Alison > Alison's Quotes

“We're all faced throughout our lives with agonizing decisions, moral choices. Some are on a grand scale, most of these choices are on lesser points. But we define ourselves by the choices we have made. We are, in fact, the sum total of our choices. Events unfold so unpredictably, so unfairly, Human happiness does not seem to be included in the design of creation. it is only we, with our capacity to love that give meaning to the indifferent universe. And yet, most human beings seem to have the ability to keep trying and even try to find joy from simple things, like their family, their work, and from the hope that future generations might understand more”
― Woody Allen

“How can we live without our lives? How will we know it's us without our past?”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

“We all have two lives. The second one starts when we realize that we only have one.”
― Tom Hiddleston

“The dream is to keep surprising yourself, never mind the audience”
― Tom Hiddleston

“Wheresoever you go, go with all your heart.”
― Confucius

“By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.”
― Confucious

“The man who asks a question is a fool for a minute, the man who does not ask is a fool for life.”
― Confucius

“It is not the failure of others to appreciate your abilities that should trouble you, but rather your failure to appreciate theirs.”
― Confucius

“The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man perfected without trials.”
― Confucius

“Never give a sword to a man who can't dance.”
― Confucius, The Analects

“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”
― Aristotle

“Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.”
― Aristotle

“Happiness depends upon ourselves.”
― Aristotle

“Anybody can become angry — that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way — that is not within everybody's power and is not easy.”
― Aristotle

“Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow ripening fruit.”
― Aristotle

“Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.”
― Aristotle

“Grief shatters.
If you let yourself shatter and then you put yourself back together, piece by piece, you wake up one day and realize that you have been completely reassembled. You are whole again, and strong, but you are suddenly a new shape, a new size. The change that happens to people who really sit in their pain—whether it’s a sliver of envy lasting an hour or a canyon of grief lasting decades—it’s revolutionary. When that kind of transformation happens, it becomes impossible to fit into your old conversations or relationships or patterns or thoughts or life anymore. You are like a snake trying to fit back into old, dead skin or a butterfly trying to crawl back into its cocoon. You look around and see everything freshly, with the new eyes you have earned for yourself. There is no going back.
Perhaps the only thing that makes grief any easier is to surrender completely to it. To resist trying to hold on to a single part of ourselves that existed before the doorbell rang. Sometimes to live again, we have to let ourselves die completely. We have to let ourselves become completely, utterly, new.
When grief rings: Surrender. There is nothing else to do. The delivery is utter transformation.”
― Glennon Doyle, Untamed

“This life is mine alone. So I have stopped asking people for directions to places they’ve never been.”
― Glennon Doyle, Untamed

“My house says to me, "Do not leave me, for here dwells your past."
And the road says to me, "Come and follow me, for I am your future."
And I say to both my house and the road, "I have no past, nor have I a future. If I stay here, there is a going in my staying; and if I go there is a staying in my going. Only love and death will change all things.”
― Khalil Gibran

“If you love somebody, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours. If they don't, they never were.”
― Kahlil Gibran

“Trees are poems the earth writes upon the sky, We fell them down and turn them into paper,
That we may record our emptiness.”
― Kahlil Gibran

“Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.”
― Kahlil Gibran

“Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart.”
― Kahlil Gibran