We ascribe beauty to that which is simple; which has no superfluous parts; which exactly answers its end; which stands related to all things; which is the mean of many extremes.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Conduct of Life, "Beauty" (1860).
Each day a few more lies eat into the seed with which we are born, little institutional lies from the print of newspapers, the shock waves of television, and the sentimental cheats of the movie screen.
Norman Mailer (b. 1923), U.S. author. Advertisements for Myself, "First Advertisement for Myself" (1959).
Let us so live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
Mark Twain, U.S. Author (1835-1910)
When we seek to discover the best in others, we somehow bring out the best in ourselves.
William Arthur Ward
Make things as simple as possible, but not simpler.
Albert Einstein
Go often to the house of thy friend, for weeds choke the unused path.
Albert Ralph Waldo Emerson
Hating people is like burning down your own house to get rid of a rat.
Henry Emerson Fosdick
The most pitiful among men is he who turns his dreams into silver and gold.
Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931) [Sand and Foam]
My Sorrow, when she's here with me,
Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be;
She loves the bare, the withered tree;
She walks the sodden pasture lane.
From "My November Guest", Robert Frost (1874-1963)
Persistent people begin their success where others end in failures.
Edward Eggleston
Pick battles big enough to matter, small enough to win.
Jonathan Kozol
Show me a man with both feet on the ground, and I'll show you a man who can't put his pants on.
Arthur K. Watson
The more original a discovery, the more obvious it seems afterward.
Arthur Koestler
Loyalty to a petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.
Mark Twain, U.S. Author (1835-1910)
O senseless man, who cannot possibly make a worm and yet will make Gods by the dozen!
Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592)
Talent develops in tranquility, character in the full current of human life.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)
The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature.
Marcus Aurelius (121-180 AD)
Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.
Helen Adams Keller (1880-1968)
There is nothing with which every man is so afraid as getting to know how enormously much he is capable of doing and becoming.
Soren Kierkegaard
If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
If I try to be like him, who will be like me?
Yiddish proverb
Inside every large program is a small program struggling to get out.
Tony Hoare's Law of Large Programs
Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play.
Heraclitus, Greek philosopher (500 B.C.)
Most of us are just about as happy as we make up our minds to be.
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.
Mark Twain
The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart.
Helen Keller
If words are to enter men's minds and bear fruit, they must be the right words shaped cunningly to pass men's defenses and explode silently and effectually within their minds.
J.B. Phillips
A cynic is not merely one who reads bitter lessons from the past, he is one who is prematurely disappointed in the future.
Sydney J. Harris
Do not praise yourself
not slander others:
There are still many days to go
and any thing could happen!
Kabir
War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses.
Thomas Jefferson
It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly.
Bertrand Russell
Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much of life. So aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something.
Henry David Thoreau
New and stirring things are belittled because if they are not belittled, the humiliating question arises, ``Why then are you not taking part in them?''
H. G. Wells
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.
Henry David Thoreau
Noise proves nothing--often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she had laid an asteroid.
Mark Twain
It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
Alfred Adler
We could never learn to be brave and patient, if there were only joy in the world.
Helen Keller
One is always a long way from solving a problem until one actually has the answer.
Stephen Hawking
Knowing all truth is less than doing a little bit of good.
Albert Schweitzer
If a man points at the moon, an idiot will look at the finger.
Sufi
A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Happiness is the absence of the striving for happiness.
Chuang-tzu
The refusal to choose is a form of choice; disbelief is a form of belief.
Frank Barron
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.
Francis Bacon
Nothing makes us so lonely as our secrets.
Paul Tournier
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The liar's punishment is not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else.
George Bernard Shaw
He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Failures, repeated failures, are finger posts on the road to achievement. One fails forward toward success.
Charles F. Kettering
How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it.
Marcus Aurelius
Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope.
Robert F. Kennedy
You can achieve anything you want in life if you have the courage to dream it, the intelligence to make a realistic plan, and the will to see that plan through to the end.
Sidney A. Friedman
Gratitude can transform common days into thanksgivings, turn routine jobs into joy, and change ordinary opportunities into blessings.
William Arthur Ward
For most of life, nothing wonderful happens. If you don't enjoy getting up and working and finishing your work and sitting down to a meal with family or friends, then the chances are you're not going to be very happy. If someone bases his [or her] happiness on major events like a great job, huge amounts of money, a flawlessly happy marriage or a trip to Paris, that person isn't going to be happy much of the time. If, on the other hand, happiness depends on a good breakfast, flowers in the yard, a drink or a nap, then we are more likely to live with quite a bit of happiness.
