My Fragile Immortality

Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.  ~ Maya Angelou

To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.  ~ W. Somerset Maugham

Where does your security lie? Is God your refuge, your hiding place, your stronghold, your shepherd, your counselor, your friend, your redeemer, your saviour, your guide? If He is, you don't need to search any further for security.  ~ Elisabeth Elliot

From my spirit's gray defeat,
From my pulse's flagging beat,
From my hopes that turned to sand
Sifting through my close-clenched hand,
From my own fault's slavery,
If I can sing, I still am free.

For with my singing I can make
A refuge for my spirit's sake,
A house of shining words, to be
My fragile immortality.  ~ Sara Teasdale

Quotes about refuge, life

To Make Allowances

I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions. ~ Augusten Burroughs
 
I like flaws. I think they make things interesting. ~ Sarah Dressen
 
A perfect character might be attended with the inconvenience of being envied and hated; and that a benevolent man should allow a few faults in himself, to keep his friends in countenance. ~ Benjamin Franklin
 
I don't want a perfect character, I want a character who has, as strange as it sounds, some humanity, some flaws, some needs. ~ Nicholas Cage

Only a kind person is able to judge another justly
and to make allowances for his weaknesses.
A kind eye, while recognizing defects,
sees beyond them.  ~Lawrence G. Lovasik

Tags: quotes about flaws, weaknesses, life

Take to the Oars

Adversity is the first path to truth.  ~ Lord Byron

When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.  ~ Henry Ford

Feeling sorry for yourself, and your present condition, is not only a waste of energy but the worst habit you could possibly have.  ~ Dale Carnegie

But ne'er the rose without the thorn.  ~ Robert Herrick

If the wind will not serve, take to the oars.  ~ Latin proverb

Tags: quotes about hardship, adversity, life

To Set our Hearts Right

Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall.  ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Hearts Live By Being Wounded.  ~ Oscar Wilde

The heart of a fool is in his mouth, but the mouth of a wise man is in his heart.  ~ Benjamin Franklin

To put the world right in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must first put the family in order; to put the family in order, we must first cultivate our personal life; we must first set our hearts right.
~Confucius 

Tags: quotes about the heart, life

Do Your Own Growing

I don't consider myself to be a major talent, so the only solace I can take is to hope I'm growing. ~ Paul Simon

Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth, We are happy when we are growing. ~ William Butler Yeats

A man growing old becomes a child again.  ~ Sophocles

The trick is growing up without growing old.  ~ Casey Stengel 
 
You have to do your own growing no matter how tall your grandfather was.  ~ Abraham Lincoln

Tags: quotes about growing, life

Take a Good Look

Every now and again take a good look at something not made with hands – a mountain, a star, the turn of a stream. There will come to you wisdom and patience and solace and, above all, the assurance that you are not alone in the world. ~Sidney Lovett

Look at the trees, look at the birds, look at the clouds, look at the stars...
and if you have eyes you will be able to see
that the whole existence is joyful.
Everything is simply happy.
Trees are happy for no reason;
they are not going to become prime ministers or presidents
and they are not going to become rich
and they will never have any bank balance.
Look at the flowers- for no reason.
It is simply unbelievable how happy flowers are.  ~Osho

Tags: quotes about nature, solace life

Bridge to our Future

Rejoice with your family in the beautiful land of life.  ~ Albert Einstein

It is not flesh and blood but the heart which makes us fathers and sons.  ~ Johann Schiller

Call it a clan, call it a network, call in a tribe, call it family.  Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one.  ~ Jane Howard

In time of test family is best.  ~ Burmese proverb

The family is link to our past, bridge to our future.  ~ Alex Haley

Tags: quotes about family, life

The Richness of Self

By all means use sometimes to be alone.  
Salute thyself; see what thy soul doth wear. ~ George Herbert

Inside myself is a place where I live all alone, and that's where I renew my springs that never dry up.  ~ Pearl Buck

