Anna > Anna's Quotes

“We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”
― Elie Wiesel

“Vulnerability is our most accurate measurement of courage.”
― Brené Brown

“The thing about growing up with Fred and George," said Ginny thoughtfully, "is that you sort of start thinking anything's possible if you've got enough nerve.”
― J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

“Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection.”
― Mark Twain

“I have seen the best of you, and the worst of you, and I choose both.”
― Sarah Kay

“Come with me,' Mom says.
To the library.
Books and summertime
go together.”
― Lisa Schroeder, I Heart You, You Haunt Me

“I must learn to love the fool in me--the one who feels too much, talks too much, takes too many chances, wins sometimes and loses often, lacks self-control, loves and hates, hurts and gets hurt, promises and breaks promises, laughs and cries. It alone protects me against that utterly self-controlled, masterful tyrant whom I also harbor and who would rob me of my human aliveness, humility, and dignity but for my Fool.”
― Theodore Isaac Rubin

“How on Earth did you do that with the same 24 hours a day that everyone else gets?”
― Lin-Manuel Miranda, Hamilton: The Revolution

“I'm not so worried anymore, because now I know nobody knows what they are doing in life, and nobody knows what to do when bad things happen, to themselves or to other people. We make it up as we go, and sometimes we are big and generous and sometimes we are small and petty. We say the wrong things, we obsess over all the ways we got it wrong and all the ways that other people did, too. The only thing I know for sure it that it is okay not to know everything, to try and fail and to sometimes suck at life, as long as you try to get better.”
― Nora McInerny Purmort, It's Okay to Laugh

“Life will hit you hard in the face, wait for you to get back up just so it can kick you in the stomach. But getting the wind knocked out of you is the only way to remind your lungs how much they like the taste of air.”
― Sarah Kay

“The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.”
― Elie Wiesel

“The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.”
― Albert Einstein

“As my sufferings mounted I soon realized that there were two ways in which I could respond to my situation -- either to react with bitterness or seek to transform the suffering into a creative force. I decided to follow the latter course.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“But I have seen the best of you and the worst of you, and I choose both. I want to share every single one of your sunshines and save them for later. I will tuck them into my pockets so I can give them back to you when the rain falls hard. Friend, I want to be the mirror that reminds you to love yourself. I want to be the air in your lungs that reminds you to breath. When the walls come down, when the thunder rumbles, when nobody else is home, hold my hand, and I promise I won’t let go.”
― Sarah Kay

“There is no syllabus for life that outlines the steps you need to take to graduate to the next event. This life itself is the lesson and the test and there is no dean’s list and no gold stars. There is just the sum of your relationships and your actions, measured by how you feel when you lie down to go to sleep at night, and how many people heart your tweets. I”
― Nora McInerny Purmort, It's Okay to Laugh

“I will love you with too many commas,
but never any asterisks.”
― Sarah Kay, No Matter the Wreckage: Poems

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
― Buckminster Fuller

“Whether we're a preschooler or a young teen, a graduating college senior or a retired person, we human beings all want to know that we're acceptable, that our being alive somehow makes a difference in the lives of others.”
― Fred Rogers, The World According to Mister Rogers: Important Things to Remember

“Let your curiosity run away with you. Know that beyond every ordinary explanation there is a deeper and more exciting discovery to be made.”
― Julie Andrews Edwards, The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles

“I want her to know that this world is made out of sugar. It can crumble so easily but don’t be afraid to stick your tongue out and taste it.”
― Sarah Kay

“Because rain will wash away everything, if you let it.”
― Sarah Kay

“Don't you sometimes feel bewildered when you think of the millions of things that put life together?' ... 'I;m not bewildered. I'm filled with the deepest awe and wonder. The miracle is that in its complexity it all works.”
― Julie Andrews Edwards, The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles

“Sooner or later we all discover that the important moments in life are not the advertised ones, not the birthdays, the graduations, the weddings, not the great goals achieved. The real milestones are less prepossessing. They come to the door of memory unannounced, stray dogs that amble in, sniff around a bit and simply never leave. Our lives are measured by these.”
― Susan B. Anthony

“Let me tell you about love, that silly word you believe is about whether you like somebody or whether somebody likes you or whether you can put up with somebody in order to get something or someplace you want or you believe it has to do with how your body responds to another body like robins or bison or maybe you believe love is how forces or nature or luck is benign to you in particular not maiming or killing you but if so doing it for your own good. Love is none of that. There is nothing in nature like it. Not in robins or bison or in the banging tails of your hunting dogs and not in blossoms or suckling foal. Love is divine only and difficult always. If you think it is easy you are a fool. If you think it is natural you are blind. It is a learned application without reason or motive except that it is God. You do not deserve love regardless of the suffering you have endured. You do not deserve love because somebody did you wrong. You do not deserve love just because you want it. You can only earn - by practice and careful contemplations - the right to express it and you have to learn how to accept it. Which is to say you have to earn God. You have to practice God. You have to think God-carefully. And if you are a good and diligent student you may secure the right to show love. Love is not a gift. It is a diploma. A diploma conferring certain privileges: the privilege of expressing love and the privilege of receiving it. How do you know you have graduated? You don't. What you do know is that you are human and therefore educable, and therefore capable of learning how to learn, and therefore interesting to God, who is interested only in Himself which is to say He is interested only in love. Do you understand me? God is not interested in you. He is interested in love and the bliss it brings to those who understand and share the interest. Couples that enter the sacrament of marriage and are not prepared to go the distance or are not willing to get right with the real love of God cannot thrive. They may cleave together like robins or gulls or anything else that mates for life. But if they eschew this mighty course, at the moment when all are judged for the disposition of their eternal lives, their cleaving won't mean a thing. God bless the pure and holy. Amen.”
― Toni Morrison, Paradise

“Time is a gift, given to you, given to give you the time you need, the time you need to have the time of your life. ”
― Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth

“This is for the times you went through hell so someone else wouldn’t have to.”
― Andrea Gibson, When The Bough Breaks

“If you remain calm in the midst of great chaos, it is the surest guarantee the it will eventually subside”
― Julie Andrews Edwards, The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles

“So many things are possible just as long as you don't know they're impossible.”
― Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth

“Miracles, contrary to popular belief, do not just happen. A miracle is the achievement of the impossible, and it is only when we put aside out greed, anger, pride and prejudice so that our minds are open and ready to accept it, that a miracle can occur.”
― Julie Andrews Edwards, The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles

“Be careful, darling. Your footsteps land heavy here. Your racket will wake the dragons.”
― Sarah Kay