QUOTES in CAN

“One day you will ask me which is more important? my life or yours? I will say mine and you will walk away not knowing that you are my life.”             Khalil Gibran

“My dearest Michael, it was 30 years ago that we first pledged our commitment to one another, but it seems like just yesterday that I was standing across from my handsome partner. We have been through a lot together. We have survived all contradictions and pressures from our parents and relatives. They did not believe in our relationship. Through all those times, I can honestly say, I loved you every step of the way. You have shown me what love feels like and for that I thank you.

Today, I want to renew those vows and again pledge my love and life to you. I promise to be there for you in sickness, especially now, cancer is ripping you away from me.  I will always think that you are perfect - perfect for me. I am here to be your supporter, your confidant, and your best friend.

You are everything I need and at this moment I know all of my prayers have been answered and that all of my dreams have come true.  I have been blessed for the last 30 years and I praise God for you Michael: for all of your love and constant friendship. I know that our love is heaven sent and I promise to be here for ever and always. From this day forward, you shall not walk alone. My heart will be your shelter and my arms will be your home. As I have given you my hand to hold, I give you my life to keep.

I love you.”

I had the chance to witness this touching pledge of love between two souls who have supported one another in their weaknesses and mistakes in life. Their love is like light, growing dearer towards the dark

I have known them for many years. I have watched them and become a testimony of their love. I saw their struggles against the conventions of society. A long of period of unemployment to be able to stand by and assist a dying partner. I know that their deep faith in God’s Mercy and Love, lifelong commitment, loyalty, and self-denying love are the dominant themes of their long term relationship. They have taught me that true love never gives up, it “never fails“.

How many of us have given up on our relationships or marriage? Unwilling to endure through better or worse, sickness or health, poverty or wealth?

Three days ago after their renewal of vows, Michael died. He did not die in vain. He left a legacy: Enduring love and commitment is possible even between two males.

John showing me Michael’s last note

The world, for me, and all the world can hold is circled in your arms,
for me there lies within the lights and shadows of your eyes the only beauty that is never old.”

made me realize they both shared their last wisdom of the afternoon.

COMMITMENT QUOTES

We only regard those unions as real examples of love and real marriages in which a fixed and unalterable decision has been taken. If men or women contemplate an escape, they do not collect all their powers for the task. In none of the serious and important tasks of life do we arrange such a “getaway.” We cannot love and be limited. – Alfred Adler

Domestic bliss and divorce are but two sides of the same coin, that coin being commitment” - Cheong Suk-Wai

Does anybody really think that they didn’t get what they had because they didn’t have the talent or the strength or the endurance or the commitment? - Nelson Mandela

The fear of making permanent commitments can change the mutual love of husband and wife into two loves of self-two loves existing side by side, until they end in separation. - Pope John Paul II

I believe life is constantly testing us for our level of commitment, and life’s greatest rewards are reserved for those who demonstrate a never-ending commitment to act until they achieve. This level of resolve can move mountains, but it must be constant and consistent. As simplistic as this may sound, it is still the common denominator separating those who live their dreams from those who live in regret. - Anthony Robbins

When you make a commitment to a relationship, you invest your attention and energy in it more profoundly because you now experience ownership of that relationship. - Barbara De Angelis

You need to make a commitment, and once you make it, then life will give you some answers. - Les Brown

So, before you are tempted to give up or get discouraged, remember all success is based on long term commitment, faith, discipline, attitude and a few stepping stones along the way. You might not like the stone you are on right now, but it’s sure to be one of the stones that lead to great opportunities in the future. - E. James ‘Jim’ Rohn

Love, like truth and beauty, is concrete. Love is not fundamentally a sweet feeling; not, at heart, a matter of sentiment, attachment, or being “drawn toward.” Love is active, effective, a matter of making reciprocal and mutually beneficial relation with one’s friends and enemies. – Carter Heyward

Unless commitment is made, there are only promisesand hopes but no plans.” - Peter Drucker

