swadhyayayoga.blogspot.com: Must Read Quotes

Acceptance:
Acceptance of one’s life has nothing to do with resignation; it does not mean running away from the struggle. On the contrary, it means accepting it as it comes, with all the handicaps of heredity, of suffering, of psychological complexes and injustices. - Paul Tournier

One has to accept pain as a condition of existence. One has to court doubt and darkness as the cost of knowing. One needs a will stubborn in conflict, but apt always to the total acceptance of every consequence of living and dying. - Morris West.

There is only one world, the world pressing against you at this minute. There is only one minute in which you are alive, this minute here and now. The only way to live is by accepting each minute as an unrepeatable miracle. - Storm Jameson

Be willing to have it so. Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune. - William James

God grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change;
Courage to change the things I can;
And wisdom to know the difference.
- Reinhold Niebuhr

The Buddhist teachings are fabulous at simply working with what’s happening as your path of awakening, rather than treating your life experiences as some kind of deviation from what is supposed to be happening. The more difficulties you have, in fact, the grater opportunity there is to let them transform you. The difficult things provoke all your irritations and bring your habitual patterns to the surface. And that becomes the moment of truth. You have the choice to launch into the lousy habitual patterns you already have, or to stay with the rawness and discomfort of the situation and let it transform you, on the spot. - Pema Chodron

When My Mind is Still
When my mind is still and alone with the beating of my heart,
I remember things too easily forgotten:
The purity of early love,
The maturity of unselfish love that asks –
desires — nothing but another’s good,
The idealism that has persisted through all the tempest of life.

When my mind is still and alone with the beating of my heart,
I can find a quiet assurance, an inner peace, in the core of my being.
It can face the doubt, the loneliness, the anxiety,
Can accept these harsh realities and can even grow
Because of these challenges to my essential being.

When my mind is still and alone with the beating of my heart,
I can sense my basic humanity,
And then I know that all men and women are my brothers and sisters.
Nothing but my own fear and distrust can separate me from the love of friends.
If I can trust others, accept them, enjoy them,
Then my life shall surely be richer and more full.
If I can accept others, this will help them to be more truly themselves,
And they will be more able to accept me.

When my mind is still and alone with the beating of my heart,
I know how much life has given me:
The history of the race, friends and family,
The opportunity to work, the chance to build myself.
Then wells within me the urge to live more abundantly,
With greater trust and joy,
With more profound seriousness and earnest service,
And yet more calmly at the heart of life.
- Paul Beattie

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial in acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity. It turns problems into gifts; failures into success, the unexpected into perfect timing, and mistakes into important events.- Melodie Beattie

Enough. These few words are enough.
If not these words, this breath.
If not this breath, this sitting here.

This opening to the life
We have refused
Again and again
Until now.

Until now
- David Whyte, Where Many Rivers Meet

Awe and Mystery:

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 aw, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed. -Albert Einstein

Two things fill the heart with renewed and increasing awe and reverence the more often and the more steadily they are meditated on: the starry heavens above and the immortal soul within. -Immanual Kant

The anticipated rarely happens, while the unexpected is bound to occur. -Sri Nisargadatta

“Bad” Emotions:

There’s no such thing as a bad emotion, only an unprocessed one. -Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D.

Some people feel the rain; other people just get wet. - Bob Dylan

The Guest House
This being human is a guest-house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
Some momentary awareness come
As an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you
out for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond. - Rumi

Busy-ness:
It is not enough to be busy; so are the ants. The question is, what are we busy about? -Henry David Thoreau

To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to violence. The frenzy of our activism neutralizes our work for peace. It destroys our own inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of our own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful. -Thomas Merton

He who is too busy doing good finds no time to be good. -Rabindranath Tagore

The Chinese pictograph for ‘busy’ is composed of two characters: heart and killing. -Brother David Stendl-Rast

