My Favorite Quotations
I collect quotes — I've been doing it consistently since my high school government class (more than 20 years ago!), when our teacher would begin the day with a new quote on the chalkboard. I've been rotating them over the years into my email sig, but I've come to the realization that I have FAR MORE quotes than I will ever rotate into emails, so I need to do something with them. All of these quotes mean something to me personally. They generally have to do with love, children, faith, reading/study, freedom, kindness, strength or understanding. I hope you enjoy them!If you're checking in on this page from time to time, I'll be putting the most recent quotes at the top of the page, so you can see them there. I add quotes in spurts, once they build up in my email enough to be annoying. :) Check back for new additions.
updated 1/09
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Eyes are vocal, tears have tongues,
Sometimes you need to hang on to
Every evening I turn worries over to God.
There is a time for departure
But an accurate definition of the self is impossible.
How can the future be molded
We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it -- and stop there -- lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again, and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one any more.
For money you can have everything it is said. No, that is not true. You can buy food, but not appetite; medicine, but not health; soft beds, but not sleep; knowledge but not intelligence; glitter, but not comfort; fun, but not pleasure; acquaintances, but not friendship; servants, but not faithfulness; grey hair, but not honor; quiet days, but not peace. The shell of all things you can get for money. But not the kernel. That cannot be had for money.
I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation,
If you need encouragement, praise,
The head thinks,
When the people we love are stolen from us,
Let us enrich ourselves with our mutual differences.
Bless us Lord, this Christmas,
The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes
The greatest mistake we make
Memories are interpreted like dreams.
A single event can awaken within us
Ring the bells that still can ring,
We live in a moment of history
If you want to build a ship,
A single grateful thought raised to heaven
Take the first step in faith.
They always say time changes things,
If you judge people,
Kindness can become its own motive.
Hope begins in the dark,
There is no religion without love,
Looking for peace
None is more impoverished
The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago.
Libraries remind us
Consult not your fears
The best things are nearest:
Faith goes up the stairs
I sit beside the fire and think
I'm quite sure that...
Expect the best,
For in the end,
We all need the waters of the Mercy River.
And verily, a woman need know but one man well,
Take the first step in faith.
Every choice carries a consequence.
Success is not final,
The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance;
It would take an infinite number of human beings
Original thought is like original sin:
Lie down and listen to the crabgrass grow
You cannot do a kindness too soon,
Things are as they are.
It is a mistake to look too far ahead.
No good ending can be expected
To take a journey of a thousand miles,
We need old friends to help us grow old
Confronting our feelings
Talents, like intelligence, are value neutral.
We spend January 1 walking through our lives,
When friendships are real,
Our health is a voyage
Dreams come in a size too big
The universe is full of magical things
We say we waste time,
God is like a mirror.
Treat your friends
A book must be the ax
You don't have to be afraid of change.
Be an explorer ...
Work is love made visible.
If you are humble nothing will touch you,
May your glass be ever full.
Dignity does not float down from heaven
Joy is prayer -
A mother is the truest friend we have,
We've heard that a million monkeys at a keyboard
We need the slower and more lasting stimulus
The happiness of your life
God shows his contempt for wealth
The world is indeed full of peril,
Being happy is something you have to learn.
Few things help an individual
Wisdom ceases to be wisdom when it becomes
The difference between false memories and true ones is the same as for
jewels: it is always the false ones that look the most real, the most
brilliant.
Live deep instead of fast.
"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from
mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the
man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses
instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly."
The grand show is eternal.
The world is round
Anyone can count the seeds in an apple,
Count no day lost in which you waited your turn, took only your share and
sought advantage over no one.
One of the most time-consuming things is to have an enemy.
Poetry is truth in its Sunday clothes.
Be like the bird, who halting in his flight
Civilizations in decline are consistently characterised by a tendency
towards standardization and uniformity.
The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading, in order to
write; a man will turn over half a library to make one book.
Flattery is like chewing gum. Enjoy it but don't swallow it.
There are years that ask questions and years that answer.
Forgiveness is loyalty to the truth
Break the anger habit.
