James A. Owen

All stories are true. But some of them never happened.

Our weaknesses are always evident, both to ourselves and others. But our strengths are hidden until we choose to reveal them--and that is when we are truly tested. When all that we have within is exposed, and we may no longer blame our inadequacies for our failure, but must instead depend upon our strengths to succeed ... that is when the measure of a man is taken, my boy.

Bad things can happen, and often do--but they only take up a few pages of your story; and anyone can survive a few pages.

I'm a conundrum. Or an enigma. I forget which

If I can't joke about imminent death, then I might as well just resign.

Power, true power, comes from the belief in true things, and the willingness to stand behind that belief, even if the universe itself conspires to thwart your plans. Chaos may settle; flames may die; worlds may rise and fall. But true things will remain so, and will never fail to guide you to your goals.

Don't ascribe to evil what can be attributed to well-intentioned stupidity.

Maya Banks

Women were supposed to be the enigmas, but men? Moody, brooding bastards, the lot of them. A woman with PMS had nothing on a man. Where women might get hormonal once a month, men suffered their own brand of PMS on a daily basis

When would he learn that women never stayed where you put them?

Sometimes forgiveness is the hardest thing to give, but the most cherished thing to receive.

When a woman submits to a man, it's the most precious gift she can give. Herself. Unreservedly. The man has to respect and honor that gift above all else. Even if he respects nothing else in the world, he must respect the woman in his care. It's his sworn duty to protect, honor and cherish his submissive. To take care of her and provide a safe haven. Someone who would put his own needs above his woman's is no man.

It doesn’t matter. I love you. That’s it. That’s all. I hope to hell it’s enough.I'm getting the impression that women, in any form, scare you."
He shrugged. "They're the more violent species. And unpredictable. I'd rather take on a wild boar. You can't shoot women.

John Bradshaw

To truly be committed to a life of honesty, love and discipline, we must be willing to commit ourselves to reality.

Hell, in my opinion, is never finding your true self and never living your own life or knowing who you are.

Since the earliest period of our life was preverbal, everything depended on emotional interaction. Without someone to reflect our emotions, we had no way of knowing who we were.

True love heals and affects spiritual growth. If we do not grow because of someone else’s love, it’s generally because it is a counterfeit form of love.

To be shame-bound means that whenever you feel any feeling, need or drive, you immediately feel ashamed. The dynamic core of your human life is grounded in your feelings, needs and drives. When these are bound by shame, you are shamed to the core.

Condemning others as bad or sinful is a way to feel righteous. Such a feeling is a powerful mood alteration and can become highly addictive.

Jenny O'Connell

[H]iding how you really feel and trying to make everyone happy doesn't make you nice, it just makes you a liar.

I guess relationships are just funny like that. It's impossible to figure out why some work out and others don't. Why someone can be so imperfect and still be the perfect person for you. Maybe, in the end, it's not about changing the person you care about. Maybe it's about learning what you can live with. Or maybe it's really about learning what you can't live without.

Sometimes change was good. Sometimes it was even exactly what you needed.

Maybe it's not about having a plan, or even a plan B. Maybe it's about seeing where life takes you and learning to enjoy the ride.

As ugly as the truth is, it's even uglier when someone says out loud what you've been thinking to yourself.

Friedrich A. Hayek

From the fact that people are very different it follows that, if we treat them equally, the result must be inequality in their actual position, and that the only way to place them in an equal position would be to treat them differently. Equality before the law and material equality are therefore not only different but are in conflict with each other; and we can achieve either one or the other, but not both at the same time.

The argument for liberty is not an argument against organization, which is one of the most powerful tools human reason can employ, but an argument against all exclusive, privileged, monopolistic organization, against the use of coercion to prevent others from doing better.

Fascism is the stage reached after communism has proved an illusion.

The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine the can design.

Our faith in freedom does not rest on the foreseeable results in particular circumstances but on the belief that it will, on balance, release more forces for the good than for the bad.

The more the state "plans" the more difficult planning becomes for the individual.

Joan Bauer

My grandma always said that God made libraries so that people didn't have any excuse to be stupid.

When the going gets tough, the tough get a librarian.

We read to learn and to grow, to laugh, to be motivated, and to understand things we've never been exposed to. We read for strength to help us when we feel broken, discouraged or afraid. We read to find hope. We read because we're not just made up of skin and bones, and a deep need for chocolate, but we're also made up of words, words which describe our thoughts and what's hidden in our hearts.

You've got to love yourself with all your short comings, and you've got to love the world no matter how bad it gets.

When we don't have the words chocolate can speak volumes.

It was probably easier in the old days when the bad guys rode into town wearing black capes or whatever bad guys wore and the milk cows were ownded by honest people. Right off the bat, you'd know who you were dealing with. Now everybody dresses alike.

Neal Shusterman

Stupid dreams. Even the good ones are bad, because they remind you how poorly reality measures up.

In a perfect world everything would be either black or white, right or wrong, and everyone would know the difference. But this isn't a perfect world. The problem is people who think it is.

I'd rather be partly great than entirely useless.

You see, a conflict always begins with an issue - a difference of opinion, an argument. But by the time it turns into a war, the issue doesn't matter anymore, because now it's about one thing and one thing only: how much each side hates the other.

You can't change laws without first changing human nature.

Words don't hurt you. Which is one of the hugest criminal lies perpetrated by adults against children in this world. Because words hurt more than any physical pain.

It's funny how a flame can only burn your hand if you move too slow, you can tease it all you want and it never gets you, if your quick enough.

Sure, I can talk like you, but I choose not to, It's like an art, you know? Picasso had to prove to the world he could paint the right way, before he goes putting both eyes on the side of a face... See if you paint wrong because that's the best you can do, you just a chump. But you do it because you want to? Then you're an artist...You can take that to the grave and dig it up when you need it.

Mary Anne Radmacher

Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says I'll try again tomorrow.

I am not the same having seen the moon shine on the other side of the world.

As we work to create light for others, we naturally light our own way.

Live with intention. Walk to the edge. Listen Hard. Practice wellness. Play with abondon. Laugh. Choose with no regrets. Appreciate your friends. Continue to learn. Do what you love. Live as if this is all there is.

Living Eulogy.
she danced.
she sang. she took.
she gave. she loved.
she created. she dissented. she enlivened.
she saw. she grew. she sweated.
she changed. she learned. she laughed.
she shed her skin. she bled on the pages of her days,
she walked through walls, she lived with intention.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I think you travel to search and you come back home to find yourself there.

You must never behave as if your life belongs to a man. Do you hear me?Aunty Ifeka said. “Your life belongs to you and you alone."

Racism should never have happened and so you don't get a cookie for reducing it.

The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.

Of course I am not worried about intimidating men. The type of man who will be intimidated by me is exactly the type of man I have no interest in.

Some people ask: “Why the word feminist? Why not just say you are a believer in human rights, or something like that?” Because that would be dishonest. Feminism is, of course, part of human rights in general—but to choose to use the vague expression human rights is to deny the specific and particular problem of gender. It would be a way of pretending that it was not women who have, for centuries, been excluded. It would be a way of denying that the problem of gender targets women.

William Makepeace Thackeray II

Life is a mirror: if you frown at it, it frowns back; if you smile, it returns the greeting.

To love and win is the best thing.
To love and lose, the next best.

Good humor may be said to be one of the very best articles of dress one can wear in society.

Revenge may be wicked, but it’s natural.

Never lose a chance of saying a kind word.

Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied?

If a man's character is to be abused, say what you will, there's nobody like a relative to do the business.

People hate as they love, unreasonably.

There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up the pen to write.