Chelsie Pheonix > Chelsie's Quotes

“It may be normal, darling; but I'd rather be natural.”
― Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Three Stories

“Solitude takes time, and caregivers to children have no time. Our children demand attention and need care. They ask questions and parents must answer. The number of decisions that go into a week of parenting astonishes me. Women have known for centuries what I have just discovered: going to work every day is far easier than staying home raising children...thoughtful parenting requires time to think, and parents of young children do not have time to think...One middle-aged female writing student spoke to me of feeling she lacked the freedom to "play hooky in nature"; it is an act of leisure men indulge in while women stay at home, keeping domestic life in order. Men often can justify poking around in the woods as a part of their profession, or as part of an acceptably manly activity like hunting or fishing. Women, for generations circumscribed by conventional values, must purposefully create opportunities for solitude, for exploration of nature or ideas, for writing.”
― Gary Paul Nabhan, The Geography of Childhood: Why Children Need Wild Places

“People use drugs, legal and illegal, because their lives are intolerably painful or dull. They hate their work and find no rest in their leisure. They are estranged from their families and their neighbors. It should tell us something that in healthy societies drug use is celebrative, convivial, and occasional, whereas among us it is lonely, shameful, and addictive. We need drugs, apparently, because we have lost each other.”
― Wendell Berry, The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays

“Don't own so much clutter that you will be relieved to see your house catch fire.”
― Wendell Berry, Farming: A Hand Book

“Education is no substitute for intelligence.”
― Frank Herbert

“It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emerson in His Journals

“Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to give thanks continuously. And because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“All of the solutions to our growth-based problems involve some form of self-restraint. That’s why most of those solutions remain just good ideas. That’s also why we will probably hit the wall, and why the outcomes described in the previous chapters of this book are likely. The sustainability revolution will occur. The depletion of nonrenewable resources ensures that humankind will eventually base its economy on renewable resources harvested at rates of natural replenishment. But that revolution will be driven by crisis.”
― Richard Heinberg, The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality

“What you seek is seeking you.”
― Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi

“The moment you recognize what is beautiful in this world, you stop being a slave”
― Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
― Rumi

“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”
― Rumi

“Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion.”
― Rumi

“Dance, when you're broken open. Dance, if you've torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of the fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance when you're perfectly free.”
― Rumi

“If you are irritated by every rub, how will your mirror be polished?”
― Rumi

“When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.”
― Rumi

“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”
― Rumi

“We do not have to be ashamed of what we are. As sentient beings we have wonderful backgrounds. These backgrounds may not be particularly enlightened or peaceful or intelligent. Nevertheless, we have soil good enough to cultivate; we can plant anything in it.”
― Chögyam Trungpa, Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism

“There is within each one of us a potential for goodness beyond our imagining; for giving which seeks no reward; for listening without judgment; for loving unconditionally.”
― Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

“creativity keeps the world alive, yet, everyday we are asked to be ashamed of honoring it, wanting to live our lives as artists. i’ve carried the shame of being a ‘creative’ since i came to the planet; have been asked to be something different, more, less my whole life. thank spirit, my wisdom is deeper than my shame, and i listened to who i was. i want to say to all the creatives who have been taught to believe who you are is not enough for this world, taught that a life of art will amount to nothing, know that who we are, and what we do is life. when we create, we are creating the world. remember this, and commit.”
― Nayyirah Waheed

“the truth is
you were born for you.
you were wanted by you.
you came for you.
you are here for you.
your existence is yours.
yes.”
― Nayyirah Waheed, Nejma

“there are feelings. you haven’t felt yet. give them time. they are almost here. – fresh”
― Nayyirah Waheed, salt.

“i have always been the woman of my dreams.”
― Nayyirah Waheed, salt.

“would you still want to travel to that country if you could not take a camera with you. – a question of appropriation”
― Nayyirah Waheed, salt.

“i have never understood.
will
probably never understand.
the white mans lust
to eat the world.
to eat the universe. (mars is next)
why he was born with such a rabid
starvation.
why he feigns for power
like
crack rock. doing everything. and anything.
to have it.
no matter how deranged.
why he is in so much pain
he needs to rip the roots of happiness
from the earth
and
burn them into
his smile.
what happened in his relationship with our mother.
that he needs to set a person on fire.
watch them burn.
to
feel powerful.
not every white man
is
born this way,
but,
it stands to remain
there are many
who
are.”
― nayyirah waheed

“there is no healthier drug than creativity.”
― Nayyirah Waheed, Salt

“be easy. take your time. you are coming home. to yourself. — the becoming”
― Nayyirah Waheed, nejma

“poetry.
is the fire leaving my body.”
― Nayyirah Waheed, Salt

“You are terrifying and strange and beautiful, someone not everyone knows how to love.”
― Warsan Shire