Andy Rooney
Most of my major disappointments have turned out to be blessings in disguise. So whenever anything bad does happen to me, I kind of sit back and feel, well, if I give this enough time, it'll turn out that this was good, so I shouldn't worry about it too much.
William Gaines
If you let yourself be absorbed completely, if you surrender completely to the moments as they pass, you live more richly those moments.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Nothing is more powerful than an individual acting out of his conscience, thus helping to bring the collective conscience to life.
Norman Cousins
Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent.
Carl Jung
Simplicity is the most difficult thing to secure in this world; it is the last limit of experience and the last effort of genius.
George Sand
It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters in the end.
Ursula K. Le Guin
As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand.
Josh Billings
The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things.
Epictetus
The future must be seen in terms of what a person can do to contribute something, to make something better, to make it go where he believes with all his being it ought to go.
Frederick R. Kappel
We can throw stones, complain about them, stumble on them, climb over them, or build with them.
William Arthur Ward
If you don't make a total commitment to whatever you're doing, then you start looking to bail out the first time the boat starts leaking. It's tough enough getting that boat to shore with everybody rowing, let alone when a guy stands up and starts putting his life jacket on.
Lou Holtz (1937-, American Football Coach)
At times failure is very necessary for the artist. It reminds him that failure is not the ultimate disaster. And this reminder liberates him from the mean fussing of perfectionism.
John Berger (1926-, British Actor)
My father gave me the greatest gift anyone could give another person, he believed in me.
Jim Valvano (American College Basketball Coach)
When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us.
Alexander Graham Bell [Sometimes attributed to Helen Keller]
The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.
Niels Bohr, physicist (1885-1962)
Life is a long lesson in humility.
James M. Barrie, novelist, short-story writer, and playwright (1860-1937)
The very first condition of lasting happiness is that a life should be full of purpose, aiming at something outside self.
Hugh Black
If I have seen farther than others, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants.
Isaac Newton
A man may be very industrious, and yet not spend his time well. There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of life getting his living.
Henry David Thoreau
Death is not extinguishing the light; it is putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.
Rabindranath Tagore, poet, philosopher, author, songwriter, painter, educator, composer, Nobel laureate (1861-1941)
He who would travel happily must travel light.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery, author and aviator (1900-1945)
All wars are civil wars, because all men are brothers... Each one owes infinitely more to the human race than to the particular country in which he was born.
Francois Fenelon, theologian and writer (1651-1715)
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.
William Blake, opening stanza: of "Auguries of Innocence"
No army can withstand the strength of an idea whose time has come.
Victor Hugo
People are like stained glass windows: they sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light within.
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, psychiatrist and author (1926- )
A sense of duty is useful in work but offensive in personal relations.
Bertrand Russell, philosopher, mathematician, and author (1872-1970)
"The journey into self-love and self-acceptance must begin with self-examination........until you take the journey of self-reflection, it is almost impossible to grow or learn in life."
Iyanla Van Zant (from her book "Until Today").
Walking is also an ambulation of mind.
Gretel Ehrlich, novelist, poet, and essayist (1946- )
The teacher is like the candle which lights others in consuming itself.
Giovanni Ruffini, writer (1807-1881)
The praise that comes of love does not make us vain, but humble rather. Knowing what we are, the pride that shines in our mother's eyes as she looks at us, is about the most pathetic thing a man has to face, but he would be a devil altogether if it did not burn some of the sin out of him.
J.M. Barrie "The Little Minister", chapter 2.
Yet if he upbraided her in his hurry, it was to repent bitterly his temper the next, and to feel its effects more than she, temper being a weapon that we hold by the blade.
J.M. Barrie "The Little Minister", chapter 9.
A great writer has spoken sadly of the shock it would be to a mother to know her boy as he really is, but I think she often knows him better than he is known to cynical friends. We should be slower to think that the man at his worst is the real man, and certain that the better we are ourselves the less likely is he to be at his worst in our company. Every time he talks away his own character before us he is signifying contempt for ours.
J.M. Barrie "The Little Minister", chapter 9.
So Babbie loved the little minister for the best that she had ever seen in man. I shall be told that she thought far more of him than he deserved, forgetting the mean in the worthy: but who that has had a glimpse of heaven will care to let his mind dwell henceforth on earth? Love, it is said, is blind, but love is not blind. It is an extra eye, which shows us what is most worthy of regard. To see the best is to see most clearly, and it is the lover's privilege.