The happiest of all lives is a busy solitude.  ~ Voltaire

Never be afraid to sit awhile and think.  ~ Lorraine Hansberry

Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is richness of self.  ~ May Sarton

Tags: quotes about solitude, life

You Have the Answer

Like vanishing dew,
a passing apparition
or the sudden flash
of lightning -- already gone --
thus should one regard one's self.  ~ Ikkyu

We are taught you must blame your father, your sisters, your brothers, the school, the teachers - but never blame yourself. It's never your fault. But it's always your fault, because if you wanted to change you're the one who has got to change.  ~ Katharine Hepburn

You are who you are when nobody's watching.  ~ Stephen Fry

Non nobis solum nati sumus. (Not for ourselves alone are we born.)  ~  Cicero

Through pride we are ever deceiving ourselves. But deep down below the surface of the average conscience a still, small voice says to us, something is out of tune.  ~ C. G. Jung

You have the answer.  Just get quiet enough to hear it.  ~ Pat Obuchowski

Tags: quotes about self, life

By Becoming More

Each day comes bearing its own gifts. Untie the ribbons.  ~ Ruth Ann Schabacker

It is better to deserve without receiving, than to receive without deserving.  ~ Robert Green Ingersoll

We should give as we would receive, cheerfully, quickly, and without hesitation; for there is no grace in a benefit that sticks to the fingers.  ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca

For of those to whom much is given, much is required.  ~ John F. Kennedy

Life is a gift, and it offers us the privilege, opportunity, and responsibility to give something back by becoming more.  ~ Anthony Robbins

For it is in giving that we receive.  ~ St. Francis of Assisi 

Tags: quotes about giving, receiving, life

It Equals Miracles

If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on.   ~ Steve Jobs
 
We've got facts, they say. But facts aren't everything; at least half the battle consists in how one makes use of them.  ~ Fyodor Dostoevski
 
Growing up, I didn't have a lot of toys, and personal entertainment depended on individual ingenuity and imagination - think up a story and go live it for an afternoon.   ~ Terry Brooks
 
Ingenuity, plus courage, plus work, equals miracles.  ~ Bob Richards

Ingenuity is nothing more than doing the best with what you've got.  ~ Eric Walton

Tags: quotes about innovation, ingenuity, life

How Can We Expect Ideal Conditions?

We all love animals.  Why do we call some "pets" and others "dinner?"  ~ k.d. lang

Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.  ~ Albert Einstein

To my mind, the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being.  I should be unwilling to take the life of a lamb for the sake of the human body.  ~ Mahatma Gandhi

I think if I want to eat more meat you should kill it yourself and eat it raw so that you are not blinded by the hypocrisy of having it processed for you.  ~ Margie Clark

While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered beasts, how can we expect ideal conditions on the earth?  ~ George Bernard Shaw

Tags: quotes about vegetarianism, life

Telling Secrets to the Wind

Voiceless it cries,
Wingless flutters,
Toothless bites,
Mouthless mutters.   ~ J. R. R. Tolkien
 
And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.   ~ Kahlil Gibran

Faeries, come take me out of this dull world,
For I would ride with you upon the wind,
Run on the top of the dishevelled tide,
And dance upon the mountains like a flame.  ~ W. B. Yeats

So fine was the morning except for a streak of wind here and there that the sea and sky looked all one fabric, as if sails were stuck high up in the sky, or the clouds had dropped down into the sea.  ~ Virginia Wolf

And the leaves were telling secrets to the wind.  ~ Peter Mulvey

Tags: quotes about the wind, life

A Call to Arms

Our own physical body possesses a wisdom which we who inhabit the body lack. We give it orders which make no sense.   ~ Henry Miller
 
The body is a big sagacity (insight), a plurality with one sense, a war and peace, a flock and shepherd.  ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
 
Cheerfulness is the best promoter of health and is as friendly to the mind as to the body.   ~ Joseph Addison
 