When everything is lost,
We mostly spend [our] lives conjugating three verbs:
But so many Christians
Always read stuff
We are each other's harvest;
If you don't feel that
Silence is one of the
I learned, when hit by loss,
Let the gentle bush
You are the same today
People travel to wonder
If "Thank you,"
There's no point in burying a hatchet
Hatred and fear blind us.
Forgiveness is the economy of the heart...
The past is a guide post,
Be who you are and say what you feel,
The soul would have no rainbow
The only difference
There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in.
Love doesn't make the world go 'round.
It is not so much our friends' help
War is a curtain of dense black fabric
There are two kinds of people in the world:
Civilization is a stream with banks.
"Education is what you get when you read the fine print; experience is
what you get when you don't."
You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it
turns out that God hates all the same people you do.
Wonder and despair
"Sure, ninety percent of science fiction is crud. That's because
ninety percent of everything is crud."
"At some point in life the world's beauty becomes enough. You don't
need to photograph, paint or even remember it. It is enough. No record
of it needs to be kept and you don't need someone to share it with or
tell it to. When that happens - that letting go - you let go
because you can."
I take a simple view of living.
Don't be misled:
For what I have received
Joy, happiness ... we do not question.
Idealism is the noble toga that
Happiness is a butterfly
"If you drink much from a bottle marked 'poison' it is almost certain
to disagree with you, sooner or later."
"While fame impedes and constricts, obscurity wraps about a man like a
mist; obscurity is dark, ample, and free; obscurity lets the mind take
its way unimpeded. Over the obscure man is poured the merciful
suffusion of darkness. None knows where he goes or comes. He may seek
the truth and speak it; he alone is free; he alone is truthful, he
alone is at peace."
"Evil spreads with the wind; truth is capable of speading even against
it."
"If one took no chances, one would not fly at all. Safety lies in the
judgment of the chances one takes. That judgment, in turn, must rest
upon one's outlook on life. Any coward can sit in his home and
criticize a pilot for flying into a mountain in fog. But I would
rather, by far, die on a mountainside than in bed."
"How often people speak of art and science as though they were two
entirely different things, with no interconnection...That is all
wrong. The true artist is quite rational as well as imaginative and
knows what he is doing; if he does not, his art suffers. The true
scientist is quite imaginative as well as rational, and sometimes
leaps to solutions where reason can follow only slowly; if he does
not, his science suffers."
I'll tell you how the sun rose-- / A ribbon at a time.
The maple tree that night
Earth is here so kind, that just tickle her with a hoe and she laughs with
a harvest.
War would end if the dead could return.
Creative activity could be described as a type of learning process where
teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.
Love is made out of ecstasy and wonder;Love is a poignant and
accustomed pain. It is a burst of Heaven-shaking thunder;It is a
linnet's fluting after rain.
"From each as they choose, to each as they are chosen."
"The truth isn't always beauty, but the hunger for it is."
A large part of the problem in the world today
Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art.
Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be
chewed and digested.
Poetry is the clear expression of mixed feelings.
Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice;
How beautiful it is to do nothing, and then rest afterward.
You cannot take the mild approach to the weeds
It is forbidden to kill;
It would be nice
Feeling gratitude and not expressing it
If you want to keep your memories,
A library is a place
There is a field beyond all notions of right and wrong. Come, meet me
there.
Lower your voice and strengthen your argument.
A quiet conscience sleeps in thunder.
No person is your friend
In old age there is a coming into flower.
My body wanes; my mind waxes.
Vocations which we wanted to pursue, but didn't, bleed, like colors, on the
whole of our existence.
The rare moment is
Early in my career I felt
If they can get you asking the wrong questions,
they don't have to worry about the answers.
God is everywhere or nowhere,
We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and
bones.
THE PARADOX OF OUR AGE
We have bigger houses but smaller families;
We've been all the way to the moon and back,
We built more computers to hold more
Age-old question:
The fingers of your thoughts are molding your face ceaselessly.
A friend of Oliver Wendell Holmes
A root is a flower that disdains fame.
