Paul Stout

“C. S. Lewis captured this so beautifully in one of my favorite quotes of all time: To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”
― Brené Brown, Rising Strong: The Reckoning. The Rumble. The Revolution.

“When I am scared, all my intentions are focused on survival and not on living to the fullest. Certainly, not on benevolence, not on being my best, not on becoming a better version of myself, not on loving myself or others.
Fear whispers “survive.” Not “live.”
― Florence Witt

“Just because someone isn’t willing or able to love us, it doesn’t mean that we are unlovable.”
― Brené Brown, Rising Strong: The Reckoning. The Rumble. The Revolution.

“So let us then be up and doing, with a heart for any fate; still achieving, still pursuing; learn to labor and to wait.”
― Ralph Waldo Emmerson