In the relentless busyness of modern life, we have lost the rhythm between work and rest. Our culture invariably supposes that action and accomplishment are better than rest, that doing something—anything—is
better than doing nothing. Because of our desire to succeed,to meet these ever-growing expectations, we do not rest. Because we do not rest, we lose our way. We miss the compass points that would show us where to go, we bypass the nourishment that would give us succor. We miss the quiet that would give us wisdom. We miss the joy and love born of effortless delight. Even when our intentions are noble and our efforts
sincere—even when we dedicate our lives to the service of others—the corrosive pressure of frantic
over-activity can nonetheless cause suffering in ourselves and others. A ‘successful’ life can become
a violent enterprise. -Wayne Muller

I ask for a moment’s indulgence to sit by thy side. The works that I have in hand I will finish afterwards.
Away from the sight of thy face my heart knows no rest nor respite, and my work becomes an endless toil in a shoreless sea of toil. Today the summer has come at my window with its sighs and murmurs; and the bees are plying their minstrelsy at the court of the flowering grove. Now it is time to sit quiet, face to face with thee, and to sing dedication of life in this silent and overflowing leisure. -Rabindranath Tagore

Certainty:

Certainty undermines one’s power, and turns happiness into a long shot. Certainty confines.
Dears, there is nothing in your life that will not change – especially your ideas of God.
Look what the insanity of righteous knowledge can do: crusade and maim thousands
in wanting to convert that which is already gold into gold.
Certainty can become an illness that creates hate and greed.
God once said to Tuka,
“Even I am ever changing - I am ever beyond Myself.
What I may have once put my seal upon, may no longer be
the greatest Truth.”
- Tukaram

If we insist on being as sure as is conceivable…we must be content to creep along the ground, and can never soar. - John Henry Newman

Uncertainty and mystery are energies of life. Don’t let them scare you unduly, for they keep boredom at bay and spark creativity. - R. I. Fitzhenry

Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties. The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers. - Erich Fromm

The new always happens against the overwhelming odds of statistical laws and their probability, which for all practical, everyday purposes amounts to certainty; the new therefore always appears in the guise of a miracle. - Hannah Arendt

The beginning of knowledge is the discovery of something we do not understand. - Frank Herbert

Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever or whatever abysses nature leads, or you will learn nothing. - Thomas Huxley

Doubt is the beginning, not the end of wisdom. - Proverb

Doubt is not the opposite of faith; it is one element of faith. - Paul Tillich

Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it. - Andre Gide

Unthinking faith is a curious offering to be made to the creator of the human mind. - John A. Hutchinson

The relationship between commitment and doubt is by no means an antagonistic one. Commitment is healthiest not when it is without doubt but is in spite of doubt. - Rollo May

No great deed is done by falterers who ask for certainty. - George Eliot

When in doubt, don’t - Benjamin Franklin

When in doubt, risk it. - Holbrook Jackson

When in doubt, do it. - Oliver Wendell Holmes

In these matters the only certainty is that nothing is certain. - Pliny the Elder

The areas of consensus shift unbelievably fast; the bubbles of certainty are constantly exploding.
- Rem Koolhaas

Doubt is uncomfortable, certainty is ridiculous. - Voltaire

Uncertainty is the only certainty there is, and knowing how to live with insecurity is the only security.
- John Allen Paulos

There is no certainty; there is only adventure. - Robert Assagioli

A bird in hand is a certainty. But a bird in the bush may sing. - Bret Harte

Change:
To exist is to change; to change is to mature; to mature is to go on creating one’s self endlessly. -Henri Bergson

Be the change you seek. -Mahatma Gandhi

To change one’s life: 1. Start immediately. 2. Do it flamboyantly. 3. No exceptions. -William James

It must be admitted that there is a degree of instability which is inconsistent with civilization. But, on the whole, the great ages have been unstable ones. - Alfred North Whitehead

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise. - F. Scott Fitzgerald

The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible — and achieve it, generation after generation. - Pearl Buck

The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty. Success is moving from one failure to another without loss of enthusiasm. - Winston Churchill

As long as we wish for safety, we will have difficulty pursuing what matters. - Peter Block

It’s not so much that we’re afraid of change or so in love with the old ways, but it’s that place in between that we fear . . . . It’s like being between trapezes. It’s Linus when his blanket is in the dryer. There’s nothing to hold on to. - Marilyn Ferguson

If we listened to our intellect, we’d never have a love affair. We’d never have a friendship. We’d never go into business, because we’d be too cynical. Well, that’s nonsense. You’ve got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down. - Annie Dillard

It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power. - Alan Cohen

Conscience:
Thou shalt not be a victim. Thou shalt not be a perpetrator. Above all thou shalt not be a bystander.
- Holocaust Museum, Washington, D.C.

