Courtesy of Alan Ayers
The SOUTH...
Our tea is sweet,
Words are long,
Days are warm,
And faith is strong.
- Unknown
We don't become Southern,
We're Born that way.
You is kind. You is smart. You is important.
-Aibileen Clark from the movie, "The Help"
I like to be a free spirit.
Some don't like that,
but that's the way I am.
- Princess Diana
I'm going to make everything around me beautiful -
that will be my life.
- Elsie de Wolfe
Happiness is the settling of the soul into its
most appropriate spot.
- Aristotle
A flower cannot live without sunshine,
and man cannot live without love.
- Unknown
Strive to be optimistic and positive, accept you
will have obstacles and, above all, have FAITH.
- Ashleigh Austin
A flower does not think of competing with the flower next to it.
It just blooms.
- Unknown
My business is not to remake myself, but make the absolute best of
what God made.
- Robert Browning
Creativity is not a competition.
- Autumn Sky Hall
Be your own competition.
- Autumn Sky Hall
Put your ear down by your HEART
and listen HARD.
-Unknown
When you look at a field of dandelions,
you can either see a hundred weeds
or a hundred wishes.
- Unknown
The best people possess a feeling for beauty, the courage
to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, the capacity
for sacrifice. Ironically, their virtues make them vulnerable:
they are often wounded, sometimes destroyed.
- Ernest Hemingway
The earth has music for those who listen.
- Shakespeare
There are only two ways to live your life.
One is as though nothing is a miracle.
The other is as though everything is a miracle.
- Albert Einstein
When you really pay attention,
everything is your teacher.
- Unknown
According to recognized aero technical tests, the bumblebee cannot fly
because of the shape and weight of his body in relation to the total wing area.
But the bumblebee doesn't know this, so he goes ahead and flies anyway.
- Unknown
There will be a few times in your life when all your instincts will tell you
to do something, something that defies logic, upsets your plans, and may
seem crazy to others. When that happens, you do it. Listen to your instincts
and ignore the odds, ignore the complications, and just go for it.
- Judith McNaught
Weep not for what you have lost, fight for what you have.
Weep not for what is dead, fight for what was born in you.
Weep not for the one who abandoned you, fight for who is with you.
Weep not for those who hate you, fight for those who want you.
Weep not for your past, fight for your present struggle.
Weep not for your suffering, fight for your happiness.
With things that are happening to us, we begin to learn that
nothing is impossible to solve, just move forward.
- Pope Francis
Help me remember that each person has a journey that is not for my understanding.
- Marci Struzinski
Children of the Inner Light
You can't live your life for other people. You've got to do what's right for you,
even if it hurts some people you love.
- Nicholas Sparks, The Notebook
The saddest people I've ever met are the ones who don't care deeply about anything
at all. Passion and satisfaction go hand in hand, and without them, any happiness
is only temporary, because there's nothing to make it last.
- Nicholas Sparks, Dear John
There are some people who could hear you speak a thousand words and still not
understand you. And there are others who will understand without you even
speaking a word.
- Unknown
I think it's very healthy to spend time alone. You need to know how to be alone and
not defined by another person.
- Oscar Wilde
If you love something, love it completely, cherish it, say it,
but most importantly, show it. Life is finite and fragile,
and just because something is there one day, it might not be
the next. Never take that for granted.
Say what you need to say, then say a little more. Say too much,
Show too much. Love too much. Everything is temporary, but love.
Love outlives us all.
- R. Queen
If you have a Garden and a Library,
You have Everything you need.
- Unknown
Books are the quietest and most constant of friends, they are the most
accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.
- Charles W. Elliot
The world is so empty if one thinks only of mountains, rivers, cities,
But to know someone who thinks and feels with us,
And who, though distant, is close to us in spirit,
This makes the earth for us, an inhabited garden.
- Goethe
Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself and know that
everything in this life has a purpose, there are no mistakes, no
coincidences, all events are blessings given to us to learn from.
- Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
Should you shield the valleys from the windstorms, you would never
see the beauty of their canyons.
- Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
The way to love anything is to realize it might be lost.
- G.K. Chesterton
Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory.
- Dr. Seuss
It is wrong to think that love comes from long companionship and persevering courtship.
Love is the offspring of spiritual affinity and unless that affinity is created in a moment,
it will not be created for years or even generations.
- Khalil Gibran
Life is Like a Camera
Just focus on what's important
Capture the GOOD TIMES
Develop from negatives,
and if things don't turn out
- just take another shot.
-Unknown
Faith is not faith unless you are willing to step off the edge,
with no security to carry you, and "let God be God."
- Ashleigh Austin
...I will trust in the shelter of Your wings.
- Psalm 61:4 (NKJV)
Hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny.
- C.S. Lewis
Risk - Don't be afraid to go out on a limb...
that's where the fruit is.
- Unknown
Getting over a painful experience is much like crossing the monkey
bars. You have to let go at some point in order to move forward.
- C.S. Lewis
Never be ashamed of a scar...
It simply means you were stronger than whatever tried to hurt you.
-Unknown
What could have been is always more haunting than what once was.
- Unknown
Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start
today and make a new ending.
- Maria Robinson
Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what's right.
- Isaac Asimov
Four Things You Can't Recover:
The Stone
after the throw,
The Word
after it's said,
The Occasion
after it's missed,
The Time
after it is gone.
- Unknown
Today you are You,
that is truer than true.
There is no one alive who
is Youer than You.
- Dr. Seuss
As you choose to see Life, so shall Life see You!
- Ashleigh Austin
The measure of love is to love without measure.
- Saint Augustine
Don't tell me the Sky is the limit,
when there are footprints on the Moon.
- Unknown
What the caterpillar calls the end of the world,
the master calls a butterfly.
- Richard Bach from Illusions
Together is the perfect place to be because it's there that you can be
delightfully imperfect, and there's nothing closer to perfection than
being loved just because you are.
- Maggie Lindley
There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hands...
- Richard Bach, from Illusions
Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they're yours.
- Richard Bach, from Illusions
Here is a test to find whether your mission on earth is finished:
If you're alive, it isn't.
- Richard Bach, from Illusions
Don't you think it's better to be extremely happy for a short while,
even if you lose it, then just be okay for your whole life?
- from The Traveler's Wife
A bit of fragrance always clings to the hand
that gives you roses.
- Chinese Proverb
Friendship isn't about who you have known the longest.
It's about those who came and never left your side...
- Unknown
Keep a green tree in your heart and perhaps a singing bird will come.
- Chinese Proverb
It is better to have a heart without words than words without a heart.
- Mahatma Ghandi
People are like stained-glass windows.
They sparkle and shine in the sun when the sun is out,
but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is
revealed only if there is light from within.
- Elizabeth Kubler-Ross
What colors our perspectives are our experiences.
- Ashleigh Austin
Love is after all
the Gift of Oneself.
- Unknown
Love is like a butterfly.
It goes where it pleases,
and pleases where it goes.
- Unknown
Distance is never a barrier for the heart.
- Unknown
Whatever you do in life will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.
- Mahatma Ghandi
The greatest gift one can give to another person
is a deeper understanding of life and the ability
to love and believe in self.
- Chantal
The dream begins with a teacher who believes in you,
who tugs and pushes and leads you to the next plateau,
sometimes poking you with a sharp stick called 'truth.'
- Dan Rather
The people who make a difference in your life are not the ones
with the most credentials, the most money, or the most awards.
They are the ones that care.
- Charles Schultz
How long will the pain last?
All the rest of your life. But the thing to remember is that
not only the pain will last, but the blessed memories as well.
Tears are the proof of life. The more love, the more tears.
If this be true, then how could we ever ask that the pain
cease altogether? For then, the memory of love would go
with it. The pain is the price we pay for love."
Excerpt from "Tears are the Proof of Life"
- Author Unknown
Memories are the ties that bind us...
heart to heart, soul to soul.
- Unknown
Every moment spent in unhappiness is a moment of happiness lost.
