“There are dreamers and there are realists in this world, you think the dreamers would find the dreamers and the realists would find the realists, but more often than not the opposite is true. See the dreamers need the realists to keep them from soaring too close to the sun. And the realists? Well without the dreamers, they might not ever get off the ground.” - Modern Family

"And then the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was greater than the risk it took to bloom."  - Anais Nin

Love Actually

"General opinion's starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don't see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere. Often, it's not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it's always there - fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends... If you look for it, I've got a sneaking suspicion... love actually is all around."

Joan.

"You want to be taken seriously, stop dressing like a little girl."

"It's like you're screaming, and no one can hear. You almost feel ashamed, that someone could be that important - that without them, you feel like nothing. No one will ever understand how much it hurts. You feel hopeless; like nothing can save you. And when it's over, and it's gone, you almost wish that you could have all that bad stuff back - so that you could have the good."

"Sexiness wears thin after a while and beauty fades, but to be married to a man who makes you laugh every day, ah, now that’s a real treat." - Joanne Woodward

Courage

"Courage is the great enabling virtue that allows one to realize other virtues, like love, hope and faith.

To have courage is to be willing to look unflinchingly at catastrophic circumstances and muster the will to overcome the fear; never to fully erase or eliminate the fear but to overcome the fear so that fear does not have the last word, so that fear does not push one into conformity, complacency, or cowardice.

For me, in many ways, the opposite of courage is not simply cowardice, but it is even worse than that – it is indifference, and indifference to evil is more invidious than evil itself precisely because evil is contagious.  The great Abraham Joshua Heschel used to make this point in almost every text and he is absolutely right. 

Courage for me is always a difficult thing to discern and find.  There is always not enough courageous folk around.  There are too many folk that want to fit in.  There are too many folk that want to just go with the grain.  There are too many folk that want to simply opt for the seductions and temptations to become drunk with the wine of the world, intoxicated with the felicities of bourgeoisie existence. 

Courage says ‘No, I will think critically.  I will love across borders, across races, across gender, across sexual orientation, across national boundary and I will hope I will never let despair have the last word, but I will recognize that he or she who has never despaired has never lived.  Never allow that despair to have the last word. 

Courage, to think critically!  Courage, to love!  Courage, to hope!  That, for me, sits at the very center of what the Socratic vocation and prophetic witness are all about." - Professor Cornel West