When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?
- Eleanor Roosevelt

To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men. - Abraham Lincoln

The inability of those in power to still the voices of their own consciences is the great force leading to change.
- Kenneth Kaunda

Justice is conscience, not a personal conscience but the conscience of the whole of humanity. Those who clearly recognize the voice of their own conscience usually recognize also the voice of justice.
- Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Cowardice asks the question, “Is it safe?” Expediency asks the question, “Is it politic?” Vanity asks the question, “Is it popular?” But, conscience asks the question, “Is it right?” And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because one’s conscience tells one that it is right. - Martin Luther King, Jr.

An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law. - Martin Luther King, Jr.

Every human being has a work to carry on within, duties to perform abroad, influence to exert, which are peculiarly his, and which no conscience but his own can teach. - William Ellery Channing

Through pride we are ever deceiving ourselves. But deep down below the surface of the average conscience a still, small voice says to us, “Something is out of tune.” - Carl Jung

Then, without realizing it, you try to improve yourself at the start of each new day. Of course, you achieve quite a lot in the course of time. Anyone can do this; it costs nothing and is certainly very helpful. Whoever doesn’t know it must learn and find by experience that a quiet conscience makes one strong.
- Anne Frank

Contradiction:
The irony is, if you don’t go in, you can’t find out. - Richard Stine

You carry in yourself all the obstacles necessary to make your realization perfect. If you discover a very black hole, a thick shadow, be sure there is somewhere in you a great light. It is up to you to know how to use the one to realize the other. - Sri Auribindo

My darkest moments, my most fearful times, when faced, became my bravest. At your weakest, you end up showing more strength, at your lowest you are suddenly lifted higher than you’ve ever been. They all border one another, these opposites, and show how quickly we can be altered. - Cecelia Ahern

Self-transformation is the most difficult and dangerous challenge to the imagination, and it is the most rewarding. Meeting it is only possible for the person whose mind is open to contradictions and well-practiced in free conjecture. - Robert Grudin

In formal logic, a contradiction is the signal of defeat, but in the evolution of real knowledge it marks the first step in progress toward a victory. - Alfred North Whitehead

Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, not the lack of contradiction a sign of truth. - Blaise Pascal

The world of science lives fairly comfortably with paradox. We know that light is a wave, and also that light is a particle. The discoveries made in the infinitely small world of particle physics indicate randomness and change, and I do not find it any more difficult to live with the paradox of a universe of randomness and chance and a universe of patterns and purpose than I do with light as a wave and light as a particle. Living with contradiction is nothing new to the human being. - Madeleine L’Engle

Wisdom tells me I am nothing.
Love tells me I am everything.
Between the two my life flows.
- Sri Nisargadatta

Difficulties:
The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise to the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. -Abraham Lincoln

Nothing on earth is more gladdening that knowing we must roll up our sleeves and move back the boundaries of the humanly possible once more. -Annie Dillard

The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers. -M. Scott Peck

Suffering alone cannot break the human spirit. Human sorrow is not a pathology; it is a poignant inheritance we share with all the family of the earth. In the face of whatever loss, illness, or harm we are given, we remain people of great courage, wisdom and healing. -Wayne Muller

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. -Plato

Disappointment:
When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the ones which open for us. - Alexander Graham Bell

If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment. - Henry David Thoreau

There will be little rubs and disappointments everywhere, and we are all apt to expect too much; but then, if one scheme of happiness fails, human nature turns to another; if the first calculation is wrong, we make a second better; we find comfort somewhere. - Jane Austen

We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope. - Martin Luther King, Jr.

