Alyssa

“people always think that happiness is a far away thing, something complicated and hard to get. yet, little things can make it up; a place of shelter when it rains - a cup of strong hot coffee when you're blue; for a man, a cigarette for contentment; a book to read when you're alone - just to be with someone you love. those little things make happiness.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“As parents and grandparents, we think that we are showing children that we love them by giving them things. In fact such practice, in and of itself, may send them the wrong message. Children may conclude that if people give you things, they love you. If receiving things tells you that you are loved, the next logical step is to measure self-worth by what you have, not by what you are. The reality is that very young children can only truly love one doll, one stuffed animal, and a few toys at a time. This experience provides a basis for adult life where one must learn to cherish one spouse, one family, one life, instead of fantasizing that it is possible to “have it all.” What”
― Paula Polk Lillard, Montessori from the Start: The Child at Home, from Birth to Age Three

“Most true is it that 'beauty is in the eye of the gazer.' My master’s colourless, olive face, square, massive brow, broad and jetty eyebrows, deep eyes, strong features, firm, grim mouth, — all energy, decision, will, — were not beautiful, according to rule; but they were more than beautiful to me; they were full of an interest, an influence that quite mastered me, — that took my feelings from my own power and fettered them in his. I had not intended to love him; the reader knows I had wrought hard to extirpate from my soul the germs of love there detected; and now, at the first renewed view of him, they spontaneously arrived, green and strong! He made me love him without looking at me.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden