Stay Involved, Flexible, Committed

The dedicated life is the life worth living.  ~ Annie Dillard

The resolved mind hath no cares.  ~ George Herbert

Without involvement, there is no commitment. Mark it down, asterisk it, circle it, underline it. No involvement, no commitment.  ~ Stephen R. Covey

Desire is the key to motivation, but it's determination and commitment to an unrelenting pursuit of your goal - a commitment to excellence - that will enable you to attain the success you seek.  ~ Mario Andretti

Our future and our fate lie in our wills more than in our hands, for our hands are but the instruments of our wills.  ~ B.C. Forbes 

Stay committed to your decisions, but stay flexible in your approach.  ~ Tom Robbins

Tags: quotes about commitment, resolve, dedication, success, life

Court Chance

It's choice - not chance - that determines your destiny.  ~ Jean Nidetch

Shallow men believe in luck or in circumstance. Strong men believe in cause and effect.  ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The harder you work, the luckier you get.  ~ Gary Player

Chance is always powerful. Let your hook be always cast. In the pool where you least expect it, will be a fish. ~ Ovid

If you're never scared or embarrassed or hurt, it means you never take any chances.  ~ Julia Sorel

Chance favors only those who court her.  ~ Charles Nicolle 

How can the world in all its chaos come up with so many coincidences, so many similarities and exact opposites?  ~ Amy Tan

Tags: quotes on/about chance, cause/effect, decisions, choice, destiny, life, vulnerability

The Turning Point

Faced with crisis, the man of character falls back on himself. He imposes his own stamp of action, takes responsibility for it, makes it his own.  ~ Charles De Gaulle
 
I think for anyone who's gone through a crisis, there comes a turning point, an epiphany, that marks the beginning of the end.  ~ Deborah Norville

Turn your midlife crisis to your own advantage by making it a time for renewal of your body and mind, rather than stand by helplessly and watch them decline.  ~ Jane E. Brody

Conflict builds character. Crisis defines it.   ~ Steven V. Thulon

Any idiot can face a crisis, it's the day to day living that wears you out.  ~ Anton Chekhov

Tags: quotes on crisis, decision making, character, endurance, life, success

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Believing in Ourselves

Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life.   Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement.  ~ Golda Meir

It took me a long time not to judge myself through someone else's eyes.   ~ Sally Field

We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us something is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch.   Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit.   ~ e.e. cummings 

Tags: quotes on confidence, self esteem, success

A Glimpse of Paradise

Rice is a beautiful food. It is beautiful when it grows, precision rows of sparkling green stalks shooting up to reach the hot summer sun. It is beautiful when harvested, autumn gold sheaves piled on diked, patchwork paddies. It is beautiful when, once threshed, it enters granary bins like a (flood) of tiny seed-pearls. It is beautiful when cooked by a practiced hand, pure white and sweetly fragrant. ~ Shizuo Tsuji 

Chicken, brown rice, and veggies is a great healthy dinner option. It's full of whole grain and protein, and will keep you full for a long time. ~ Mia Hamm

Rice is great if you're really hungry and want to eat two thousand of something.  ~ Mitch Hedberg

Same old slippers, Same old rice, Same old glimpse of paradise.  ~ William James Lampton

Tags: quotes about rice, food, nutrition, health

Bread is King

How can a nation be great if their bread tastes like kleenex?   ~Julia Childs

‘A loaf of bread,’ the Walrus said, ‘is what we chiefly need: Pepper and vinegar besides are very good indeed.’ ~ Lewis Caroll

The smell of good bread baking, like the sound of lightly flowing water, is indescribable in its evocation of innocence and delight.  ~M.F.K. Fischer

With bread all sorrows are less, Sancho Panza in Don Quixote.  ~Miguel de Cervantes

Give me yesterday’s Bread, this Day’s Flesh, and last Year’s Cider.  ~Benjamin Franklin

Peace goes into the making of a poem as flour goes into the making of bread.  ~Pablo Neruda

There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.  ~ Mahatama Gandhi

Blues is to jazz what yeast is to bread. Without it, it’s flat.  ~Carmen McRae

Bread for myself is a material question. Bread for my neighbor is a spiritual one.  ~Nikoli Berdyaev