Trials, temptations, disappointments – all these are helps instead of hindrances, if one uses them rightly. They not only test the fiber of character but strengthen it. Every conquering temptation or disappointment represents a new fund of moral energy. - James Buckham

The marvelous richness of human experience would lose something if there were no limitations to overcome. The hilltop hour would not be half so wonderful if there were no dark valleys to traverse. - Helen Keller

Disappointment is the nurse of wisdom. - Bayle Roche

One’s first step in wisdom is to question everything – and one’s last is to come to terms with everything.
- Georg C. Lichtenberg

Life’s disappointments are harder to take when you don’t’ know any swear words. - Calvin and Hobbes

Do not depend on the hope of results. You may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. - Thomas Merton

You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don’t try. - Beverly Sills

The size of your success is measure by the strength of your desire, the size of your dream, and how you handle disappointment along the way. - Robert Kiyosaki

I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed. - Michael Jordan

We must learn our limits. We are all something, but none of us are everything. - Blaise Pascal

Failure and Success:
When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us. - Alexander Graham Bell

Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts. - Winston Churchill

Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better. What if they are a little course, and you may get your coat soiled or torn? What if you do fail, and get fairly rolled in the dirt once or twice? Up again, you shall never be so afraid of a tumble.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Yes, risk-taking is inherently failure-prone. Otherwise, it would be called sure-thing -taking. -Tim McMahon

If you have made mistakes, there is always another chance for you. You may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing we call “failure” is not the falling down, but the staying down. - Mary Pickford

Making your mark on the world is hard. If it were easy, everybody would do it. But it’s not. It takes patience, it takes commitment, and it comes with plenty of failure along the way. The real test is not whether you avoid this failure, because you won’t. It’s whether you let it harden or shame you into inaction, or whether you learn from it; whether you choose to persevere. - Barack Obama

When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems as though you could not hang on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn. - Harriet Beecher Stowe

There is suffering in life, and there are defeats. No one can avoid them. But it’s better to lose some of the battles in the struggles for your dreams than to be defeated without ever knowing what you’re fighting for.
- Paulo Coelho

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved. - Helen Keller

We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success. We often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery. - Samuel Smiles

Thomas Alva Edison was asked by a reporter how he felt about failing 2,000 times before he invented the light bulb. Edison is reported to have replied, “My dear young man. I did not fail. I did invent the light bulb. It was simply a 2,000 step process.”

Flexibility:

Blessed are they who are flexible, for they shall never be bent out of shape. -from my yoga teacher Debra Higgins

It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real
security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power. -Alan Cohen

Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death. -Anais Nin

The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only is such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers. -M. Scott Peck

New ideas stir from every corner. They show up disguised innocently as interruptions, contradictions, and embarrassing dilemmas. Beware of total strangers and friends alike who shower you with comfortable sameness, and remain open to those who make you uneasy, for they are the true messengers of the future. -Rob Lebow

The boldness of asking deep questions may require unforeseen flexibility if we are to accept the answers.
-Brian Greene

You can judge your age by the amount of pain you feel when you come in contact with a new idea. -Pearl S. Buck

It’s not so much that we’re afraid of change or so in love with the old ways, but it’s that place in between that we fear. It’s like being between trapezes. It’s Linus when his blanket is in the dryer. There’s nothing to hold on to. -Marilyn Ferguson

The important thing is this: To be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become.
-W.E.B. DuBois

Forgiveness:
Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have 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. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Forgo your anger for a moment and save yourself a hundred days of trouble. - Chinese proverb

Forgiveness is not an occasional act; it is a permanent attitude. - Martin Luther King, Jr.

Never does the human soul appear so strong as when it foregoes revenge, and dares forgive an injury.
- E. H. Chapin

When you hold resentment toward another, you are bound to that person or condition by an emotional link that is stronger than steel. Forgiveness is the only way to dissolve that link and get free. - Catherine Ponder

You will know that forgiveness has begun when you recall those who hurt you and feel the power to wish them well. - Lewis B. Smedes

Resentment is like a glass of poison that a man drinks; then he sits down and waits for his enemy to die.
- Fred Luskin

It is very easy to forgive others their mistakes; it takes more grit and gumption to forgive them for having witnessed our own. - Jessamyn West

Forgiveness is a funny thing. It warms the heart and cools the sting. - William A. Ward

When you forgive, you in no way change the past – but you sure do change the future. - Bernard Meltzer

Forgiveness and reconciliation are not just ethereal, spiritual, other– worldly activities. They have to do with the real world. They are realpolitik, because in a very real sense, without forgiveness, there is no future.
- Desmond Tutu