A diamond with a flaw is better than a common stone that is perfect.
Fatigue is the best pillow.
I don't know about having too much zeal;
but I think it is better the pot should boil over
than not boil at all.
We teach what we need to learn.
Illness is in part what the world has done to a victim, but in a larger
part it is what the victim has done with his world.
'Tis with our judgements as our watches: none Go just alike, yet each
believes his own.
True religion is the life we lead, not the creed we profess.
Fat is not a four letter word. It is not obscene, or inappropriate for minors to hear, or dirty, or uncouth. What it describes is not something only done or talked about in hushed whispers and dark corners. It tells you nothing of my moral fiber, the content of my character, my cute quirks and annoying tendencies. It doesn't tell you anything about my exercise or eating habits, or whether I revel in my body or am ashamed of it. It does not give you insight into my fears and longings, my hopes and dreams. It is not a word that, when uttered, has the power to make me feel small or less than you. I am not. I am large, powerful. I am bigger than life, round with abundance and the fruits of the earth. I relish in my senses – all of them – and find delights of sensation where others find only denial. I live with dignity and self-love, and I reclaim this word, so small, but so densely packed with hatred and fear and loathing and condemnation. I embrace it as fully mine, as part of me, as a harmless adjective that tells you nothing, really, about who I am - except that I am fat.
My mother gave me a bumblebee pin
Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers.
You can out-distance that which is running after you, but not what is
running inside you.
The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the
necessary may speak.
Yes, of course [this age] is materialistic,
The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a
green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and
deformity... and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man
of imagination, nature is imagination itself.
I used to think that the brain was the most wonderful organ in my body.
Then I realized who was telling me this.
I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time.
Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds
long to play with your hair.
Every cask smells of the wine it contains.
That man is truly good who knows his own dark places.
All art is autobiographical; the pearl is the oyster's autobiography.
I don't mind that you think slowly but I do mind that you are publishing
faster than you think.
The closing years of life are like the end of a masquerade party, when the
masks are dropped.
Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are
putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.
In war, there are no unwounded soldiers.
Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of
thought.
Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.
You don't have to burn books
Failure is an event, not a person.
Read carefully anything that requires your signature.
No matter how far you have gone on the wrong road, turn back.
Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits.
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we
have lost in information?
Don't be distracted by criticism.
Remember — the only taste of success some people have is when they take a bite out of you.
The Hollow Men:
It would indeed be ironic if, in the name of national defense, we would
sanction the subversion of one of those liberties which make the defense
of our nation worthwhile.
If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he
will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.
Don't ask me who's influenced me. A lion is made up of the lambs he's
digested, and I've been reading all my life.
You must constantly ask yourself these questions:
My father used to play with my brother and me in the yard.
We find little in a book but what we put there.
What is reading, but silent conversation.
Hatred — the anger of the weak.
When two elephants fight it is the grass that gets trampled.
All know that the drop merges into the ocean but few know that the ocean
merges into the drop.
The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between
the notes— ah, that is where the art resides.
Home is not where you live but where they understand you.
The most important thing a father
can do for his children is to love their mother.
Three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do,
something to love, and something to hope for.
An elephant can be tethered by a thread--
if he believes he is captive. If we believe
we are chained by habit or anxiety, we are in bondage.
When money speaks, the truth keeps silent.
One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that
one's work is terribly important.
There is no surer way to misread any document than to read it literally.
If you are planning for one year, grow rice. If you are planning for 20
years, grow trees. If you are planning for centuries, grow men.
No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and
he's not the same man.
It's easy to carry the past as a burden instead of a school.
It's easy to let it overwhelm you instead of educate you.
No man is an Island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the
Continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy
friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am
involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell
tolls; It tolls for thee.
Every time a child is born it brings with it the hope that God is not yet
disappointed in man.
Earth laughs in flowers.
Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers; pray for powers equal to your
tasks.
Sorrow looks back, worry looks around, faith looks up.
Why does no one confess his sins? Because he is yet in them. It is for a
man who has awoke from sleep to tell his dreams.