In life, many thoughts are born in the course of a moment, an hour, a day. Some are dreams, some visions. Often, we are unable to distinguish between them. To some, they are the same; however, not all dreams are visions. Much energy is lost in fanciful dreams that never bear fruit. But visions are messages from the Great Spirit, each for a different purpose in life. Consequently, one person’s vision may not be that of another. To have a vision, one must be prepared to receive it, and when it comes, to accept it. Thus when these inner urges become reality, only then can visions be fulfilled. The spiritual side of life knows everyone’s heart and who to trust. How could a vision ever be given to someone to harbor if that person could not be trusted to carry it out. The message is simple: commitment precedes vision. – High Eagle

I’m doing what I think I was put on this earth to do. And I’m really grateful to have something that I’m passionate about and that I think is profoundly important. – Marian Wright Edelman

Commitment is not the end-all. It brings the beginning of another age, another war, not an automatic happiness. The circumstances under which the choice is made is not predeterminate. Thus the indeed mythical line: ‘They married and lived happily ever after’ should have been ‘They married and may live happily ever after’.” - Marcie Gordon

Whoever said anybody has a right to give up? – Marian Wright Edelman

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it. – Attributed to Talmud

The relationship between commitment and doubt is by no means an antagonistic one. Commitment is healthiest when it is not without doubt but in spite of doubt. – Rollo May

Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can. - John Wesley

A promise must never be broken. - Alexander Hamilton

Losers make promises they often break. Winners make commitments they always keep. - Denis Waitley

You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it. - Margaret Thatcher

If you hear a voice within you say ‘you cannot paint,’ then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced. -Vincent Van Gogh

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did so. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. -Mark Twain

The question in life is not wheter you get knocked down. You will. The quesiton is, are you ready to get back up … and fight for what you believe in? - Dan Quayle

It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare. It is because we do not dare that things are difficult. - Seneca

“Whatever I have tried to do in life, I have tried with all my heart to do it well; whatever I have devoted myself to, I have devoted myself to completely.” - Charles Dickens

Commitment unlocks the doors of imagination, allows vision, and gives us the ‘right stuff’ to turn our dreams into reality. -James Womack

He who is most slow in making a promise is the most faithful in performance of it. -Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The fear of making permanent commitments can change the mutual love of husband and wife into two loves of self - two loves existing side by side, until they end in separation.” -Pope John Paul II

Passion is the quickest to develop, and the quickest to fade. Intimacy develops more slowly, and commitment more gradually still.”-Robert J. Sternberg

Committing yourself is a way of finding out who you are. A man finds his identity by identifying.” -Robert Terwilliger

I can’t imagine a person becoming a success who doesn’t give this game of life everything he’s got.” -Walter Cronkite

Never, never, never give up.” -Winston Churchill

Filed under: Homosexuality, COMMITMENT, COMMITMENT QUOTES, FAITH, LOVE, RELATIONSHIPS by ross

Like kites without strings, and butterflies without wings, my mother taught me to soar with my dreams. - William H. McMurry III

“I believe in you” were my mother’s supportive embrace when I needed a cane to push my laming spirit forward. “Your happiness is mine too” were my mother’s fortune wish behind my cloudy decisions.How can she always be present when sometimes I refused to accept her gift of affection like a madman running away from a healing cloak?

How can she be a healing face when I am beaten down with pride and pain?

Is it because she is a mother?

Through the years, I witness the essence of true love and forgiveness in her words and gestures. If my every thought for Mom can be likened to a flower, I will be walking through a big beautiful garden.

My words mean little to describe her and no words or actions can suffice to show my gratitude for having a mother like her.

Thank you Mom and Happy Mother’s Day!

MOTHER’S QUOTES

Mothers are fonder than fathers of their children because they are more certain they are their own. -Aristotle

Women are aristocrats, and it is always the mother who makes us feel that we belong to the better sort. -John Lancaster Spalding

Take the word “family.” Strike out the “m” for mother and the “y” for youth - and all you have left is “fail.” - Omar Burleson

A mother is the truest friend we have, when trials heavy and sudden, fall upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity; when friends who rejoice with us in our sunshine desert us; when trouble thickens around us, still will she cling to us, and endeavor by her kind precepts and counsels to dissipate the clouds of darkness, and cause peace to return to our hearts. -Washington Irving