The day the child realizes that all adults are imperfect, he becomes an adolescent; the day he forgives them, he becomes an adult; the day he forgives himself, he becomes wise. - Alden Nowlan

Friends:
People are lonely because they build walls instead of bridges. -Joseph F. Newton

The happiest hours of my life have been spent in the flow of affection among friends. -Thomas Jefferson

True friends are those who, when you make a fool of yourself, don’t believe that this condition is permanent.
-Erwin T. Randall

Love guards the heart from the abyss. -Mozart, The Magic Flute

Friends are the light in the darkness. -Eric Jonsson

Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom -Marcel Proust

We are all travelers in the wilderness of this world, and the best we can find in our travels in an honest friend.
-Robert Louis Stevenson

To know of someone here and there with whom we accord, who is living on with us even in silence, this makes our earthly ball a peopled garden. -Goethe

Generosity:
We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give. - Winston Churchill

In the act of giving lies the expression of my aliveness. - Erich Fromm

Thousand of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared. - Buddha

The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit. - Nelson Henderson

Real generosity toward the future consists in giving all to what is present. - Albert Camus

Money is like manure; it’s not worth a thing unless it’s spread around encouraging young things to grow.
- Thornton Wilder

If you haven’t any charity in your heart, you have the worst kind of heart trouble. - Bob Hope

It is not how much we give, but how much love we put in the giving. - Mother Teresa

I’ve learned that you shouldn’t go through life with catcher’s mitts on both hands. You need to be able to throw something back. - Maya Angelou

Even after all this time
The sun never says to the earth,
“You owe me.”
Look what happens
With a love like that -
It lights the whole world.
- Hafiz

You give but little when you give of your possessions.
It is when you give of yourself that your truly give.

There are those who give little of the much which they have – and they give it for recognition and their hidden desire makes their gifts unwholesome.

And there are those who have little and give it all. These are the believers in life and the bounty of life, and their coffer is never empty.

And is there aught you would withhold?
All you have shall someday be given;
Therefore give now, that the season of giving
May be yours and not your inheritors’.

In truth it is life that gives unto life
While you, who deem yourself a giver,
Are but a witness.

You often say, “I would give, but only to the deserving.”
The trees in your orchard say not so, nor the flocks in your pasture.
They give that they may live, for to withhold is to perish.
Surely he who is worthy to receive his days and his nights
Is worthy of all else from you.
And he who has deserved to drink from the ocean of life
Deserves to fill his cup from your little stream.
- Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet, excerpted on Giving

Gratitude:
At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us. -Albert Schweitzer

If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, “thank you,” that would suffice. -Meister Eckhart

Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy. -Rabbi Abraham Herschel

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity. It turns problems into gifts, failures into success, the unexpected into perfect timing, and mistakes into important events. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow. -Melodie Beattie

Kindness:
What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness? - Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Kindness is more important than wisdom, and the recognition of this is the beginning of wisdom.
- Theodore Isaac Rubin

Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not. - Samuel Johnson

Today I bent the truth to be kind, and I have no regret, for I am far surer of what is kind than I am of what is true. - Robert Brault

As the bus slowed down at the crowded bus stop, the Pakistani bus conductor leaned from the platform and called out, “Six only!” The bus stopped. He counted on six passengers, rang the bell, and then, as the bus moved off, called to those left behind: “So sorry, plenty of room in my heart – but the bus is full.” He left behind a row of smiling faces. It’s not what you do; it’s the way that you do it. - Francis Gay

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. - Plato

Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around. - Leo Buscaglia

Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain

The kindest word in all the world is the unkind word, unsaid. - Author Unknown

Love thy neighbor, and if it requires that you bend your understanding of the truth, the Truth will understand.
- Robert Brault

To err on the side of kindness is seldom an error. - Liz Armbruster

The greatest good you can do for another is not just to share your riches but to reveal to him his own.
- Benjamin Disraeli

Being considerate of others will take your children further in life than any college degree. - Marian Wright Edelman

How far you go if life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in your life, you will have been all of these. - George Washington Carver

