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1 " But it ain't easy, trying to do without God even if you know he ain't there, trying to do without him is a strain "
― Alice Walker , The Color Purple
2 " Good or bad, happy or sad, everything that happens does so for a reason; no incident in this world is a stray occurrence. Don’t be unnecessarily perplexed or anxious about it- accept it. There’s no point resisting it because it was ordained. A strain of music, perhaps a song, at times a stray incident brings back memories of another day. Some may be nostalgically beautiful others may bring back that ache in the heart that you thought you had overcome long ago. Don’t stop them, let them keep flooding in. They are your memories of an era gone by. Feel them. Relive the good ones. Chew the cud of nostalgia. You will feel energized. The unhappy ones too are welcome, let them in. That pain that you feel once again is the purging of your heart. Feel that the ache for one last time and forgive those that caused the pain. Let go of those memories tenderly. Gently bid them adieu with love. You are a new person now. Those old memories have gone and they have left a space; you are now ready to accept new ones. Fill your life with love; spread it. Live life the way you want to. Do things that you have wanted to do all this while but were afraid to. Live the life that brings you happiness and makes your heart sing with joy... "
3 " In a story, you must always listen for the voice you cannot hear, the one that has been ignored or silenced. In that crushed voice, there is a strain of truth, as a crushed grape yields a drop of wine. "
4 " As she stooped over him, her tears fell upon his forehead.The boy stirred, and smiled in his sleep, as though these marks of pity and compassion had awakened some pleasant dream of a love and affection he had never known; as a strain of gentle music, or the rippling of water in a silent place, or the odour of a flower, or even the mention of a familiar word, will sometimes call up sudden dim remembrances of scenes that never were, in this life; which vanish like a breath; and which some brief memory of a happier existence, long gone by, would seem to have awakened, for no voluntary exertion of the mind can ever recall them. "
― Charles Dickens , Oliver Twist
5 " there was perhaps a strain of humility that was more common then than now, that there was a moral ecology, stretching back centuries but less prominent now, encouraging people to be more skeptical of their desires, more aware of their own weaknesses, more intent on combatting the flaws in their own natures and turning weakness into strength. "
6 " A truly brave man is ever serene; he is never taken by surprise; nothing ruffles the equanimity of his spirit. In the heat of battle he remains cool; in the midst of catastrophes he keeps level his mind. Earthquakes do not shake him, he laughs at storms. We admire him as truly great, who, in the menacing presence of danger or death, retains his self-possession; who, for instance, can compose a poem under impending peril or hum a strain in the face of death. Such indulgence betraying no tremor in the writing or in the voice, is taken as an infallible index of a large nature—of what we call a capacious mind (Yoyū), which, far from being pressed or crowded, has always room for something more. "
― Inazō Nitobe , Bushido: The Soul of Japan. A Classic Essay on Samurai Ethics
7 " Donald had reached its further edge, and could hear the rush of the stream from the deep obscurity of the abyss below, when there rose from the opposite side a strain of the most delightful music he had ever heard. "
