Bold Beginnings

Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. ~ Goethe

Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy.  ~ Norman Vincent Peale
 
A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct. ~ Frank Herbert

A Day Spent

A day spent without the sight or sound of beauty, the contemplation of mystery, or the search for truth or perfection is a poverty-stricken day; and a succession of such days is fatal to human life. ~ Lewis Mumford
 
- Where have you recently experienced beauty?
- Mystery?
- Truth and perfection?
- How were you enriched?

Haunted by Waters

I would love to live like a river flows, carried by the surprise of its own unfolding.   ~John O'Donohue

The sea pronounces something, over and over, in a hoarse whisper, I cannot make it out.  ~ Annie Dillard


Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.
I am haunted by waters.  ~ Norman Maclean

Springing from the Soul

I wanted no part of politics. And I wasn't in Berlin (1936) to compete against any one athlete. The purpose of the Olympics, anyway, was to do your best. As I'd learned long ago from Charles Riley, the only victory that counts is the one over yourself.   ~Jesse Owens

There is something in the Olympics, indefinable, springing from the soul, that must be preserved.   ~Chris Brasher

The Olympic Games must not be an end in itself, they must be a means of creating a vast programme of physical education and sports competitions for all young people.   ~Avery Brundage

Innovating, Creating, Implementing

Innovation opportunities do not come with the tempest but with the rustling of the breeze.   ~Peter Drucker

The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect, but by the play instinct arising from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the object it loves.   ~Carl Jung

I want to put a ding in the universe.   ~Steve Jobs

I will act as if what I do will make a difference.  ~William James

Love Light

The Eskimos had 52 names for snow because it was important to them; there ought to be as many for love.  ~Margaret Atwood

Love is the master key that opens the gates of happiness.  ~ Oliver Wendall Holmes 

Love must be as much a light,  as it is a flame.  ~ Henry David Thoreau

Theme Series: Success

Perhaps there is no more motivating dream than the pursuit of success. The following quotes provide illuminating perspectives:

-Failure is success if we learn from it. ~ Malcolm Forbes

-Success is like death. The more successful you become, the higher the houses in the hills get and the higher the fences get. ~ Kevin Spacey

-Success is that old ABC - ability, breaks, and courage. ~ Charles Luckman

-Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome. ~ Booker T. Washington

-The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic and self-complacent is erroneous; on the contrary it makes them, for the most part, humble, tolerant and kind. ~ W. Somerset Maugham

-Can success change the human mechanism so completely between one dawn and another? Can it make one feel taller, more alive, handsomer, uncommonly gifted and indomitably secure with the certainty that this is the way life will always be? It can and it does. ~ Moss Hart

Selected by quoteflections.

-Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne'er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.
Not one of all the purple host
Who took the flag today
Can tell the definition,
So clear, of victory,
As he defeated, dying,
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Break, agonized and clear. ~ Emily Dickinson

-Pray that success will not come any faster than you are able to endure it. ~ Elbert Hubbard

-Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value. ~Albert Einstein

-Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm. ~Winston Churchill

-Sometimes I worry about being a success in a mediocre world. ~Lily Tomlin

(Tags: select top quotes, quotations, theme series, self help, life, inspiring, enriching, uplifting, motivational, educational, philosophical.)

(Sharing/recommending this post/this blog is appreciated.)

The big questions

All my life, I have been fascinated by the big questions that face us, and have tried to find scientific answers to them.  ~Stephen Hawking


Philosophers wrestling with the big questions of life are no longer alone. Now scientists are struggling to define life as they manipulate it, look for it on other planets, and even create it in test tubes.  ~Seth Borenstein

Science is what you know.  Philosophy is about what you don't know.  ~ Bertrand Russell

Mirror Image

Life is for each person a solitary cell whose walls are mirrors. ~ Eugene O'Neill
 
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. ~ Rudolph Steiner

There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it. ~ Edith Wharton

I Have Had My Hour

Happy the man, and happy he alone,
He who can call today his own:
He who, secure within, can say,
Tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today.
Be fair or foul or rain or shine
The joys I have possessed, in spite of fate, are mine.
Not Heaven itself upon the past has power,
But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour. ~ Horace

- How secure are you within?
- To what extent have you lived your life to the fullest with each passing day?
- What can you say about your hour?

What Makes you Come Alive?

Don’t ask yourself what the world needs, ask yourself what makes you come alive. And then go and do that.  Because what the world needs is people who are alive.   ~Howard Thurman

Acceptance of Life

I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do.
Willa Cather


- What tree amidst difficult circumstances comes to your mind after reading this quote?
- How resigned/ accepting are you to the conditions of your life?
- How might you, like the tree, gain strength and beauty amidst the challenges?

Who Are You?

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation. ~ Oscar Wilde
 
Always be a first rate version of yourself and not a second rate version of someone else. ~ Judy Garland
 
Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life, but define yourself. ~ Harvey Fierstein

You are you; now isn't that pleasant?  ~ Dr. Seuss

Press Pause

What is this life if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare?  ~ William Henry Davies

Sometimes you need to press pause to let everything sink in. ~ Sebastion Vettel

It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.  ~ Confucius 

To Feel that we Exist

Oh, for a life of sensations rather than of thoughts. ~ John Keats
 
Acting is a total physical, emotional sensation. ~ Armand Assante
 
The great art of life is sensation, to feel that we exist, even in pain. ~ Lord Byron

- What sensations have you experienced recently?
- Do you prefer living more with sensations or thoughts?
- How do you cultivate the former?

Back in the Saddle

After a hiatus from blogging for several months, I have decided to return.  I realize that it is within my nature to read, write, and inquire.   This hobby provides a needed outlet for my energies.  

A number of readers also encouraged me to continue because they valued the thought nuggets which the quotations provided.

So here I am.  I apologize for the vacillation and hope that you may gain some enrichment from my continued posts. 

(The photo is taken from Signal Hill, St. John's, Newfoundland where my wife and I enjoyed a wonderful vacation.)

I also continue with my other blog 365 Quote Quest where I provide a select quotation and provide several questions for personal reflection.