Wisdom Wednesday: Family

Happy Wednesday! With Wednesday comes the inevitable "hump day" blues, sense of disillusionment, exhaustion, and longing for the weekend. Like a good shot of espresso, an inspiring quote can often inspire and perk me up, ready to take on what the rest of the day and week holds. Each Wednesday here on notsosimplestyle features a few bits of wisdom on varying topics, in the hopes you may find humor, inspiration, solace and affirmation.

With Thanksgiving rapidly approaching, it's that time of year when family and friends come together. We can be thankful for our family by blood, by marriage, by time, by love. No matter how we found them, what we call them, where they are; they are family. 


The love of family and the admiration of friends is much more important than wealth and privilege.
                       ~ Charles Kuralt


In every conceivable manner, the family is link to our past, bridge to our future.
                       ~ Alex Haley


I was born into the most remarkable and eccentric family I could possibly have hoped for.
                       ~ Maureen O'Hara


One of the things that binds us as a family is a shared sense of humor.
                       ~ Ralph Fiennes


My friends and family are my support system. They tell me what I need to hear, not what I want to hear and they are there for me in the good and bad times. Without them I have no idea where I would be and I know that their love for me is what's keeping my head above the water.
                        ~ Kelly Clarkson


Blood relatives often have nothing to do with family, and similarly, family is about who you choose to make your life with.
                        ~ Oliver Hudson


So much of what is best in us is bound up in our love of family, that it remains the measure of our stability because it measures our sense of loyalty. All other pacts of love or fear derive from it and are modeled upon it.
                         ~ Haniel Long


My family is my life, and everything else comes second as far as what's important to me.
                         ~ Michael Imperioli


When we're dealing with the people in our family - no matter how annoying or gross they may be, no matter how self-inflicted their suffering may appear, no matter how afflicted they are with ignorance, prejudice or nose hairs - we give from the deepest parts of ourselves.
                         ~ Anne Lamott


I cannot remember a moment in my life when I have not felt the love of my family. We were a family that would have killed for each other - and we still are.
                         ~ Richard Branson

Wisdom Wednesday: Love

Happy Wednesday! With Wednesday comes the inevitable "hump day" blues, sense of disillusionment, exhaustion, and longing for the weekend. Like a good shot of espresso, an inspiring quote can often inspire and perk me up, ready to take on what the rest of the day and week holds. Each Wednesday here on notsosimplestyle features a few bits of wisdom on varying topics, in the hopes you may find humor, inspiration, solace and affirmation.

Perhaps a cliché topic, love has been mused upon, dissected, and ultimately declared impossible to understand by the wisest of the ages. Yet, love's presence in life is undeniable. Regardless of the mystery involved, people continue to write, sing, act out love. While ten quotes hardly scratches the surface, at least it shines a light on the ever-changing face of love.

I have found the paradox that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.

                       ~ Mother Teresa

Love is a force more formidable than any other. It is invisible - it cannot be seen or measured, yet it is powerful enough to transform you in a moment, and offer you more joy than any material possession could.

                       ~ Barbara de Angelis

If we all discovered that we had only five minutes left to say all that we wanted to say, every telephone booth would be occupied by people calling other people to tell them that they loved them.

                       ~ Christopher Morley

Absence diminishes little passions and increases great ones just as the wind blows out a candle and fans a fire.

                        ~ La Rochefoucauld

Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue, a wonderful living side by side can grow, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky.

                        ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.

                         ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Don't brood. Get on with living and loving. You don't have forever.

                         ~ Leo Buscaglia

Love is metaphysical gravity.

                         ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

Time is too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve, too short for those who rejoice, but for those who love, time is eternity.

                          ~ Henry Van Dyke

unlove's the heavenless hell and homeless home…lovers alone wear sunlight.

                       ~ e. e. cummings

Wisdom Wednesday: Being a Girl

Happy Wednesday! With Wednesday comes the inevitable "hump day" blues, sense of disillusionment, exhaustion, and longing for the weekend. Like a good shot of espresso, an inspiring quote can often inspire and perk me up, ready to take on what the rest of the day and week holds. Each Wednesday here on notsosimplestyle features a few bits of wisdom on varying topics, in the hopes you may find humor, inspiration, solace and affirmation.

Being a woman, girl, lady, or gal isn't a walk in the park. Sometimes it's great. Sometimes it's fighting against societal expectations, or struggling to fit in, or wanting things to just be different. It's being a tomboy and a girly-girl and something in between. It's being yourself. I could go on and on and probably will at some point but frankly other people have said it better.

A successful woman is one who can build a firm foundation with bricks others have thrown at her.

                     ~ Unknown

Every girl is expected to have caucasian blue eyes, full Spanish lips, a classic button nose, hairless Asian skin with a California tan, a Jamaican dance hall ass, long Swedish legs, small Japanese feet, the abs of a lesbian gym owner, the hips of a nine-year-old boy, the arms of Michelle Obama and doll tits. This is why everyone is struggling.

                      ~ Tina Fey

Growing up, I wish I hadn't tried so hard to fit in. I'd tell myself to just embrace what you were born with because it's beautiful and you were made like that for a reason. It's tough being a girl. I think we need all the support we can get.

                       ~ Shay Mitchell

Feminism to me means fighting. It's a very nuanced, complex thing, but at the very core of it I'm a feminist because I don't think being a girl limits me in any way.

                       ~ Tavi Gevinson


Better to be strong than pretty and useless.
                       ~ Lilith Saintcrow


Girls will get together just to get together. Guys need an activity as an excuse. Otherwise it's too homo for them to handle.
                        ~ Megan McCafferty


One of the biggest mistakes girls can make concerning their romantic life is sitting around waiting for their prince to find them, rather than getting out there and finding him themselves.
                        ~ Meg Cabot


I love the person I've become because I fought to become her.
                        ~ Kaci Diane


We must teach our girls that if they speak their mind, they can create the world they want to see.
                        ~ Robyn Silverman


Show me a girl with her feet planted firmly on the ground and I'll show you a girl who can't put her pants on.
                         ~ Annik Marchand