In the woods, if you stopped, if you grew still, you'd hear a whole new set of sounds, wind rasping through silhouetted leaves and the cries and chatter of blue jays and brown thrashers and redbirds and sparrows, the calling of crows and hawks, squirrels barking, frogs burping, the far braying of dogs, armadillos snorkeling through dead leaves.

Every dog starts life with blank canvas. His destiny is etched by the hands of the painter, and each one an artist's original. The portrait painted depends on how the brush is held. Paint with hostility, a dog learns to fight, Paint with cruelty, a dog learns to fear, Paint with affection and a dog learns to love, Every dog is the product of its environment. Bad dogs are not born, they are created. It the portrait is flawed, look the artist. Stop blaming the dogs.

The bat is dun with wrinkled wings       Like fallow article, And not a song pervades his lips,       Or none perceptible. His small umbrella, quaintly halved,       Describing in the air An arc alike inscrutable, –       Elate philosopher! Deputed from what firmament       Of what astute abode, Empowered with what malevolence       Auspiciously withheld. To his adroit Creator       Ascribe no less the praise; Beneficent, believe me,       His eccentricities.

As she stood there looking about, that radio sound resolved into the bluff baritone of Burl Ives, encouraging all the world to have a holly jolly Christmas, and never mind it was the third week of March. The voice was coming from the attached garage, a dingy building with a single roll-up door and four square windows looking into it, milky with filth.

I was just sitting in Target, just getting over my cold. I blew my nose and I see these people looking at me and kind of whispering and pointing. Finally, I went, 'Is everything okay? Did I do something wrong? Do I have a booger on my face and no one's telling me?' I'm just not used to it.

A little flower that blooms in may, A lovely sunset at the end of a day, Someone helping a stranger along the way, That's heaven to me.

Camping rules: •stare at the fire, •listen to the birds, •jump in the lake, •read, •take a nap, •relax, •watch the sunset, •cook over the fire, •breath the fresh air.

Have you ever watched a crab on the shore crawling backward in search of the Atlantic Ocean, and missing? That's the way the mind of man operates.

God created us with an overwhelming desire to soar. Our desire to develop and use every ounce of potential He’s placed in us is not egotistical. He designed us to be tremendously productive and “to mount up with wings like eagles,” realistically dreaming of what He can do with our potential.

As long as the mind and ego control the direction of creating, there will always be problems in the outer world, for the ego thinks only of itself and lives in duality. But when the heart is in control, everything comes back to balance, for the heart feels and knows only the oneness of life.

I feet empty yet so full of emotion, like the smallest thing could push me over the edge, What do you do when there is nothing but pain left inside you, And what if everything we were looking for also existed in our dreams, How do you explain something you don't even understand yourself.

In the in between times, when day fades into night or spring melts into summer. And at the in between places, where the paths converge a veil is parted between the worlds, and one may entered the otherworld, the world of fairy. But use much caution dear one, for you have entered the fairy crossing, and none returned unchanged.

God looked down on his planned paradise and said I need a caretaker—so God made a farmer.

In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.

Suffering is not holding you. You are holding suffering. When you become good at the art of letting sufferings go, then you’ll come to realize how unnecessary it was for you to drag those burdens around with you. You’ll see that no one else other than you was responsible. The truth is that existence wants your life to become a festival.

A duck was about to cross the road, when a chicken looked at him and said "Don't do it man, you will never hear the end of it."

To a gargoyle on the ramparts of Notre Dame as Esmeralda rides off with Gringoire Quasimodo says. "Why was I not made of stone like thee?

In the 1880s, women were decades away from earning the right to vote. Few owned property - if they were even permitted to do so. In addition to childcare obligations, many toiled in work that was either underpaid or not paid at all. Essentially, the gears of progress for women were moving slowly in just about every arena of life.

Everything can go to hell in less than a second. In moments like this, you feel death creeping in, and you know nothing will ever be the same. But you need to do whatever it takes to survive. —MONEY HEIST—

For attractive lips, speak words of kindness. For lovely eyes, seek out the good in people. For a slim figure, share your food with the hungry. For beautiful hair, let a child run his fingers through it once a day. For poise, walk with the knowledge that you will never walk alone.

Dear matchbox I hope you're doing well in his pocket. He is burning down all your mates for his satisfaction. Sometimes you escaped from his palm grip to save them. But you come back in his hand as he picked you up to take out another mate of yours and burns his head to burn my face. I'm burning down to my end. And he will throw you off the same way as he threw me. But don't you cry because you still have a life. Look at me I was born and die being the ashes in dark Your faithfully Cigarette

l'm a big believer in small, dark, cozy bedrooms. I would describe myself as introspective - I feel things first, and then I think them through - and I need the enveloping comfort of a little squirrel's nest when I have to retreat from the world to recharge.

From fairy tales, to her ponytail I'm grew up... From his apple pie to his Adam's apple He is now a man.

You're the Salt to my Pepper, The Stamp to my Letter, You're the Hi to my Five, The Tom Daley to my Dive, If you'll be my William, I'll be your Kate, We could go out on romantic dinner dates, But in reality its not you, Its me, together forever, its just a fantasy.

I closed my eyes and curled my fists around the things I knew for sure: That a scallop has thirty-five eyes, all blue. That a tuna will suffocate if it ever stops swimming. That I was loved. That this time, it was not me who broke.

He that fought the lion must surely have the lion’s claws in his body.

There was a frantic scurry among the Palace servants when the orders were received from the Queen that a twenty-four-foot giant must be seated with Her Majesty in the Great Ballroom within the next half-hour.

My earliest memories of my mom were of her multi-tasking - preparing dinner while checking on homework and housework; clearing the dinner plates while setting out bowls for breakfast; making sure we ate our breakfast while lining up bread, lunch meats, apples, and snacks assembly-line style so we could make our lunches.

Temptations are very troublesome; for tempted souls are like the persons we read of that were possessed: sometimes the evil spirit threw them into the fire, and sometimes into the water: so Satan comes sometimes with one temptation, and sometimes with another. Satan hurried their bodies, and he as much hurries the minds of those that are tempted.

Road trips require a couple of things: a well-balanced diet of caffeine, salt and sugar and an excellent selection of tunes – oh, and directions.

One of life's best coping mechanisms is to know the difference between an inconvenience and a problem. Oh! If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on fire. Uh! then you’ve got a problem. Everything else is an inconvenience. Life is inconvenient. Life is lumpy. A lump in the oatmeal, a lump in the throat and a lump in the breast are not the same kind of lump. One needs to learn the difference.