Did you really leave me again? After all the seasons I spent waiting, watching out the window, listening at the door, waiting for the news of your return? for the news that you realized that someone important was waiting for you. A whole lifetime I've been waiting. I can't believe you're not coming back. I can't believe I'm supposed to stop waiting. I can't believe you left me again...

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I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will. Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows.

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Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly.

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If you are a dreamer, come in, If you are a dreamer, A wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, A magic bean buyer... If you're a pretender, come sit by my fire For we have some flax-golden tales to spin. Come in! Come in!

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Listen to the mustn'ts child. Listen to the don'ts. Listen to the shouldn't haves, the impossibles, the won'ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me. Anything can happen child. Anything can be.

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Life is divided into three terms - that which was, which is, and which will be. Let us learn from the past to profit by the present, and from the present to live better in the future.

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Don't bring negative to my door.

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I drink to our ruined house, to the dolor of my life, to our loneliness together; and to you I raise my glass, to lying lips that have betrayed us, to dead-cold pitiless eyes, and to the hard realities; that the world is brutal and coarse, that God, in fact, has not saved us.

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I took a deep breath and listened to the old bray of my heart. I am. I am. I am.

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Busy old fool, unruly Sun, why dost thou thus through windows and through curtains call on us? Must to thy motions lovers seasons run?

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Rise, brothers, rise; the wakening skies pray to the morning light, The wind lies asleep in the arms of the dawn like a child that has cried all night. Come, let us gather our nets from the shore and set our catamarans free, To capture the leaping wealth of the tide, for we are the kings of the sea! No longer delay, let us hasten away in the track of the sea gull's call, The sea is our mother, the cloud is our brother, the waves are our comrades all. What though we toss at the fall of the sun where the hand of the sea-god drives? He who holds the storm by the hair, will hide in his breast our lives. Sweet is the shade of the cocoanut glade, and the scent of the mango grove, And sweet are the sands at the full o' the moon with the sound of the voices we love; But sweeter, O brothers, the kiss of the spray and the dance of the wild foam's glee; Row, brothers, row to the edge of the verge, where the low sky mates with the sea.

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If you have only one smile in you, give it to the people you love. Don't be surly at home, then go out in the street and start grinning Good morning at total strangers.

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To finish the moment, to find the journey's end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom. It is not the...

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To live in hearts we leave behind Is not to die.

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How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of Being and ideal Grace. I love thee to the level of every day's Most quiet need; by sun and candle-light. I love thee freely, as men strive for Right; I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise. I love thee with the passion put to use In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith I love thee with a love I seemed to lose With my lost saints,--I love thee with the breath. Smiles, tears, of all my life!--and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death.

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That the whole free people of any nation ought to be exercised to arms, not only the example of our ancestors, as appears by the acts of parliament made in both kingdoms to that purpose, and that of the wisest governments among the ancients; but the advantage of choosing out of great numbers, seems clearly to demonstrate. For in countries where husbandry, trade, manufactures, and other mechanical arts are carried on, even in time of war, the impediments of men are so many and so various, that unless the whole people be exercised, no considerable numbers of men can be drawn out, without disturbing those employments, which are the vitals of the political body. Besides, that upon great defeats, and under extreme calamities, from which no government was ever exempted, every nation stands in need of all the people, as the ancients sometimes did of their slaves. And I cannot see why arms should be denied to any man who is not a slave, since they are the only true badges of liberty; and ought never, but in times of utmost necessity, to be put into the hands of mercenaries or slaves: neither can I understand why any man that has arms should not be taught the use of them.

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I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it.

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Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I am in, therein to be content.

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Never to suffer would never to have been blessed.

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Love is an endless mystery, for it has nothing else to explain it.

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The good social worker doesn't go on mechanically helping people out of a ditch. Pretty soon, she/he begins to find out what ought to be done to get rid of the ditch.

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Hope smiles on the threshold of the year to come, whispering that it will be happier.

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Mistakes are a fact of life. It’s the response to the error that counts.

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There’s a land where the mountains are nameless, And the rivers all run God knows where; There are lives that are erring and aimless, And deaths that just hang by a hair; There are hardships that nobody reckons; There are valleys unpeopled and still; There’s a land — oh, it beckons and beckons, And I want to go back — and I will.

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A golden rule: to leave an incomplete image of oneself.

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Each of us has that right, that possibility, to invent ourselves daily. If a person does not invent herself, she will be invented. So, to be bodacious enough to invent ourselves is wise.

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This life's dim windows of the soul Distorts the heavens from pole to pole And leads you to believe a lie When you see with, not through, the eye.

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To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.

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Said the little boy, Sometimes I drop my spoon. Said the little old man, I do that too. The little boy whispered, I wet my pants. I do too, laughed the old man. Said the little boy, I often cry. The old man nodded. So do I. But worst of all, said the boy, it seems Grown-ups don't pay attention to me. And he felt the warmth of a wrinkled old hand. I know what you mean, said the little old man.

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To laugh often and much to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others to leave the world a little better whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is the meaning of success.

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