How Do You Make a Life?

How Do You Make a Life: 475 Quotes and Questions for the Journey provides an opportunity to think about what makes an enriching life.  Each quote encourages reflection with a guiding quote.  By the end of the book one can achieve a comprehensive vista about life's perspectives, challenges, and personal opportunities.

The book is available from Amazon at my author page.

Pain comes like the weather, but joy is a choice.  ~ Rodney Cowell
- In what areas of your life could you kindle some joy?

Thinks be thanks

It's faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes a life worth living.  ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes
- In what do you have faith and enthusiasm?

You are the storyteller of your own life, and you can create your own legend or not.  ~ Isabel Allende
- What vital stories lie within you?

Let all your thinks be thanks.  ~ W. H. Auden
- For what diverse aspects of your life could you be grateful?

The best of your days

Control your emotions, or they will control you.  ~ Chinese proverb
- How do you control your emotions?

Interdependency follows independence.  ~ Stephen R. Covey
- What networks could you cultivate?

If there is another world, he lives in bliss
If there is none, he made the best of this.  ~ Robert Burns
- How are you making the best of your days?

Keep rowing

To live for some future goal is shallow.  It's the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top.  ~ Robert Pirsig
- How do you cultivate daily enrichment?

What comes from the heart, goes to the heart.  ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- How much heart do you bring to your relationships?

Everyone must row with the oars he has.  ~ English proverb
- What talents/strengths will help you to progress through life?

Projecting light

The values of the world we inhabit and the people we surround ourselves with have a profound effect on who we are.  ~ Malcolm Gladwell
- To what values do you aspire?

Lighthouses don't go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining.  ~ Anne Lamott
- What helps your light to shine?

Wise people, even though all laws were abolished, would still lead the same life.  ~ Aristophanes
- What central principles guide your life?

On my way

If you want to keep your memories, you first have to live them.  ~ Bob Dylan
- What positive memories could you create today?

Earth provides enough for every man's needs, but not for every man's greed.  ~ Gandhi
- In what ways could you reduce and simplify your life?

I don't know where I am going, but I am on my way.  ~ Carl Sandburg
- Why should the destination not be the primary consideration?

Away and within

When have you experienced nature's gentle power?

In the balance

Dig the well before you are thirsty.  ~ Chinese proverb
- On what do you need to focus as you anticipate the future?

The noblest question in the world is, 'What good may I do in it?'  ~ Benjamin Franklin
- What good could you do today?

The power is in the balance: we are our injuries, as much as are our successes.  ~ Barbara Kingsolver
- What strategies help to keep you balanced?

Asleep with compasses

Fairy dust is useful.  I use it to turn oatmeal into cake.  ~ David Shannon
- How could you nurture a little more whimsy in your life?

No one becomes rich unless he enriches others.  ~ Andrew Carnegie
- Where could you provide some enrichment?

We are asleep with compasses in our hands.  ~ W. S. Mervin
- How awake are you?

Life balance

The purpose of life is to live, learn, and love.  ~ Christine Rice
- How well are you living up to the three l's?

Movement is tranquility.  ~  Stirling Moss
- What pursuits help to keep your life in balance?

We are what we believe we are.  ~ C. S. Lewis
- What understanding do you have about yourself?

Open and close

The most common form of despair is not being who you are.  ~ Soren Kierkegaard
- How would you describe your authentic nature?

The doors we open and close each day decide the lives we live.  ~ Flora Whittemore
-  What important decisions do you face regularly?

It's a hard life if you don't weaken.  ~ Stephen King
- Where could you show some vulnerability?

A Running Stream

The lowest ebb is the turn of the tide. ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
- In what area of your life could you muster renewed hope?

Not all those who wander are lost. ~ J. R. R. Tolkien
- How open are you to daily discoveries?

Happiness consists in activity. It is a running stream, not a stagnant pool. ~ John Mason Good
- What activities help to enrich your life?

The Little Dash Between

Fresh air impoverishes the doctor.  ~ Danish proverb
- How red are your cheeks?

I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.  ~ Maya Angelou
- How can you enhance your interactions?

There'll be two dates on your tombstone and all your friends will read 'em, but all that's gonna matter is that little dash between 'em.  ~ Kevin Welch
-How are you living your dash?

Steps today

Positive anything is better than negative thinking.  ~ Elbert Hubbard
- What positive actions could you provide today?

The more you care, the stronger you can be.  ~ Jim Rohn
- Where could you show greater care?

The future comes one day at a time.  ~ Dean Acheson
- What steps can you take today for a hopeful tomorrow?

This New Year

With every rising of the sun,
Think of your life as just begun.  ~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox

- What beginning could you make today,.. this new year?

The bridge

Character is the sum total of all our everyday choices.  ~ Margaret Jensen
- What do your everyday choices reveal about you?

It's better to burn out than to fade away.  ~ Neil Young
- In what areas are you actively engaged?

Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment.  ~ Jim Rohn
- What areas deserve your focused pursuit?

The Best Day

We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.  ~ Winston Churchill
- In what ways can you give back?

Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and life to everything.  ~ Plato
- What can you do to enrich your appreciation of music?

Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.  ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
- What can you do to make this day a very good one?

To Awaken

Hope for the best.  Expect the worst.  Life is a play.  We're unrehearsed.  ~ Mel Brooks
- How do you make the most of each day?

If you do things well, do them better.  Be daring be first, be different, be just.  ~ Anita Roddick
- Where could you show some positive initiative and ingenuity?

We celebrate the past to awaken the future.  ~ John F. Kennedy
- What can you celebrate about your past which can provide direction for the future?

Life well Lived

If the world seems cold to you, kindle fires to warm it.  ~ Lucy Larcom
- In what areas could you spark some warmth?

We are all butterflies.  Earth is our chrysalis.  ~ LeeAnn Taylor
- How sensitive are you to the fragility of our environment?

I've learned that making a living is not the same thing as 'making a life.' - Maya Angelou
- What are the essential elements of a life well lived?

I have compiled 475 quotes and questions such as the above in How Do You Make a Life? Check out my author page on Amazon.

Ride the energy

If you surrender to the wind, you can ride it.  ~ Toni Morrison
- How willing are you to let go and experience situations as they arise?

It is not the length of life, but the depth of life.  ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
- What are the qualities of a life well lived?

Ride the energy of your own unique spirit.  ~ Gabrielle Roth
- What brings you energy and enthusiasm for life?