"He has not learned the lesson of life who does not every day surmount a fear."
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Don't waste yourself in rejection, nor bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good."
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

"All our progress is an unfolding, like a vegetable bud. You have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge as the plant has root, bud, and fruit. Trust the instinct to the end, though you can render no reason."
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

"A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer."
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

"We are all on a mission because we love our leader."
~Elaine Reid, waxing poetic late one night

"Everything works out in the end, even if the end isn't quite written yet."
~Charlie Veprek, to me, via email

"I must learn to love the fool in me--the one who feels too much, talks too much, takes too many chances, wins sometimes and loses often, lacks self-control, loves and hates, hurts and gets hurt, promises and breaks promises, laughs and cries. It alone protects me against that utterly self-controlled, masterful tyrant whom I also harbor and who would rob me of human aliveness, humility, and dignity but for my fool."
~Theodore I. Rubin, MD (thanks Mel)

"For loneliness is but cutting adrift from our moorings and floating out to the open sea, an opportunity for finding ourselves, our real selves, what we are about, where we are heading, during our little time on this beautiful Earth."
~Anne Shannon Monroe (thanks Heather)

"The priveledge of a lifetime is being who you are."
~Joseph Campbell (thanks Mel)

"Everything in the universe is within you. Ask all from yourself."
~Rumi (thanks Mel)

"There was a time when the theme song from Cops was my favorite song in the whole world."
~Ryan Hahn

"What little I've accomplished has been by the most laborious and uphill work, and I wish now I'd never relaxed or looked back -- but said at the end of The Great Gatsby: 'I've found my line -- from now on this comes first. This is my immediate duty -- without this I am nothing.'"
~F. Scott Fitzgerald

"Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius."
~Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (thanks Sara)

"In whatever you're doing, failure is an option, fear is not."
~James Cameron (thanks Sara)

"I love you between shadow and soul. I love you as the plant that hasn't bloomed yet, and carries hidden within itself the light of flowers. I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. Because of you, the dense fragrance that rises from the earth lives in my body, rioting with hunger for the eternity of our victorious kisses."
~Pablo Neruda (as translated by Stephen Tapscott)

"My New Year's resolution is to spend more time with you."

~Mark Nehlich to Heather Toews

"Walls protect and walls limit. It is the nature of walls that they should fall. That walls should fall is the consequence of blowing your own trumpet."

~Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (thanks Mom)

"Is that guy ok?" ~me

...

"I don't know, but there's nothing we can do to help him from here."

~Ron Toews (aka Dad), regarding a man being swept away by a flood on The Weather Channel

"We must look at it as an art, otherwise we're gonna get so confused. Because there are a million things you can do, and so you just have to perfect your own art and hopefully there will be room for it. I'm very thankful for the position I have and the freedom I have. And I just keep my focus and I play what pleases me."

~Bill Evans, regarding jazz piano, but I think you can apply that attitude to just about anything (thanks Matt)

"You need to practice wiping your ass with money."

~Elaine Reid, to me, on how I should prepare myself for abundance (she wipes her ass with $70 every day)

"I see feathers and it doesn't even phase me."

~Jeremy Burgan, on being immune to rock star charms

"It is better to live one day as a lion than ten years as a lamb."
~Anon (thanks Dad, you lion)

"That eagle is boring."

~Heather Toews, unimpressed while observing bald eagles in North Idaho

"Sorry I was such a brat today, it's like when a baby doesn't get his bottle, you know? I am a baby and you are my bottle."
~Taylor Rice, to me, from Berlin, via email

"One doesn't discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time,"
~Andre Gide

"When one does not love too much, one does not love enough."
~Blaise Pascal

"Love consists in this,

that two solitudes protect,

and touch, and greet each other."

~Rainer Marie Rilke

"If I could make it in time, I would wibble wobble my way to you on a two-wheeled tricycle. I would crawl backwards. I would even risk imminent death and ride a jet-propelled scooter just to be where you are."

~me to Taylor Rice, my long-distance love, via email