J.M. Barrie "The Little Minister", chapter 23.
When we see men of a contrary character, we should turn inwards and examine ourselves.
Confucius (551-479 BC)
The soul would have no rainbow had the eyes no tears.
John Vance Cheney, poet (1848-1922)
Gratitude can transform common days into thanksgivings, turn routine jobs into joy, and change ordinary opportunities into blessings.
William Arthur Ward
There is a foolish corner in the brain of the wisest man.
Aristotle, philosopher (384-322 B.C.)
You cannot be lonely if you like the person you're alone with.
Wayne Dyer
There is never a better measure of what a person is than what he does when he's absolutely free to choose.
William M. Bulger (1934-, American Educator, Senator)
Security is not the meaning of my life. Great opportunities are worth the risk.
Shirley Hufstedler (1925-, American jurist and secretary of education)
Dreams have only one owner at a time. That's why dreamers are lonely.
Erma Bombeck, author (1927-1996)
Without danger you cannot get beyond danger.
George Herbert (1593-1632, British Metaphysical Poet)
If you concentrate on finding whatever is good in every situation, you will discover that your life will suddenly be filled with gratitude, a feeling that nurtures the soul.
Rabbi Harold Kushner
Out beyond our ideas of right-doing and wrong-doing there is a field. I'll meet you there.
Rumi
It's never too late to have a happy childhood.
Tom Robbins, from Still Life with Woodpecker
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?
Alexander Solzhenitsyn
All progress has resulted from people who took unpopular positions.
Adlai E. Stevenson
No soul is desolate as long as there is a human being for whom it can feel trust and reverence.
George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), novelist (1819-1880)
Nothing worse could happen to one than to be completely understood.
Carl Gustav Jung, psychiatrist (1875-1961)
Everything you want is out there waiting for you to ask. Everything you want also wants you. But you have to take action to get it.
Jack Canfield
Most people would rather be certain they're miserable, than risk being happy.
Robert Anthony
Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. Be the living expression of God's kindness: kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile.
Mother Teresa
You desire to know the art of living, my friend? It is contained in one phrase: make use of suffering.
Henri Frederic Amiel, philosopher and writer (1821-1881)
What we wish, that we readily believe.
Demosthenes, c 383-322 BC, Greek orator.
Most writers regard truth as their most valuable possession, and therefore are economical in its use.
Mark Twain
There's as much risk in doing nothing as in doing something.
Trammel Crow
We must travel in the direction of our fear.
John Berryman, 1914-1972, American poet.
How different our lives are when we really know what is deeply important to us, and keeping that picture in mind, we manage ourselves each day to be and to do what really matters most.
Stephen Covey
If you want happiness for an hour - take a nap. If you want happiness for a day - go fishing. If you want happiness for a month - get married. If you want happiness for a year - inherit a fortune. If you want happiness for a lifetime - help someone else.
Chinese Proverb
Don't be afraid to take a big step if one is indicated. You can't cross a chasm in two small jumps.
David Lloyd George (1863-1945, British Statesman, Prime Minister)
Your decision to be, have and do something out of ordinary entails facing difficulties that are out of the ordinary as well. Sometimes your greatest asset is simply your ability to stay with it longer than anyone else.
Brian Tracy (American Trainer, Speaker, Author, Businessman)
The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make a mistake.
Elbert Hubbard (1859-1915, American Author, Publisher)
Love is a symbol of eternity. It wipes out all sense of time, destroying all memory of a beginning and all fear of an end.
Germain de Stael (1766-1817, French-Swiss Novelist)
Love your enemies because they bring out the best in you.
Friedrich Nietzsche
It's only when we truly know and understand that we have a limited time on earth - and that we have no way of knowing when our time is up, we will then begin to live each day to the fullest, as if it was the only one we had.
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
The mind cannot long act the role of the heart.
Francois de la Rochefoucauld
You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.
Henry David Thoreau
Never regret. If it's good, it's wonderful. If it's bad, it's experience.
Victoria Holt
We must lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time; we can be responsible only for the one action of the present moment. But we can beg for an increase of love in our hearts that will vitalize and transform all our individual actions.
Dorothy Day (1897-1980, American Religious Leader)
There is a magnet in your heart that will attract true friends. That magnet is unselfishness, thinking of others first. When you learn to live for others, they will live for you.
Paramahansa Yogananda
Playing it safe is the riskiest choice we can ever make.