Take care of your body. It's the only place you have to live.   ~ Jim Rohn
 
This is a call to arms. A call to be gentle, to be forgiving, to be generous with yourself. The next time you look into the mirror, try to let go of the story line that says you're too fat or too sallow, too ashy or too old, your eyes are too small or your nose too big; just look into the mirror and see your face. When the criticism drops away, what you will see then is just you, without judgment, and that is the first step toward transforming your experience of the world.    ~ Oprah Winfrey

Tags: quotes about the body, life

Hold on to One's Heart

He is a true fugitive who flies from reason.  ~ Marcus Aurelius

Reason is the shepherd trying to corral life's vast flock of wild irrationalities.  ~ Paul Eldridge

Reason: the arithmetic of the emotions.  ~ Elbert Hubbard

The heart has its reasons which reason knows not.  ~ Blaise Pascal

One ought to hold on to one's heart; for if one lets it go, one soon loses control of the head too.  ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Tags: quotes about reason, logic, life

Cannot Blossom Without Sunshine

Keep your face to the sun and you will never see the shadows.  ~ Helen Keller

What sunshine is to flowers, smiles are to humanity. These are but trifles, to be sure; but scattered along life's pathway, the good they do is inconceivable.  ~ Joseph Addison

Some people are so much sunshine to the square inch.  ~ Walt Whitman

Laughter is a sunbeam of the soul.  ~ Thomas Mann

A flower cannot blossom without sunshine, and man cannot live without love.  ~ Max Muller

Tags: quotes about sunshine, life

Light One Small Candle

Character consists of what you do on the third and fourth try.  ~ James A. Michener

Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.  ~ John Wooden

It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.  ~ Mark Twain

When you choose your friends, don't be short-changed by choosing personality over character.  ~ W. Somerset Maugham

Better to light one small candle than to curse the darkness.  ~ Chinese proverb

Tags: quotes about character, life

Risks Must Be Taken

To laugh is to risk being a fool.
To weep is to risk appearing sentimental.
To reach out to another is to risk involvement.
To express feelings is to risk exposing your true self.
To place your ideas, your dreams, before the crowd
Is to risk their loss. To love is to risk not being loved in return.
To live is to risk dying.
To hope is to risk despair.
To try is to risk failure.
The person who risks nothing,
Does nothing,
Has nothing and is nothing.
They may avoid suffering and sorrow, 
But they simply cannot learn, Feel, change, grow, love or live. 
Risks must be taken because, the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing. 
Only a person who risks is free.  ~Leo Buscaglia

Tags: quotes about risk, life

A Form of Exploration

Experience is not what happens to you; it is what you do with what happens to you.  ~ Aldous Huxley

Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow; it only saps today of its strength.   ~A. J. Cronin

And if my heart be scarred and burned,
The safer, I, for all I learned.  ~ Dorothy Parker

Never regret. If it's good, it's wonderful. If it's bad, it's experience.  ~ Victoria Holt

In wisdom gathered over time I have found that every experience is a form of exploration.  ~ Ansel Adams

Tags: quotes about experience, life

You Own Unique Spirit

No creature is fully itself till it is, like the dandelion opened in the bloom of pure relationship to the sun, the entire living cosmos.  ~ D. H. Lawrence

It is the chiefest point of happiness that a man is willing to be what he is.  ~ Desiderus Erasmus

Originality is...a by-product of sincerity.  ~ Marianne Moore

My mom always said I like to stir the pot with a glittering spoon.  ~ Kris Carr

Ride the energy of your own unique spirit.  ~ Gabrielle Roth

Tags: quotes about being yourself, individuality, life

Grades of Concealing It

In heaven I yearn for knowledge, account all else inanity;
On earth I confess an itch for the praise of fools - that's vanity.   ~ Robert Browning
 
I loathe narcissism, but I approve of vanity.  ~ Diana Vreeland
 
Vanity is so secure in the heart of man that everyone wants to be admired; even I who write this, and you who read this.  ~ Blaise Pascal
 
