Carmen > Carmen's Quotes

“Folks are usually about as happy as they make their minds up to be.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“Happy people are not people without problems; they are people who face their problems and at some point make a decision to move past them.”
― Will Bowen, Happy Stories!: Real-Life Inspirational Stories from Around the World

“Invitations not obligations: Our expectations of other people can be a big drain on our emotions. When we ask someone to do something, or, worse, have a belief that someone should do something and insist that he or she comply, it places a great stress on us. And the other person, noting our anxiety and insistence that they conform to our expectations, may actually become less inclined to respond as we like.

Instead, consider everything you want someone else to do to be an invitation that the other person may or may not choose to accept. Of course, if you are an employer or a parent who is trying to ensure a child's safety, you must have parameters and ground rules. Everyone else, however, should be released from the obligation of doing, being, living, and acting as you feel they should.”
― Will Bowen, Happy This Year!: The Secret to Getting Happy Once and for All

“Refuse to be unhappy. "I see so many unhappy people, and I just don't get it," Virginie says with a weary smily. "It's like some people just want to be unhappy. Life is filled with phases, and it's how you adapt that makes you either happy or unhappy.”
― Will Bowen, Happy Stories!: Real-Life Inspirational Stories from Around the World

“Accept where you are in life—it's OK. Virginie was recently denied the renewal of her driver's license for the first time; so, she sold her car. "What are you going to do?" she says with a big shrug of her shoulders. "You can't change it, you just adapt—you accept it.”
― Will Bowen, Happy Stories!: Real-Life Inspirational Stories from Around the World

“I shall take the heart. [...] For brains do not make one happy, and happiness is the best thing in the world.”
― L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

“People are so caught up in their age," she says. "You decide how old you are, not the calendar.”
― Will Bowen, Happy Stories!: Real-Life Inspirational Stories from Around the World

“I always worried someone would notice me, and then when no one did, I felt lonely.”
― Curtis Sittenfeld, Prep

“What is the point of being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable?”
― John Green, An Abundance of Katherines

“Nothing great in the world was accomplished without passion.”
― Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

“I am different, not less.”
― Temple Grandin

“One must live as if it would be forever, and as if one might die each moment. Always both at once.”
― Mary Renault, The Persian Boy

“Between killing and dying there's a third way: live”
― Christa Wolf, Kassandra

“Make your mistakes, take your chances, look silly, but keep on going. Don’t freeze up.”
― Thomas Wolfe, You Can't Go Home Again

“Ordinary life is pretty complex stuff.”
― Harvey Pekar

“If we wait for the moment when everything, absolutely everything is ready, we shall never begin.”
― Ivan Turgenev

“Sometimes you wake up. Sometimes the fall kills you. And sometimes, when you fall, you fly.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 6: Fables & Reflections

“I have failed at many things, but I have never been afraid.”
― Nadine Gordimer

“Life is too short to be lived badly.”
― Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return

“The world is so strange that maybe it’s perfectly logical.”
― Beth Lisick

“Beauty and ingenuity beat perfection hands down, every time.”
― Nalo Hopkinson, Sister Mine

“Being a nerd, which is to say going too far and caring too much about a subject, is the best way to make friends I know.”
― Sarah Vowell, The Partly Cloudy Patriot

“Adults are always asking little kids what they want to be when they grow up ’cause they’re looking for ideas.”
― Paula Poundstone

“You have everything needed for the extravagant journey that is your life.”
― Carlos Castaneda

“One, remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Two, never give up work. Work gives you meaning and purpose and life is empty without it. Three, if you are lucky enough to find love, remember it is there and don't throw it away.”
― Stephen Hawking

“Nobody said not to go.”
― Emily Hahn

“I knew when I met you an adventure was going to happen.”
― A.A. Milne

“Break a vase, and the love that reassembles the fragments is stronger than that love which took its symmetry for granted when it was whole.”
― Derek Walcott

“One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

“You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm.”
― Colette