Motherhood has a very humanizing effect. Everything gets reduced to essentials. -Meryl Streep

Mothers are like fine collectibles - as the years go by, they increase in value. - Unknown

The sweetest sounds to mortals given
Are heard in Mother, Home, and Heaven. - William Goldsmith Brown

What are Raphael’s Madonnas but the shadow of a mother’s love, fixed in permanent outline forever? -Thomas Wentworth Higginson

My mom is a never ending song in my heart of comfort, happiness, and being. I may sometimes forget the words but I always remember the tune. - Graycie Harmon

Mother love is the fuel that enables a normal human being to do the impossible. -Marion C. Garretty, quoted in A Little Spoonful of Chicken Soup for the Mother’s Soul

I love my mother as the trees love water and sunshine - she helps me grow, prosper, and reach great heights. -Adabella Radici

[A] mother is one to whom you hurry when you are troubled. -Emily Dickinson

A mother’s arms are made of tenderness and children sleep soundly in them. -Victor Hugo

Grown don’t mean nothing to a mother. A child is a child. They get bigger, older, but grown? What’s that suppose to mean? In my heart it don’t mean a thing. -Toni Morrison, Beloved, 1987

All that I am or ever hope to be, I owe to my angel Mother.”
- Abraham Lincoln

A mother is the truest friend we have, when trials heavy and sudden, fall upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity; when friends who rejoice with us in our sunshine desert us; when trouble thickens around us, still will she cling to us, and endeavor by her kind precepts and counsels to dissipate the clouds of darkness, and cause peace to return to our hearts. -Washington Irving

I remember my mother’s prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life.”
- Abraham Lincoln

Mothers all want their sons to grow up to be president, but they don’t want them to become politicians in the process.”- John Fitzgerald Kennedy

You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother.”- Albert Einstein

By and large, mothers and housewives are the only workers who do not have regular time off. They are the great vacation-less class.”- Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Mother is far too clever to understand anything she does not like.”- Arnold Bennett

A mother is she who can take the place of all others but
whose place no one else can take.”- Cardinal Mermillod

A mother is not a person to lean on but a person to make leaning unnecessary.”
- Dorothy Canfield Fisher

If there were no schools to take the children away from home part of the time, the insane asylum would be filled with mothers.”
- Edgar Watson Howe

My mother was the most beautiful woman I ever saw. All I am I owe to my mother. I attribute all my success in life to the moral, intellectual and physical education I received from her.”- George Washington

The mother’s heart is the child’s schoolroom.”- Henry Ward Beecher

What the mother sings to the cradle goes all the way down to the coffin.”
- Henry Ward Beecher

The heart of a mother is a deep abyss at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness.”- Honore’ de Balzac

Education commences at the mother’s knee, and every word spoken within hearsay of little children tends toward the formation of character.”- Hosea Ballou

A little girl, asked where her home was, replied, “where mother is.” -Keith L. Brooks

The phrase “working mother” is redundant.”- Jane Sellman

God could not be everywhere, and therefore he made mothers.”- Jewish proverb

A boy’s best friend is his mother.”- Joseph Stefano

Most of all the other beautiful things in life come by twos and threes by dozens and hundreds. Plenty of roses, stars, sunsets, rainbows, brothers, and sisters, aunts and cousins, but only one mother in the whole world.”- Kate Douglas Wiggin

Of all the rights of women, the greatest is to be a mother.”- Lin Yutang

(more…)

Filed under: MOTHER's QUOTES, Mother's day, Mother, QUOTES by ross

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Change has a considerable psychological impact on the human mind. To the fearful it is threatening because it means that things may get worse. To the hopeful it is encouraging because things may get better. To the confident it is inspiring because the challenge exists to make things better. - King Whitney Jr.

“Go back to Italy. There’s no future for you here in the Philippines”, quipped my brother when he sensed my decision to stay in our country permanently. “Future” is one dream for thousands of Filipinos who wanted to go abroad, seek greener pastures and live well: materially!.

