Reinhold Niebuhr

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Sirius Black, Harry Potter

I want you to listen to me very carefully, Harry. You’re not a bad person. You’re a very good person, who bad things have happened to. Besides, the world isn’t split into good people and Death Eaters. We’ve all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on. That’s who we really are.

Nora Ephron

Whatever you choose, however many roads you travel, I hope that you choose not to be a lady. I hope you will find some way to break the rules and make a little trouble out there. And I also hope that you will choose to make some of that trouble on behalf of women.

Clara Oswald, Doctor Who

Listen. Listen. This is just a dream. But very clever people can hear dreams. So please, just listen. I know you're afraid. But being afraid is all right. Because didn't anybody ever tell you? Fear is a super power. Fear can make you faster, and cleverer, and stronger. And one day, you're going to come back to this barn, and on that day, you're going to be very afraid indeed. But that's okay. Because if you're very wise and very strong, fear doesn't have to make you cruel or cowardly. Fear can make you kind. It doesn't matter if there's nothing under the bed, or in the dark, so long as you know it's okay to be afraid of it. So listen. If you listen to nothing else, listen to this. You're always going to be afraid, even if you learn to hide it. Fear is like...a companion. A constant companion, always there. But that's okay, because fear can bring us together. Fear can bring you home. I'm going to leave you something, just so you'll always remember -- fear makes companions of us all.

"Ewige Sehnsucht" von Christian Morgenstern

Wenn Gott nicht die ewige Sehnsucht zweier Seelen zueinander ist –
wenn die Welt nicht der ewige Weg zu dieser zweier Sellen ist – so weiß ich
nicht, was Gott und Welt nicht bedeuten.

Spätsommer 1908


(aus:  Christian Morgenstern, Werke und Briefe, Band 5: Aphorismen, Weltbild: Episode, Tagebuch eines Mystikers. Stuttgarter Ausgabe, Verlag Urachaus, Stuttgart 1987.)

"Briefwechsel mit Dagny" von Christian Morgenstern

09. Mai 1899
Wenn ich Ihnen einen Wunsch zum Vermächtnis geben dürfte, so wäre es dieser:
Lernen Sie gross zu empfinden!

Pünktlichkeit

...ist die Kunst richtig abzuschätzen, um wie viel sich der andere verspäten wird.

A kaleidoscope of memories

I think... I think when it's all over it just comes back in flashes, you know? It's like a kaleidoscope of memories; it just all comes back. But he never does. I think part of me knew the second I saw him that this would happen. It's not really anything he said, or anything he did ― it was the feeling that came along with it. Crazy thing is, I don't know if I'm ever going to feel that way again. But I don't know if I should. I knew his world moved too fast and burned too bright, but I just thought, 'How can the devil be pulling you toward someone who looks so much like an angel when he smiles at you?' Maybe he knew that when he saw me. I guess I just lost my balance. I think that the worst part of it all wasn't losing him. It was losing me.

- Taylor Swift


(first seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVZG8BInfYs)

Isak Dinesen

The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears or the sea.

Abbey Lee Kershaw

I like people with depth, I like people with emotion, I like people with a strong mind, an interesting mind, a twisted mind, and also people that can make me smile.

Ivan Turgenev

We’re young, we’re not monsters, no fools: we’ll conquer happiness for ourselves.

"Fragen" von Erich Fried

Wie groß ist dein Leben?
Wie tief?
Was kostet es dich?
Bis wann zahlst du?
Wieviel Türen hat es?
Wie oft
hast du ein neues begonnen?

Warst du schon einmal
gezwungen um es zu laufen?
Wenn ja
bist du rundherum gelaufen
im Kreis oder hast du
Einbuchtungen mitgelaufen?
Was dachtest du dir dabei?

Woran erkanntest du
daß du ganz herum warst?
Bist du mehrmals gelaufen?
War das dritte Mal
wie das zweite?

Würdest du lieber
die Strecke im Wagen fahren?
oder gefahren werden?
in welcher Richtung?
Von wem?

"Frau Welt" von Erich Fried

Ich bin
zur Welt gekommen
und bin nun endlich
so weit
laut zu fragen
wie ich dazukomme
zu ihr zu kommen

Sie kommt
und sagt leise:
Du kommst nicht
du bist schon im Gehen

"Was es ist" von Erich Fried

Es ist Unsinn
sagt die Vernunft
Es ist was es ist
sagt die Liebe

Es ist Unglück
sagt die Berechnung
Es ist nichts als Schmerz
sagt die Angst
Es ist aussichtslos
sagt die Einsicht
Es ist was es ist
sagt die Liebe

Es ist lächerlich
sagt der Stolz
Es ist leichtsinnig
sagt die Vorsicht
Es ist unmöglich
sagt die Erfahrung
Es ist was es ist
sagt die Liebe

Robert Alton Harris

You can be a king or a street sweeper, but everybody dances with the Grim Reaper.

