Marc P. Robinson

What drives me to be who I am, to do all that I do, is not what words will be engraved for my epitaph. What drives me to be who I am, to do what I do, is not vanity, is not for adulation in the eyes of others. What drives me is my own desire to be better; to be happy. When I am dead and buried, the words above will not bring me back to life, I choose to live out my epitaph, and not just for it to be a collection of words someone has chosen to define me.

I want to be free; to escape. I use my pen as oars; the paper as my boat. I fill these pages to keep me afloat. I ride the waves of turmoil, so I can paddle away to calmer seas.

I have never had trouble to love others, but loving myself was difficult. For years I didn’t like myself, so how could I love myself. It has taken time, and still there is a way to go, but I can say, not only do I like myself, but also care about myself enough to start loving myself too.

I always forgive others. The anger; sadness; frustration; pain, whatever feelings I felt, no matter the hurt; the tears, I always found understanding and reason to forgive them; to not hold onto it; to not resent them. But there is one, who I never seem to be able to give absolution, and that’s myself.

Always seeking acceptance from others, searching for belonging. Striving for individuality, yet wanting to fit in. Never understanding that acceptance for one’s own individuality make all of that redundant.

When the romance is gone, if it’s always you left searching for it, maybe it’s time to stop looking, and start searching for someone new, and start a new romantic journey.

The mould of a man’s fortune is in his own hands.

It is said that the present is pregnant with the future.

I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.

Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not.

Standing on the doorstep of desire, I hold this bouquet like a gun and these vows like a petition for the death penalty.

In conversation the game is, to say something new with old words. And you shall observe a man of the people picking his way along, step by step, using every time an old boulder, yet never setting his foot on an old place.

If you do not take control over your time and your life, other people will gobble it up. If you don’t prioritize yourself, you constantly start falling lower and lower on your list.

What do we live for; if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?

Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb.

Half the vices which the world condemns most loudly have seeds of good in them and require moderate use rather than total abstinence.

Any enlightenment which requires to be authenticated, certified, recognized, congratulated, is false, or at least incomplete.

To inherit property is not to be born – it is to be still-born, rather.

We are long before we are convinced that happiness is never to be found; and each believes it possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself.

His heart was as great as the world, but there was no room in it to hold the memory of a wrong.

When Nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.