What follows are miscellaneous quotes and poems that we have collected over the years for one reason or another. A lot of these I have written down in my DayTimer as I have come across them and they are meaningful (or funny) to me. Hope you like them. I'll add to the list from time to time.

Solitude
Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone.
For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,
But has trouble enough of its own.
Sing, and the hills will answer;
Sigh, it is lost on the air.
The echoes bound to a joyful sound,
But shrink from voicing care.

Rejoice, and men will seek you;
Grieve, and they turn and go.
They want full measure of all your pleasure,
But they do not need your woe.
Be glad, and your friends are many;
Be sad, and you lose them all.
There are none to decline your nectared wine,
But alone you must drink life's gall.

Feast, and your halls are crowded;
Fast, and the world goes by.
Succeed and give, and it helps you live,
But no man can help you die.
There is room in the halls of pleasure
For a long and lordly train,
But one by one we must all file on 
Through the narrow aisles of pain.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Don't let your throat tighten
with fear. Take sips of breath
all day and night, before death
closes your mouth.
Rumi
My Worst Habit
My worst habit is I get so tired of winter
I become a torture to those I'm with.
If you're not here, nothing grows.
I lack clarity. My words
tangle and knot up.
How to cure bad water? Send it back to the river.
How to cure bad habits? Send me back to you.
When water gets caught in habitual whirlpools,
dig a way out through the bottom
to the ocean. There is a secret medicine
given only to those who hurt so hard
they can't hope.
The hopers would feel slighted if they knew.
Look as long as you can at the friend you love,
no matter whether that friend is moving away from you
or coming back toward you.
Rumi
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 the diamond glints on snow
I am the sunlight on ripened grain
I am the gentle autumn 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.
Mary E. Frye
We move in the same mental spaces. In some of our dreams we wander the same streets, trying tom get back to the same house. One form of loneliness is to have a memory and no one to share it with.
Phyllis Rose
But that is the way we are made: we don't reason, where we feel; we just feel.
From A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain
As long as I kept moving, my grief streamed out behind me like a swimmer's long hair in water. I knew the weight was there but it didn't touch me. Only when I stopped did the slick, dark stuff of it come floating around my face, catching my arms and throat till I began to drown. So I just didn't stop. The substance of grief is not imaginary. It's as real as rope or the absence of air, and like both those things, it can kill. My body understood there was no safe place for me to be.
From The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
Faith, like light, should always be simple and unbending; while love, like warmth, should beam forth on every side, and bend to every necessity of our brother.
Martin Luther
Faith is not about having the right answers. Faith is a feeling; faith is a hunch. It's a hunch that there is something bigger connecting it all, connecting us all together. And that feeling - that hunch - is God.
From the movie Keeping the Faith
Our opinion of people depends less upon what we see in them than upon what they make us see in ourselves.
Sara Grand
Should you go first and I remain
One thing I'd have you do;
Walk slowly down that long, lone path,
For soon I'll follow you.
I'll want to know each step you take
That I may walk the same
For someday down that lonely road,
You'll hear me call your name.
Albert Rowswell
Upon those who step into the same rivers flow other and yet other waters.
Heraclitus
'True friendship comes when silence between two people is comfortable.' Well, who was your best friend, if not God, and what did you really need to say to Him or He to you when you both already knew the most and only important thing, which was that you would always be there for each other.
From Hideaway by Dean Koontz
But I repeat, you have to look for the joy. Look for the light of God that is hitting your life, and you will find sparkles you didn't know were there.
Barbara Johnson
To me it is one of God's greatest miracles that we can still go on existing and find the wherewithal to support ourselves!
Martin Luther
May those who love us love us; and those who don't love us, may God turn their hearts. And if He cannot turn their hearts, may he turn their ankles so that we may know them by their limping.
From the movie Keeping the Faith
There is no such thing as a dangerous or deadly weapon. There are only deadly men.
From Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein
After a while you learn the subtle difference between holding a hand and sharing a life, and you learn that love doesn't mean possession and company doesn't mean security and loneliness is universal.

And you learn that kisses aren't contracts and presents aren't promises, and you begin to accept your defeats with your head up and your eyes open with the grace of a woman not the grief of a child.

And you learn to build your hope on today as the future has a way of falling apart in midflight because tomorrow's ground can be too uncertain for plans, yet each step taken in a new direction creates a path toward the promise of a brighter dawn.

And you learn that even sunshine burns if you get too much, so you plant your own garden and nourish your own soul, instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.

And you learn that love, true love, always has joys and sorrows, seems ever present, yet is never quite the same becoming more than love and less than love, so difficult to define.

And you learn that through it all you really can endure, that you really are strong, that you do have value, and you learn and grow with every goodbye... you learn.
Anonymous
...one day we will learn that the heart can never be totally right if the head is totally wrong.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
...love is vast with levels upon levels. The big love that lasts forever, the love that we sing of in ballads, is possible to find... But sometimes there are small loves that glow and vanish like fireflies, and though they offer none of the long term joy of big love, they are far from meaningless. Listen to your heart, seize the day and those moments will repay your daring with a comfort all their own. Of course, there's danger and great risk in such rashness and it's not for everyone. Sometimes, in losing our heads, we may lose more than we bargained for. But sometimes just saying no is too gloomy an option... This was about luck and longing and the instinct to take what fate offered.
From McCall's by Owen Edwards
My dear children...you must know that there is nothing higher and stronger and more wholesome and useful for life in after years than some good memory, especially a memory connected with childhood, with home. People talk to you a great deal about your education, but some fine, sacred memory, preserved from childhood, is perhaps the best education. If a man carries many such memories with him into life, he is safe to the end of his days, and if we have only one good memory left in our hearts, even that may sometime be the means of saving us.
From The Brothers Karamazov