Guard well within yourself that treasure, kindness. Know how to give without hesitation, how to lose without regret, how to acquire without meanness. - George Sand

Write injuries in sand; kindnesses in marble. - French proverb

When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people.
- Abraham Joshua Heschel

It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all of one’s life and find, at the end, that one has no more to offer by way of advice than “try to be a little kinder.” - Aldous Huxley

This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness. - Dalai Lama

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

Civilization is just a slow process of learning to be kind. - Author unknown

Kindness is the golden chain by which society is bound together. - Johan Wolfgang von Goethe

Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough. - Franklin D. Roosevelt

When kindness has left people, even for a few moments, we become afraid of them, as if their reason had left them. - Willa Cather

Never look down on anybody unless you’re helping him up. - Jesse Jackson

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

Laughter:
In the human condition, you cannot experience distress and emotional uplift at the same time. When you’re experiencing mirth, you’re not experiencing depression, anxiety or anger. If you increase your humor quotient, it will change your life. - Steven Sultanoff, professor of psychology at Pepperdine University

To laugh in a painful or distressing situation isn’t to avoid emotional reckoning but to gain the perspective needed to make the experience productive, to see the dilemma as part of the somewhat absurd human drama, and to seek fellowship in the society of the living. - Blaine Greteman

It is paradoxical that many educators and parents still differentiate between a time for learning and a time for play without seeing the vital connection between them. -Leo Buscaglia

Play, in short, prepares the brain to handle the unexpected. - Lee Alan Dugatkin

Play is the only way the highest intelligence of humankind can unfold. - Joseph Chilton Pearce

Laughter is the sensation of feeling good all over and showing it prinicipally in one place. - Josh Billings

Laughter connects people with their humanity. Through laughter, people acknowledge together that they are not alone. - Jos Houben

Laughter is the closest distance between two people. - Victor Borge

A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs — jolted by every pebble in the road.
- Henry Ward Beecher

Humor offers a revolutionary yet simple spiritual paradigm. If you can laugh at yourself, you can forgive yourself. And if you can forgive yourself, you can forgive others. Laughter heals us and grounds us in a place of hope. It fosters intimacy and honesty in our relationships with each other and with God. And isn’t that what grace is all about? - Susan Sparks

A merry heart doeth good like a medicine, but a broken spirit drieth the bones. - Proverbs
He who laughs, lasts. - Mary Pettibone Poole

Sometimes just changing your face and body language can create more space in your mind. Laughter is a real aid to bring about that spaciousness. - James Baraz

Humor triggers wit, and wit shifts belief systems and thinking patterns and prompts changes in attitude.
- Steven Sultanoff

Life Purpose:
I slept and dreamed that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and, behold, service was joy. -Rabindranath Tagore

This is the true joy in life, the being used up for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one. Life is
no ‘brief candle’ for me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for a moment, and I want
to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to the future generations. -George Bernard Shaw

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms. When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder If I have made of my life something particular, and real. I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened, Or full of argument. I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world. Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? -Mary Oliver

Listening:

When we shift our attention toward listening, our whole world changes. Learning to listen is equal to learning to love. - Ruth Cox

Being listened to is so close to being loved that most people don’t know the difference. - David Augsburger

Deep listening is miraculous for both listener and speaker. When someone receives us with open-hearted, non-judging, intensely interested listening, our spirits expand. - Sue Patton Thoele

The most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen. Just listen. Perhaps the most important thing we ever give each other is our attention. A loving silence often has far more power to heal and to connect than the most well-intentioned words. - Rachel Naomi Remen

The greatest gift you can give another is the purity of your attention. - Richard Moss

The first duty of love is to listen. - Paul Tillich

The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer. - Henry David Thoreau

It is the province of knowledge to speak, and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen. - Oliver Wendell Holmes
To listen closely and reply well is the highest perfection we are able to attain in the art of conversation.
- Francois de la Rouchefoucauld

We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that something deep inside us is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch. - E.E. Cummings