Remember that children, marriages, and flower gardens
reflect the kind of care they get.
There are no such things as excuses. There are reasons
that why a particular decision was reached, and why that
decision was not a good one. There is a discernible path
that can be followed to find the reasons why a failure
occurred. There are no excuses, only wrong decisions.
In order for something to become clean, something else must become dirty.
Trees are not known by their leaves, nor even by their blossoms, but by
their fruits.
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 not.
The charm, one might say the genius of memory, is that it is choosy,
chancy and temperamental; it rejects the edifying cathedral and indelibly
photographs the small boy outside, chewing a hunk of melon in the dust.
When you have only two pennies left in the world, buy a loaf of bread with
one, and a lily with the other.
You can't cross the sea merely by staring at the water.
Work like you don't need money,
Love like you've never been hurt,
And dance like no one's watching.
I don't need time. What I need is a deadline.
The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks.
If you begin to live life looking for the God that is all around you,
every moment becomes a prayer.
Have courage for the great sorrows of life and for the small ones; and
when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in
peace. God is awake.
When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the
rest of the world.
The body is a house of many windows: there we all sit, showing ourselves
and crying on the passers-by to come and love us.
Life is not measured by the breaths you take but by the moments that
take your breath away.
Danger and delight grow on one stalk.
The only difference between saints and sinners is that every saint has a
past while every sinner has a future.
Power is the ability to do good things for others.
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being the more joy you can
contain. Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned
in the potter's oven?
Blessed is the season which engages the whole world in a conspiracy of
love.
When I am working on a problem I never think about beauty. I only think
about how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution
is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.
Him that I love, I wish to be free — even from me.
An ounce of mother is worth a pound of clergy.
Please subdue the anguish of your soul. Nobody is destined only to
happiness or to pain. The wheel of life takes one up and down by turn.
A poem begins with a lump in the throat.
Don't worry that your children never listen to you; worry that they are
always watching you.
The future will belong not only to the educated man, but to the man who
is educated to use his leisure wisely.
Beware the fury of the patient man.
Don't be dismayed at goodbyes. A farewell is necessary before you can
meet again. And meeting again, after moments or lifetimes is certain for
those who are friends.
Life does not accommodate you, it shatters you... Every seed destroys
its container or else there would be no fruition.
To a disciple who was forever complaining about others the Master said,
"If it is peace you want, seek to change yourself, not other people. It
is easier to protect your feet with slippers than to carpet the whole of
the earth."
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
No man is useless who has a friend, and if we are loved we are
indispensable.
Chance is always powerful. Let your hook be always cast. In the pool
where you least expect it, will be a fish.
We allow our ignorance to prevail upon us and make us think we can survive
alone, alone in patches, alone in groups, alone in races, even alone in
genders.
We cannot become what we need to be by remaining what we are.
A painting is never finished — it simply stops in interesting places.
There is a time for departure even when there's no certain place to go.
Nothing contributes so much to tranquilizing the mind as a steady purpose
Do not let mercy and truth leave you. Fasten them around your neck.
Write them on the tablet of your heart. Then you will find favor and
much success in the sight of God and humanity.
On the whole, age comes more gently to those who have some doorway into
an abstract world--art, or philosophy, or learning--regions where the
years are scarcely noticed and the young and old can meet in a pale
truthful light.
There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hands.
You seek problems because you need their gifts.
He who waits to do a great deal of good at once, will never do
anything.
Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with
the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.
Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste they hurry past it.
Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of
throwing it at someone else; you are the one getting burned.
The man who insists upon seeing with perfect clearness before he
decides, never decides. Accept life and you must accept regret.
It's a shallow life that doesn't give a person a few scars.
The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit. The second is to
look things in the face and know them for what they are.
You will not be punished for your anger, you will be punished by your
anger... Let a person overcome anger by love.
Be willing to be a beginner every single morning.
Those who love deeply never grow old; they may die of old age, but
they die young.
In order to live free and happily you must sacrifice boredom. It is
not always an easy sacrifice.
It isn't for the moment you are struck that you need courage, but for
the long uphill climb back to sanity and faith and security.
