"Lord, keep your arm around my shoulder
and Your hand over my mouth."
~Anonymous

"People will forget what you do,
and people will forget what you say,
but people will never forget
how you make them feel."
~Anonymous

"Be who you are and say what you feel,
because those who mind don't matter,
and those who matter don't mind."
~Dr. Seuss

"If you have only one smile in you,
give it to the people you love.
Don't be surly at home,
then go out in the street
and start grinning 'Good morning'
at total strangers."
~Maya Angelou

"Tears on the outside, fall on the ground
and are slowly swept away.
Tears on the inside, fall on the soul
and stay, and stay, and stay.
~Anonymous

"It's nice to be important,
but more important to be nice."
~Anonymous

"Say what you mean,
mean what you say,
but don't say it mean."
~Anonymous

"Grownups never understand anything for themselves,
and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever
explaining things to them."
~Antoine de Saint-Exupery The Little Prince"

"May you always see the world
through the eyes of a child."
~CJ Heck

"Parents need to fill
a child's bucket of self-esteem
so high that the rest of the world
can't poke enough holes in it
to drain it dry."
~Alvin Price

"We cough to clear our throats.
We sigh to clear our hearts."
~T.S. Matthews

"The great man is he who does not lose his child-heart."
~Mencius

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
~Albert Einstein

"I love the man that can smile in trouble,
that can gather strength from distress,
and grow brave by reflection."
~Thomas Paine, "The Crisis"

"The longer I live, the more beautiful life becomes."
~Frank Lloyd Wright

"All our guests bring happiness,
some by coming,
others by going."
~Anonymous

"When one tugs at a single thing in nature,
he finds it attached to the rest of the world."
~John Muir, naturalist and writer

"Level with your child by being honest.
Nobody spots a phony quicker than a child."
~Mary MacCracken

"Train up a child in the way he should go,
and when he is old, he will not depart from it."
~(Proverbs 22:6)

"You know that children are growing up
when they start asking questions that have answers."
~John J. Plomp

"If you can give your son or daughter only one gift,
let it be enthusiasm."
~Bruce Barton

"Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life.
It turns what we have into enough, and more.
It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order,
confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast,
a house into a home, a stranger into a friend.
Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today,
and creates a vision for tomorrow."
~Melody Beattie

"The truth is such a delightful thing
that it is delightful to tell it."
~Emily Dickinson

"Don't worry about people stealing your ideas.
If your ideas are any good,
you'll have to ram them down peoples' throats."
~Howard Aiken

"When a man is wrapped up in himself,
he makes a pretty small package."
~John Ruskin

"No one can make you feel inferior
without your consent."
~Eleanor Roosevelt

"I can't understand
why people are frightened of new ideas.
I'm frightened of the old ones."
~John Cage

"Wisdom doesn't automatically come with old age.
Nothing does -- except wrinkles.
It's true, some wines improve with age.
But only if the grapes were good in the first place."
~Abigail Van Buren

"Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions.
Small people always do that, but the really great ones
make you feel that you, too, can become great."
~Mark Twain

"I expect to pass through this world but once;
any good thing therefore that I can do,
or any kindness that I can show to any fellow creature,
let me do it now; let me not defer or neglect it,
for I shall not pass this way again."
~Ettiene DeGrellet

"Most folks are about as happy
as they make up their minds to be."
~Abraham Lincoln

"The words that enlighten the soul
are more precious than jewels."
~Hazrat Inayat Khan

"Family isn't about whose blood you have.
It's about who you care about."
~Trey Parker and Matt Stone

"I've never known any trouble
that an hour's reading didn't assuage."
~Charles DeSecondat

"Be the change you wish to see in the world."
~Gandhi

"Conscience is the inner voice
that warns us somebody may be looking."
~Henry Louis Mencken

"There are no grades of vanity,
only grades of ability in concealing it."
~Mark Twain

"It is often easier to fight for one's principles
than to live up to them."
~Adlai Stevenson

"The future belongs to those who believe
in the beauty of their dreams."
~Eleanor Roosevelt

