It was no wonder that people were so horrible when they started life as children.
—Kingsley Amis
If you love something that somebody does—some art, some words, some sounds—you tell them that you love it. You tell everyone how much you love it, repeatedly and enthusiastically. Don’t save your appreciation for later, or worry about wearing people out with your passion. Because the happy truth is this: If a piece of art truly moves you, you will never, ever run out of new adjectives to express how much you love it. Getting to love someone’s art is one of the very finest parts of being alive.
—Paul Constant
No, there's nothing half so sweet in life as love's young dream.
—Thomas Moore
Laughing at our mistakes can lengthen our own life. Laughing at someone else's can shorten it.
—Cullen Hightower
It takes courage to love, but pain through love is the purifying fire which those who love generously know. We all know people who are so much afraid of pain that they shut themselves up like clams in a shell and, giving out nothing, receive nothing and therefore shrink until life is a mere living death.
—Eleanor Roosevelt
It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.
—George S. Patton
Layer by layer art strips life bare.
—Robert Musil
In wilderness I sense the miracle of life, and behind it our scientific accomplishments fade to trivia.
—Charles Lindbergh
Here's a tip to avoid death by celebrity: First off, get a life. They can't touch you if you're out doing something interesting.
—Kent Nichols and Douglas Sarine
There is a difference between saying goodbye and letting go. Goodbye is not permanent. You can meet years later and share what happened in your life. You can smile and laugh about all the nonsense that you both went through. However, letting go is being okay with never seeing this person ever again… being okay with never knowing how their life turned out… being okay with fifty or more years of silence… being okay with running into that person at a grocery store and having them not acknowledge your presence. This is the part of life that doesn't sit well with me and never will. It tears my heart in pieces, robs me of gratitude, drains me of anything positive and eats at the faith that holds on.
—Shannon L. Alder
I believe good things happen everyday. I believe good things happen even when bad things happen. And I believe on a happy day like today, we can still feel a little sad. And that's life, isn't it?
—Gabrielle Zevin in Elsewhere
Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one.
—Stella Adler
So many people enter and leave your life. Hundreds of thousands of people. You have to keep the door open so they can come in. But it also means you have to let them go.
—Jonathan Safran Foer in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
I think anyone who opened their heart enough to love without restraint and subsequently were devastated by loss knows that in that moment you are forever changed; a part of you is no longer whole. Some will never again love with that level of abandon where life is perceived as innocent and the threat of loss seems implausible.
—Donna Lynn Hope
I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, It's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, And that enables you to laugh at life's realities.
—Dr. Seuss