasions.

You will never leave where you are until you decide where you would rather be...


Or where you belong... or don't belong...
Or where is healthiest for you...
Or where you can most respect yourself...
Or what you can live with and what you can't...
Or where you can call home and truly be happy...

Although I think I've done a lot of growing up and am finally at that place, I'll still hold onto that card, and I will never forget the face of the kindly old man who gave it to me, nor the tangible piece of wisdom he gifted me with a decade ago.