- Leo Buscaglia
We have all been placed on this earth to discover our own path,
and we will never be happy if we live someone else's idea of life.
- James Van Praagh
The sun shines not on us, but in us.
The rivers flow not past, but through us...
- John Muir
Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and
pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.
- John Muir
There is not a person on the face of the earth
who can steal your joy, strength, or dream
unless you allow it.
- Ashleigh Austin
Feel with your Heart...
See with an Open Mind...
Love with your Soul...
- Unknown
Remembered joys are never past.
- James Montgomery
It is such a comfort to drop the tangles of Life
into God's Hands and leave them there.
- Unknown
We are not human beings on a spiritual journey.
We are spiritual beings on a human journey.
- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Love alone is capable of uniting living beings in such a
way as to complete and fulfill them, for it alone takes them
and joins them by what is deepest in themselves.
- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Listen to the beating of your heart.
The people you love are there inside...
Where all things matter most,
They live on.
- Unknown
Earth and sky, woods and fields, lakes and rivers,
the mountain and the sea, are excellent schoolmasters,
and teach some of us more than we can ever learn
from books.
-John Lubbock
Life's not about waiting for the storm to pass...
It's about learning to dance in the rain!
- Vivian Greene
Quiet Heals.
Adopt the pace of Nature:
Her Secret is Patience.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
All things must come to the soul from its roots,
from where it is planted.
- Saint Teresa of Avila
Live each day in the present, and make it beautiful.
If you really want to do something, you'll find a way.
If you don't, you'll find an excuse.
- Unknown
It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing
because you can only do a little.
- Sydney Smith, writer and clergyman (1771-1845)
Only when the last tree has been felled, the last river
poisoned, and the last fish caught, man will know that he
cannot eat money.
- Cree Saying
(Plant a tree to celebrate a Life well-lived.)
We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness.
God is the friend of silence. See how nature - trees, flowers, grass - grows
in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in
silence... we need silence to be able to touch souls.
- Mother Teresa
A happy life must be to a great extent a quiet life,
for it is only in an atmosphere of quiet that true joy can live.
- Bertrand Russell
There is a common ground that kindred spirits walk...
shared thoughts that forever bind their souls.
- Unknown
The best way to know life is to love many things.
- Vincent Van Gogh
...do small things with great love.
- Mother Teresa
Here is the deepest secret nobody knows.
Here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
And the sky of the sky of a tree called life;
Which grows higher than soul can hope or mind can hide.
And this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart.
I carry your heart.
I carry it in my heart.
- E.E. Cummings
If you love somebody enough, you can still hear
the laughter after they're gone.
- Unknown
If love could have saved you,
you would have lived forever.
- Unknown
Wherever you go, take your whole heart along.
All that matters is this moment.
... the eyes are the windows of the soul.
- Max Beerbohm
It's not only the scenery you miss by going too fast.
Enjoy Life... this is not a rehearsal.
Heal the past, live the present, dream the future.
Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born
at the age of 80 and gradually approach 18.
- Mark Twain
Live as if you were to die tomorrow;
Learn as if you were to live forever.
- Mahatma Gandhi
But now I know that the skin just veils the soul
For I have seen, the face of love
The grace of God, the face of love.
- Jewel
(From her song Face of Love,
Joy: A Holiday Collection album)
"What is Real?" asked the Rabbit one day...
"Does it mean having things that buzz inside you
and a stick-out handle?"
"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse.
"It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves
you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but
really loves you, then you become Real."
- Margery Williams, Velveteen Rabbit
You can kiss your family and friends good-bye and put miles
between you, but at the same time you carry them with you in
your heart, your mind, your stomach, because you do not just
live in a world but a world lives in you.
- Frederick Buechner
May you take time to reflect with gratitude and to
love and appreciate those whom God has chosen
to cross your Life's path.
- Ashleigh Austin
Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the
charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.
- Marcel Proust
I would rather have one rose and a kind word
from a friend while I'm here
than a whole truck load when I'm gone.
Flowers are like people --- if you really love them,
they'll love you back.
