This is... actually a fairly reasonable takeaway from this year.

Don't

Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.

― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

A mathematical formula for happiness:

Reality divided by Expectations.

There were two ways to be happy:

Improve your reality or lower your expectations.

― Jodi Picoult, Nineteen Minutes

It’s easy for someone to joke about scars if they’ve never been cut.

― William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

A change may be just around the corner.

Change is uncomfortable but necessary.

Better to fail in originality than succeed in imitation

Pause, Think, and Commence

You do!

Balance is not something you find, it's something you create.

- Jana Kingsford

Life is like a cup of tea it's all in how you make it.

Sometimes you just jump and hope it's not a cliff.

― Casey McQuiston, Red, White & Royal Blue

The Soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone. Goethe

If you’ve never eaten while crying you don’t know what life tastes like.

-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

If you don’t think that anybody can love you, terrible as you are, then you’ll be willing to invite in anybody who shows you the slightest appreciation.

― Thomas Erikson, Surrounded by Psychopaths

It is better to remain silent at the risk of being thought a fool, than to talk and remove all doubt of it.

― Maurice Switzer, Mrs. Goose, Her Book

...and they breath life to the reader

Don't ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up.

― Robert Frost

But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.

Sometimes your heart needs more time to accept what your mind already knows.