There are no grades of vanity; there are only grades of concealing it.  ~ Mark Twain
 
Or, rather, let us be more simple and less vain.   ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Tags: quotes about vanity, life

Keep Moving

Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony.   ~ Thomas Merton

Your hand opens and closes, opens and closes. If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralyzed.  Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as birds' wings.   ~ Rumi
 
My point is, life is about balance. The good and the bad. The highs and the lows. The pina and the colada.     ~ Ellen DeGeneres

The word happiness would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.   ~Carl Jung
 
Live a balanced life – learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.   ~Robert Fulghum

Life is like riding a bicycle; in order to keep your balance you must keep moving.   ~ Albert Einstein 

Tags: quotes about balance, life

Enhancing Life

Synchronicity…means a ‘meaningful coincidence’ of outer and inner events that are not themselves causally connected. The emphasis lies on the word ‘meaningful’. ~ Marie Louise vonFranz

Synchronicity hints at the unified world behind the illusory veil of the material universe. ~ Roger S. Jones

Synchronicity is choreographed by a great, pervasive intelligence that lies at the heart of nature, and is manifest in each of us through what we call the soul. ~ Deepak Chopra

Chance is perhaps the pseudonym of God when he does not wish to sign his work. ~ Anatole France

These events serve to nurture, support, protect and enhance human life and spiritual growth. ~ Scott Peck
Tags: quotes about synchronicity, meaning, life

Not Cease from Exploration

We are asleep with compasses in our hands.  ~ W. S. Merwin

You have your brush, you have your colors, you paint paradise, then in you go.  ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

The first step ...shall be to lose the way.  ~ Galway Kennell

If you come to a fork in the road, take it.  ~ Yogi Berra

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.  ~ T. S. Eliot

Tags: quotes about the journey, life

Built from Love or Fear

There is a time when we must firmly choose the course which we will follow or the endless drift of events will make the decision for us.  ~ Herbert Prochnow

The glory of human nature lies in our seeming capacity to exercise conscious control of our own destiny.   ~ Winston Churchill

The self is not something ready-made, but something in continuous formation through choice of action.   ~ John Dewey
 
We either make ourselves miserable or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same.  ~ Lord Byron

We need to teach the next generation of children from Day One that they are responsible for their lives. Mankind's greatest gift, also its greatest curse, is that we have free choice. We can make our choices built from love or from fear.  ~ Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Tags: quotes about choice, life

The Final Achievement

We go on multiplying our conveniences only to multiply our cares. We increase our possessions only to the enlargement of our anxieties.  ~ Anna C. Brackett

The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.  ~ Hans Hofman

Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.  ~ Frederic Chopin

Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.  ~ William Morris

The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less.  ~ Socrates

Tags: quotes about simplicity, life

A Rare Commodity

Ability is a wonderful thing, but its value is greatly enhanced by dependability.  Ability implies repeatability and accountability.   ~ Robert Heinlein

Natural abilities are like natural plants, they need pruning by study and studies to give forth directions...bounded by experience.  ~ Francis Bacon

Love what you do.  Get good at it.  Competence is a rare commodity in this day and age.  ~ Jon Stewart

Ability will never catch up with the demand for it.  ~ Malcolm Forbes

I can; therefore I am.  ~ Simone Weil

Tags: quotes about ability, achievement, success, life

Make Room

Acceptance of one’s life has nothing to do with resignation; it does not mean running away from the struggle.  On the contrary it means accepting it as it comes… To accept is to say yes to life in its entirety.   ~Paul Tournier

Change the changeable, accept the unchangeable, and remove yourself from the unacceptable.   ~Denis Waitley
 
For after all, the best thing one can do when it is raining is let it rain.   ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 
Sometimes people let the same problem make them miserable for years when they could just say, So what. That’s one of my favorite things to say. So what.   ~Andy Warhol
 