- Ashleigh Austin
A woman's heart is a deep ocean of secrets.
- Old Rose, from Titanic
We try to give what little we have to somebody who hasn't got it,
and maybe they try to give us back some of what they have that
we haven't got. That's what love is. That's all it is.
- Anne Rivers Siddons
Life is precious. There is no time to leave important words unsaid
or a kindness undone.
- Flavia
Perhaps love is the process of my leading you gently
back to yourself.
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
The arms of love encompass you with your present, your past,
your future, the arms of love gather you together.
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Although the act of nurturing another's spiritual growth has
the effect of nurturing one's own, a major characteristic of
genuine love is that the distinction between oneself and the
other is always maintained and preserved.
- M. Scott Peck
Some people give without asking and remember every kindness.
Perhaps this is love in its purest form.
- Flavia
Many persons have the wrong idea about what constitutes
true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification,
but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.
- Helen Keller
When we give of ourselves, we share the finest gift of all.
- Flavia
Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without
and know we cannot live within.
- James Baldwin
To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying Amen to
what the world tells you ought to prefer, is to have kept your
soul alive.
- Robert Louis Stevenson
God determines who walks into your life...
it's up to you to decide who you let walk away,
who you let stay, and who you refuse to let go.
-Unknown
Love never reasons but profusely gives;
gives, like a thoughtless prodigal, its all,
and trembles lest it has done too little.
-Hannah Moore
Love is the highest respect.
Love means caring for somebody more than yourself.
It is putting somebody else's pleasure and happiness and
well-being above your own. It is sacrificing yourself for
another and enjoying doing it. It is knowing someone's
every fault and blemish and not caring.
No one can define it; it just is.
- Dorothy Dix (1860-1951)
I believe in the Sun when it is not shining.
I believe in Love even when I cannot feel it.
I believe in God even when He is silent.
- Unknown
The miracle is this: the more we share the more we have.
- Leonard Nimoy
Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over,
it became a butterfly.
- Proverb
Life is not measured by the number of breaths
we take, but by the moments that
take our breath away.
- Unknown
And in the end, it's not the years in your life
that count. It's the LIFE in your years.
- Unknown
No one can confidently say that he will still be living
tomorrow.
- Euripides
Live so that when your children hear these words
they think of you...
Fairness, Caring, Integrity, Honesty, Love, Trust.
- Anonymous
What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us;
what we have done for others and the world remains
and is immortal.
- Albert Pike
We are all pencils in the hand of God.
- Mother Teresa
You don't stop playing because you grow old...
You grow old because you stop playing.
- Unknown
The soul would have no rainbow,
had the eyes no tears.
-John Vance Cheney
Is your heart and spirit bitter or better
because of Life's journeys?
- Unknown
Some people, no matter how old they get,
never lose their beauty - they merely move it
from their faces into their hearts.
- Martin Buxbaum
When you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced;
live your life so that when you die,
the world cries, and you rejoice.
- Cherokee Saying
A mother holds our hand for a while...
but our heart forever.
- Unknown
Life gives us friends so we can share the growing up...
and growing down and old.
- Unknown
There are no goodbyes of the heart.
- Unknown
Home is where your story begins.
-Annie Danielson
No cord nor cable can so forcibly draw,
or hold so fast,
as love can do with a twined thread.
-Robert Burton (1577-1640)
"And what is as important as knowledge?" asked the
mind.
"Caring and seeing with the heart," answered the
soul.
- Flavia Weedn
We are all perpetual students of research and discovery
at the University of Life where we never fully complete
our courses and never receive our diplomas.
- Unknown
I'd rather have roses on my table,
than diamonds on my neck.
- Unknown
Giving up doesn't
always mean you
are weak . . .
Sometimes, it means you are strong
enough to let go.
- Unknown
A friend is someone who knows the song in
your heart . . .
and can sing it back to you even when you
have forgotten the words.
- Unknown
They say it only takes a minute to find
a special person ...
an hour to appreciate them ...
a day to love them ...
but an entire lifetime to forget them.
- Unknown
More to Come!