I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed and that necessary.

Margaret Atwood

Be a presence first, a person second.

Adyashanti 

When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured.

Herman Hesse

Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children.

Kahlil Gibran (1883 - 1931)

Be yourself—not your idea of what you think somebody else’s idea of yourself should be.

Henry David Thoreau

If it doesn’t challenge you, it doesn’t change you.

Fred Devito

It is a simple truth that if we identify ourselves as being fundamentally pure, strong, and capable we will actually develop these qualities, but if we continue to think of ourselves as dull and foolish, that is what we will become.

Lama Thubten Yeshe 

No living creature, not even man, has achieved, in the centre of his sphere, what the bee has achieved in her own: and were some one from another world to descend and ask of the earth the most perfect creation of the logic of life, we should needs have to offer the humble comb of honey.

Maurice Maeterlinck, The Life Of The Bee, 1924

Source: The Healist

Be crumbled. So wild flowers will come up where you are. You have been stony for too many years. Try something different. Surrender.

Rumi

I am always trying to convey something that can’t be conveyed, to explain something which is inexplicable, to tell about something I have in my bones, something which can be expressed only in the bones.

Franz Kafka

Better to be slapped with the truth than kissed with a lie.

Russian Proverb

Sometimes I doubt and sometimes I believe. And I like not making myself believe when I am doubting, and not making myself doubt when I am believing. Surely neither God nor Accident need my consistency.

Hugh Prather

Music in the soul can be heard by the universe.

Lao Tzo

Be not afraid of growing slowly, be afraid only of standing still.

- Chinese Proverb

Now more than ever do I realize that I will never be content with a sedentary life, that I will always be haunted by thoughts of a sun-drenched elsewhere.

— Isabelle Eberhardt 

I am not afraid of my truth anymore and I will not omit pieces of me to make you comfortable.

Alex Elle

Loafe with me on the grass, loose the stop from your throat, Not words, not music or rhyme I want, not custom or lecture, not even the best, Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice.

Walt Whitman,��Song of Myself, Part 5 

Breathe. You’re going to be okay. Breathe and remember that you’ve been in this place before. You’ve been this uncomfortable and anxious and scared, and you’ve survived. Breathe and know that you can survive this too. These feelings can’t break you. They’re painful and debilitating, but you can sit with them and eventually, they will pass. Maybe not immediately, but sometime soon, they are going to fade and when they do, you’ll look back at this moment and laugh for having doubted your resilience. I know it feels unbearable right now, but keep breathing, again and again. This will pass. I promise it will pass.

Daniell Koepke

The true genius shudders at incompleteness — imperfection — and usually prefers silence to saying the something which is not everything that should be said.

Edgar Allan Poe

I don’t give a shit what the world thinks. I was born a bitch, I was born a painter, I was born fucked. But I was happy in my way. You did not understand what I am. I am love. I am pleasure, I am essence, I am an idiot, I am an alcoholic, I am tenacious. I am; simply I am … You are a shit.

Frida Kahlo, from an unsent letter to Diego Rivera