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Inspiration for Your Letters

You are eager to write your letter but are not sure where to start? To kindle your thoughts and help you find the right words, we have curated for you a vivid collection of inspiring quotes, letters and images. A few of these wise lines are from letters that were written for and printed in our books of letters for special occasions. We invite you to browse through these quotes and draw some inspiration for your own letters…

BE SOMEBODY THAT MAKES EVERYBODY FEEL LIKE A SOMEBODY.

~ From a FromABirdie.com book of letters

Getting to this respectable age needs some special thoughts like these:

  • Wouldn’t it be great if we could put ourselves in the dryer for ten minutes and come out wrinkle-free and three sizes smaller?
  • Last year I joined a support group for procrastinators. We have not met yet!
  • I don’t have grey hair; I have “wisdom highlights”
  • I don’t trip over things, I just do random gravity checks
  • If God wanted me to touch my toes, he would have put them on my knees
  • Of course I talk to myself – sometimes I need expert advice

~ From a FromABirdie.com book of letters

A child needs five adults who are not related to her but who are involved in her life, in order for her to realize her full potential.

~ From a FromABirdie.com book of letters

A letter from Kurt Vonnegut to the students at Xavier High School:

Dear Xavier High School, and Ms. Lockwood, and Messrs Perin, McFeely, Batten, Maurer and Congiusta:

I thank you for your friendly letters. You sure know how to cheer up a really old geezer (84) in his sunset years. I don’t make public appearances any more because I now resemble nothing so much as an iguana.

What I had to say to you, moreover, would not take long, to wit: Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.

Seriously! I mean starting right now, do art and do it for the rest of your lives. Draw a funny or nice picture of Ms.Lockwood, and give it to her. Dance home after school, and sing in the shower and on and on. Make a face in your mashed potatoes. Pretend you’re Count Dracula.
Here’s an assignment for tonight, and I hope Ms. Lockwood will flunk you if you don’t do it: Write a six line poem, about anything, but rhymed. No fair tennis without a net. Make it as good as you possibly can. But don’t tell anybody what you’re doing. Don’t show it or recite it to anybody, not even your girlfriend or parents or whatever, or Ms. Lockwood. OK?Tear it up into teeny-weeny pieces, and discard them into widely separated trash receptacles. You will find that you have already been gloriously rewarded for your poem. You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what’s inside you, and you have made your soul grow.

God bless you all!

Kurt Vonnegut (In 2006 Ms. Lockwood, an English teacher at Xavier High School, asked her students to write a letter to a famous author. She wanted them discuss the author’s work and ask for advice. Kurt Vonnegut (1922 – 2007) was the only one to write back.)

Because of you, I laugh a little harder, cry a little less, and smile a lot more.

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean– the one who has flung herself out of the grass, the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down–
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

~ Mary Oliver

From Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carrol :

“Would you tell me please, which way I ought to go from here?”
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.
“I don’t much care where…” said Alice.
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go”, said the Cat.
“…so long as I get SOMEWHERE”, Alice added as an explanation.
“Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat “if you only walk enough.”

IT MATTERS NOT WHO YOU LOVE, WHERE YOU LOVE, WHY YOU LOVE, WHEN YOU LOVE, OR HOW YOU LOVE. IT MATTERS ONLY THAT YOU LOVE.

~ John Lennon

An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life. “A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy.

“It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.” He continued, “The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too.”

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?” The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”

~ A Cherokee Indian legend

“THE BEST AND MOST BEAUTIFUL THINGS IN THE WORLD CANNOT BE SEEN OR TOUCHED, THEY MUST BE FELT.” 

~Helen Keller

A story tells that two best friends were walking through the desert. During some point of the journey, they had an argument, and one friend said something deeply hurtful to the other. The other friend was hurt, but without saying anything, kneeled down and wrote in the sand, “Today my best friend deeply hurt my feelings.”

They kept on walking, until they found an oasis, where they decided to take a swim. The friend who’s feelings had been hurt began to struggle and started to drown, but was saved by his best friend. After recovering from the near drowning, he carved into a stone, “Today my best friend saved my life.”
    
The friend, who had said the hurtful things and later saved his best friend from drowning asked, “After I hurt you, you wrote in the sand, and now, you carve on a stone, why?”
    
The friend replied, “When someone hurts us, we should write it down in sand, where the winds of forgiveness can erase it away, but when someone does something good for us, we must engrave it in stone where no wind can ever erase it.

~ From a FromABirdie.com book of letters