Sarah Ban Breathnach
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 eternity.
Henry Van Dyke (1852--1933)
What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step. It is always the same step, but you have to take it.
Antoine De Saint-Exupery
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with such applause in the lecture room, how soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick; Till rising and gliding out, I wandered off by myself, in the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, looked up in perfect silence at the stars.
Walt Whitman
People can't live with change if there's not a changeless core inside them. The key to the ability to change is a changeless sense of who you are, what you are about and what you value.
Stephen R. Covey
Praying without ceasing is not ritualized, nor are there even words. It is a constant state of awareness of oneness with God.
Peace Pilgrim 1908-1981, American Peace Activist
Our plans miscarry because they have no aim. When you don't know what harbor you're aiming for, no wind is the right wind.
Seneca (BC 3-65 AD, Roman Philosopher, Dramatist, Statesman)
The truth which makes men free is for the most part the truth which men prefer not to hear.
Herbert Sebastian Agar
We must be the change we wish to see in the world.
Mahatma Gandhi
We are no longer happy as soon as we wish to be happier.
Walter Savage Landor 1775-1864, British Poet, Essayist
To love is to admire with the heart; to admire is to love with the mind.
Theophile Gautier, writer (1811-1872)
One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.
Andre Gide (1869-1951, French Author)
Figure out what your purpose is in life, what you really and truly want to do with your time and your life; then be willing to sacrifice everything and then some to achieve it. If you are not willing to make the sacrifice, then keep searching.
Quintina Ragnacci (1967-, Entrepreneur)
No horse gets anywhere until he is harnessed. No stream or gas drives anything until it is confined. No Niagara is ever turned into light and power until it is tunneled. No life ever grows great until it is focused, dedicated, disciplined.
Harry Emerson Fosdick
We are all born originals - why is it so many of us die copies?
Edward Young, poet (1683-1765)
Many of us spend our whole lives running from feeling with the mistaken belief that you cannot bear the pain. But you have already borne the pain. What you have not done is feel all you are beyond that pain.
Kahlil Gibran
When we get too caught up in the busyness of the world we lose connection with one another and ourselves.
Jack Kornfield
Sometimes our light goes out but is blown into flame by another human being. Each of us owes deepest thanks to those who have rekindled this light.
Albert Schweitzer
I have accepted fear as a part of life - specifically the fear of change. I have gone ahead despite the pounding in the heart that says: turn back.
Erica Jong
Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Caged birds accept each other but flight is what they long for.
Tennessee Williams
Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.
Norman Cousins
They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.
Francis Bacon
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex ... it takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction.
Albert Einstein
Let yourself be open and life will be easier. A spoon of salt in a glass of water makes the water undrinkable. A spoon of salt in a lake is almost unnoticed.
Buddha
Most people are paralyzed by fear. Overcome it and you take charge of your life and your world.
Mark Victor Hansen
...if there is sin against life, it lies in hoping for another life and evading the implacable grandeur of the one we have.
Albert Camus
Of all the things which wisdom provides to make us entirely happy, much the greatest is the possession of friendship.
Epicurus (c.341-270 BC, Greek Philosopher)
It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.
Charles Darwin
One must never lose time in vainly regretting the past nor complaining against the changes which cause us discomfort, for change is the very essence of life.
Anatole France
The first step toward change is acceptance. Once you accept yourself, you open the door to change. That's all you have to do. Change is not something you do, it's something you allow.
Will Garcia
If you are patient in one moment of anger, you will avoid one hundred days of sorrow.
Chinese Proverb
Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending.
Carl Bard
The world is moving so fast these days that the man who says it can't be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it.
Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878-1969, American Minister)
You will never find time for anything. you must make it.
Charles Buxton (1823-1871, British Author)
Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for the truth.
Benjamin Disraeli
The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think.
Edwin Schlossberg, designer (1945- )
Speech is conveniently located midway between thought and action, where it often substitutes for both.
John Andrew Holmes
A committee is a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured and then quietly strangled.
Barnett Cocks
It is easy enough to be friendly to one's friends. But to befriend the one who regards himself as your enemy is the quintessence of true religion. The other is mere business.
Mohandas K. Gandhi
It does not take much strength to do things, but it requires great strength to decide what to do.
Elbert Hubbard (1859-1915, American Author, Publisher)
When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.
John Muir (1838-1914)
An angry man opens his mouth and shuts his eyes.
