So I've Heard

On Life

“Leave behind the expectations of what you MUST do in your life. Abandon the known. Abandon the comfortable. Abandon the accepted. Because in the end, as your lungs are taking in the last few breaths they will ever take, you will look back on the people you’ve loved, the places you’ve been, and all you’ve accomplished. Don’t you want all of that to be somewhat interesting? So, Embrace the unknown, Escape your comfort zone, Love what is different. It just might give you some good memories.”

- C.H. -

On Work & Career

“We are at our very best, and we are happiest, when we are fully engaged in work we enjoy on the journey toward the goal we’ve established for ourselves. It gives meaning to our time off and comfort to our sleep. It makes everything else in life so wonderful, so worthwhile.” 

- Earl Nightingale -

On Love & Relationships

“Still and all, why bother? Here’s my answer. Many people need desperately to receive this message: ” I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone.”

- Kurt Vonnegut -

On Life

“Too many people are only willing to defend rights that are personally important to them. It’s selfish ignorance, and it’s exactly why totalitarian governments are able to get away with trampling on people. Freedom does not mean freedom just for the things I think I should be able to do. Freedom is for all of us. If people will not speak up for other people’s rights, there will come a day when they will lose their own.”

- Tony Lawrence -

On Travel

“I have wandered all my life, and I have also traveled; the difference between the two being this, that we wander for distraction, but we travel for fulfillment.”

- Hilaire Belloc -

On Life

“I urge you to please notice when you are happy, an exclaim, murmur, or think at some point, “if this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.”

- Kurt Vonnegut -

On Life

“It’s your place in the world; it’s your life. Go on and do all you can with it, and make it the life you want to live.”

- Mae Jemison -

On Travel

“Take time to leave cities, at least once in a year, and go to some natural place, hills, sea, jungles, rivers, where you see nothing but nature… His creations. Where you only hear chirping of birds, clinkering of trees, murmuring of winds, splashes of water in the river, and uproar of waterfalls.” 

- Girdhar Joshi -

On Life

“Four great adventures; read, learn, write and travel.”

- Lailah Gifty Akita -

On Love & Relationships

“I watched a girl in a sundress kiss another girl on a park bench, and just as the sunlight spilled perfectly onto both of their hair, i thought to myself: ‘How bravely beautiful it is, that sometimes, the sea wants the city, even when it has been told its entire life it was meant for the shore.”

- Christopher Poindexter -

On Life

“Sometimes being a friend means mastering the art of timing.  There is a time for silence. A time to let go and allow people to hurl themselves into their own destiny.  And a time to prepare to pick up the pieces when it’s all over.”

- Octavia Butler -

On Life

“Optimism is a strategy for making a better future.  Because unless you believe that the future can be better, it’s unlikely you will step up and take responsibility for making it so.  If you assume that there’s no hope, you guarantee that there will be no hope. If you assume that there is an instinct for freedom, there are opportunities to change things, there’s a chance you may contribute to making a better world.  The choice is yours.”

- Noam Chomsky -

On Life

“It is funny about life: if you refuse to accept anything but the very best you will very often get it.”

- W. Somerset Maugham -

On Life

“If you want to feel proud of yourself, you’ve got to do things you can be proud of. Feelings follow actions.”

- Oseola McCarty -

On Life

“All people dream, but not equally.  Those who dream by night in the dusty recess of their minds wake in the morning to find that it was vanity.  But the dreamers of the day are dangerous people for they dream their dreams with open eyes and make them come true.”

- T.E. Lawrence -

On Life

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

- Viktor E. Frank -

On Life

“Small things were important. Seconds were small things, and if you heaped enough of those on top of one another, they became a man’s life.”

- Androl -

On Life

“It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.”

- Lewis Carroll -

On Travel

“Never hesitate to go far away, beyond all seas, all frontiers, all countries, all beliefs.” 

- Amin Maalouf -

On Life

“Seem as you are or be as you seem”

- Rumi -

On Life

“The problem with today’s world is that everyone believes they have the right to express their opinion AND have others listen to it.  The correct statement about individual rights is that everyone has the right to an opinion, but crucially, that opinion can be roundly ignored and even made fun of, particularly if it is demonstrably nonsense.”

- Brian Cox -