Bread is the king of the table and all else is merely the court that surrounds the king. The countries are the soup, the meat, the vegetables, the salad, but bread is king.   ~Louis Bromfield

If thou tastest a crust of bread, thou tastest all the stars and all the heavens.  ~Robert Browning

Avoid those who don’t like bread and children.  ~ Swiss Proverb

With a piece of bread in your hand you’ll find paradise under a pine tree.  ~Russian Proverb

What hymns are sung.
What praises said.
For homemade miracles of bread?   ~ Louis Untermeyer

Tags: quotes on bread, food, nourishment, life, happiness

Involved in the Same Quest

You can make it, but it's easier if you don't have to do it alone.  ~ Betty Ford

There can be no vulnerability without risk; there can be no community without vulnerability; there can be no peace, and ultimately no life, without community.  ~ M. Scott Peck

When they are alone they want to be with others, and when they are with others they want to be alone. After all, human beings are like that.  ~ Gertrude Stein

The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community.  ~ William James

For a community to be whole and healthy, it must be based on people's love and concern for each other.  ~ Millard Fuller 

First, we are challenged to rise above the narrow confines of our individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.  ~ Martin Luther King Jr.

A healthy social life is found only, when in the mirror of each soul the whole community finds its reflection, and when in the whole community the virtue of each one is living.  ~ Rudolf Steiner 

To love our neighbor as ourselves is such a truth for regulating human society, that by that alone one might determine all the cases in social morality.  ~ John Locke

Simply being with other people who are also seekers and who are involved in the same quest you are is very meaningful.  ~ Dan Wakefield

We're all just walking each other home.   ~Ram Dass

Tags: quotes, quotations on community, sharing

Democracy as Daily Citizenship

Democracy is based on the conviction that man has the moral and intellectual capacity, as well as the inalienable right to govern himself with reason and justice.  ~ Harry S. Truman

If you want to understand democracy, spend less time in the library with Plato, and more time in the buses with people.  ~ Simeon Strunsky

The greatest blessing of our democracy is freedom.  But in the last analysis, our only freedom is the freedom to discipline ourselves.  ~ Bernard Baruch

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master.  This expresses my idea of democracy.  ~ Abraham Lincoln 

I understand democracy as something that gives the weak the same chance as the strong.  ~Mohandas Gandhi

The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.  ~ Winston Churchill

Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.  ~ George Bernard Shaw

There cannot be daily democracy without daily citizenship.   ~Ralph Nader

The job of a citizen is to keep his mouth open.  ~ Gunter Grass

We talk about problems, issues, policies, but we don't talk about what democracy means — what it bestows on us — the revolutionary idea that it isn't just about the means of governance but the means of dignifying people so they become fully free to claim their moral and political agency.  ~ Bill Moyers

Tags: ten quotes on democracy

The Gentle Herb

I say let the world go to hell, but I should always have my tea.  ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Drinking a daily cup of tea will surely starve the apothecary.  ~ Chinese proverb

Writing is a job, a talent, but it's also the place to go in your head. It is the imaginary friend you drink your tea with in the afternoon.  ~ Ann Patchett

There are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.  ~ Henry James

There is something in the nature of tea that leads us into a world of quiet contemplation of life.  ~ Lin Yutang

Who would then deny that when I am sipping tea in my tearoom I am swallowing the whole universe with it and that this very moment of my lifting the bowl to my lips is eternity itself transcending time and space?  ~ D. T. Suzuki

Some people will tell you there is a great deal of poetry and fine sentiment in a chest of tea.  ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Each cup of tea represents an imaginary voyage.  ~ Catherine Douzel

I am so fond of tea that I could write a whole dissertation on its virtues. It comforts and enlivens without the risks attendant on spirituous liquors. Gentle herb! Let the florid grape yield to thee. Thy soft influence is a more safe inspirer of social joy.  ~ James Boswell

Tea tempers the spirits and harmonizes the mind, dispels lassitude and relieves fatigue, awakens thought and prevents drowsiness, lightens or refreshes the body, and clears the perceptive faculties.  ~ Confucius

