#132 Discipline

Some people regard discipline as a chore. For me, it is a kind of order that sets me free to fly. ~ Julie Andrews

Quoteflections: Embark on a Journey

The suggestion of a boat having left the dock on a picturesque lake is appropriate. In my quest to find engaging quotes about life, I hope to provide readers with a sampling of the accumulated wisdom through the ages.

Their insights are not always a simple affirmation, but a plea to think about life's intricacies and subtleties. Amidst life's challenges and heartaches, the journey provides wonderful opportunities and delights.

Thanks for joining me through the calm and stormy seas of life. I hope that ultimately the quotes are enriching and rewarding.

#131 Calmness

Tranquility! thou better name
Than all the family of Fame. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

#130 Enemies of the Truth

The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie- deliberate, contrived and dishonest- but the myth- persistent, persuasive and unrealistic. ~ John F. Kennedy

Emerson: Champion of Individualism

(This is my fourth in a series of select quotes by great authors.)

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) was an American essayist, poet, and leader of the Transcendentalist movement in the early nineteenth century. He was a champion of individualism, and a critic of the countervailing pressures of society. Emerson's nature was more philosophical than naturalistic. He disseminated his thoughts through dozens of published essays and more than 1,500 public lectures across the United States.

-To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.

-Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.

-To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and to endure the betrayal of false friends. To appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know that even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.

-Finish every 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; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.

-It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.

-What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.

-Always do what you are afraid to do.

-Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

-Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.

Selected by quoteflections.

-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.

-The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.

-Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.

-All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

-Be not the slave of your own past - plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep, and swim far, so you shall come back with new self-respect, with new power, and with an advanced experience that shall explain and overlook the old.

-Guard well your spare moments. They are like uncut diamonds. Discard them and their value will never be known. Improve them and they will become the brightest gems in a useful life.

-There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.

Labels: quotes, quotations, reflections, instructional, inspirational, life lessons, insights, self help, great author series

#129 Looking Within

(I am on an intriguing quest to find 1,000 engaging quotes about life...)

Be faithful to that which exists nowhere but in yourself- and thus make yourself indispensable. ~ Andre Gide

#128 Find your Voice

Three women who fought injustice, dictatorship and sexual violence in Liberia and Yemen accepted the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize. Sirleaf, Africa's first democratically elected female president, shared the award with women's rights campaigner Leymah Gbowee, also from Liberia, and Tawakkul Karman, a female icon of the protest movement in Yemen.

My sisters, my daughters, my friends- find your voice. ~ Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf

We used our pains, broken bodies and scarred emotions to confront the injustices and terror of our nation... We must continue to unite in sisterhood to turn our tears into triumph. There is no time to rest until our world achieves wholeness and balance, where all men and women are considered equal and free. ~ Leymah Gbowee

This should haunt the world's conscience because it challenges the very idea of fairness and justice. ~ Tawakkul Karman

#127 Right Now

If I had wings and I could fly,
I know where I would go.
But right now I'll just sit here so contentedly
And watch the river flow. ~ Bob Dylan

#126 Who really lives?

Some have too much, yet still do crave;
I have little, and seek no more.
They are but poor, though much they have.
And I am rich with little store.
They poor, I rich; they beg, I give;
They lack, I leave; they pine, I live. ~ Edward Dyer (1543-1607)

Albert Einstein: Poignant Quotes

Albert Einstein (1879-1955) was a German born theoretical physicist who developed the theory of general relativity effecting a revolution in physics. In 1921 he won the Nobel Prize in physics. After Hitler came to power in 1933, Einstein moved to the U.S. where he became a citizen in 1940. Einstein wrote more than 300 scientific papers and 150 non-scientific works.

-Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.

-Coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous.

- Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.

-A clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it.

-Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.

-I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.

-Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.

-Try not to become a man of success. Rather become a man of value.

Selected by quoteflections.

-The best way to cheer yourself is to cheer somebody else up.

-The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.

-We dance for laughter, we dance for tears, we dance for madness, we dance for fears, we dance for hopes, we dance for screams, we are the dancers, we create the dreams.

-It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.

-The search for truth is more precious than its possession.

- A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

- The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mystical. It is the power of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms- this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I belong to the rank of devoutly religious men.

Labels: quotes, quotations, reflections, instructional, inspirational, life lessons, insights, self help, great author series

#125 Within Us

Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie, which we ascribe to heaven. ~ William Shakespeare, All's Well That Ends Well

#124 The Waters of the Heart

Light breaks where no sun shines,
Where no sea runs, the waters of the heart
Push in their tides. ~ Dylan Thomas

#123 Arrive where we Started

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

#122 Love Nature More

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but nature more. ~ Lord Byron

Confucius: Perennial Quotes

Confucius (551-479 BC) was a Chinese thinker and social philosopher. His philosophy emphasized personal and governmental morality, correctness of social relationships, justice, and sincerity. His perspectives, often remembered through perceptive aphorisms, still offer timely insights.

-Do not do to others what you do not want done to yourself.

- Hold faithfulness and sincerity as first principles.

-If you look into your own heart, and you find nothing wrong there, what is there to worry about? What is there to fear?

- The firm, the enduring, the simple, and the modest are near to virtue.

-Silence is a true friend who never betrays.

-Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.

-Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.

-Our greatest glory is not in never falling but in rising every time we fall.

-He who knows all the answers has not been asked all the questions.

Selected by quoteflections.

-Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.

-I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.

-And remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

-Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance.

-Forget injuries, never forget kindnesses.

-When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don't adjust the goals, adjust the action steps.

-Give a bowl of rice to a man and you will feed him for a day. Teach him how to grow his own rice and you will save his life.

-They must often change, who would be constant in happiness or wisdom.

- A gentleman covets the reputation of being slow in word but prompt in deed.

-To practice five things under all circumstances constitutes perfect virtue; these five are gravity, generosity of soul, sincerity, earnestness, and kindness.

Labels: quotes, quotations, greatest, best, reflections, instructional, inspirational, life lessons, insights, self help, great author series

#121 Kindness and Courage

Life is mostly froth and bubble,
Two things stand like stone,
Kindness in another's trouble,
Courage in your own. ~ Adam Lindsay Gordon

#120 A Reminder

People, even more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. ~ Audrey Hepburn

#119 The Real Voyage

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. ~ Marcel Proust

#118 Keep a Vision

No vision and you perish;
No ideal, and you're lost;
Your heart must ever cherish
Some faith at any cost.
Some hope, some dream to cling to,
Some rainbow in the sky,
Some melody to sing to,
Some service that is high. ~ Harriet Du Autermont

#117 Eternity in Each Moment

You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this. ~ Henry David Thoreau

See more select quotes by Thoreau in my beginning great author series.