Not Let Go

Necessity is the mother of invention, it is true, but its father is creativity, and knowledge is the midwife.  ~ Jonathan Schattke

Necessity is not an established fact, but an interpretation.  ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Our real problem, then, is not our strength today; it is rather the vital necessity of action today to ensure our strength tomorrow.  ~ Dwight David Eisenhower

I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you.  ~ Annie Dillard

Quotes about necessity

Finding that Synergy

Law: an ordinance of reason for the common good, made by him who has care of the community.  ~ Thomas Aquinas

There is no higher religion than human service.  To work for the common good is the greatest creed.  ~ Woodrow Wilson

No decisions should ever be made without asking the question: is this for the common good?  ~ Michael Moore

A nation is formed by the willingness of each of us to share in the responsibility for upholding the common good.  ~ Barbara Jordan

Religion creates community, community creates altruism, and altruism turns us away from self and towards the common good... There is something about the tenor of relationships within a religious  community that make it the best tutorial in citizenship and good neighborliness.  ~ Johnathan Sacks

When it all boils down, it's about embracing each others' stories and maybe even finding that synergy to collaborate for the common good.  ~ Dhani Jones

Quotes about the common good

There you Are

Be/Accept/Value/Forgive/Bless/Express/Trust/Love/Empower....Yourself.  ~ unknown

Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.  ~ Oscar Wilde

Yesterday I was so clever, so I wanted to change the world.  Today I am wise so I am changing myself.  ~ Rumi

A day wasted on others is not wasted on oneself.  ~ Charles Dickens

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

Quotes about self

How Much you Care

We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.  ~ Albert Einstein

Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get.  ~ George Bernard Shaw

Take care of your body.  It's the only place you have to live.  ~ Jim Rohn

Take care of all your memories.  For you cannot relive them.  ~ Bob Dylan

Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.  ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Quotes about care, caring

Peace amid

He who would be serene and pure needs but one thing, detachment.  ~ Meister Eckhart

The love of learning, the sequestered nooks, and all the sweet serenity of books.   ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 
The great critic must be a philosopher, for from philosophy he will learn serenity, impartiality, and the transitoriness of human things.  ~ W. Somerset Maugham

Boredom is the feeling that everything is a waste of time; serenity, that nothing is.  ~ Thomas Szasz

Serenity is not freedom from the storm, but peace amid the storm. ~ unknown

Quotes about serenity, tranquility 

Nurtures and Builds

Nurture your mind with great thoughts, for you will never go any higher than you think.  ~ Benjamin Disraeli

Find out what your gift is and nurture it.  ~ Katy Perry

Our young people are assets to be cultivated and nurtured.  ~ Jane Fonda

We've got this gift of love, but love is like a precious plant...You've got to really look after it and nurture it.  ~ John Lennon

Be the one who nurtures and builds. Be the one who has an understanding and a forgiving heart, one who looks for the best in people.  ~ Marvin J. Ashton

Quotes about nurture

Tomorrow is another one

The body, she says, is subject to the force of gravity. But the soul is ruled by levity, pure.   ~Saul Bellow

I try to conduct my life with a little levity.  ~ Sheryl Crow

My method is to take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say with the utmost levity.  ~ George Bernard Shaw

Today was good.  Today was fun.  Tomorrow is another one.  ~ Dr. Seuss

If you want an interesting party sometime, combine cocktails and a fresh box of crayons for everyone.  ~Robert Fulghum

Quotes about levity, fun

The Deepest Capacities

We all have a choice in every difficult situation in our life. We can become either bitter or better. ~ Corina Zalace
 
Pain comes like the weather, but joy is a choice.  ~ Rodney Crowell

You are where you are today because you have chosen to be there.   ~ Harry Browne

The strongest principle of growth lies in human choice.   ~ George Eliot

Being oppressed means the absence of choices.   ~ Bell Hooks

We must make the choices that enable us to fulfill the deepest capacities of our real selves.  ~ Thomas Merton

Quotes about choice

The Best Portion

The everyday kindness of the back roads more than makes up for the acts of greed in the headlines.  ~ Charles Kuralt