Tea is the elixir of life.  ~ Lao Tsu

Tea to the English is really a picnic indoors.  ~ Alice Walker

Tags: quotes, quotations on tea, meditation, life, pleasures

Ideas Begin to Move

I orchestrate my mornings to the tune of coffee.   ~Harry Mahtar 

Coffee smells like freshly ground heaven.   ~Jessi Lane Adams 

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.   ~T.S. Eliot 

Actually, this seems to be the basic need of the human heart in nearly every great crisis - a good hot cup of coffee.   ~Alexander King 

Coffee makes us severe, and grave, and philosophical.   ~Jonathan Swift 

Only one thing is certain about coffee.... Wherever it is grown, sold, brewed, and consumed, there will be lively controversy, strong opinions, and good conversation.   ~Mark Pendergrast 

As soon as coffee is in your stomach, there is a general commotion. Ideas begin to move...similes arise, the paper is covered. Coffee is your ally and writing ceases to be a struggle.    ~Honore de Balzac

The morning cup of coffee has an exhilaration about it which the cheering influence of the afternoon or evening cup of tea cannot be expected to reproduce.   ~Oliver Wendall Holmes.  

Tags: quotes, quotations

The Elusive Search

The alchemists in their search for gold discovered many other things of greater value.  ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

 A man travels the world in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.  ~ George Edward Moore

The noblest search is the search for excellence.  ~ Lyndon B. Johnson

Search others for their virtue, and yourself for your vices.  ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind.  ~ Bertrand Russell

The search for truth is more precious than its possession.  ~ Albert Einstein

Tags: quotes about search, searching, discovery, quest, meaning

The Sweetest Things in Life

If the world seems cold to you, kindle fires to warm it.  ~ Lucy Larcom

Find a need and fill it.  ~ Ruth Stafford Peale

How beautiful a day can be when kindness touches it.  ~ George Elliston

The best things in life are nearest: Breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of right just before you. Then do not grasp at the stars, but do life's plain, common work as it comes, certain that daily duties and daily bread are the sweetest things in life.  ~Robert Louis Stevenson

Tags: quotes on life, kindness, simple pleasures, action, goodness

Thyself Most

Once in a while you have to take a break and visit yourself.  ~ Audrey Giorgi

Never feel self-pity, the most destructive emotion there is. How awful to be caught up in the terrible squirrel cage of self.  ~Millicent Fenwick 

The self is not something ready-made, but something in continuous formation through choice of action.  ~ John Dewey

Observe all men, thyself most.   ~ Benjamin Franklin

There's only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self.  ~ Aldous Huxley 

Tags: quotes on self, improvement, growth,

The Most Beautiful Thing

It began in mystery and it will end in mystery, but what a rare and beautiful country lies in between.  ~Diane Ackerman

I feel as though I have lived many lives, experienced the heights and depths of each and like the waves of the ocean, never known rest. Throughout the years, I looked always for the unusual, for the wonderful, for the mysteries at the heart of life.   ~ Leni Riefenstahl

We awake, if ever at all, to mystery. ~ Annie Dillard

The real mystery of life is not a problem to be solved, it is a reality to be experienced.  ~J.J. Van der Leeuw

We are so impressed by scientific clank that we feel we ought not to say that the sunflower turns because it knows where the sun is. It is almost second nature to us to prefer explanations . . . with a large vocabulary. We are much more comfortable when we are assured that the sunflower turns because it is heliotropic. The trouble with that kind of talk is that it tempts us to think that we know what the sunflower is up to. But we don't. The sunflower is a mystery, just as every single thing in the universe is. --Robert Farrer Capon

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.   ~Albert Einstein

Tags: quotes on mystery, mysticism, philosophy, meaning

To Make Life More Meaningful

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

The quality of life is determined by its activities.  ~ Aristotle
 
I'm not naive. I realize that quality of life and income are inextricably bound together, but sooner or later we're going to have to ask ourselves whether it is possible to make life more meaningful without charging it to Visa.  ~ Daron Hicklin