"Writing is hard work ... and bad for the health."
~E.B. White

"Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a
blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form
on your forehead."
~Gene Fowler

"Write to be understood, speak to be heard, read to grow."
~Lawrence Clark Powell

"A writer lives in awe of words for they can be
cruel or kind, and they can change their meaning
right in front of you. They pick up flavors and
odors like butter in a refrigerator."
~Anonymous

"Writing came easy -- it would only get hard
when I got better at it."
~Garry Willis

"Writing, I think, is not apart from living.
Writing is a kind of double living. The writer
experiences everything twice. Once in reality
and once in the mirror which waits always before or behind."
~Catherine Drinker Bowen

"Writing is a solitary occupation. Family, friends,
and society are the natural enemies of the writer.
He must be alone, uninterrupted, and slightly savage
if he is to sustain and complete an undertaking."
~Jessamyn West

"To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not
what it's about, but the music the words make."
~Truman Capote

"The waste basket is the writer's best friend."
~Isaac Singer

"Fairy tales are more than true:
not because they tell us that dragons exist,
but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten."
~G.K. Chesterton

"I finally know what I want to be when I grow up."
~C.J. Heck

"Poetry ... is the opening and closing of a door,
leaving those who look through to guess
about what was seen during a moment."
~Carl Sandburg

"The destiny of the world
is determined less by the battles
that are lost and won than by the stories
it loves and believes in."
~Harold Goddard, The Meaning of Shakespeare

"The role of a writer is not to say
what we can all say,
but what we are unable to say."
~Anais Nin

"I began to realize how simple life could be
if one had a regular routine to follow
with fixed hours and a fixed salary
and very little original thinking to do.
The life of a writer is absolute hell
compared with the life of a businessman.
A person is a fool to become a writer."
~Roald Dahl

"There have been great societies that did not use the wheel,
but there have been no societies that did not tell stories."
~Ursula K. LeGuin

"The tale is often wiser than the teller."
~Susan Fletcher, Shadow Spinner

"In our time, when the literature for adults is deteriorating,
good books for children are the only hope, the only refuge."
~Isaac Bashevis Singer

"Thou shalt not' is soon forgotten,
but 'Once upon a time' lasts forever."
~Philip Pullman

"Words should be weighed, not counted."
~Jewish folk saying

"If stories come to you, care for them.
And learn to give them away where they are needed.
Sometimes a person needs a story more
than food to stay alive."
~Barry Lopez, Crow and Weasel

"If a book comes from the heart,
it will contrive to reach other hearts."
~Thomas Carlyle

"Story is the vehicle we use to make sense of our lives
in a world that often defies logic."
~Jim Trelease

"Of course it's true, but it may not have happened."
~Patricia Polacco's grandmother

"People who don't have stories in their cultures go nuts."
~Rafe Martin

"To hunt for symbols in a fairy tale is absolutely fatal."
~W.H. Auden

"In every generation, children's books mirror
the society from which they arise;
children always get the books their parents deserve."
~Leonard S. Marcus

"Adults are only obsolete children."
~Dr. Seuss

"As I look back on what I have written,
I can see that the very persons who have taken away my time
are those who have given me something to say."
~Katherine Paterson

"The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas."
~Linus Pauling

"To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism;
to steal from many is research."
~Oscar Wilde

"You see, I was one of those people
who do not believe in enchantments.
And because of that, I must suffer to be enchanted myself,
and to be chained and push this millstone around."
~Richard Kennedy, as the Chained Lady, "Crazy in Love"

"It's a fair-sized job to write a book
that people can be bothered just to read;
when they begin to steal copies,
you are really getting someplace."
~Ruth Stout

"Telling the proper stories is as if
you were approaching the throne of Heaven
in a fiery chariot."
~Baal Shem Tov, as quoted by Steve Sanfield

"God made man because he loves stories."
~Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlev, as quoted by Steve Sanfield

"Australian Aborigines say that the big stories,
the stories worth telling and retelling,
the ones in which you may find the meaning of your life,
are forever stalking the right teller,
sniffing and tracking like predators
hunting their prey in the bush."
~Robert Moss, Dreamgates