Okay, it's not my writing, but did I say it had to be? This is a collection of various quotes and bits of poetry that I like. I got into the habit of collecting them after browsing through a bunch of my Mom's... she's got tons! Enjoy!

Love is always open arms. With arms open you allow love to come and go as it wills, freely, for it'll do so anyway. If you close your arms about love you'll find you are left only holding yourself.

~ Leo Buscaglia

I love you like a lion, like a thunderstorm, like a helpless rage...

~ Ken Follett, "Pillars of the Earth"

To love... is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give it to no one. It will not be broken. It will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable...

~ C.S. Lewis

We have loved the stars too fondly
to be fearful of the night.

~ Epitaph for John & Phoebe Brashear

Come away, O human child
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand-in-hand
For the world's more full of weeping
Than you can understand.

~ W.B. Yeats

When you reach for the stars you might not get one, but you won't come up with a handful of dirt either.

~ Randy Ashmore

The truth is that life is hard and dangerous; that he who seeks his own happiness does not find it; that he who is weak must suffer; that he who demands love will be disappointed; that he who is greedy will not be fed; that he who seeks peace will find strife; that truth is only for the brave; that joy is only for him who does not fear to be alone; that life is only for the one who is not afraid to die.

~ Joyce Cary

The framers of our Constitution knew human nature as well as we do. They had lived in dangerous days; they knew the suffocating influence of orthodoxy and standardized thought. They weighed the compulsions for restrained speech and thought against the abuses of liberty. They chose liberty.

~ William O'Douglas (Supreme Court Justice)

I don't believe in anti-anything. A man has to have a program; you have to be for something, otherwise you will never get anywhere.

~ Harry S. Truman

You know, I used to think it was awful that life was so unfair. Then I thought, wouldn't it be so much worse if life were fair, and all the terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserve them? So, now I take great comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe.

~ Marcus Cole ("Babylon 5")

We must be born with an intuition of mortality. Before we know the words for it; before we know there are words, out we come, bloodied and squalling, with the knowledge that for all the points of the compass, there's only one direction, and time is its only measure.

~ "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead"

Do not stand at my grave and weep.
I am not there, I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am a diamond's glint on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn's rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry.
I am not there. I did not die.

~ Author unknown

So we'll go no more a'roving
So late into the night,
Though our hearts be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright.

For the sword outwears the sheath,
And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And Love itself have rest.

Though the night was made for loving,
And the day returns too soon,
Yet we'll go no more a'roving
By the light of the moon.

...Come my friends,

'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are--
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

~ Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "Ulysses"

But a man is not forgotten, as long as there are two people left under the sky. One, to tell the story; the other to hear it.

~ Diana Gabaldon, "Drums of Autumn"

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

~ Thoreau

I find friendship to be like wine, raw when new, ripened with age, the true old man's milk and restorative cordial.

~ Thomas Jefferson

Friends don't keep score. At least, if they do, it's always love all.

~ Mike Whitaker

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There's no use in being a damn fool about it.

~ W.C. Fields

I pay as much attention to the wind from the mouths of critics as I do to the wind expelled from their backsides.

~ Leonardo da Vinci

Keep an open mind, but don't let your brain fall out.

~ Joan Borysenko

Never engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed person.

~ Unknown

If you open your mouth enough, sooner or later something witty will come out.

~ Bob Hollweg

The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that the English language is as pure as a crib-house whore. It not only borrows words from other languages; it has on occasion chased other languages down dark alley-ways, clubbed them unconscious and rifled their pockets for new vocabulary.

~ James Nicoll

Somewhere on this globe, every ten seconds, there is a woman giving birth to a child. She must be found and stopped.

~ Sam Levenson

Ignorance is the softest pillow on which a man can rest his head.

~ Montaigne

There are two kinds of strengths: the strength to lead, and the strength to follow;
the strength to control, and the strength to yield.
There are two kinds of power: the power to strip another's soul bare,
and the power to stand naked.

~ Yaldah Tovah

Not everything we do for the greater good looks good on its own.

~ Mike Whitaker

There are no broken dreams, only broken spirits.

~ Matt Luders

Truth has power, but ignorance has numbers.

~ Matt Luders

Fear knocked at the door, and Faith answered, and no one was there.

~ Old Saying

Ah but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a Heaven for?

~ Robert Browning

There is only one God. We human beings have given God different names and found different ways of worship. If we are all going to the dining room, does it matter which direction we come from?

~ Gandhi

But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner who needed it most?

~ Mark Twain

Religion's fine, as long as you don't believe any of that horseshit.

~ Kennedy Poyser

Only two things are infinite -- the universe and stupidity -- and I'm not sure about the former.

~ Albert Einstein

I am a deeply religious non-believer. This is a somewhat new kind of religion.

~ Albert Einstein