It's obvious that the key problem facing humanity in the coming century is how to bring a better quality of life - for 8 billion or more people - without wrecking the environment entirely in the attempt.   ~ E. O. Wilson

How long can men thrive between walls of brick, walking on asphalt pavements, breathing the fumes of coal and of oil, growing, working, dying, with hardly a thought of wind, and sky, and fields of grain, seeing only machine-made beauty, the mineral-like quality of life?   ~ Charles Lindbergh
 
No one imagines that a symphony is supposed to improve in quality as it goes along, or that the whole object of playing it is to reach the finale. The point of music is discovered in every moment of playing and listening to it. It is the same, I feel, with the greater part of our lives, and if we are unduly absorbed in improving them we may forget altogether to live them.  ~ Alan B. Watts
 
Without community service, we would not have a strong quality of life. It's important to the person who serves as well as the recipient. It's the way in which we ourselves grow and develop.   ~ Dorothy Height

Tags: quotes on quality of life, lifestyle, values, environment

Things that We Share in the World

I don't know what you could say about a day in which you have seen four beautiful sunsets.  ~ John Glenn

After an orange cloud — formed as a result of a dust storm over the Sahara and caught up by air currents — reached the Philippines and settled there with rain, I understood that we are all sailing in the same boat.   ~Vladimir Kovalyonok (Astronaut)

It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth.  I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth.  I didn't feel like a giant.  I felt very, very small.  ~ Neil Armstrong

Problems look mighty small from 150 miles up.  ~ Roger B. Chaffee

For those who have seen the Earth from space, and for the hundreds and perhaps thousands more who will, the experience most certainly changes your perspective. The things that we share in our world are far more valuable than those which divide us.   ~ Donald Williams

Tags: quotes from astronauts, wonder, space, nature

You have the Answer

We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be.  ~ Jane Austen

And remember, no matter where you go there you are.  ~ Confucius

I took a deep breath and listened to the old bray of my heart.  I am.  I am.  I am.  ~ Sylvia Plath

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

Tags: quotes on self, identity, ability, realization

That Single Spark of Divinity

The greatness of the human personality begins at the hour of birth.  ~ Maria Montessori

The unique personality which is the real life in me, I can not gain unless I search for the real life, the spiritual quality, in others.  ~ Felix Adler

Personality is only ripe when a man has made the truth his own.  ~ Soren Kierkegaard

Part of having a strong sense of self is to be accountable for one's actions. No matter how much we explore motives or lack of motives, we are what we do.  ~ Janet Geringer Woititz

If you have anything really valuable to contribute to the world it will come through the expression of your own personality, that single spark of divinity that sets you off and makes you different from every other living creature.  ~ Bruce Barton

Tags: quotes on personality, identity, self, individuality, ability, success

The Splendor of a Sudden Thought

In art the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can inspire.  ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Beethoven, Wagner, Bach and Mozart settled down day after day to the job in hand with as much regularity as an accountant settles down each day to his figures. They didn't waste time waiting for inspiration.  ~ Ernest Newman

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

I write when I'm inspired, and I see to it that I'm inspired at nine o'clock every morning.  ~ Peter De Vries

Just as appetite comes by eating, so work brings inspiration, if inspiration is not discernible at the beginning.  ~ Igor Stravinsky

Inspiration may be a form of super-consciousness, or perhaps of subconsciousness - I wouldn't know. But I am sure it is the antithesis of self-consciousness.  ~ Aaron Copland

Inspiration is wonderful when it happens, but the writer must develop an approach for the rest of the time... The wait is simply too long.  ~ Leonard Bernstein

Stung by the splendor of a sudden thought.  ~ Robert Browning

- When were you last inspired?
- To what extent can you develop a mindset and regimen where inspiration may happen on most days?
- How could these inspirations manifest themselves?

Tags: quotes on inspiration, work, focus, life, happiness

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A Daily Triology

How fit to employ all the heart and the soul and the senses forever in joy!   ~Robert Browning

- To what extent could this quote be a daily mantra for you?
- What did you do yesterday which combined all three?
- What could you do today?