Ordering a man to write a poem is like commanding a pregnant woman to give
birth to a red-headed child.
Not what we say about our blessings, but how we use them, is the true
measure of our thanksgiving.
No one rises to low expectations.
I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet.
Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding
of ourselves.
"Quos amor verus tenuit, tenebit. (Those whom true love has held, it will
go on holding.)"
"Take from the altar of the past the fire, not the ashes."
To lose patience is to lose the battle.
For what is a poem but a hazardous attempt at self-understanding: it is
the deepest part of autobiography.
What is at the center of your life? Carefully examine where you spend
your attention, your time. Look at your appointment book, your daily
schedule... This is what receives your care and attention--and by
definition, your love.
There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its
hands. You seek problems because you need their gifts.
Forgiveness is the name of love practiced among people who love poorly.
The hard truth is that all of us love poorly. We need to forgive and be
forgiven every day, every hour — unceasingly. That is the great work of
love among the fellowship of the weak that is the human family.
Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.
Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.
The most effective kind of education is that a child should play amongst
lovely things.
If you're going through hell, keep going.
"When two people meet, there are really six people present. There is each
man as he sees himself, each man as he wants to be seen, and each man as
he really is."
Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our
joy and the dividing of our grief
I would like to believe when I die that I have given myself away like a
tree that sows seed every spring and never counts the loss, because it
is not loss, it is adding to future life. It is the tree's way of
being. Strongly rooted perhaps, but spilling out its treasure on the
wind.
A man never discloses his own character so clearly as when he describes
another's.
It is very dangerous to go into eternity with possibilities which one
has oneself prevented from becoming realities. A possibility is a hint
from God. One must follow it.
I believe that the first test of a truly great man is his humility. I do
not mean by humility, doubt of his own powers. But really great men have a
curious feeling that the greatness is not in them, but through them. And
they see something divine in every other man and are endlessly, foolishly,
incredibly merciful.
Quod Me Nutrit Me Destruit - What nourishes me, destroys me.
Not all those that wander are lost.
A man does not show his greatness by being at one extremity, but rather by
touching both at once.
Life isn't long enough to do all you could accomplish. And what a
privilege even to be alive. In spite of all the pollutions and horrors,
how beautiful this world is. Supposing you only saw the stars once
every year. Think what you would think. The wonder of it!
Art is a house that tries to be haunted.
Expect to have hope rekindled. Expect your prayers to be answered in
wondrous ways. The dry seasons in life do not last. The spring rains
will come again.
Everyone is the son of his own works.
Love has the innate ability to look past the human and see the godly.
People travel to wonder at the height of mountains, at the huge waves of
the sea , at the long courses of rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean,
at the circular motion of the stars; and they pass by themselves without
wondering.
Out of suffering comes creativity. You cannot spell painting without pain.
We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned, so as to have
the life that is awaiting us.... The old skin has to be shed before the
new one is to come.
"Tongues in trees.
Books in running brooks.
Sermons in stones and good in everything. "
Those who deem me unworthy at a glance and pass me by, have my blessing to
keep walking, for they have a long way to go.
It is really faith that is indispensible to almost all positive human
activity. Because you can't know the future, and if you don't have faith,
the pursuit of bodily pleasure and preoccupation with obstacles to it
become your entire life. And the horizons darken.
Our life is frittered away by detail... Simplify, simplify, simplify!
... Simplicity of life and elevation of purpose.
Nick, it is what it is, it's not what it should have been, not what it
could have been, it is what it is.
Solitude, if rightly used, becomes not only a privilege but a
necessity. Only a superficial soul fears to fraternize with itself.
Never fear shadows. They simply mean that there's a light somewhere
nearby.
I just think the best way to stay clear from something until you're
totally delivered from it is to stay away from it. I'm just staying away
from everything that I'm trying to be delivered from.
Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the
public and have no self.
Bless a thing and it will bless you. Curse it and it will curse you. If
you bless a situation, it has no power to hurt you: and even if it is
troublesome for a time, it will gradually fade out, if you sincerely
bless it.
