Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.
Anyone without a sense of humor is at the mercy of everyone else.
She shrugged. "You can be happy for someone else's good fortune, but that doesn't mean you forget your own bad luck.
I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world.
When I was little and running on the race track at school, I always stopped and waited for all the other kids so we could run together even though I knew (and everybody else knew) that I could run much faster than all of them! I pretended to read slowly so I could "wait" for everyone else who couldn't read as fast as I could! When my friends were short I pretended that I was short too and if my friend was sad I pretended to be unhappy. I could go on and on about all the ways I have limited myself, my whole life, by "waiting" for people. And the only thing that I've ever received in return is people thinking that they are faster than me, people thinking that they can make me feel bad about myself just because I let them and people thinking that I have to do whatever they say I should do. My mother used to teach me "Cinderella is a perfect example to be" but I have learned that Cinderella can go fuck herself, I'm not waiting for anybody, anymore! I'm going to run as fast as I can, fly as high as I can, I am going to soar and if you want you can come with me! But I'm not waiting for you anymore.
Do I have an original thought in my head? My bald head. Maybe if I were happier, my hair wouldn't be falling out. Life is short. I need to make the most of it. Today is the first day of the rest of my life. I'm a walking cliché. I really need to go to the doctor and have my leg checked. There's something wrong. A bump. The dentist called again. I'm way overdue. If I stop putting things off, I would be happier. All I do is sit on my fat ass. If my ass wasn't fat I would be happier. I wouldn't have to wear these shirts with the tails out all the time. Like that's fooling anyone. Fat ass. I should start jogging again. Five miles a day. Really do it this time. Maybe rock climbing. I need to turn my life around. What do I need to do? I need to fall in love. I need to have a girlfriend. I need to read more, improve myself. What if I learned Russian or something? Or took up an instrument? I could speak Chinese. I'd be the screenwriter who speaks Chinese and plays the oboe. That would be cool. I should get my hair cut short. Stop trying to fool myself and everyone else into thinking I have a full head of hair. How pathetic is that? Just be real. Confident. Isn't that what women are attracted to? Men don't have to be attractive. But that's not true. Especially these days. Almost as much pressure on men as there is on women these days. Why should I be made to feel I have to apologize for my existence? Maybe it's my brain chemistry. Maybe that's what's wrong with me. Bad chemistry. All my problems and anxiety can be reduced to a chemical imbalance or some kind of misfiring synapses. I need to get help for that. But I'll still be ugly though. Nothing's gonna change that.
Let your light shine. Shine within you so that it can shine on someone else. Let your light shine.
When you feel someone else's pain and joy as powerfully as if it were your own, then you know you really loved them.
Chiron had said once that nations were the most foolish of of mortal inventions. "No man is worth more than another, wherever he is from." "But what if he is your friend?" Achilles has asked him, feet kicked up on the wall of the rose-quartz cave. "Or your brother? Should you treat him the same as a stranger?" "You ask a question that philosophers argue over," Chiron had said. H is worth more to you, perhaps. But the stranger in someone else's friend and brother. So which life is more important?" We hd been silent. We were 14 and these things were too hard for us. Now that we are 27, they still feel too hard He is half of my soul, as the poets say. He will be dead soon and his honor is all that will remain. It is his child, his dearest self. Should I reproach him for it? I have saved Briseis I cannot save them all. I know, now, how I would answer Chiron. I would say: there is no answer. Whichever you choose, you are wrong.
When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.