"To be nobody-but-yourself — in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else — means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight." ~ e.e. cummings

“In the midst of hate, I found there was, within me, an invincible love. In the midst of tears, I found there was, within me, an invincible smile. In the midst of chaos, I found there was, within me, an invincible calm. I realized, through it all, that… In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer. And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back.” ~ Albert Camus

"It is important to do everything with passion, it embellishes life enormously." ~ Lev Landau

"Rock bottom teaches lessons that mountain tops never will. " ~ Unknown

“It's easy to be a naive idealist. It's easy to be a cynical realist. It's quite another thing to have no illusions and still hold the inner flame.” ~ Marie-Louise von Franz

”A work of art opens a void, a moment of silence, a question without answer, provokes a breach without reconciliation where the world is forced to question itself.” ~ Michel Foucault

”No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself.” ~ Virginia Woolf

"Your perception of me is a reflection of you; my reaction to you is an awareness of me." ~ Buddhist quote

"Hope is optimism with a broken heart" ~ Nick Cave

"Only the man who strives to fail deserves our trust: if he succeeds in this he will have killed the monster, the monster he was as long as he was concerned to act, to triumph. We progress only to the detriment of our purity, that summa of our setbacks. Sustained, traversed by an impulse toward corruption, our actions preclude us from paradise, fortify our failure, our fidelity to the world: no movement forward which does not excite and consolidate in us the old perversion of existence." ~ Emil Cioran

“Only passions, great passions, can elevate the soul to great things.” ~ Denis Diderot

Tell me, Atlas. What is heavier:
The world or its people's hearts? ~ Darshana Suresh

”The older you get...the deeper the love you need.” ~ Leonard Cohen

“The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters. “ ~ Antonio Gramsci

“Whenever you are offended, understand that you are complicit in taking offense.” ~ Epictetus

“The body should be treated more rigorously, so that it may not be disobedient to the mind.” ~ Seneca

"Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things." ~ Isaac Newton