People generally think that it is the world, the environment, external
relationships, which stand in one's way, in the way of ones' good
fortune... and at bottom it is always man himself that stands in his
own way.
If they give you ruled paper, write the other way.
God Himself, sir, does not propose to judge a man until his life is over.
Why should you and I?
The more we know the better we forgive. Whoever feels deeply, feels for
all who live.
So many gods, so many creeds, So many paths that wind and wind, While just
the art of being kind is all the sad world needs.
I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.
There are two ways to slide easily through life: to believe everything or
to doubt everything; both ways save us from thinking.
Contentment consisteth not in adding more fuel, but in taking away some
fire.
Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them to
become what they are capable of being.
Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does
not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children.
A full cup must be carried steadily.
The question is not can they reason? Nor can they talk? But can they
suffer?
Never confuse motion with action.
Eloquence is a painting of the thoughts.
Poetry and Hums aren't things which you get, they're things which get you.
And all you can do is to go where they can find you.
The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass,
it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in
itself.
Keep your thoughts positive because your thoughts become your words.
When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a
nail.
Temptation almost always assails us at the point where we thought no
defense necessary.
The trouble with people who have broken a habit is that they usually have
the pieces mounted and framed.
Leap, and the net will appear.
If you bungle raising your children, I don't think whatever else you do
well matters very much.
When we hate our enemies, we are giving them power over us: power over our
sleep, our appetites, our blood pressure, our health and our happiness.
Our enemies would dance with joy if only they knew how they were worrying
us, lacerating us, and getting even with us! Our hate is not hurting them
at al, but our hate is turning our days and nights into a hellish turmoil.
Spiritual progress is like detoxification. Things have to come up in
order to be released. Once we have asked to be healed,
then our unhealed places are forced to the surface.
It is as hard for the good to suspect evil, as it is for the bad to
suspect good.
There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that
reflects it.
In spite of illness, in spite even of the archenemy sorrow, one can remain
alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of
change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things,
and happy in small ways.
The sun does not shine for a few trees and flowers, but for the wide
world's joy.
Now is the operative word. Everything you put in your way is just a
method of putting off the hour when you could actually be doing your
dream. You don't need endless time and perfect conditions. Do it now.
Do it today. Do it for twenty minutes and watch your heart start beating.
If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds
and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and
destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart
of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own
heart?
If you aren't good at loving yourself, you will have a difficult time
loving anyone, since you'll resent the time and energy you give another
person that you aren't even giving to yourself.
We gain the strength of the temptation we resist.
A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days.
It is scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at
sections of time. A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order - willed,
faked, and so brought into being.
A house is no home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well
as the body.
You can't wake a person who is pretending to be asleep.
This is the true joy of life, the being used up for a purpose recognized
by yourself as a mighty one; being a force of nature instead of a
feverish, selfish little clot of ailments and grievances, complaining that
the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion
that my life belongs to the community, and as long as I live, it is my
privilege to do for it what I can.
The winners in life think constantly in terms of I can, I will, and I am.
Losers, on the other hand, concentrate their waking thoughts on what they
should have or would have done, or what they can't do.
Winning is not a sometime thing; it's an all-time thing. You don't win
once in a while, you don't do things right once in a while, you do them
all the time. Winning is a habit.
I have learned through bitter experience the one supreme lesson to
conserve my anger, and as heat conserved is transmitted into energy, even
so our anger controlled can be transmitted into a power that can move the
world.
The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies;
probably because generally they are the same people.
Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we
didn't.
The wise speak when they have something to say, the fools speak when they
have to say something.
"to whom much is given, much will be required" ( Luke 12:48)
There is always something to do. There are hungry people to feed, naked
people to clothe, sick people to comfort and make well. And while I don't
expect you to save the world I do think it's not asking too much for you
to love those with whom you sleep, share the happiness of those whom you
call friend, engage those among you who are visionary and remove from your
life those who offer you depression, despair and disrespect.
I don't measure a man's success by how high he climbs but how high he
bounces when he hits bottom.
If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each
man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.
