"I have been astonished that men could die martyrs for their religion- I have shudder'd at it. I shudder no more. I could be martyr'd for my religion Love is my religion And I could die for that I could die for you." -- John Keats "Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place." -- Zora Neale Hurston "No birth certificate is issued when friendship is born. There is nothing tangible. There is just a feeling that your life is different and that your capacity to love and care has miraculously been enlarged without any effort on your part. It's like having a tiny apartment and somebody moves in with you. But instead of becoming cramped and crowded, the space expands, and you discover rooms you never knew you had until your friend moved in with you." --- Steve Tesich "There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is to live as though everything is a miracle." -- Albert Einstein "Tell me who admires and loves you, and I will tell you who you are." -- Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve "Friendship is the only cement that will ever hold the world together." -- Woodrow Wilson "Think where man's glory most begins and ends And say my glory was I had such friends." -- William Yeats "Calling it a simple schoolgirl crush was like saying a Rolls Royce was a vehicle with four wheels, something like a hay wagon. She did not giggle wildly and blush when she saw him, nor did she chalk his name on trees or write it on the walls of the Kissing Bridge. She simply lived with his face in her heart all of the time, a kind of sweet, hurtful ache. She would have died for him." -- from It, by Stephen King "To laugh often and much, to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children, to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends, to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others, to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded!" --- Ralph Waldo Emerson "What I can give you now is nothing you can touch with your hands. I give you my love. Never forget that. My love always." -- A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L'Engle "Young lovers seek perfection. Old lovers learn the art of sewing shreds together and of seeing beauty in a multiplicity of patches." - from How to Make an American Quilt "Love sought is good, but given unsought is better." -- William Shakespeare "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of being and ideal grace. I love thee to the level of every day's Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight. I love thee freely, as men strive for right; I love thee purely, as they turn from praise. I love thee with the passion put to use In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith. I love thee with a love I seemed to lose With my lost saints - I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears, of all my life! - and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death." -- Elizabeth Browning "Listen to no one who tells you how to love. Your love is like no other, and that is what makes it beautiful. Your self is your divinity.... Express yourself." -- Das Energi by Paul Williams "Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light." -- Helen Keller "History has demonstrated that the most notable winners usually encountered heartbreaking obstacles before they triumphed. They won because they refused to become discouraged by their defeats." --- Bertie C. Forbes "Love, you know, seeks to make happy rather than to be happy." - Ralph Connor "Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around." -- Leo Buscalgia "Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." --Mark Twain "I love you. And not in a friendly way, although I think we're great friends. And not in a misplaced affection, puppy-dog way, although I'm sure that's what you'll call it. And it's not because you're unattainable. I love you. Very simply, very truly. You're the epitome of every attribute and quality I've ever looked for in another person." -- from Chasing Amy "Everyone should carefully observe Which way his heart draws him And then choose that way with all his strength." -- Hasidic saying "If I had my life to live over I would have invited friends over to dinner even if the carpet was stained and the sofa faded." --- Erma Bombeck "Ultimately the bond of all companionship, Whether in marriage or in friendship, is conversation." -- Oscar Wilde "Only love lets us see normal things in an extraordinary way." - Alejandro de Solminihac "Whine less, breathe more; Talk less, say more; Hate less, love more; And all good things are yours." -Swedish Proverb "Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life; define yourself." -Harvey Fierstein "I could do without many things with no hardship. You are not one of them!" -- Ashleigh Brilliant "'Stay' is a charming word in a friend's vocabulary." -Louisa May Alcott "Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage." -- Lao Tzo "It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson "Doubt that the stars are fire; Doubt that the sun doth move; Doubt truth to be a liar; But never doubt I love." -- William Shakespeare, from Hamlet "Let no one who loves be unhappy. Even love unreturned has its rainbow." -- J.M. Barrie "To cement a new friendship, especially between foreigners or persons of a different social world, a spark with which both were secretly charged must fly from person to person, and cut across the accidents of place and time." ---George Santayana "Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own." -- Robert A. Heinlein "Once you have loved, you will always love. For what's in your mind may escape, but what's in your heart will remain forever." -- Brooke Zuroweste "Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can. All of them make me laugh." - W.H. Auden "I fell in love with her courage, her sincerity, and her flaming self-respect, and it's these things I'd believe in even if the whole world indulged in wild suspicions that she wasn't all she should be... I love her and that's the beginning of everything." -- F. Scott Fitzgerald "For