"Do Not Fall In Love With People Like Me" by Caitlyn Siehl

Do not fall in love
With people like me.
people like me
will love you so hard
that you turn into stone
into a statue where people
come to marvel at how long
it must have taken to carve
that faraway look into your eyes

Do not fall in love with people like me
we will take you to
museums and parks
and monuments
and kiss you in every beautiful
place so that you can
never go back to them
without tasting us
like blood in your mouth

Do not come any closer.
people like me
are bombs
when our time is up
we will splatter loss
all over your walls
in angry colors
that make you wish
your doorway never
learned our name

do not fall in love
with people like me.
with the lonely ones
we will forget our own names
if it means learning yours
we will make you think
hurricanes are gentle
that pain is a gift
you will get lost
in the desperation
in the longing for something
that is always reaching
but never able to hold

do not fall in love
with people like me.
we will destroy your
apartment
we will throw apologies at you
that shatter on the floor
and cut your feet

we will never learn
how to be soft

we will leave.
we always do.

"I Wrote This For You" by Iain Thomas

All the hardest, coldest people you meet were once as soft as water. And that’s the tragedy of living.

William Shakespeare

When I saw you
I fell in love, and
you smiled
because you knew

Don’t let people treat you like a cigarette, they only use you when they’re bored and step on you when they’re done. Be like drugs, let them die for you.

"Beauty is.." by Emma Watson

Beauty is not long hair, skinny legs, tanned skin or perfect teeth. Believe me. Beauty is the face of who cried and now smiles, beauty is the scar on your knee since you fell when you were a kid, beauty is the circles when love doesn’t let you sleep, beauty is the expression on the face when the alarm rings in the morning, it’s the melted makeup when you have a shower, it’s the laughter when you make a joke you’re the only one who can understand, beauty is meeting his gaze and stopping understanding, beauty is your gaze when you see him, it’s when you cry for all you paranoias, beauty is the lines marked by time. Beauty is what we feel in the inside which also shows outside us. Beauty is the marks the life leaves on us, all the kicks and the caresses the memories leave us. Beauty is letting yourself live.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

And in the end, we were all just humans... drunk on the idea that love, only love, could heal our brokenness.

Jeremy Radin

Let me sleep, finally,
in the arms
of something beautiful.
Let me say my last
fuck yous
with honey in my mouth.

"Undress me" by Michael Faudet

All that you write,
         you know
         it's not right
         you move me
         with written suggestion.
I know it's absurd,
         to be undressed
         by a word,
         write me more
         write me more—
         make me yours.
   

African Proverb

If you want to go fast, go alone.
If you want to go far, go together.

You are so used to your features, you don’t know how beautiful you look to a stranger.

Kanye West

Someone will always be prettier.
Someone will always be smarter.
Someone will always be younger.
But they will never be you.

"The Time Traveler’s Wife" by Audrey Niffenegger

I’m living under water. Everything seems slow and far away. I know there’s a world up there, a sunlit quick world where time runs like dry sand through an hourglass, but down here, where I am, air and sound and time and feeling are thick and dense.

Giacomo Casanova

One who makes no mistakes
makes nothing at all.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

You are the finest, loveliest, tenderest, and most beautiful person I have ever known—and even that is an understatement.

Find someone who makes you feel drunk when you're sober.

Elizabeth Scott

I want to care but I don't. I look at you and all I feel is tired.

Emerson

We must be our own before we can be another's.

Anais Nin

We don't see things as they are.
We see them as we are.

"Lolita" by Vladimir Nabokov

...and then there were times when I knew how you felt and it was hell to know it.

Tupac

You can spend minutes, hours, days, weeks or even months over-analyzing a situation; trying to put the pieces together, justifying what could've, would've happened
...or you can just leave the pieces on the floor and move the fuck on!

John Gardner

We read five words on the first page of a really good novel and we begin to forget that we are reading printed words on a page; we begin to see images.

Alan Watts

If you go off into a far, far forest and get very quiet, you’ll come to understand that you’re connected with everything.