Time is a dressmaker specializing in alterations.   ~Faith Baldwin
 
The moment that judgement stops through acceptance of what it is, you are free of the mind. You have made room for love, for joy, for peace.   ~Eckhart Tolle

Tags: quotes about acceptance, life

The Most Important Part

I have always been delighted at the prospect of a new day, a fresh try, one more start, with perhaps a bit of magic waiting somewhere behind the morning. ~ J. B.Priestly
 
You raze the old to raise the new. ~ Justina Headley
 
Start wherever you are and start small. ~ Rita Baily

The beginning is the most important part of the work. ~ Plato

Do what you can, with what you have, where you are. -Theodore Roosevelt


Tags: quotes about new beginnings, beginning, begin

Refresh your Mind

Make your own Bible.  Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.  ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

An apt quotation is like a lamp which flings its light over the whole sentence.  ~ Letitia Elizabeth Landson

Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise to balance it.  ~ George Santayana

Most people are other people.  Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passion a quotation.  ~ Oscar Wilde

Like your body your mind also gets tired; so refresh it by wise sayings.  ~ Hazrat Ali

Tags: quotes about quotations, quotes, life

The Secret of the Stars

There are no constraints on the human mind, no walls around the human spirit, no barriers to our progress except those we ourselves erect. ~ Ronald Reagan

Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit. ~ e. e. cummings
 
Revolution is not something fixed in ideology, nor is it something fashioned to a particular decade. It is a perpetual process embedded in the human spirit. ~ Abbie Hoffman
 
I always try to balance the light with the heavy - a few tears of human spirit in with the sequins and the fringes. ~ Bette Midler
 
No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars, or sailed an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit. ~Helen Keller

Tags: quotes about the human spirit, life

Words as with Sunbeams

Like stones, words are laborious and unforgiving, and the fitting of them together, like the fitting of stones, demands great patience and strength of purpose and particular skill.  ~ Edmund Morrison

Words are recalcitrant as circus animals, and the unskilled trainer can crack his whip at them in vain.  ~ Gerald Brenan

It is with words as with sunbeams.  The more they are condensed, the deeper they burn.  ~ Robert Southey

Language is to the mind more than light is to the eye.  ~ William Gibson

Tags: quotes about words, language

No Short Cuts

Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty. ~ Bertold Brecht

The first and best victory is to conquer self.   ~ Plato

You can never conquer the mountain. You can only conquer yourself.  ~ Jim Wittaker
 
We are what we repeatedly do, excellence then is not an act, but a habit.   ~ Aristotle

There are no short cuts to any place worth going.  ~ Beverly Sills
 
Mastering others is strength. Mastering yourself is true power.  ~ Lao Tsu

Tags: quotes about discipline, freedom, life

Leads You to the Treshold

To all teachers, parents, grandparents, mentors, coaches...

In the end we will conserve only what we love. We will love only what we understand. We will understand only what we are taught. ~Baba Dioum

Come forth into the light of things, let nature be your teacher.   ~ William Wordsworth

A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.   ~Henry Adams

What the teacher is, is more important than what he teaches.  ~Karl Menninger

The teacher who is indeed wise does not bid you to enter the house of his wisdom but rather leads you to the threshold of your mind.  ~Khalil Gibran

Tags: quotes about teaching, nature, life, learning

To a Higher Level

Today we are beginning to notice that the new media are not just mechanical gimmicks for creating worlds of illusion, but new languages with new and unique powers of expression.  ~ Marshall McLuhan

Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock.  ~ Ben Hecht
 
Reporters thrive on the world's misfortune. For this reason they often take an indecent pleasure in events that dismay the rest of humanity.  ~ Russell Baker

Harmony seldom makes a headline.   ~ Silas Bent

All of us who professionally use the mass media are the shapers of society. We can vulgarize that society. We can brutalize it. Or we can help lift it onto a higher level.  ~ William Bernbach 

