Ann Cote > Ann's Quotes

“When a man loves a woman, he has to become worthy of her. The higher her virtue, the more noble her character, the more devoted she is to truth, justice, goodness, the more a man has to aspire to be worthy of her. The history of civilization could actually be written in terms of the level of its women.”
― Fulton J. Sheen, Life Is Worth Living

“When you stop expecting people to be perfect, you can like them for who they are.”
― Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life

“Incredible change happens in your life when you decide to take control of what you do have power over instead of craving control over what you don't.”
― Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free

“you have to realize that you don't have someone else's life and your never going to. You better start loving the one you got. Embrass the life you have and stop wishing that you could be someone else. Just stop all that and start saying "God here I am. Do what you want to do with me".”
― Joyce Meyer

“I've come to believe that there exists in the universe something I call "The Physics of The Quest" — a force of nature governed by laws as real as the laws of gravity or momentum. And the rule of Quest Physics maybe goes like this: "If you are brave enough to leave behind everything familiar and comforting (which can be anything from your house to your bitter old resentments) and set out on a truth-seeking journey (either externally or internally), and if you are truly willing to regard everything that happens to you on that journey as a clue, and if you accept everyone you meet along the way as a teacher, and if you are prepared – most of all – to face (and forgive) some very difficult realities about yourself... then truth will not be withheld from you." Or so I've come to believe.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

“As you go about your daily life, you will encounter many lemons. Sour expressions, sour attitudes, sour auras! The good thing is that if you don't want to be a lemon, you don't have to be! Just don't let those lemons rub themselves all over you! And you don't even have to save them! Let lemons be lemons! One of the most important things that I have ever learned, is that I don't have to save people.”
― C. JoyBell C.

“Accepting all the good and bad about someone. It's a great thing to aspire to. The hard part is actually doing it.”
― Sarah Dessen, What Happened to Goodbye

“You always have a choice. It's just that some people make the wrong one.”
― Nicholas Sparks, The Guardian

“There is no difficulty that enough love will not conquer: no disease that love will not heal: no door that enough love will not open...It makes no difference how deep set the trouble: how hopeless the outlook: how muddled the tangle: how great the mistake. A sufficient realization of love will dissolve it all. If only you could love enough you would be the happiest and most powerful being in the world...”
― Emmet Fox

“. . . hell is wanting to be somewhere different from where you are. Being one place and wanting to be somewhere else . . . . Wanting life to be different from what it is. That's also called leaving without leaving. Dying before you die. It's as if there is a part of you that so rails against being shattered by love that you shatter yourself first. (p. 44)”
― Geneen Roth, Women, Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything

“There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature.”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”
― Nelson Mandela

“It's not the load that breaks you down, it's the way you carry it.”
― Lou Holtz

“I want a life that sizzles and pops and makes me laugh out loud. And I don't want to get to the end, or to tomorrow, even, and realize that my life is a collection of meetings and pop cans and errands and receipts and dirty dishes. I want to eat cold tangerines and sing out loud in the car with the windows open and wear pink shoes and stay up all night laughing and paint my walls the exact color of the sky right now. I want to sleep hard on clean white sheets and throw parties and eat ripe tomatoes and read books so good they make me jump up and down, and I want my everyday to make God belly laugh, glad that he gave life to someone who loves the gift.”
― Shauna Niequist, Cold Tangerines: Celebrating the Extraordinary Nature of Everyday Life

“When you look into your mother’s eyes, you know that is the purest love you can find on this earth.”
― Mitch Albom, For One More Day

“There's no bitch on earth like a mother frightened for her kids.”
― Stephen King

“When your mother asks, "Do you want a piece of advice?" it's a mere formality. It doesn't matter if you answer yes or no. You're going to get it anyway.”
― Erma Bombeck

“A great marriage is not when the 'perfect couple' comes together. It is when an imperfect couple learns to enjoy their differences.”
― Dave Meurer

“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”
― Mahatma Gandhi, All Men Are Brothers: Autobiographical Reflections

“I've learned to get really good at this - say one thing when I'm thinking about something else, act like I'm listening when I'm not, pretend to be calm and happy when I'm really freaking out. It's one of the skills you perfect as you get older”
― Lauren Oliver, Delirium

“The older I get, the surer I am that I’m not running the show.”
― Leonard Cohen

“We can't be afraid of change. You may feel very secure in the pond that you are in, but if you never venture out of it, you will never know that there is such a thing as an ocean, a sea. Holding onto something that is good for you now, may be the very reason why you don't have something better.”
― C. JoyBell C.

“Get Off The Scale!

You are beautiful. Your beauty, just like your capacity for life, happiness, and success, is immeasurable. Day after day, countless people across the globe get on a scale in search of validation of beauty and social acceptance.

Get off the scale! I have yet to see a scale that can tell you how enchanting your eyes are. I have yet to see a scale that can show you how wonderful your hair looks when the sun shines its glorious rays on it. I have yet to see a scale that can thank you for your compassion, sense of humor, and contagious smile. Get off the scale because I have yet to see one that can admire you for your perseverance when challenged in life.

It’s true, the scale can only give you a numerical reflection of your relationship with gravity. That’s it. It cannot measure beauty, talent, purpose, life force, possibility, strength, or love. Don’t give the scale more power than it has earned. Take note of the number, then get off the scale and live your life. You are beautiful!”
― Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free

“Not what we say about our blessings, but how we use them, is the true measure of our thanksgiving.”
― W.T. Purkiser

“I am my own biggest critic. Before anyone else has criticized me, I have already criticized myself. But for the rest of my life, I am going to be with me and I don't want to spend my life with someone who is always critical. So I am going to stop being my own critic. It's high time that I accept all the great things about me.”
― C. JoyBell C.

“The person in life that you will always be with the most, is yourself. Because even when you are with others, you are still with yourself, too! When you wake up in the morning, you are with yourself, laying in bed at night you are with yourself, walking down the street in the sunlight you are with yourself.What kind of person do you want to walk down the street with? What kind of person do you want to wake up in the morning with? What kind of person do you want to see at the end of the day before you fall asleep? Because that person is yourself, and it's your responsibility to be that person you want to be with. I know I want to spend my life with a person who knows how to let things go, who's not full of hate, who's able to smile and be carefree. So that's who I have to be.”
― C. JoyBell C.

“When You Are Old"


WHEN you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.”
― W.B. Yeats

“I realized that with everything I did from that point onward, I would have to ask myself this question: "How would I feel if what I'm doing right now is written up on the front page of the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times or if it is on television? Would I still do it?" That is a very useful exercise for leaders to engage in, because we shouldn't do anything we might be embarrassed by or ashamed of.”
― John Mackey, Conscious Capitalism

“TRUST YOUR FEELINGS BEFORE YOU TRUST ANYONE ELSE. YOUR FEELINGS ARE YOUR DIVINE GUIDANCE. IF ANYTHING MAKES YOU FEEL GOOD, THEN DO IT. IF YOU DO NOT GET A GOOD FEELING, THEN IT IS NOT FOR YOU.”
― Premlatha Rajkumar, Twelve Steps to Inner Peace

“I've enjoyed every age I've been, and each has had its own individual merit. Every laugh line, every scar, is a badge I wear to show I've been present, the inner rings of my personal tree trunk that I display proudly for all to see. Nowadays, I don't want a "perfect" face and body; I want to wear the life I've lived.”
― Pat Benatar, Between a Heart and a Rock Place: A Memoir