The fact that other people get to decide what they think of your behavior leaves only two strategies for not suffering from those judgments: not doing anything, or not caring about the reaction. Not caring works surprisingly well.
—Clay Shirky, on confidently doing interesting things. (Via Put This On which has the full quote.)
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear — not absence of fear.
—Mark Twain

Jesus Calls Peter - Joshua Harris

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it up carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable… The only place outside of Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers of love is hell.
—C.S. Lewis
We do not see things as they are. We see things as we are.
—Jewish proverb
A man should look as if he had bought his clothes with intelligence, put them on with care, and then forgotten all about them.
—Hardy Amies