When you feel like giving up:
On the difficult days, when the world’s on your shoulders, remember that diamonds are made under the weight of mountains.
(Beau Taplin)
You’re growing; I can see it. I can see you’re okay with not being okay and it’s beautiful.
(Evelyn Julia Wicksteed)
This is the human way, she thought. On the edge of destruction, at the end of all things, we still dance. And hope.
(Rosamund Hodge)
Find a beautiful piece of art. If you fall in love with Van Gogh or Matisse or John Oliver Killens, or if you fall love with the music of Coltrane, the music of Aretha Franklin, or the music of Chopin - find some beautiful art and admire it, and realize that that was created by human beings just like you, no more human, no less.
(Maya Angelou)
Cherish your visions and your dreams as they are the children of your soul.
(Napoleon Hill)
It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them. I was so preposterously serious in those days…Lightly, lightly—it’s the best advice ever given me. So throw away your baggage and go forward. There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet, trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. That’s why you must walk so lightly. Lightly, my darling.
(Aldous Huxley)
When you are being hard on yourself:
I think we deserve a soft epilogue, my love. We are good people and we’ve suffered enough.
(Nikka Ursula)
The world will knock you down plenty. You don’t need to be doing it to yourself.
(Elizabeth Scott)
Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air.
(Ralph Waldo Emerson)
Remember, you belong everywhere.
(Derrick C. Brown)
Sometimes, you do things and you do them not because you’re thinking but because you’re feeling. Because you’re feeling too much. And you can’t always control the things you do when you’re feeling too much.
(Benjamin Alire Sáenz)
Be softer with you. You are a breathing thing. A memory to someone. A home to a life.
(Nayyirah Waheed)
When you don’t feel good about yourself:
You can’t eat beauty. It doesn’t feed you…You can’t rely on beauty to sustain you. What actually sustains us, what is fundamentally beautiful, is compassion for yourself and for those around you. That kind of beauty inflames the heart and enchants the soul.
(Lupita Nyong’o)
My darling, you can’t see it, can you? How like the moon you are. Both of you so timid in yourselves; hiding pieces from the world. Then, there are those rare moments when you both are full, and it becomes hard to look away. You are beautiful.
(Alexandria Drzewiecki)
Some people reflect light, some deflect it, you by some miracle, seem to collect it.
(Mark Z. Danielewski)
You are most beautiful. Whenever you are most comfortable. Whenever you are most, you.
(Donte Collins)
Avoid the flourish. Do not be afraid to be weak. Do not be ashamed to be tired. You look good when you’re tired. You look like you could go on forever. Now come into my arms. You are the image of my beauty.
(Leonard Cohen)
Remember this, girl, you are half sea. No one ever asks the ocean to quiet her storm, so why do you keep apologizing for yours?
(Pavana)