“What you have to decide… is how you want your life to be. If your forever was ending tomorrow, would this be how you’d want to have spent it? Listen, the truth is, nothing is guaranteed. You know that more than anybody. So don’t be afraid. Be alive.” —Sarah Dessen
Perfection
“Have no fear of perfection—you’ll never reach it.” —Salvador Dalí
Dreams
“Never give up on a dream just because of the time it will take to accomplish it. The time will pass anyway.” —Earl Nightingale
Complaining
“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.” —Oscar Wilde
Pain
“Pain nourishes courage. You can’t be brave if you’ve only had wonderful things happen to you.” —Mary Tyler Moore
Nature
“One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.” —William Shakespeare
Wisdom
“Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers.” —Alfred Tennyson
Pedantry
“But whence it should come to pass, that a mind enriched with the knowledge of so many things should not become more quick and sprightly, and that a gross and vulgar understanding should lodge within it, without correcting and improving itself, all the discourses and judgments of the greatest minds the world ever had, I am yet to seek.” —Michele Montaigne, Of Pedantry
Deathbed
“On your deathbed, you would do anything, pay anything for one more ordinary evening. For one more car ride to school with your children. For one more juicy peach. For one more hour on a park bench. Yet here you are, experiencing any number of those things, and rushing through it. Or brushing it off. Or complaining about it because it’s hot or there is traffic or because of some alert that just popped up on your phone....
Goals
“No matter how many goals you have achieved, you must set your sights on a higher one.” —Jessica Savitch