Tags: quotes about the news, mass media

Our Real Journey

It may be when we no longer know what to do,
we have come to our real work,
and that when we no longer know which way to go,
we have begun our real journey.  ~Wendell Berry

What is important is to spread confusion, not eliminate it.  ~ Salvador Dali

If you're not confused, you're not paying attention.  ~ Tom Peters

How dreadful...to be caught up in a game and have no idea of the rules.  ~ Caroline Stervermer

The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing... not healing, not curing... that is a friend who cares.  ~ Henri Nouwen

Tags: quotes about life, the journey, confusion,

The Ultimate Sophistication

Concision in style, precision in thought, decision in life.  ~ Victor Hugo
 
Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn.  ~ Gore Vidal

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

To understand a literary style, consider what it omits.  ~ Mason Cooley
 
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.  ~Leonardo da Vinci

Tags: quotes about simplicity, style, life

Live In a Way

Man is born free, yet he is everywhere in chains. ~ Jean Jacques Rousseau

For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.  ~ Nelson Mandela

Workers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains.  ~ Karl Marx

Happy is the man who has broken the chains which hurt the mind, and has given up worrying once and for all.  ~ Ovid

It is often safer to be in chains than to be free.  ~ Franz Kafka

Tags: quotes about freedom, chains, life

The Burden which is Well Borne

It is easy to tell the toiler
How best he can carry his pack
But no one can rate a burden's weight
Until it has been on his back.  ~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox


Now you know how badly someone wanted you, Charley. Children forget that sometimes. They think of themselves as a burden instead of a wish granted.  ~ Mitch Albom

Tell 'em to God. Don' go burdenin' other people with your sins. That ain't decent.  ~ John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath


I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.  ~ Martin Luther King

The burden which is well borne becomes light.  ~ Ovid

Tags: quotes about burden, life

Your Soul is Alive

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and right doing there is a field.
I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about. ~ Rumi

A room without books is like a body without a soul. ~ Cicero

Don't Gain The World & Lose Your Soul, Wisdom Is Better Than Silver Or Gold. ~ Bob Marley

Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

If the sight of the blue skies fills you with joy, if a blade of grass springing up in the fields has power to move you, if the simple things in nature have a message you understand, rejoice, for your soul is alive. ~Eleanora Duse
Tags: quotes about the soul, life

Step Up and Take Responsibility

A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.  ~ Winston S. Churchill

You'll never find a rainbow if you're looking down.  ~ Charles Chaplin

Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.  ~ Marcus Aurelius

Be of good cheer. Do not think of today's failures, but of the success that may come tomorrow. You have set yourselves a difficult task, but you will succeed if you persevere; and you will find a joy in overcoming obstacles.  Remember, no effort that we make to attain something beautiful is ever lost.  ~ Helen Keller

Optimism is a strategy for making a better future. Because unless you believe that the future can be better, you are unlikely to step up and take responsibility for making it so.   ~Noam Chomsky

Tags: quotes about optimism, opportunity, life

Expect nothing

We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom.  ~ Leo Tolstoy

I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.  ~ Plato


I love to talk about nothing; it's the only thing I know anything about.  ~ Oscar Wilde

Expect nothing. Live frugally on surprise.  ~Alice Walker

I know only that it is time for me to be something when I am nothing.  ~ Patrick Branwell Bronte

Tags: quotes about nothing, life

Fruitful Contradictions and Paradoxes

Life is a preparation for the future; and the best preparation for the future is to live as if there were none.  ~ Albert Einstein


We must not allow the clock and the calendar to blind us to the fact that each moment of life is a miracle and mystery.  ~ H. G. Wells

I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.  ~ Mother Teresa

The paradoxes of today are the prejudices of tomorrow, since the most benighted and the most deplorable prejudices have had their moment of novelty when fashion lent them its fragile grace.  ~ Marcel Proust

