change

“They always say time changes things but you actually have to change them yourself.”

– Andy Warhol

kinds of love

“There are all kinds of love in this world but never the same love twice.”

– F. Scott Fitzgerald

advice from merlin to the young king arthur

Ann Curry tweeted this quote the other day and I was really taken by it. It’s wisdom imparted from Merlin to a young Arthur in T.H. White’s The Once and Future King. My undergrad advisor recommended the book to me awhile back and I think this just bumped it to the top of my summer reading list.

“The best thing for being sad,” replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, “is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake in the middle of the night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world around you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honor trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting.”

what you see

“It’s not what you look at that matters; it’s what you see.”

– Henry David Thoreau

now

“Now is the accepted time, not tomorrow, not some more convenient season.”

– W. E. B. Du Bois

the truth of the matter

“The truth of the matter is that you always know the right thing to do. The hard part is doing it.”

– General H. Norman Schwarzkopf

roses

C’est le temps que tu as perdu pour ta rose qui fait ta rose si importante.
It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.

– Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Le Petit Prince

in the long run

“The longer that you feel without acting, the less you will be able to act and, in the long run, the less you will be able to feel.”

– C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

unrequited

“You like someone who can’t like you back because unrequited love can be survived in a way that once-requited love cannot.”

– John Green, Will Grayson, Will Grayson

a temporary madness

“Love is a temporary madness, it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides, you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion, it is not the desire to mate every second minute of the day, it is not lying awake at night imagining that he is kissing every cranny of your body. No, don’t blush, I am telling you some truths. That is just being “in love”, which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident.“

– Louis de Bernières, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin