Stay

I realized that you're in people's lives for a reason. They want you there. It's important to stay.
--V.

Hardest

It isn't easy, it doesn't count if it's easy, it's the hardest thing. Forgiveness. Which is maybe where love and justice finally meet.
--Tony Kushner

Grind

Though the mills of God grind slowly.
Yet they grind exceeding small.
--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Leave

no one leaves home until home
is a damp voice in your ear saying
leave, run now, i don't know what
i've become.
--Warsan Shire

Children

So many children. You don't walk hundreds of miles with babies unless where you are headed is safer than where you are fleeing.
--Leah McElrath

Thanks

Thanks

Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water thanking it
standing by the windows looking out
in our directions

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks we are saying thank you
in the faces of the officials and the rich
and of all who will never change
we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us
our lost feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is

--W. S. Merwin

Reach

Cynicism is a hardening, a calcification of the soul. Hope is a stretching of its ligaments, a limber reach for something greater.
--Maria Popova

Rule of Law

Often I fear it will all come to this, that the rule of law and the rights of men will be destroyed by sectarian mischief and nationalistic recklessness.
--Roger Ebert

Never

Thought I saw an eagle,
But it might have been a vulture.
I never could decide.
--Leonard Cohen

Kindness

If most everything is purely capitalist, a society cannot really invest in gentleness and kindness. The only lesson that people will really learn is that their neighbors and peers, young and old, are commodities.
--Umair Haque

Virtue

Music is the movement of sound to reach the soul for the education of its virtue.
--Plato

Words

Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all.
--Winston Churchill

Eternity

Eternity isn't a long time. Eternity has nothing to do with time. Eternity is the dimension of here and now which thinking and time cuts out.
--Joseph Campbell

Today

Let's lay it right on the line. Bigotry and racism are among the deadliest social ills plaguing the world today.
--Stan Lee (1968)

Profound

Religion is a phase a species goes through when it evolves enough intelligence to ask profound questions, but not enough to answer them.
--Bill Flavel

Finding

Prosperity knits a man to the World. He feels that he is "finding his place in it," while really it is finding its place in him.
--C.S. Lewis

Lurks

In all ages, whatever the form and name of government, be it monarchy, republic, or democracy, an oligarchy lurks behind the façade.
--Ronald Syme (The Roman Revolution; 1939)

Depend

Today is only one day in all the days that will ever be. But what will happen in all the other days that ever come can depend on what you do today.
--Ernest Hemingway

Drop

No drop of water believes that it is to blame for the flood.
--Jan Kriegel

Voters

Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President and senators and congressmen and government officials, but the voters of this country.
--Franklin D. Roosevelt

Repeat

Very often, when leaders repeat things over and over, they are preparing you for when that meme actually emerges in reality.
--Timothy D. Snyder

Reveal

They let themselves weep, for unlike those who think tears indicate weakness they know that they reveal humanity.
--Eliot A. Cohen