We live on the brink of disaster because we do not know how to let life alone. We do not respect the living and fruitful contradictions and paradoxes of which true life is full.   ~Thomas Merton

Tags: quotes about paradoxes, life

Crossing over fences

Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at it destination full of hope.  ~ Maya Angelou

It doesn't matter which side of the fence you get off on sometimes.  What matters most is getting off.  You cannot make progress without making decisions.  ~ Jim Rohn

Throw your heart over the fence and the rest will follow.  ~ Norman Vincent Peale

The only fence against the world is a thorough knowledge of it.  ~ John Locke

Don't ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up.  ~ Robert Frost

Everyone pushes a falling fence.  ~ Chinese proverb

The grass is not, in fact, always greener on the other side of the fence. No, not at all. Fences have nothing to do with it. The grass is greenest where it is watered. When crossing over fences, carry water with you and tend the grass where ever you may be.   ~Robert Fulghum

Tags: quotes about fences, life

In Winter Enjoy

In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.  ~ Albert Camus

Winter is the time for comfort, for good food and warmth, for the touch of a friendly hand and for a talk beside the fire: it is the time for home.  ~ Edith Sitwell

I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says "Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again.  ~ Lewis Carroll

What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.  ~ John Steinbeck

Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face.  ~ Victor Hugo

In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.  ~ William Blake

Tags: quotes about winter, life, seasons

Thinking of Yourself Less

There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.  ~ Ernest Hemingway 

Never be haughty to the humble.  Never be humble to the haughty.  ~ Jefferson Davis

A true genius admits that he/she knows nothing.  ~ Albert Einstein

True humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less.  ~ C. S. Lewis

The soul is healed by being with children.  ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

A great leader needs to love and respect people, and he needs to be comfortable with himself and with the world. He also needs to be able to forgive himself and others. In other words, a leader needs grace.  ~ Leo Hindery Jr.

Tags: quotes about humility, life,

Do It for Yourself

If people are taught how to think and not always what to think, a false concept will be guarded against.  ~ Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.  ~ Voltaire

Stop thinking and end your problems.  ~ Lao Tzu

Sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits...  ~ A. A. Milne

Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.  ~ Carl Sagan

Believing is easier than thinking.  Hence so many more believers than thinkers.  ~ Bruce Calvert

Thinking is like loving and dying.  Each of us must do it for himself.  ~ Josiah Royce

Do What is Necessary

In philosophy an individual is becoming himself.  ~ Bernard Lonergan

Adversity's sweet milk, philosophy.  ~ William Shakespeare

One's task is not to turn the world upside down, but to do what is necessary at the given place and with a due consideration of reality.  ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Be a philosopher but, amid all your philosophy be still a man.  ~ David Hume

All Things Flow

The butterfly counts not months but moments,
And has time enough.  ~ Rabindranath Tagore

To excel the past we must not allow ourselves to lose contact with it; on the contrary, we must feel it under our feet because we raised ourselves upon it.  ~ Jose Ortega y Gasset

Let time that makes you homely, make you sage.  ~ Thomas Parnell

All things flow, nothing abides.  ~ Heraclitus

One of these days is none of these days.  ~ English proverb

How Does One Become a Linchpin?

The job is what you do when you are told what to do. The job is showing up at the factory, following instructions, meeting spec, and being managed.

Someone can always do your job a little better or faster or cheaper than you can.
The job might be difficult, it might require skill, but it's a job.

Your art is what you do when no one can tell you exactly how to do it. Your art is the act of taking personal responsibility, challenging the status quo, and changing people.

I call the process of doing your art 'the work.' It's possible to have a job and do the work, too. In fact, that's how you become a linchpin.

The job is not the work.  ~ Seth Godin

- How does Godin distinguish between a job and work?
- To what extent do you utilize 'your art' in the endeavors of your day?
- Where can you cultivate your personal attributes as a linchpin? 

At 365 Quote Quest I provide quotes and questions such as the above for  reflection and enrichment.