Listening grows our brains and feeds our hearts. Being listened to enlivens us and provides opportunities to explore what we think, how we feel, what we want, who we are, and who we’re becoming. The transformation into a skilled listener is an emotionally and spiritually challenging endeavor. Many feelings and new realizations arise as we attempt to learn about others and ourselves. It is a challenge well worth turning toward. The ongoing practice of listening transforms not only the speaker with it healing attention and compassionate focus, but it transforms the listener as well. With practice listeners grow bigger hearts, have more compassion, wisdom and solutions for successfully navigating life. - Mark Brady and Jennifer Leigh

Since true listening involves a setting aside of the self, it also temporarily involves a total acceptance of the others. Sensing this acceptance, the speaker will feel less and less vulnerable, and more and more inclined to open up the inner recesses of his or her mind to the listener. As this happens, speaker and listener begin to appreciate each other more and more, and the dance of love is begun again. - M. Scott Peck

Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. When we listen to people there is an alternating current, and this recharges us so that we never get tired of each other. It is this little creative fountain inside us that begins to spring and cast up new thoughts and unexpected laughter and wisdom. When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand. Ideas actually begin to grow within us and come to life.
- Brenda Ueland

Ah, the comfort,
The inexpressible comfort
Of feeling safe with a person.
Having neither to weigh out thoughts
Nor words,
But pouring them all right out, just as they are,
Chaff and grain together;
Certain that a faithful hand
Will take them and sift them;
Keeping what is worth keeping and,
With the breath of kindness,
Blow the rest away.
- Anonymous

When someone deeply listens to you
it is like holding out a dented cup
you’ve had since childhood
and watching it fill up with cold, fresh water.
When it balances on top of the brim,
you are understood.
When it overflows and touches your skin,
you are loved.

When someone deeply listens to you
the room where you stay
starts a new life
and the place where you wrote
your first poem
begins to glow in your mind’s eye.
It is as if gold has been discovered!

When someone deeply listens to you
your bare feet are on the earth
and a beloved land that seemed distant
is now at home within you.
- John Fox

Deep listening is miraculous for both listener and speaker. When someone receives us with open-hearted, non-judging, intensely interested listening, our spirits expand. - Sue Patton Thoele

Being listened to is so close to being loved that most people don’t know the difference. - David Augsburger

Meaningful Work:

I long to accomplish great and noble tasks, but it is my chief duty to accomplish humble tasks as though they were great and noble. The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker. - Helen Keller

It’s more important to know that words don’t move mountains. Work, exacting work, moves mountains.
- Danilo Dolci

Opportunity is missed by most because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work. - Thomas Alva Edison

Our England is a garden, and such gardens are not made By singing: –”Oh, how beautiful!” and sitting in the shade. - Rudyard Kipling

The society which scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity, and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because philosophy is an exalted activity, will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water. - John W. Gardner

The Roots of Violence:
Wealth without work,
Pleasure without conscience,
Knowledge without character,
Commerce without morality,
Science without humanity,
Worship without sacrifice,
Politics without principles.
- Mohandas K Gandhi

I am somehow less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops. - Stephen Jay Gould

A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depend on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving. - Albert Einstein

Don’t waste life in doubts and fears; spend yourself on the work before you, well assured that the right performance of this hour’s duties will be the best preparation for the hours and ages that will follow it.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Pray as though everything depended on God. Work as though everything depended on you. - Saint Augustine

The difference between try and triumph is a little umph. - author unknown

Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits. - Thomas Alva Edison

Without work, all life goes rotten. But when work is soulless, life stifles and dies. - Albert Camus

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing. - Oriah Mountain Dream, The Invitation

There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. If you block it, it will never exist through any other medium. It will be lost. The world will never have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how it compares to other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. - Martha Graham

Can anything be sadder than work left unfinished? Yes; work never begun. - Christina Rossetti

Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.
- Theodore Roosevelt

To find joy in work is to discover the fountain of youth. - Pearl S. Buck

You work that you may keep pace with the earth and the soul of the earth. For to be idle is to become a stranger unto the seasons, and to step out of life’s procession that marches in majesty and proud submission towards the infinite.

In keeping yourself with labor you are in truth loving life and to love life through labour is to be intimate with life’s inmost secret.