Kindness is the golden chain by which society is bound together.  ~ Goethe

The best portion of a good man's life is his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love.   ~ William Wordsworth

Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind.   ~ Eric Hoffer

What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?   ~ Jean Jacques Rousseau

Quotes about kindness

A Warmth and Richness

The living self has one purpose only: to come into its own fullness of being, as a tree comes into full blossom, or a bird into spring beauty, or a tiger into lustre.   ~ D.H. Lawrence

The whole point of being alive is to evolve into the complete person you were intended to be.   ~ Oprah Winfrey

Wisdom is your perspective on life, your sense of balance, your understanding of how the various parts and principles apply and relate to each other. It embraces judgment, discernment, comprehension. It is a gestalt or oneness, an integrated wholeness.  ~ Stephen R. Covey

Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead. The consciousness of loving and being loved brings a warmth and richness to life that nothing else can bring.  ~ Oscar Wilde

Quotes about wholeness in life

The Doors We Open and Close

If not now, when?  ~ Hillel

Choices are the hinges of destiny.  ~ Pythagorus 

If you chase two rabbits, both will escape.  ~unknown

Decisions become easier when your will to please God outweighs your will to please the world.  ~ Anso Coetzer 

The doors we open and close each day decide the lives we live.  ~ Flora Whittemore

Quotes about decision making

The Art of Living

When the waves close over me, I dive down to fish for pearls.   ~Masha Kaleko

To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.  ~ Bertrand Russell

I have woven a parachute out of everything broken.  ~ William Stafford

It's a hard life if you don't weaken.  ~ Stephen King

The art of living lies less in eliminating our troubles than in growing with them.  ~ Bernard M. Baruch

Quotes about hardship, adversity, difficulty

Doors Yet to Open

We must always change, renew, rejuvenate ourselves; otherwise we harden.   ~Goethe
 
To be tested is good. The challenged life may be the best therapist.  ~Gail Sheehy
 
A challenge only becomes an obstacle when you bow to it.   ~Ray Davis

Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.  ~Seneca
 
Bless those who challenge us for they remind us of doors we have closed and doors we have yet to open.   ~Native American Prayer

Quotes about challenges, new beginnings

The Only Sure Road

An egotist is a person more interested in himself than in me!  ~ Ambrose Bierce

Egotism is the source and summary of all faults and miseries.  ~ Thomas Carlyle

Our own self-love draws a thick veil between us and our faults.  ~ Philip Chesterfield

Egotism is the art of seeing in yourself what others cannot see.  ~ George V. Higgins

Show me someone without an ego, and I'll show you a loser.  ~ Donald Trump

Loving is the only sure road out of darkness, the only serum known that cures self-centeredness.  ~ Roger McKuen

Quotes about ego

Dwell in Possibility

When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive- to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.  ~ Marcus Aurelius

The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.  ~ Joseph Campbell

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

Rank does not confer privilege or give power.   It imposes responsibility.  ~ Peter F. Drucker

Understand that the right to choose your own path is a sacred privilege.  Use it.  Dwell in possibility.  ~ Oprah Winfrey

Quotes about privilege

As Simple as ABC

You will either step forward into growth or you will step back into safety.   ~Abraham Maslow

The ache for home lives in all of us. The safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned. ~Maya Angelou

For now, I just want things all safe and familiar. My life may not be perfect, but it is what I have known. ~Ann M. Martin

Obedience is the mother of success and is wedded to safety.   ~ Aeschylus

Prepare and prevent, don't repair and repent.  ~ unknown

Safety is as simple as ABC- Always Be Careful.   ~ unknown

Quotes about safety

The Interdependence of All Things

Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around in awareness.  ~ James Thurber

Manners are a sensitive awareness of the feelings of others.  If you have that awareness, you have good manners, no matter what fork you use.  ~ Emily Post

Be present in all things, and thankful for all things.  ~ Maya Angelou

Rather than being your thoughts and emotions, be the awareness behind them.  ~ Eckhart Tolle

Compassion is the keen awareness of the interdependence of all things.  ~ Thomas Merton

Quotes about awareness

Stop Digging

Don't let other people's opinions burn holes in your dreams.   ~Elsa Joy Bailey

Only he that has traveled the road knows where the holes are deep.  ~ Chinese proverb

