This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Queen's U chapter.
Words can have such a profound effect on us. Finding a quote that encapsulates how I’m feeling or have felt is one of the most powerful feelings in the world. I write down quotes in a journal or save them on Pinterest to look back on them later. Sometimes I just need a few someone else’s words to inspire me to write my own or help me to feel like I’m not alone in what I feel, or maybe just to encourage me to do better. Now, I’m sharing these words with you, so that maybe you can find a semblance of peace in them.
- “With freedom, books, flowers, and the moon, who could not be happy?” – Oscar Wilde
- “Dance first. Think later. It’s the natural order.” – Samuel Beckett
- “It is a risk to love. What if it doesn’t work out? Ah, but what if it does.” – Peter McWilliams
- “The stars nodded, the ocean agreed, The flowers chorused, ‘Bloom now – Bloom free’ – Rise again.” – Tess Guinery
- “You are the universe experiencing itself.” – Alan Watts
- “This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.” – Walt Whitman
- “Run to the rescue with love and peace will follow.” – River Phoenix
- “We’re all worth it, man. We’re all worth millions of planets and stars and galaxies and universes.” – River Phoenix
- “She has never believed herself fit to be loved by any person. But now she has a new life, of which this is the first moment, and even after many years have passed she will still think: Yes, that was it, the beginning of my life.” – Normal People, Sally Rooney
- “Live for art and die happy.” – Unknown
- “That is how I look at it; to continue, to continue, that is what is necessary.” – Vincent Van Gogh
- “To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.” – Joseph Chilton Pearce
- “‘Finding yourself’ is not really how it works. You aren’t a ten-dollar bill in last winter’s coat pocket. You are also not lost. Your true self is right there, buried under cultural conditioning, other people’s opinions, and inaccurate conclusions you drew as a kid that became your beliefs about who you are. ‘Finding yourself’ is actually returning to yourself. An unlearning, an excavation, a remembering who you were before the world got its hands on you.” – Emily McDowell
- “The belonging you seek is not behind you…it is ahead.” – Maz Kanata, Star Wars: The Force Awakens
- “You have to let go of that feeling that you need to prove yourself.” – Abraham Hicks
- “If you get tired, learn to rest, not to quit.” – Banksy
I hope that something in these words will help you to keep going—to know that whatever you’re feeling is okay and that you’re not alone.