One Great Fact

Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.  ~ Henry David Thoreau

Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.  ~Epictetus

Make money your god and it will plague you like the devil.  ~Henry Fielding

Not he who has much is rich, but he who gives much.  ~Erich Fromm

I desire ... to leave this one great fact clearly stated. THERE IS NO WEALTH BUT LIFE.  ~John Ruskin

Quotes about wealth and life

Readers, I am taking a break for several weeks and will return in the new year.  Holiday best wishes to all.

Everything we Do

A person educated in mind and not in morals is a menace to society.  ~Juanita Kidd Stout

We pay a price when we deprive children of the exposure to the values, principles, and education they need to make them good citizens.  ~Sandra Day O'Connor

People need religion. It's a vehicle for a moral tradition. A crucial role. Nothing can take its place.  ~Irving Kristol

The recognition of the sanctity of the life of every man is the first and only basis of all morality.  ~Leo Tolstoy

The act of acting morally is behaving as if everything we do matters.  ~Gloria Steinem

Quotes about morals, ethics

Never too Late

Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.  ~Albert Einstein

Find out who you are and do it on purpose.  ~Dolly Parton

In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.  ~Thomas Jefferson

Never bend your head. Always hold it high. Look the world right in the eye.  ~Helen Keller

It is never too late to be what you might have been.  ~George Eliot

Quotes about being true to yourself

There is Enough

Good, the more communicated, more abundant grows.  ~John Milton

When we give generously, with an abundance mentality, what we give away will multiply.  ~Henri Nouwen

The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate.  ~Oprah Winfrey

Too often we visit the well of divine abundance with a teacup instead of a bucket.  ~Elinor MacDonald

There is enough in the world for everyone's need; there is not enough for everyone's greed.  ~Mohandas Gandhi

Quotes about abundance

We Must Focus

Inspiration exists but it must find you working. ~ Pablo Picasso

We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty. ~ Maya Angelou

You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club. ~Jack London

The first and final thing you have to do in this world is to last it and not be smashed by it. ~ Ernest Hemingway

It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light.  ~Aristotle Onassis

Quotes about inspiration

A Citizen of the World

I'm a stranger in a strange land.  ~ Carson McCullers

There are no strangers here;only friends you haven't met yet.  ~ William Butler Yeats

Happiness grows at our own firesides, and it's not be to picked in strangers' gardens.  ~ Douglas Jerrold

Sometimes you have to get to know someone really well to realize you're really strangers.  ~ Mary Tyler Moore

If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world.  ~ Francis Bacon

Quotes about strangers

A Little Courage

Make each day a story worth telling. ~ Patti Majeski

Every day brings new choices.  ~ Martha Beck

Each day is a new life. Seize it. Live it. ~ David Guy Powers

Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Begin each day with a little courage, a little curiosity, and a little spring in your step. ~ Doe Zantamata

Quotes about each day

The Very Peace

The question is not what you look at, but what you see...I begin to see an object when I cease to understand it. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Shut your eyes and see.  ~ James Joyce

The precision of naming takes away from the uniqueness of seeing.  ~Pierre Bonnard 

You see it the way you see it. Nobody can see it for someone else.   ~Anette Waterbeek 

To look at any thing,
If you would know that thing,
You must look at it long:
To look at this green and say,
"I have seen spring in these
Woods," will not do - you must
Be the thing you see:
You must be the dark snakes of
Stems and ferny plumes of leaves,
You must enter in
To the small silences between
The leaves,
You must take your time
And touch the very peace
They issue from.
~John Moffitt

We are a landscape of all we have seen.  ~ Isamu Noguchi 

Quotes about seeing

Pays the Best

What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to the soul.  ~Joseph Addison

A sense of curiosity is nature's original school of education.  ~Smiley Blanton

An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.  ~Benjamin Franklin

Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.  ~Malcolm S. Forbes

Education is ... hanging around until you've caught on.  ~Robert Frost

Quotes about education

Across an Abyss

Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase.  ~Martin Luther King, Jr.

To me faith is not just a noun but also a verb.  ~Jimmy Carter

Reason is our soul's left hand,
Faith her right;
by these we reach divinity.  ~John Donne

The spiritual life is the way of walking with God instead of walking alone.  ~Elinor MacDonald

The soul can split the sky in two
And let the face of God shine through.  ~Edna St. Vincent Millay

To leap across an abyss, one is better served by faith than doubt.  ~William James

Quotes about faith

Sunshine Today

Worry pretends to be necessary but serves no useful purpose.   ~Eckhart Tolle

Worry often gives a small thing a big shadow.  ~Swedish proverb

Don't take tomorrow to bed with you.  ~Norman Vincent Peale

There are two kinds of worries: those you can do something about and those you can't. Don't spend any time on the latter.  ~Duke Ellington

Worry is like a rocking chair;it gives you something to do but it doesn't get you anywhere.  ~Dorothy Galyean

I always feel sorry for people who think more about a rainy day ahead than sunshine today.  ~Rae Foley

Quotes about worry

Real Power

Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for; it is a thing to be achieved.  ~W.J. Bryant

Happiness... it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.  ~Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Just do a thing and don’t talk about it. This is the great secret of success.  ~Sarah Grand

Nothing builds self-esteem and self-confidence like accomplishment.  ~Bill Hybels

To achieve you need thought. You have to know what you are doing and that's real power.  ~Ayn Rand

Quotes about achievement

Mix a Little Foolishness

We're fools whether we dance or not, so we might as well dance.  ~Japanese proverb

If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.  ~Bertrand Russell

Only a fool expects to be happy all the time.  ~Robertson Davies

Mix a little foolishness with your serious plans: it's lovely to be silly at the right moment.  ~Horace

We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.  ~Martin Luther King, Jr.

Quotes about foolishness

The Deepest Feeling

We all have within us a center of stillness surrounded by silence.  ~Dag Hammarskjold

Accustomed to the veneer of noise, to the shibboleths of promotion, public relations, and market research, society is suspicious of those who value silence.  ~John Lahr

Silence fertilizes the deep place where personality grows. A life with a peaceful center can weather all storms.  ~Norman Vincent Peale

A story is told as much by silence as by speech.  ~Susan Griffin

The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence.  ~Marianne Moore

Quotes about silence

Under the Feet

So few the grains of happiness measured against all the dark
and still the scales balance. ~Jane Hirshfield

Sadness is but a wall between two gardens. ~Kahlil Gibran

Happiness: a way station between too little and too much.  ~Channing Pollock

Comparison is the thief of joy.  ~unknown

The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance; the wise grows it under his feet.  ~James Oppenheim

Quotes about joy

Lived Experience

I like good strong words that mean something.  ~Louisa May Alcott (Little Women)

Our words should be purrs instead of hisses.  ~Kathrine Palmer Peterson

Words do two major things: They provide food for the mind and create light for understanding and awareness.  ~Jim Rohn

Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assaults of thoughts on the unthinking.  ~John Maynard Keynes

For me, words are a form of action, capable of influencing change. Their articulation represents a complete, lived experience.  ~Ingrid Bengis

Quotes about words

Faithful Mentor

The ultimate test of man's conscience may be his willingness to sacrifice something today for future generations whose words of thanks will not be heard.  ~Gaylord Nelson

The conscience interprets life honestly and realistically. The same cannot be said about the ego.  ~Shantidasa

Conscience is the window of our spirit, evil is the curtain.  ~Doug Horton

A disciplined conscience is a man's best friend. It may not be his most amiable, but it is his most faithful mentor.  ~Austin Phelps

The inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking.  ~H. L. Mencken

Quotes about conscience