I don’t know about you, but finding a quote that perfectly sums up a feeling or idea that hits you right in the chest is one of my favorite feelings. Because I want to capture those feelings and save them for when I need them next, I keep a quote journal in my desk where I can write powerful words when I’m lucky enough to find them. Every so often, I flip back through the journal to find inspiration, lift myself up, or remind myself of brilliant ideas. Some quotes are one line, some take up multiple pages. Some I find online, some from books or songs, one from a person I passed by on the sidewalk. Some are about life, others are about society and history (history major, can’t help it), some are about bravery. While I have too many quotes to write them all here, these are some of the favorites I gravitate back to (in no particular order). Please enjoy this random collection of words strung together, hopefully one of them inspires you.
1. “The more you create, the more powerful you become. The more you consume, the more powerful others become.” — James Clear, motivational author and speaker (and Denison alum!)
2. “I will never have this version of me again. Let me slow down and be with her.” — Rupi Kaur, poet
3. “So, no, I don’t pursue balance. Balance is boring. I seek satisfaction instead, and I find it most often in the challenges I face, in the work of meeting them, and in the unexpected lessons learned when I try to do something hard.” — Vivian Howard, chef and cookbook author
4. “It’s okay to be scared. Being scared means you’re about to do something really, really brave.”
5. “I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the … Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice… who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a ‘more convenient season.’ Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice, and that when they fail to do this they become dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.” — Martin Luther King Jr., (no description needed)
6. “Dreams aren’t found, they’re made.” — Kids That Fly (lyric from “Kiss Her You Fool”), band
7. “If you look at the people in your circle and you don’t get inspired, you don’t have a circle, you have a cage.” — Nipsey Hussle, rapper
8. “The world moves on and we must move with it.” — Lady Mary Crawley, character in the Downton Abbey franchise
9. “Tough times don’t last, but tough people do.” — Dr. Terrance Dean, professor at Denison University
10. “Courage is not the absence of fear but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear. The brave may not live forever, but the cautious do not live at all.” — Prince Phillipe, character in The Princess Diaries series
11. “I trust myself, the universe, and the timing of my life.”
12. “What to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, hypocrisy – a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour. Allow me to say, in conclusion, notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented, of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this country. There are forces in operation which must inevitably work the downfall of slavery. ‘The arm of the Lord is not shortened,’ and the doom of slavery is certain. I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope.” — Frederick Douglass, former slave and abolitionist
13. “I’m not any better than anyone else but I’ll be darned if anyone else is better than me.” — Gloria Gaynor, singer
14. “Average is as close to the bottom as it is to the top.” — Mr. Dunn, my high school principal, superintendent, and basketball coach
15. “You find love where you make it.” — Hipjoint and Sherry St. Germain (in “Do It”), musicians
16. “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically lifts others.” — Marianne Williamson, motivational author and speaker
17. “People pleasing is not a virtue, and where there is tension, there is progress.”
18. “I don’t measure America by its achievement but by its potential.” — Shirley Chishol, politician
19. “I think you just gotta have the bad days so you can love the good days even more.” — Alexander Cooper, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Day
20. “There is no strength where there is no struggle.” — Mr. Sigworth, high school math teacher
21. “We will fight when we must fight, but I will never allow us to get so wrapped in the fighting that we start to think fighting is the point. The point is what lies on the other side.” — Pete Buttegieg, politician
22. “Write about what disturbs you, particularly if it bothers no one else.” — Kathryn Stockett (in The Help), author
23. “Good things are coming our way.” — random Denisonian I passed on the sidewalk
P.S. Religious sentiments are not my own, the quotes are just really good.
P.P.S. Not all quotes may be from the original author, I just quoted who I heard them from myself.