A Random Collection of Quotations
(If there is no attribution either I lost it
or it was lost long before I came upon the quotation.)
If you want to be happy, be.
Henry David Thoreau
Begin somewhere; you cannot build a reputation on what you intend to do.
Liz Smith
Some people regard discipline as a chore. For me, it is a kind of order that sets me free to fly.
Julie Andrews
Each moment is already here in all its fullness, waiting for us to immerse ourselves in its sometimes muddy, but always restorative, waters.
Jerome Front
As human beings out greatness lies not so much in our being able to remake our world as in being able to remake ourselves.
Gandhi
We may in fact disappoint ourselves, may not meet our own expectations, but we do not cease to be a friend to ourselves.
Sharon Salzberg
Give me a fruitful error any time, full of seeds, bursting with its own corrections.
Pareto
Patience is waiting. Not passively waiting. That is laziness. But to keep going when the going is hard and slow - that is patience.
Anonymous
No matter how long your journey appears to be, there is never more than this: one step, one breath, one moment--now.
Eckhart Tolle
Positive guilt occurs when we begin to break rules that need to be broken.
Dede Beasley
Motivation is a fire from within. If someone else tries to light that fire under you, chances are it will burn very briefly.
Stephen R. Covey
The distance is nothing; it's only the first step that is difficult.
Marquise du Deffand
Definition of Burnout:
Trying to change someone else’s life and being attached to the results.
Rules for Living:
· Show Up
· Pay Attention
· Tell the Truth
· Don’t Be Attached to the Results
Angeles Arien
Don’t just do something, sit there.
Who you are is more important than what you do and far more important than what you say.
Instead of cursing the darkness, bring in the light
Carolyn Costin
When you relax, you can make miracles.
Tan Dun
Behind every success is a succession of failures.
Rick Beneteau
To receive gifts is to lose freedom.
Sandi
You can get everything in life you want, if you'll just help enough other people get what they want.
Zig Ziglar
The person interested in success has to learn to view failure as a healthy, inevitable part of the process of getting to the top.
Dr. Joyce Brothers
The successful man will profit from his mistakes and try again in a different way.
-Dale Carnegie
Even a mistake may turn out to be the one thing necessary to a worthwhile achievement.
Henry Ford
The man who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything.
Theodore Roosevelt
Excellence is the gradual result of always striving to become better.
Pat Riley
Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go.
T. S. Eliot
Faith means living with uncertainty - feeling your way through life, letting your heart guide you like a lantern in the dark”
Dan Millman
Fear is like a hologram. It seems real, filled with substance. Then when you go beyond it, you realize it's only an illusion.
No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this present instant.
Fra Giovanni
A guideline can be thought of as a signpost that leads us down the road—until we reach the next sign.
Donald Altman
When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability... To be alive is to be vulnerable.
Madeleine L'Engle ~
When you blame others, you give up your power to change.
Douglas Noel Adams
He is not laughed at that laughs at himself first.
Tomas Fuller
Change and growth take place when a person has risked himself and dares to become
involved with experimenting with his own life.
Herbert Otto
Stand for one distinctive thing that will give you a competitive advantage.
Harry Beckwith
Success is not a place at which one arrives but rather the spirit with which one undertakes and continues the journey.
Alex Noble
You can't fake listening. It shows.
Raquel Welch
I have always sought to guide the future -- but it is very lonely sometimes trying to play God.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Desire, ask, believe, receive.
Stella Terrill Mann
I feel the greatest reward for doing is the opportunity to do more.
Jonas Salk
The farther away from here and now; the smaller is our human potential.
Rene Egli
Striving for excellence motivates you; striving for perfection is demoralizing.
Harriet Braiker
Celebrate what you want to see more of.
Tom Peters
The greatest good you can do for another is not just to share your riches, but to reveal to him his own.
Benjamin Disraeli
People deal too much with the negative, with what is wrong... Why not try and see positive things, to just touch those things and make them bloom?
Thich Nhat Hanh
Listening, really listening, is tough and grinding work, often humbling, sometimes distasteful. It's a fairly sure bet that you won't like the lion's share of what you hear.
Bob Waterman
Self-knowledge is not an aim in itself, but a means of liberating the forces of spontaneous growth.
Karen Horney
Facts are useless if you need advice on how to use them.
Halla
They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel.
Carl W. Buechner
Discoveries are often made by not following instructions, by going off the main road, by trying the untried.
Frank Tyger
To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. To not dare is to lose oneself.
Soren kierkegaard
The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely.
Carl Jung
If I could define enlightenment briefly I would say it is ''the quiet acceptance of what is.''"
Wayne Dyer
Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.
William James
The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.
Plutarch
To have a vision, one needs to have a sense of possibility far beyond reasonable thinking.
Thomas Leonard
We don't stop playing when we grow old, we grow old when we stop playing.
Anonymous
Life is what we make it, always has been, always will be.
Grandma Moses
When you lose, do not lose the lesson.
The Dalai Lama
Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.
The Dalai Lama
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
The Dalai Lama
Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.
The Dalai Lama
Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon.
