When the risk to remain
Closed tightly in a bud
Became more painful
Than the risk it took
To Blossom
— Anonymous
When inward tenderness
Finds the secret hurt,
Pain itself will crack the rock
And, Ah! Let the soul emerge.
— Rumi
We are all of us exceedingly complex creatures and do ourselves a service in regarding ourselves as complex. Otherwise, we live in a dream world of nonexistent, simplistic black-and-white notions which simply do not apply to life.
— Theodore Rubin