'To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering one must not love. But then one suffers from not loving. Therefore to love is to suffer, not to love is to suffer. To suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love. To be happy then is to suffer. But suffering makes one unhappy. Therefore, to be unhappy one must love, or love to suffer, or suffer from too much happiness. I hope you're getting this down'.

- Woody Allen, Love and Death

'What counts in making a happy marriage is not so much how
compatible you are, but how you deal with incompatibility'.

- Leo Tolstoy

THANKFUL

Today is a special day for me! I am thankful for everything!

'When men wish to construct or support a theory,
how they torture facts into their service'

- John MacKay
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, 1852

How to Know if You're Really in Love?

1. You know, because you have been told by your significant other, that your deep feelings are returned in kind.
2. The object of your affections makes you feel special and good about yourself.
3. If/when you feel jealous it is always fleeting; you trust your partner not to betray you or hurt your relationship.
4. Nothing makes you feel as serene as when you and your partner are together.
5. When you fight with your partner you usually make up within a few hours and you always agree that nothing is more important than you both being able to express your true feelings (even if they sometimes cause conflict).
6. Your partner never asks you to choose between him/her and your loyalties to your family and friends - if you do choose him/her over them you always have a good reason and it is always YOUR decision, and your decision alone.
7. Neither you or your partner feel the need to test the other's loyalties or feelings.
8. You are more yourself when with your partner than you are with anybody else.
9. If sex is part of your relationship it is by mutual desire and agreement without the slightest hint of commitment testing or persuasion.

(If you agree with 7 of the following 9 statements you are probably in love, if not it could be LUST or a fake physical attraction!)

My Promise

'When time comes you find yourself in deep trouble
Like a ship lost in the mid-sea during a storm
You want to cry and need a shoulder to lean on
Seem hopeless and could not move on...
Got no one around whom to count on.

Maybe you have totally forgotten me
Have given up on me for somebody
Think I am useless and nothing but garbage
So you shun and make a mock on me.

You might be surprised when you turn your back
See me smile with open arms and extended hands
For unlike them whom you prefer to be with than me
I'll never give up...
Turn my back on you.

I'll be your candle
Offer you light so you may not stumble'

'Atrás de um grande homem há sempre uma grande mulher'.

Behind a great man there is always a great woman.

- a Brazilian quote

'Never promise a poor person, and never owe a rich one'

- a Brazilian quote

Deeply in love..

'She is always in my dreams
And near in my screams
Everything perfect as it seems

One day when she starts forgetting me
How meaningless my life would be
Without her, life will keep nothing to see

One day when she stands far away
I'll start remembering each thing she used to say
And when she said with me she'll always stay

No matter and besides everything she has done
To me she will always be the one
And in my heart she is always there and never gone!'

'Água mole em pedra dura tanto bate até que fura'.

- 'Soft water against a hard stone will perforate it' or 'When you persist, you will get what you want'.

- a Brazilian quote

'For every ailing foot, there is a slipper'.

- a Brazilian quote

'The bottom line is that (a) people are never perfect, but love can be, (b) that is the one and only way that the mediocre and vile can be transformed, and (c) doing that makes it that. We waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead of creating the perfect love'.

Still Life With Woodpecker

- Tom Robbins

'You may wonder, 'How can I leave it all behind if I am just coming back to it? How can I make a new beginning if I simply return to the old?' The answer lies in the return. You will not come back to the 'same old thing.' What you return to has changed because you have changed. Your perceptions will be altered. You will not incorporate into the same body, status, or world you left behind. The river has been flowing while you were gone. Now it does not look like the same river'.

The Book of the Vision Quest

- Steven Foster

'Where so many hours have been spent in convincing myself that I am right, is there not some reason to fear I may be wrong?'

- Jane Austin

'Money is better than poverty,
if only for financial reasons'.

- Woody Allen

'Let me remember that each life must follow it's own course, and that what happens to other people has absolutely nothing to do with what happen to me'.

