"You can't get into a piss fight with a skunk" --Dr Webb (director of study abroad at Meredith)

"Beginnings are scary, endings are usually sad, but it's the middle that counts the most. Try to remember that when you find yourself at a new beginning. Just give hope a chance to float up. And it will..."-Hope Floats

“You start out life with a clean slate. Then you begin to make your mark. You face decisions, make choices. You keep moving forward. But sooner or later there comes a time when you look back over where you have been …and wonder who you really are.”-The Wonder Years

The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.

- Oscar Wilde

"It's everybody, i mean. Everything everbody does is so - i don't know- not wrong or even mean, or even stupid necessarily. But it's just so tiny and meaningless and - sad-making. And the worst part is, if you go bohemian or something crazy like that, you're conforming just as much as everyone else, only in a different way." - J.D. Salinger

"The church says the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than in the church."

Ferdinand Magellan

"No,no don't speak- for some moments in life there are no words"-Willy Wonka

"Sometimes it's easier to pretend things are okay rather than face a difficult truth.So we go through the motions and rituals of everyday life.We hope the comfortable rhythms of familiarity will hold off the inevitable just a little longer.Return things to normal, anything to buy us more time.Playing pretend,make believe - it might be one thing we never outgrow."-Everwood

Even though I don't have to put on a suit every morning at 8 a.m., we all have one thing in common and that's fear. Call it fear of the unknown, fear of failure or just fear that you can't schedule your social life around your classes. Any way you look at it, these things are always intimidating. Everything seems to scare you at first...

Never explain--your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you
anyway.
Elbert Hubbard (1856 - 1915)

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear.
Mark Twain (1835 - 1910)

You are the person who has to decide.
Whether you'll do it or toss it aside;
You are the person who makes up your mind.
Whether you'll lead or will linger behind.
Whether you'll try for the goal that's afar.
Or just be contented to stay where you are.

~ Edgar A. Guest ~

"a sentimental person thinks things will last- a romantic person hopes against hope that they won't."
-this side of paradise

“... have to remind myself that some birds aren't meant to be caged; their feathers are just too bright. And when they fly away, the part of you that knows it was a sin to lock them up does rejoice. Still, the place you live in is that much more drab and empty that they're gone." -Shawshank Redemption

Promise only what you can deliver. Then deliver more than you promise.
--Author Unknown

We promise according to our hopes, and perform according to our fears.
--Francois duc de la Rochefoucauld

"Gentleness requires tremendous strength. Gentleness is having the power not to react when everything about the circumstance says you should. Gentleness is the beginning of learning what love is all about."

~ Shale Paul in The Warrior Within

Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build this whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, wanders into your stupid life .... you give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They do something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should just be friends' or 'how very perceptive' turns you into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts, not just in the imagination, not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a body-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.
-neil gaiman

“I was normal once, I didn't like it. “ -Bumper Sticker

"We long to be known and we fear it like nothing else. Most people live with a subtle dread that one day they will be discovered for who they really are and the world will be appalled." - Brent Curtis and John Eldredge, The Sacred Romance