Cato The Elder (BC 234-149, Roman Statesman, Orator)
The trees that are slow to grow bear the best fruit.
Moliere, actor and playwright (1622-1673)
May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.
Edward Abbey, naturalist and author (1927-1989)
I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.
Walt Whitman, poet (1819-1892)
Be brave enough to live life creatively. The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. You can't get there by bus, only by hard work and risk and by not quite knowing what you're doing. What you'll discover will be wonderful. What you'll discover will be yourself.
Alan Alda
Then a woman said, "Speak to us of Joy and Sorrow."
And he answered:
Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled
with your tears.
And how else can it be?
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?
And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was
hollowed with knives?
Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet, "On Joy and Sorrow"
Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
Take rest; a field that has rested gives a bountiful crop.
Ovid, poet (43 BCE - CE 17)
Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on "I am not too sure."
H. L. Mencken
Gamble everything for love,
if you’re a true human being.
If not, leave this gathering.
Rumi
If people can be educated to see the lowly side of their own natures, it may be hoped that they will also learn to understand and to love their fellow men better. A little less hypocrisy and a little more tolerance towards oneself can only have good results in respect for our neighbor; for we are all too prone to transfer to our fellows the injustice and violence we inflict upon our own natures.
Carl Jung
"How does one become a butterfly?" she asked pensively. "You must want to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar."
Trina Paulus
We should have a great many fewer disputes in the world if words were taken for what they are, the signs of our ideas, and not for things themselves.
John Locke
People change and forget to tell each other.
Lillian Hellman, playwright
Thank God I'm not a Jungian
C.G. Jung
At first people refuse to believe that a strange new thing can be done. Then they begin to hope it can be done. Then they see it can be done. Then it is done and all the world wonders why it was not done centuries ago.
Frances Hodgson Burnett
A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight.
Robertson Davies, writer
Assumptions are the termites of relationships.
Henry Winkler, actor
Expect problems and eat them for breakfast.
Alfred A. Montapert
Life is an adventure in forgiveness.
Norman Cousins
I am sitting in the smallest room of my house. I have your review before me. In a moment it will be behind me.
Max Reeger
If you give me six lines written by the most honest man, I will find something in them to hang him.
Cardinal Richelieu
Whenever you do things from your Soul, you feel a river inside, a joy.
Rumi
To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.
Emily Dickinson
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar;
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home.
William Wordsworth
God is in you as the ocean is in the wave.
Eric Butterworth
Only the hand that erases can write the true thing.
Meister Eckhart
The world in general doesn't know what to make of originality; it is startled out of its comfortable habits of thought, and its first reaction is one of anger.
W. Somerset Maugham, writer
The apparently unendurable conflict is proof of the rightness of your life. A life without contradiction is only half a life; or else a life in the Beyond, which is destined only for angels. But God loves human beings more than the angels.
Carl Jung
Once you hear the details of victory, it is hard to distinguish it from a defeat.
Jean-Paul Sartre
What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to a human soul.
Joseph Addison
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.
Bertrand Russell
A bit of perfume always clings to the hand that gives the rose.
Chinese proverb
Often war is waged only in order to show valor; thus an inner dignity is ascribed to war itself, and even some philosophers have praised it as an ennoblement of humanity, forgetting the pronouncement of the Greek who said, "War is an evil in as much as it produces more wicked men than it takes away."
Immanuel Kant
I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.
Susan B Anthony
All violence is the result of people tricking themselves into believing that their pain derives from other people and that consequently those people deserve to be punished.
Marshall Rosenberg
Punishment damages goodwill and self-esteem, and shifts our attention from the intrinsic value of an action to external consequences.
Marshall Rosenberg
My aim is to agitate and disturb people. I'm not selling bread, I'm selling yeast.
Miguel de Unamuno
The Experience of Sacred Space makes possible the founding of the world: where the sacred Manifests itself in space, the real unveils itself, the world comes into existence.
Mircea Eliade
As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
Albert Einstein
Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens....
Carl Jung
When we understand the needs that motivate our own and other’s behavior, we have no enemies.
Marshall Rosenberg
Everything has changed, except our way of thinking.
Albert Einstein
Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence, but also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
It’s never what people do that make us angry, it’s what we tell ourselves about what they did.
Marshall Rosenberg
Making a request without revealing the feeling/need takes all the joy out of other's service.
Lucy Leu
And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
You can never learn anything that is not a part of yourself.
Louis Kahn
The significant problems of our time cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.
Albert Einstein
Be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.
Henry David Thoreau