Post 33: Finding Magic in Nature!

"Those who don't believe in magic will never find it."

Post 32: Slow Dancing in a Burning Room

We're going down,
And you can see it too.
We're going down,
And you know that we're doomed.
My dear,
We're slow dancing in a burning room.
- John Mayer

Post 31: The Heart of Life

""You know it's nothing new. Bad news never had good timing. Then the circle of your friends will defend the silver lining. Pain throws your heart to the ground, love turns the whole thing around. No, it won't all go the way it should, but I know the heart of life is good." 

                                                       — John Mayer"

Post 30: I like Nonsense!

“I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, It’s a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, And that enables you to laugh at life’s realities.”

Post 29: Oh the heart that has truly loved never forgets

Believe me if all those endearing young charms,
Which I gaze on so fondly today,
Were to change by tomorrow and fleet in my arms,
Like fairy gifts fading away!
Thou wouldst still be adored, as this moment thou art,
Let thy loveliness fade as it will
And around the dear ruin each wish of my heart
Would entwine itself verdantly still.
It is not while beauty and youth are thine own,
And thy cheeks unprofaned by a tear,
That the fervor and faith of a soul may be known,
To which time will but make thee more dear!
Oh the heart that has truly loved never forgets,
But as truly loves on to the close,
As the sunflower turns to her god when he sets
The same look which she turned when he rose!
Thomas Moore

Post 28: The secret of creativity

"The secret of creativity is knowing how to hide your sources." ~ Albert Einstein ~

Post 27: Light and Darkness

"However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light."

Post 26: Be who you are

""Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind." 
— Dr. Seuss

Post 25: It's Them that do the bad things.

It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone's fault. If it was us, what did that make Me? After all, I'm one of Us. I must be. I've certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We're always one of Us. It's Them that do the bad things.

Terry Pratchett, Jingo

Post 24: For all the creative geniuses out there!

"Calvin: You can't just turn on creativity like a faucet. You have to be in the right mood.
Hobbes: What mood is that?
Calvin: Last-minute panic."
— Bill Watterson

Post 23: Books

"In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them." 

                                                                            — Mark Twain

Post 22: I want to know if you can be alone with yourself

"It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing. 
It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive. 
It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain!I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it, or fix it. 
I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember the limitations of being human. 
It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul; if you can be faithlessand therefore trustworthy. 
I want to know if you can see beauty even when it's not pretty, every day,and if you can source your own life from its presence. 
I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, “Yes!” 
It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up, after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done to feed the children. 
It doesn't interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back. 
It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you, from the inside, when all else falls away. 
I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments." 
— Oriah Mountain Dreamer

Post 21: Money is like love

"Money is like love; it kills slowly and painfully the one who withholds it, and enlivens the other who turns it on his fellow man." - Kahlil Gibran

Post 20: Don't hide the Madness

"Concentrate on what you want to say to yourself and your friends. Follow your inner moonlight; don't hide the madness. You say what you want to say when you don't care who's listening." 

                                                     — Allen Ginsberg

Post 19: Harry Potter!

It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.  ~J.K. Rowling,Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, 1999, spoken by the character Albus Dumbledore

Post 18: The Power of One

"The power of one is above all things the power to believe in yourself, ofen well beyond any latent ability you may have previously demonstrated. The mind is the athlete, the body is simply the means it uses to run faster or longer, jump higher, shoot straighter, kick better, swim harder, hit further, or box better." 

— Bryce Courtenay 

Post 17: Freedom

‎"The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You trade in your sense for an act. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask. There can't be any large-scale revolution until there's a personal revolution, on an individual level. It's got to happen inside first." 

                                                                   — Jim Morrison

Post 16: Make it Simple!

"As far as I'm concerned, if something is so complicated that you can't explain it in 10 seconds, then it's probably not worth knowing anyway." 

                               — Bill Watterson (The Indispensable Calvin and Hobbes)

Post 15: Memories

"When all things are gone as all things will go, these are all we shall have... the fleeting sounds, colors and scents evoking emotions so familiar and yet unknown."

Post 14: The Ideal Life

"Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life." 

                                                                    — Mark Twain

Post 13: The Road Less Traveled

"I shall be telling this with a sigh 

Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference."

Post 12: Life will break you

"Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could." 

                                                    — Louise Erdrich (The Painted Drum)

Post 11: The wages of sin

"The wages of sin is death but so is the salary of virtue, and at least the evil get to go home early on Fridays." 

                                                           — Terry Pratchett (Witches Abroad)

The 10th Pratchett Quote To Cure Bad Days!

"If there was anything that depressed him more than his own cynicism, it was that quite often it still wasn't as cynical as real life." 

                                                                — Terry Pratchett (Guards! Guards!)

The 9th from Pratchett about Travel and Change

"Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving." 

                                                                         — Terry Pratchett (A Hat Full of Sky) 

The 8th for a Week Dedicated to the Genius of Terry Pratchett

God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of his own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players, to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time.

                                          Terry Pratchett, "Good Omens"

The 7th for All Those Who Love Life and Love It Till the Very End.

"To love life, to love it even 

when you have no stomach for it and everything you've held dear crumbles like burnt paper in your hands, your throat filled with the silt of it. When grief sits with you, its tropical heat thickening the air, heavy as water more fit for gills than lungs; when grief weights you like your own flesh only more of it, an obesity of grief, you think, How can a body withstand this? Then you hold life like a face between your palms, a plain face, no charming smile, no violet eyes, and you say, yes, I will take you I will love you, again." — Ellen Bass

The Sixth to Help Us Keep Our Happiness!

"Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it. You must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it." 

                                                                        — Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love)

The Fifth for those Who Live with Integrity

"It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out  how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweatand blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause, who at best knows achievement and who at the worst if he fails atleast fails while daring greatly so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat. 
-Theodore Roosevelt