'Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.' (Martin Luther King Jr.)
'If the unexamined life is not worth living, it's equally true that the unlived life is not worth examining' (Diane Ackerman)
'In this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. Love it. Love it hard' (Tony Morrison)
'Judgments of persons are moral; judgments of souls are theological; judgments of selves are economic and political. Societies of persons are constructed to assure the rights of choice and action; they emerge from a contract of agents; societies of selves are also formed to protect and guarantee the rights of their members. But when the members of a society achieve their rights by virtue of their possessions, the protection of rights requires the protection of property, even though in principle everyone is equally entitled to the fruits of his labors and protection under law.' (Amélie Rorty)
'Real strength and real tenderness at the same time, in one frame, is something that I go back to a lot. In queer relationships, there [are] so many times when it's so tender and soft but, also, you have to have so much strength to show yourself and to be who you are' (Molly Landreth)
'Denial stops us from listening… But denial lies. It protects us from the potency of a truth we cannot yet bear to accept. It takes our hands and leads us to places of comfort. Denial flourishes in the familiar. It seduces us with our own desires and cleverly constructs walls around us to keep us safe.' (Terry Tempest Williams)
'The mountains are whole and beautiful for one principal reason: they have been broken so often… It is the very breaking and jointing, the cracking and carving and breakdown, the weathering and scouring, that all together give rise to the countless forms of beauty — iridescent, miraculous, gift-giving, exultant — throughout the whole of the range.' (Richard J. Nevle)
'Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, and though they are with you yet they belong not to you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts, for they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far. Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness; For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.' (Khaled Gibran)
'Home is the place you cannot escape from and you cannot bear.' (Herta Müller, transl. from Romanian)