“I always like walking in the rain, so no one can see me crying.”
–Charlie Chaplin, My Autobiography.
Inspirational Quotes
“The most lost of all days, is that in which we have not laughed”
-Probably Nicolas Chamfort, from his original quote of “La plus perdue de toutes les journées est celle où l’on n’a pas ri.”
Often accredited to Charlie Chaplin, Steve Martin, or Groucho Marx
“Surrender is the strongest, most subversive thing you can do in this world. It takes strength to admit you are weak, bravery to show you are vulnerable, courage to ask for help.”
-Holly Whitaker, Quit Like a Woman: The Radical Choice to Not Drink in a Culture Obsessed with Alcohol
“You can’t just pick the rainbows and unicorns without experiencing the rain and unicorn poo.”
-Stuart Danker, “Don’t Tell Me You Don’t Think These Thoughts When You Write“
“It is easy enough to do right when in good company, but it is not easy to defend the right when the majority of the crowd are opposing it; and yet, that is the time to show true courage.”
“I think I can understand that feeling about a housewife’s work being like that of Sisyphus (who was the stone rolling gentleman). But it is surely in reality the most important work in the world. What do ships, railways, miners, cars, governments, etc. exist for except for that people may be fed, warmed, and safe in their own homes? As Dr. Johnson said, ‘To be happy at home is the end of all human endeavor.’ … We wage war in order to have peace, we work in order to have leisure, we produce food in order to eat it. So your job is the one for which all others exist.”
–C.S. Lewis, from a letter he wrote in 1955 (Thanks, Mere Inkling)
“Some periods of our growth are so confusing that we don’t even recognize that growth is happening. We may feel hostile or angry or weepy and hysterical, or we may feel depressed. It would never occur to us, unless we stumbled on a book or a person who explained to us, that we were in fact in the process of change, of actually becoming larger, spiritually, than we were before.
“Whenever we grow, we tend to feel it, as a young seed must feel the weight and inertia of the earth as it seeks to break out of its shell on its way to becoming a plant. Often the feeling is anything but pleasant.
“But what is most unpleasant is the not knowing what is happening. Those long periods when something inside ourselves seems to be waiting, holding its breath, unsure about what the next step should be, eventually become the periods we wait for, for it is in those periods that we realize that we are being prepared for the next phase of our life and that, in all probability, a new level of the personality is about to be revealed.”
-Alice Walker, Living by the Word
“Your ordinary acts of love and hope point to the extraordinary promise that every human life is of inestimable value.”
“In myths the hero is the one who conquers the dragon, not the one who is devoured by it. And yet both have to deal with the same dragon. Also, he is no hero who never met the dragon, or who, if he once saw it, declared afterwards that he saw nothing. Equally, only one who has risked the fight with the dragon and is not overcome by it wins the hoard, the ‘treasure hard to attain.’ He alone has a genuine claim to self-confidence, for he has faced the dark ground of his self and thereby has gained himself.
“This experience gives some faith and trust, the pistis in the ability of the self to sustain him, for everything that menaced him from inside he has made his own. He has acquired the right to believe that he will be able to overcome all future threats by the same means. He has arrived at an inner certainty which makes him capable of self-reliance.”
–Carl Jung, Mysterium coniunctionis, CW 14
“Great authors don’t write what they know. They convince readers to ‘willingly suspend their disbelief’ and not care if it’s not true.”
-Jacqui Murray, “Write What You Know“
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