The Dalai Lama
Any fact facing us is not as important as our attitude toward it, for that determines our success or failure. The way you think about a fact may defeat you before you ever do anything about it. You are overcome by the fact because you think you are.
Norman Vincent Peale
When the universe knocks on your door, open it up and let it in, silly!
Drew Rozell
As it is more blessed to give than receive, so it must be more blessed to receive than to give back.
Robert Frost
You can turn painful situations around through laughter. If you can find humor in anything - even poverty - you can survive it.
Bill Cosby
I not only use all the brains I have, but all I can borrow.
Woodrow Wilson
To be nobody - but yourself - in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else - means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting.
e.e. cummings
That which one feels in himself to be different is precisely that which is rare, and this is his worth.
Andre Gide
Energy creates energy. It is by spending oneself that one becomes rich.
Sarah Bernhardt
The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but progress.
Joseph Joubert
As long as there is a chance of the world getting through its troubles, I hold that a reasonable man must behave as though he were sure of it. If at the end your cheerfulness was not justified, at any rate you will have been cheerful.
William Shakespeare
Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left over by those who hustle.
Abraham Lincoln
Be with what is so that what is to be may become.
Soren Kierkegaard
To climb steep hills requires slow pace at first.
William Shakespeare
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
Aristotle
Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.
Mahatma Gandhi
Conditions for creativity are to be puzzled; to concentrate; to accept conflict and tension; to be born everyday; to feel a sense of self.
Erich Fromm
God does not require that you succeed. He only requires that you try.
Mother Teresa
The human spirit is never finished when it is defeated…it is finished when it surrenders.
Ben Stein
To understand the heart and mind of a person, look not at what he has already achieved, but at what he aspires to do.
Kahlil Gibran
That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you'd understood all your life, but in a new way.
Doris Lessing
The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.
William James
They do not love that do not show their love.
Shakespeare
We may miss a great deal of joy because we expect it to be unusual, dramatic, and spectacular. We are waiting for lights to flash and bells to ring. But the truth is that joy is here, right now, waiting for us to notice it.
Veronica Ray
Live out of your imagination, not your history.
Stephen Covey
That something happened to you is of no importance to anyone, not even to you. The important thing about you is what you choose to make happen -- your values and choices.
Ayn Rand
If you can find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn't lead anywhere.
Frank A Clark
The ultimate lesson all of us have to learn is unconditional love, which includes not only others but ourselves as well.
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Theodore Roosevelt
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.
Aristotle
When we long for life without... difficulties, remind us that oaks grow strong in contrary winds, and diamonds are made under pressure.
Peter Marshall
There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hands.
Richard Bach
The only ones among you who will be really happy are those who will have sought and found how to serve.
Albert Schweitzer
Praise and blame
gain and loss
pleasure and sorrow
come and go like the wind.
To be happy,
rest like a great tree in the midst of them all.
The Buddha
Personally I'm always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.
Sir Winston Churchill
We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.
Joseph Cambbell
If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.
attributed to Jesus in the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas
It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.
Seneca
Every object, every being, is a jar full of delight. Be a connoisseur.
Rumi
There can be no knowledge without emotion. We may be aware of a truth, yet until we have felt its force, it is not ours. To the cognition of the brain must be added the experience of the soul.
Arnold Bennett
Life is not holding a good hand; Life is playing a poor hand well.
Danish proverb
Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space lies our freedom and power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom.
Victor Frankl
Begin everyday expecting to be surprised and you will be.
Never deprive someone of hope; it might be all they have.
H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words.
If you have a talent, use it in every which way possible. Don’t hoard it. Don’t dole it out like a miser. Spend it lavishly like a millionaire intent on going broke.
Brendan Francis
Follow your instincts. That's where true wisdom manifests itself.
Oprah Winfrey
The more love we project, the more loving people we will attract. Guess what we attract when we project neediness, judgment, or any of those other love-destroying qualities?
Susan Jeffers
I look to the future because that's where I'm going to spend the rest of my life.
George F. Burns
Instead of waiting for the perfect opportunity, I should work toward a realization that every opportunity is perfect.
Suzan-Lori Parks
Life is to be lived. If you have to support yourself, you had bloody well better find some way that is going to be interesting.
Katherine Hepburn
The question is not what a man can scorn, or disparage, or find fault with, but what he can love, and value, and appreciate.
John Ruskin
We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give.
Sir Winston Churchill
Blame is demeaning; responsibility is empowering.
Victoria Moran, Author
Long life is indeed a blessing, but maybe we overdo our concern for the length of our lives and give insufficient attention to the passion we bring to whatever time we have.
Thomas Moore
Every day brings a chance to live free of regret, and with as much joy, fun and laughter as you can stand.
Oprah Winfrey
All cruelty springs from weakness.
Seneca
If it ain't broke... make it better.
Byron Katie
When you learn to love hell, you will be in heaven.
Thaddeus Golas
Do what you fear and your fear will die.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
If you are going through hell, keep going.
Winston Churchill
Whatever you expect, it will be different.
The Buddha
Anyone can become angry. That is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose and in the right way - that is not easy.
Aristotle
Conditions for creativity are to be puzzled; to concentrate; to accept conflict and tension; to be born everyday; to feel a sense of self.
Erich Fromm