"There is no need for me to grow up. In fact, just the opposite: I must become less and less."  --St. Therese of Lisieux

"Sorrow prepares you for joy. It violently sweeps everything out of your house, so that new joy can find space to enter. It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place. It pulls up the rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow. Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things will take their place."  --Rumi

"Is this how it’s always been? / To exist in the face of suffering and death / And somehow still keep singing"  --Florence + the Machine, “Free”

"Dreams are hopeless aspirations, in hopes of coming true, believe in yourself, the rest is up to me and you."-- Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes from TLC, Waterfalls

"But where there’s hope, there’s life. It fills us with fresh courage and makes us strong again."  --Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl (1947) 

“‘Telling the truth’ . . . is not solely a matter of moral character; it is also a matter of correct appreciation of real situations and of serious reflection upon them. The more complex the actual situations of a person's life, the more responsible and the more difficult will be [their] task of ‘telling the truth.’"  --Parker J. Palmer

"Oh, and tell me, what’s a man with a rifle in his hand gonna do for a world that’s so sick and sad?"  -- Hurray for the Riff Raff, “The Body Electric”