“It was necessary, as a black historian, to have a personal agenda.”
Even "meant to be" takes work.
People change us. It is a rare, if not an impossible occurrence, that we come out of relationships unscathed. In our dealings with people we take something with us and we leave something behind. Some people are haunted more than others, either by the sweet perfume of another or the stink of regret.
There was once a spirited feral mustang broken in by her stern rider. It was a harmonious relationship for the most part but, like any relationship, she tested the boundaries he placed on her and threw him...Would the rider, having suffered his own wound, retaliate, discipline or forgive?
A life lived in fear is a life half lived.
One woman's definition of success may not be another's. Is success, as the world defines it, an accomplishment in a society this sick?
I love men. I also hate men; I wouldn't want to be in a world without them but I have to say, it's not a compliment to know a man wants to sleep with you. It's only a compliment when he will go to great lengths for you.
You're flattered because he wants to sleep with you? Who doesn't he want to sleep with?
Some families are an odd melting pot of strangers with the occasional offering of obligation.
You don't build a family by tearing down another one.
He who has health has hope and he who has hope has everything.
And the only hope-perhaps the real hope he'd been missing all along-was found in God.
Hope is not just... out in the sky, or accepting the facts or reality. Hope is having optimistic, positive expectations.
Hope was what kept the world going. Hope that one day you would find somebody you could love and trust, hope that you would never lose them; hope that your team won the cup this year; hope that you found that dream job; hope that you would find the money to pay the mortgage. But most of all, hope that one day - whatever you have told yourself over that years - you would find that life really does go on beyond the deathbed.
I have written this book to encourage women to dream big, forge a path through the obstacles, and achieve their full potential. I am hoping that each woman will set her own goals and reach for them with gusto. And I am hoping that each man will do his part to support women in the workplace and in the home, also with gusto. As we start using the talents of the entire population, our institutions will be more productive, our homes will be happier, and the children growing up in those homes will no longer be held back by narrow stereotypes.
She took the posters downtown that afternoon. She filled a rolling suitcase with them ... she took a stapler. And a box of staples. And hope. I think of those things. The paper, the stapler, the staples, the tape, the hope. It makes me sick. Physical things. Forty years of loving someone becomes staples and hop.
“It's all right to cry. It's all right to hurt. It's all right to be confused, ... Hope will rebuild landmarks. Hope will outlive the broken hearts. Hope will outlive the disillusioned.”
When joy is LOST, hope can easily FIND it... It's only your HOPE, that knows the where about of your JOY! If you lose hope you lose everything!
It was hope that was the problem. Hoping feelings wouldn't be hurt, hoping love would blossom, that was painful. But committing yourself to misery, that was just a dead feeling. It was pulling the Band-Aid and embracing the pain.
When hopeful and hopeless come together, both will learn great things from each other: Hopeful will learn the horror of being hopeless and the hopeless will learn the beauty of being hopeful!