when two beings who are not friends are near each other there is no meeting, and when friends are far apart there is no separation." -- Simone Weil "Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with." -- Mark Twain "You know it's love when all you want is that person to be happy, even if you're not part of their happiness." -- Jean Zheng "The proper office of a friend is to side with you when you are in the wrong. Nearly anybody will side with you when you are in the right." ---Mark Twain "To love one who loves you, To admire one who admires you, In a word, to be the idol of one's idol, Is exceeding the limit of human joy; It is stealing fire from heaven." --- Delphine de Girardin "To love is to risk not being loved in return. To hope is to risk pain. To try is to risk failure, But risk must be taken, Because the greatest hazard in life Is to risk nothing." --- Leo Buscaglia "The real test of friendship is: can you literally do nothing with the other person? Can you enjoy those moments of life that are utterly simple?" -Eugene Kennedy "A friend is one with whom you are comfortable, to whom you are loyal, through whom you are blessed, and for whom you are grateful." -- William Arthur Ward "Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another, "What! You too? Thought I was the only one." -- C.S. Lewis "It is not so much our friends' help that helps us as the confident knowledge that they will help us." -- Epicurus "Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods." -- Aristotle "Happiness is time spent with a friend and looking forward to sharing time with them again." -- Lee Williamson "A friend loves at all times." -- Proverbs 17:17 "There are persons so radiant, so genial, so kind, so pleasure-bearing, that you instinctively feel in their presence that they do you good, whose coming into a room is like the bringing of a lamp there." -- Henry Ward Beecher "Don't be dismayed at goodbyes. A farewell is before you can meet again, and meeting again after a moment or lifetime is certain for those who are friends." -- Richard Bach "There is nothing better than the encouragement of a good friend." -- Katherine Hathaway "Friendship is the hardest thing in the world to explain. It's not something you learn in school. But if you haven't learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven't learned anything." -- Muhammad Ali "If you judge people you have no time to love them." -- Mother Teresa "The most wasted day of all is that during which we have not laughed." -Sebastian R. N. Chamfort "Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends." -- John 15:13 "One doesn't desert one's friends in a scrape." -- Victor Hugo "All for one and one for all!" -- Alexandre Dumas "Treat your friends as you do your pictures, and place them in their best light." -- Jennie Jerome Churchill "No man is a failure who has friends." -- It's A Wonderful Life "It is not easy to live life sometimes And face the world with a smile when you're crying inside. It takes a lot of courage to reach down inside yourself, Hold on to that strength that's still there, And know that tomorrow is a new day-with new possibilities. But if you can just hold on long enough to see this through, You'll come out a new person- stronger, With more understanding and with a new pride in yourself From knowing you made it." --- Kathy Obara "I've learned that it is the weak who are cruel, and that gentleness is to be expected only from the strong." -- Anon. "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter." -- Anon. "He who has nothing to die for has nothing to live for." -Moroccan Proverb "No man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be altogether irreclaimably bad." ---Thomas Carlyle "Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us on a wild-goose chase, and is never attained. Follow some other object, and very possibly we may find that we have caught happiness without dreaming of it." ---Nathaniel Hawthorne "If a man loves the labour of his trade, apart from any question of success or fame, the gods have called him." --Robert Louis Stevenson "What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us." -Oliver Wendell Holmes "After the verb 'to Love,' 'to Help' is the most beautiful verb in the world." -Bertha von Suttner "Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all." -Dale Carnegie "Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught." - Oscar Wilde "Imagine." --- John Lennon "People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within." --- Elizabeth Kubler-Ross "I keep my ideals, because in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." --- Anne Frank "Remember your dreams." --- Maryanne Radmacher-Hershey "A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing." --- George Bernard Shaw "If you think you're too small to make an impact, try going to bed with a mosquito in the room." --- Anita Roddick "Long live eccentricity! It is the willingness to do things differently that allows the human race to progress." --- Isabel Parlett "The turning point in the process of growing up is when you discover the core strength within you that survives all hurt." --- Max Lerner "Those who don't know how to weep with their whole heart don't know how to laugh, either." --- Golda Meir "The smallest act of kindness is worth more than the greatest intention." --- Kahlil Gibran "The opposite of love is not hate but indifference." --- Elie Wiesel "Everybody can be great...because anybody can serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love." --- Martin Luther King, Jr. "Rather fail by honor than succeed by fraud." --- Sophocles "It is more shameful to distrust one's friends than to be deceived by them." -- Duc de la Rochefoucauld "What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us; What we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal." --- Albert Pike "There is not enough darkness in the world to put out the light of even one candle." --- Robert Alden "Only those who attempt the absurd will achieve the impossible." --- Escher "Always be a little kinder than necessary." --- James