Quotes to Live By

On Love:

“The truest strength is shouldering the burden of care.” ~Hank Green, A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor

“Love doesn’t make sense! You can’t logic your way into it or out of it. Love is totally nonsensical. But we have to keep doing it or else we’re lost and love is dead, and humanity should just pack it in. Because love is the best thing we do.” ~Ted Mosby in How I Met Your Mother

“… She discovered with great delight that one does not love one’s children just because they are one’s children but because of the friendship formed while raising them.” ~Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Love in the Time of Cholera

“Forgiveness is like you think you’re letting someone else off the hook, but you’re actually letting yourself off the hook because if you keep it, there’s no healing with hatred. You have to love each other.” ~Polly Shepherd

On Smiling:

“It was only a smile, nothing more. It didn’t make everything all right. It didn’t make anything all right. Only a smile. A tiny thing. A leaf in the woods, shaking in the wake of a startled bird’s flight. But I’ll take it. With open arms. Because when spring comes, it melts the snow one flake at a time, and maybe I just witnessed the first flake melting.” Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

On Marriage:

“Make sure you marry someone who laughs at the same things you do.” ~J.D. Salinger

“Always remember that the most important thing in a good marriage is not happiness, but stability.” ~Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Love in the Time of Cholera

“Family not only need consist of merely those whom we share blood, but also for those whom we’d give blood.” ~Charles Dickens

On the Future:

“The one who plants trees knowing that he or she will never sit in their shade, has at least started to understand the meaning of life.” ~Rabindranath Tagore

“Real generosity toward the future consist in giving all to what is present.” ~Albert Camus

“Boats that stay in the harbor are safe, sweetheart, but that’s not what boats were built for.” ~Fredrick Backman, Anxious People

“Sometimes I think the greatest talent of all is perseverance.” ~Mitch Albom, The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto

“To fulfill the dreams of one’s youth; that is the best that can happen to a man. No worldly success can take the place of that.” ~Willa Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop

“'No life is a waste,' The blue man said. 'The only time we waste is the time we spend thinking we are alone.'” ~Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven

“People were always getting ready for tomorrow. I didn’t believe in that. Tomorrow wasn’t getting ready for them. It didn’t even know they were there.” ~Cormac McCarthy, The Road

On Parenting:

“Because that was a parent’s job: to provide shoulders. Shoulders for your children to sit on when they’re little so they can see the world, then stand on when they get older so they can reach the clouds, and sometimes lean against whenever they stumble and feel unsure.” ~Fredrick Backman, Anxious People

“Children are not a distraction from the more important work. They are the most important work.” ~Dr. John Trainer

“Being a mother can be like … mending a roof: it takes time, sweat, and money, and once it’s done everything looks exactly the same as it did before. It’s not the sort of thing anyone gives you praise for. But spending an extra hour in the office is like hanging up a beautiful painting or a new lamp: everyone notices.” ~Fredrick Backman, Us Against You

“It seemed to me that one of the defining features of parents is that they don’t get paid to love you.” ~John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

On Diversity:

“We should know that diversity makes for a rich tapestry, and we must understand that all the threads of the tapestry are equal in value no matter what their color.” ~Maya Angelou

On Humility:

“Humility is a most excellent barometer and ought to be looked for in all those we are made to look up to.” ~Alan Bradley

“Your own story is just one, and perhaps not the important. The self is not the principal thing.” ~Michael Ondaatje, Warlight