- Marjorie Holmes

'The great question...which I have not been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is "what does a woman want?".

- Sigmund Freud

'There is a hope for all of us. Well, anyway, if you don't die you live through it, day in, day out'.

- Mary Beckett

'You can have anything you want if you want is desperately enough. You must want it with an exuberance that errupts through the skin and joins the energy that created the world'

- Sheila Graham

'Only the heart knows how to find what is precious'.

- Fyodor Dostoyevsky

'Before I built a wall I'd ask to know what I was walling in or walling out'.

- Robert Frost

'Concern should drive us into action and not into a depression'.

- Karen Horney

'In solitude we give passionate attention to our lives, to our memories, to the details around us'.

- Virginia Woolf

'Marriage is an alliance entered into by a man who can't sleep with the window shut, and a woman who can't sleep with the window open'.

- George Bernard Shaw

'In every marriage more than a week old, there are grounds for divorce. The trick is to find, and continue to find, grounds for marriage'.

- Robert Anderson, Solitaire & Double Solitaire

'I offer you peace. I offer you love. I offer you friendship. I see your beauty. I hear your need. I feel your feelings. My wisdom flows from the Highest Source. I salute that Source in you. Let us work together for unity and love'.

- Mahatma Gandhi

'The nice thing about teamwork is that you always have others on your side'.

- Margaret Carty

'Dignity does not consist in possessing honors, but in deserving them'.

Aristotle

'Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it'.

- Henry David Thoreau

'Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing'.

- Abraham Lincoln

'To succeed, you need to take that gut feeling in what you believe and act on it with all of your heart'.

- Christy Borgeld

'If your success is not on your own terms, if it looks good to the world but does not feel good in your heart, it is not success at all'.

- Anna Quindlen

'Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall'.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Art:

c.1535; Oil on hardboard transferred from panel;
left panel: The Rule of Bacchus, 39 x 15.9 cm
middle panel: The Fall of Man, 39 x 31.5 cm
right panel: The Rule of Mars, 39 x 15.7 cm
The National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, USA

'My life is my message'.

- Mahatma Ghandi

'We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore,
is not an act but a habit'.

- Aristotle

'People are unreasonable, illogical and self-centered.
Love them anyway.
If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.
If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.
The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.
Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.
The biggest person with the biggest ideas can be
shot down by the smallest person with the smallest mind.
Think big anyway.
What you spend years building may
be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.
People really need help but may attack if you help them.
Help people anyway.
Give the world the best you have
and you might get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you've got anyway'.

'To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe'.

- Anatole France

'The only job where you start at the top, is digging a hole'.

'Anybody can become angry, that is easy; but to be angry with the right person, and to the right degree, and at the right time, and for the right purpose, and in the right way, that is not within everybody's power, that is not easy'.

- Aristotle

'Mistakes are a part of being human. Appreciate your mistakes for what they are: precious life lessons that can only be learned the hard way. Unless it's a fatal mistake, which, at least, others can learn from'.

- Al Franken

'To understand the heart and mind of a person, look not at what he has already achieved, but at what he aspires to'.

- Kahlil Gibran

'The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up'.

- Paul Valery

'Though you may be under a dark tree, always look for the light shining through the
branches'

'One of the extraordinary things about human events is that the unthinkable becomes thinkable'.

- Salman Rushdie

'The highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognize that we ought to control our thoughts'.

- Charles Darwin

'We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same'.

-Carlos Cstaneda

'Control your destiny or somebody else will'.

- Jack Welch

'Integrity is telling myself the truth. And honesty is telling the truth to other people'.

- Spencer Johnson

'Watch your thoughts;
they become words.
Watch your words;
they become actions.
Watch your actions;
they become habits.
Watch your habits;
they become character.
Watch your character;
it becomes your destiny'.


- Frank Outlaw

'The word ''belief'' is a difficult thing for me. I don't believe. I must have a reason for a certain hypothesis. Either I know a thing, and then I know it -I don't need to believe it'.

- Carl Gustav Jung