Faith is an oasis in the heart which will never be reached by the caravan
of thinking.
What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say.
Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward. They may be beaten, but they
may start a winning game.
Courage is the price that life extracts for granting peace. The soul that
knows it not, knows no release from little things.
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by
stupidity.
There is no such thing as a 'self-made' man. We are made up of thousands
of others. Everyone who has ever done a kind deed for us, or spoken one
word of encouragement to us, has entered into the make-up of our character
and of our thoughts.
In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an
invincible summer.
Be aware that a halo has to fall only a few inches to be a noose.
He who does not attempt to make peace / When small discords arise, /
Is like the bee's hive which leaks drops of honey / Soon, the whole hive
collapses.
Just as a cautious businessman avoids tying up all his capital in one
concern, so, perhaps, worldly wisdom will advise us not to look for the
whole of our satisfaction from a single aspiration.
You can learn new things at any time in your life if you're willing to be
a beginner. If you actually learn to like being a beginner, the whole
world opens up to you.
One way to become enthusiastic is to look for the plus sign. To make
progress in any difficult situation, you have to start with what's right
about it and build on that.
A failure is a man who has blundered but is not able to cash in on the
experience.
It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid
with them.
Courage is not the towering oak that sees storms come and go; it is the
fragile blossom that opens in the snow.
We all have big changes in our lives that are more or less a second
chance.
Love is friendship set on fire; Hate is friendship burned.
It is not economical to go to bed early to save the candles if the result
is twins.
Children need love, especially when they do not deserve it.
Apply dog logic to life:
Let this be an example for the acquisition of all knowledge, virtue, and
riches. By the fall of drops of water, by degrees, a pot is filled.
Every man has his secret sorrows, which the world knows not; and
oftentimes we call a man cold when he is only sad.
Do not praise yourself / not slander others:
There are still many days to go / and anything could happen.
How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young,
compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of
the weak and strong. Because someday in life you will have been all of
these.
Of course I'm not happy, she said to me, but I've got a degree in
psychology so at least I can explain why.
Trust in Allah, but tie your camel.
All sunshine makes a desert.
What is to give light must endure burning.
To give pleasure to a single heart by a single act is better than a
thousand heads bowing in prayer.
Some things have to be believed to be seen.
Man discovers his own wealth when God comes to ask gifts of him.
Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once
in a while, or the light won't come in.
Years are only undergarments, and you either wear them with style all your
life, or else you go dowdy to the grave.
The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that,
you've got it made.
In the midst of great joy, do not promise anyone anything. In the midst of
great anger, do not answer anyone's letter.
You cannot make yourself feel something you do not feel, but you can make
yourself do right in spite of your feelings.
When you re-read a classic, you do not see more in the book than you did
before; you see more in yourself than there was before.
Have patience! In time, even grass becomes milk.
A bird in the hand is a certainty, but a bird in the bush may sing.
Necessity may be the mother of invention, but play is certainly the
father.
It's never too late - in fiction or in life - to revise.
Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies
inside us while we live.
Be master of your petty annoyances and conserve your energies for the big,
worthwhile things. It isn't the mountain ahead that wears you out - it's
the grain of sand in your shoe.
Clay is moulded to make a vessel, but the utility of the vessel lies in
the space where there is nothing. Thus, taking advantage of what is, we
recognize the utility of what is not.
Have patience with everything in your heart and try to love the questions
themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign
language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you
now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live
everything. Live the question now. Perhaps then, someday far in the
future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into
the answer.
When you struggle, that's when you realize what you're made of, and
that's when you realize what the people around you can do. You learn
who you'd want to take with you to a war, and who you'd only want to
take to lunch.
In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes
on.
If you can't see it, before you see it, you'll never see it.
Never bear more than one trouble at a time. Some people bear three kinds -
all they have had, all they have now, and all they expect to have.
Stare. It is the way to educate your eye, and more. Stare, pry, listen
eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long.
Those who understand only what can be explained understand very little.
The higher we soar the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly.
If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on
fire - then you got a problem. Everything else is inconvenience. |
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