M. Barrie "Failure is success, if we learn from it." --- Malcolm S. Forbes "Expect trouble as an inevitable part of life, and when it comes, hold your head high, look it in the eye and say, "I will be bigger than you. You cannot defeat me." -- Anon. "When you walk to the edge of all the light you have And take that first step into the darkness of the unknown You must believe that one of two things will happen: There will be something solid for you to stand upon Or, you will be taught how to fly." -- Patrick Overton "There are two lasting bequests we can give our children: One is roots, the other is wings." --- Hodding Carter Jr. "Family means too much, friends are too valuable, and life is too short to put off sharing with people how much they really mean to you and pursuing whatever it is that makes you happy." --- Chuck Wiltraut "To accomplish great things we must not only act, but also dream. Not only plan, but also believe." -- Anon. "No matter what a man's past may have been, his future is spotless." --John R. Rice "Wheresoever you go, go with all your heart." -- Confucius "Je ne regrette rien!" (No regrets) --- Edith Piaf "I must conquer my loneliness alone. I must be happy with myself Or I have nothing to offer you. Two halves have little choice But to join; And yes, They do make a whole. But two wholes When they coincide... That is beauty. That is love." --- Peter McWilliams "Love has to spring spontaneously from within And it is no way amenable to any form of inner or outer force. Love and coercion can never go together; But though love cannot be forced on anyone, It can be awakened in him through love itself. Love is essentially self communicative; Those who do not have it catch it from those who have it. True love is unconquerable and irresistible, And it goes on gathering power and spreading itself, Until eventually it transforms everyone whom it touches." --- Meher Baba "I dream of a love that even time will lie down and be still for." -- from Practical Magic "Love is a gift. You can't buy it, you can't find it, someone has to give it to you. Learn to be receptive of that gift." --Kurt Langner "Speak of me as I am... One that loved not wisely but too well." -- William Shakespeare, from Othello "Whereever you are, it is your own friends who make your world." -- William James "Love is not obedience, conformity, or submission. It is a counterfeit love that is contingent upon authority, punishment, or reward. True love is respect and admiration, compassion and kindness, freely given by a healthy, unafraid human being." --- Dan Barker "We are shaped and fashioned by what we love." -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe "Unable are the loved to die for love is immortality." ---Emily Dickinson "Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it's cracked up to be. That's why people are so cynical about it. . . . It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more." ---Erica Jong "To a person in love, the value of the individual is intuitively known. Love needs no logic for its mission." -Charles A. Lindbergh "A man reserves his true and deepest love not for the species of woman in whose company he finds himself electrified and enkindled, but for that one in whose company he may feel tenderly drowsy." ---George Jean Nathan "If so many men, so many minds, certainly so many hearts, so many kinds of love." ---Leo Tolstoy "There comes that mysterious meeting in life when someone acknowledges who we are and what we can be, igniting the circuits of our highest potential." --- Rusty Berkus "The eskimos have 52 words for snow because it is so special to them; there ought to be as many for love!" ---Margaret Atwood "Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret." - Ambrose Bierce "To fall in love is easy, even to remain in it is not difficult; our human loneliness is cause enough. But it is a hard quest worth making to find a comrade through whose steady presence one becomes steadily the person one desires to be." -Anna Louise Strong "The best proof of love is trust." -Joyce Brothers "The hardest of all is learning to be a well of affection, and not a fountain; to show them we love them not when we feel like it, but when they do." -Nan Fairbrother "Absence is to love what wind is to fire; it extinguishes the small, it enkindles the great." - Comte DeBussy-Rabutin "To measure the man, measure his heart." -Malcolm S. Forbes "If you don't like someone, the way he holds his spoon will make you furious; if you do like him, he can turn his plate over into your lap and you won't mind." - Irving Becker "Love is friendship set on fire." - French Proverb "Ask the child why it is born Ask the flower why it blossoms Ask the sun why it shines I love you because I must love you." -- George Upton "Beauty is not in the face; Beauty is a light in the heart." -- Kahlil Gibran "Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired." -- Robert Frost "Humans are powerful spiritual beings meant to create good on earth. This good isn't usually accomplished in bold actions, but in singular acts of kindness between people. It's the little things that count because they are more spontaneous and show who you really are." --- Dannion Brinkley "Unremembered and afar I watched you as I watched a star Through darkness struggling into view And loved you better than you knew." -- Elizabeth Akers Allen "Long after moments of closeness have passed A part of you remains with me And warms the places your hands have touched And hastens my heart for your return." -- Robert Sexton "When you love someone, all your saved-up wishes start coming out." -- Elizabeth Bowen "You will find, as you look back upon your life, that the moments when you really lived are the moments when you have done things in the spirit of love." --- Henry Drummond "I will love you no matter what. I will love you if you slip or fall on your face, if you do the wrong thing, if you make mistakes, if you behave like a human, I will love you no matter." --- Leo Buscaglia "In any moment of decision the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing." -- Anon.