Deborah Short > Deborah's Quotes

“If a plant cannot live according to its nature, it dies; and so a man.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience and Other Essays

“Nothing truly real is forgotten eternally, because everything real comes from eternity and goes to eternity.”
― Paul Tillich, The Eternal Now

“I've found what makes children happy doesn't always prepare them to be courageous, engaged adults.”
― Brené Brown, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead

“Who we are and how we engage with the world are much stronger predictors of how our children will do than what we know about parenting.”
― Brené Brown, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead

“Spirituality emerged as a fundamental guidepost in Wholeheartedness. Not religiosity but the deeply held belief that we are inextricably connected to one another by a force greater than ourselves--a force grounded in love and compassion. For some of us that's God, for others it's nature, art, or even human soulfulness. I believe that owning our worthiness is the act of acknowledging that we are sacred. Perhaps embracing vulnerability and overcoming numbing is ultimately about the care and feeding of our spirits.”
― Brené Brown, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead

“...history has shown that the most terrible crimes against love have been committed in the name of fanatically defended doctrines.”
― Paul Tillich, Dynamics of Faith

“Joy is the emotional expression of the courageous YES to one's own true being.”
― Paul Tillich, The Courage to Be

“The passion for truth is silenced by answers which have the weight of undisputed authority.”
― Paul Tillich

“...only the philosophical question is perennial, not the answers.”
― Paul Tillich, Dynamics of Faith

“Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.
It is up to you to give [life] a meaning.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“If you love beauty, it’s because beauty lives within you. If you love art, it’s because you are creative. If it wakes up your heart, a receptor for it already exists within you. Your soul is drawn to the things that will help you unfold your most glorious expression. Give in.”
― Cynthia Occelli

“Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.”
― Mary Oliver

“If a woman is given only a limited amount of time to spend with the man she loves, she endures the separation by constantly recalling and reliving every moment down to the finest detail.”
― Lucy De Barbin and Dary Matera, Are You Lonesome Tonight? The Untold Story of Elvis Presley's One True Love and the Child He Never Knew

“Me and you, we got more yesterday than anybody. We need some kind of tomorrow.”
― Toni Morrison, Beloved

“They encouraged you to put some of your weight in their hands and soon as you felt how light and lovely it was, they studied your scars and tribulations...”
― Toni Morrison, Beloved

“No matter what all your teeth and wet fingers anticipated, there was no accounting for the way that simple joy could shake you.”
― Toni Morrison, Beloved

“Jump, if you want to, ‘cause I’ll catch you, girl. I’ll catch you “fore you fall. Go as far inside as you need to, I’ll hold your ankles. Make sure you get back out. I’m not saying this because I need a place to stay. That’s the last thing I need. I told you, I’m a walking man, but I been heading in this direction for seven years. Walking all around this place. Upstate, downstate, east, west; I been in territory ain’t got no name, never staying nowhere long. But when I got here and sat out there on the porch, waiting for you, well, I knew it wasn’t the place I was heading toward; it was you. We can make a life, girl. A life.”
― Toni Morrison, Beloved

“It’s very hard to believe that I’m feeling this. It’s like I’ve been dead all these years and suddenly now...in a matter of days and hours, I came to life. I don’t want to die again!”
― Dan Skinner, The Bible Boys

“He turned and pulled her in, placed his hands on the sides of her face and gazed into her eyes, his head moving closer and closer----she still couldn't say anything, couldn't think of anything other than his mouth landing on hers.”
― Jane Green, Summer Secrets

“New love is grand. Savor all the crazy, muddled might of it.”
― Eli Easton, The Mating of Michael

“I didn’t fall in love with you… I flew.”
― Colleen Hoover, Ugly Love

“He only who has lived with the beautiful can die beautifully.”
― Okakura Kakuzō, The Book of Tea

“You are happy when you are enthusiastic and action-oriented, not when you are luxury and pleasure oriented.”
― Debasish Mridha

“To strengthen your power of love,
Love those who do not deserve your love.”
― Debasish Mridha

“The miraculous wonder of this blessed day is beyond my comprehension.”
― Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!

“The love for God is the love for nature.”
― Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!

“The Skin Horse had lived longer in the nursery than any of the others. He was so old that his brown coat was bald in patches and showed the seams underneath, and most of the hairs in his tail had been pulled out to string bead necklaces. He was wise, for he had seen a long succession of mechanical toys arrive to boast and swagger, and by-and-by break their mainsprings and pass away, and he knew that they were only toys, and would never turn into anything else. For nursery magic is very strange and wonderful, and only those playthings that are old and wise and experienced like the Skin Horse understand all about it.

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

"I suppose you are real?" said the Rabbit. And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive. But the Skin Horse only smiled.

"The Boy's Uncle made me Real," he said. "That was a great many years ago; but once you are Real you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always.”
― Margery Williams Bianco, The Velveteen Rabbit

“It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.
It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.
It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain!I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it, or fix it.
I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember the limitations of being human.
It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul; if you can be faithlessand therefore trustworthy.
I want to know if you can see beauty even when it's not pretty, every day,and if you can source your own life from its presence.
I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, “Yes!”
It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up, after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done to feed the children.
It doesn't interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.
It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you, from the inside, when all else falls away.
I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.”
― Oriah Mountain Dreamer

“Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number-
Shake your chains to earth like
dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you
Ye are many-they are few.”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Masque of Anarchy: Written on Occasion of the Massacre at Manchester