When I was a little girl you use to learn to sew all the holes in things, darning socks, but nobody mends things anymore.   ~ Vivienne Westwood

Fill your every day holes with patches of gratitude.  ~ unknown

It's a good thing to follow The First Law of Holes: if you are in one, stop digging.  ~ Denis Healey

Hope fills the holes of frustration in my heart.  ~ Emanuel Clever 

Quotes about holes, resilience

Animating Everything

Those who wish to sing always find a song.  ~ Swedish proverb

Life is a shipwreck, but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats.  ~ Voltaire

Some day there won't be a song in your heart; sing anyway.  ~ Emory Austin

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,
One clover, and a bee,
And revery.
The revery alone will do,
If bees are few.  ~ Emily Dickinson

Be cheerful, animating everything around you.  ~ Catherine McAuley

Quotes about cheerfulness, lightheartedness

The Finest Remedy

Things won are done; joy's soul lies in the doing.  ~ William Shakespeare

Good actions give strength to ourselves and inspire good actions in others.  ~ Plato

Action is the antidote to despair.   ~ Joan Baez

Success seems to be connected with action. Successful people keep moving. They make mistakes but don't quit.  Conrad Hilton

When thought becomes excessively painful, action is the finest remedy.  ~ Salman Rushdie

Quotes about action

To Taste Experience

The purpose in life is not to win but to grow and share.  ~ Harold S. Kushner

The purpose of life is to contribute in some way to making things better.  ~ Robert F. Kennedy

The purpose of life is to live, learn, and love.  ~ Christine Rice

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.  ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

Quotes about discovering the purpose of life

One Small Room

The quality of your thinking determines the quality of your life.   ~A.R. Bernard

The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.  ~ Eden Phillpotts

Change your thoughts and you change the world.  ~ Norman Vincent Peale

Man lives in only one small room of the enormous house of his consciousness.  ~ William James

Quotes about thinking

Stronger than the Oak

If you don't like something change it; if you can't change it, change the way you think about it.  ~ Mary Engelbreit

When you are through changing, you are through.  ~ Bruce Barton

When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.  ~ Viktor E. Frankl

They must often change, who can be constant in happiness or wisdom.  ~ Confucius

The bamboo that bends is stronger than the oak that resists.  ~ Japanese proverb

Quotes about ourselves and change

The Way you Carry It

Do you want to know who you are?  Don't ask.  Act!  Action will delineate and define you.  ~ Thomas Jefferson

The road to success is always under construction.  ~ Lily Tomlin

Dreams don't work unless you do.  ~ John C. Maxwell

Motivation is what gets you started.  Habit is what keeps you going.  ~ Jim Rohn

Enthusiasm is excitement with inspiration, motivation, and a pinch of creativity.  ~ Bo Bennett

It's not the load that breaks you down; it's the way you carry it.  ~ Lou Holtz

Quotes about motivation

The Realm of Your Own

Movement is tranquility.  ~ Stirling Moss

Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility.  ~ James Thurber

It is neither wealth nor splendor but tranquility and occupation which give you happiness.  ~ Thomas Jefferson

It is within your power to withdraw yourself whenever you desire.  Perfect tranquility within consists in the good ordering of the mind, the realm of your own.  ~ Marcus Aurelius 

I love tranquil solitude and such society as is quiet, wise, and good.  ~ Percy Shelley


Periods of tranquility are seldom prolific of creative achievement.  Mankind has to be stirred up.  ~ Alfred North Whitehead

Quotes about tranquility

Everything we Look Upon

The greatness of a man's power is the measure of his surrender.  ~William Booth

The creative process is a process of surrender, not control.  ~Julia Cameron

If you surrender completely to the moments as they pass, you live more richly those moments.  ~Anne Morrow Lindbergh

To hold, you must first open your hand. Let go.  ~Lao Tzu

All of our reasoning ends in surrender to feeling.  ~Blaise Pascal

When such as I cast out remorse

So great a sweetness flows into the breast
We must laugh and we must sing,
We are blest by everything,
Everything we look upon is blessed.  ~William Butler Yeats

Quotes about surrender