It’s official - I’m staying and am joining the ranks of the ordinary self-employed in our country. Everyone is asking me why in the world I’d risk leaving a stable job - with great people, good economic compensation, better retirement benefits, secured health insurance, etc. - for something with no guarantees or unstable life.

The best answer I came up with: I want to know how the story’s going to end, and I can’t do that without a serious commitment to STOP COMPROMISING.

Inside of us have these competing desires or needs between security and independence, oftentimes, we always end up halfway between them, resulting to frustrations. I have to make a choice and take an overwhelming risk and courage to face an awful or an embarrassing failure.

I believe it is not yet too late to believe in working and living with minimal stress using our creativity, intelligence, and authenticity.

This is another important chapter in my life. My passion is driving me to make a new page, here is where the magic begins. The price of admission is high but I’m sure, miracles will supply me the resources I need for my endeavor.

CHANGE QUOTES

You are educated. Your certification is in your degree. You may think of it as the ticket to the good life. Let me ask you to think of an alternative. Think of it as your ticket to change the world. - Tom Brokaw

It is never too late to become what you might have been. - George Eliot

They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself. - Andy Warhol

Only I can change my life. No one can do it for me. - Carol Burnett

Change is the constant, the signal for rebirth, the egg of the phoenix. -Christina Baldwin

We all have big changes in our lives that are more or less a second chance. - Harrison Ford

Things do not change; we change. - Henry David Thoreau

Nothing endures but change. - Heraclitus

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself. - Tolstoy

Hard work, sacrifice and focus will never show up in tests. - Lance Armstrong

The most powerful agent of growth and transformation is something much more basic than any technique: a change of heart. - John Welwood

Some people change when they see the light, others when they feel the heat. - Caroline Schoeder

The moment you have in your heart this extraordinary thing called love and feel the depth, the delight, the ecstacy of it, you will discover that for you the world is transformed. - I. Krishnamurti

Nothing is easy to the unwilling. - Thomas Fuller

If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude. Don’t complain. - Maya Angelou

The shape of our lives is defined by our insertion into institutions and systems whose interlocking power generates the “virtual reality” we experience. Such ‘knowledge’ is so thoroughly a part of our world view that it simply would not occur to most people to question it. Yet underneath this reality is another, sub-institutional reality in which very different responses are simply acted out. This is the reality in which everyone, until very recently, lived. - David Schwartz

The greatest revolution in our generation is that of human beings, who by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives. - Marilyn Ferguson

Men do change, and change comes like a little wind that ruffles the curtains at dawn, and it comes like the stealthy perfume of wildflowers hidden in the grass. - John Steinbeck

We want the facts to fit the preconceptions. When they don’t, it is easier to ignore the facts than to change the preconceptions. - Jessamyn West

The future is not a result of choices among alternative paths offered by the present, but a place that is created–created first in the mind and will, created next in activity. The future is not some place we are going to, but one we are creating. The paths are not to be found, but made, and the activity of making them, changes both the maker and the destination. - John Schaar

Don’t fear change, embrace it. - Anthony J. D’Angelo

Everybody wants to be somebody; nobody wants to grow. - Goethe

Only in growth, reform, and change, paradoxically enough, is true security to be found. - Anne Morrow Lindbergh

To change one’s life: 1. Start immediately, 2. Do it flamboyantly, 3. No exceptions. - William James

Change in all things is sweet. - Aristotle

If you are still being hurt by an event that happened to you at twelve, it is the thought that is hurting you now. - James Hillman

You must be the change you wish to see in the world. - Mahatma Gandhi

Your current safe boundaries were once unknown frontiers. - Unknown

When you blame others, you give up your power to change. - Dr. Robert Anthony

Most of the change we think we see in life is due to truths being in and out of favor. - Robert Frost

A reporter interviewing A.J. Muste, who during the Vietnam War stood in front of the White House night after night with a candle, one rainy night asked,”Mr. Muste, do you really think you are going to change the policies of this country by standing out here alone at night with a candle?” Muste replied, “Oh, I don’t do it to change the country, I do it so the country won’t change me. - Andrea Ayvazian

Filed under: CHANGE, CHANGE QUOTES, LIFE QUOTES, LIFE, QUOTES by ross