Work is love made visible. - Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

Mistakes and Failure:
Success is moving from one failure to another without loss of enthusiasm. -Winston Churchill

Knowledge rests not upon truth alone, but upon error also. - Carl G. Jung

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent in doing nothing.
-George Bernard Shaw

Patience:

Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answers. - Rainer Marie Rilke

Do you have the patience to wait till your mud settles and the water is clear? Can you remain unmoving till the right action arises by itself? - Tao Te Ching

If I have ever made any valuable discoveries, it has been owing more to patient attention than to any other talent. - Sir Isaac Newton

The key to everything is patience. You get the chicken by hatching the egg, not by smashing it.
- Arnold Glasgow

I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches. If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers. To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness, and the willingness to remain vulnerable. - Joseph Addison

Patience is the companion of wisdom. - Saint Augustine

Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones; and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace. - Victor Hugo

Perception:

We don’t see things as they are; we see things as we are. -Anais Nin

Men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them. -Epictetus

No life is so hard that you can’t make it easier by the way you take it. -Ellen Glasgow

When I look at a patch of dandelions, I see a bunch of weeds that are going to take over my yard. My kids see flowers for Mom and blowing white fluff you can wish on. When I feel wind on my face, I brace myself against it. I feel it messing up my hair and pulling me back when I walk. My kids close their eyes, spread their arms and fly with it until they fall to the ground laughing. When I see a mud puddle I step around it. I see muddy shoes and dirty carpets. My kids sit in it. They see dams to build, rivers to cross, and worms to play with. -anonymous

Perseverance:

Making your mark on the world is hard. If it were easy, everybody would do it. But it’s not. It takes patience, it takes commitment, and it comes with plenty of failure along the way. The real test is not whether you avoid this failure, because you won’t. it’s whether you let it harden or shame you into inaction, or whether you learn from it; whether you choose to persevere. - Barack Obama

Even after a bad harvest there must be sowing. - Seneca

You just need to be a flea against injustice. Enough committed fleas biting strategically can make even the biggest dog uncomfortable and transform even the biggest nation. - Marian Wright Edelman

Nothing could be worse than the fear that one had given up too soon, and left one unexpended effort that might have saved the world. - Jane Addams

Nearly every man who develops an idea works at it up to the point where it looks impossible, and then gets discouraged. That’s not the place to become discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward. - Thomas A. Edison

It always seems impossible until it’s done. - Nelson Mandela

How long should you try? Until. - Jim Rohn

When the story of these times gets written, we want it to say that we did all we could, and it was more than anyone could have imagined. - Bono

Let me tell you the secret that has led me to my goal: my strength lies solely in my tenacity. - Louis Pasteur

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

Most people never run far enough on their first wind to find out they’ve got a second. - William James

Nobody trips over mountains. It is the small pebble that causes you to stumble. Pass all the pebbles in your path and you will find you have crossed the mountain. - Author Unknown

Look at a stone cutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack
showing in it. Yet at the hundred-and-first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not the last blow
that did it, but all that had gone before. - Jacob A. Riis

The drops of rain make a hole in the stone not by violence but by oft falling. - Lucretius

The greatest oak was once a little nut who held its ground. - Author Unknown

By perseverance the snail reached the ark. - Charles Spurgeon

Consider the postage stamp: its usefulness consists in the ability to stick to one thing till it gets there.
- Josh Billings

My motto was always to keep swinging. Whether I was in a slump or feeling badly or having trouble off the field, the only thing to do was keep swinging. - Hank Aaron

Big shots are only little shots who keep shooting. - Christopher Morley

It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer. - Albert Einstein

If you are tired, keep going; if you are scared, keep going; if you are hungry; keep going; if you want to taste freedom, keep going. - Harriet Tubman

Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day. - A.A. Milne

Risk:

A ship is safe is harbor, but that’s not what ships are for. -proverb

Life is a daring adventure, or it is nothing. -Helen Keller

So much of what we are learning [about how the brain works] is so new, we must be comfortable venturing into error. -Richard Mendius, M.D., The Neurology of Awakening

A man may fulfill the object of his existence by asking a question he cannot answer, and attempting a task he
cannot achieve. -Oliver Wendell Holmes

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could, some blunders and absurdities have 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. -Ralph Waldo Emerson

Presence:
We buy books, we go to gyms, we expend a lot of brain power on trying to hold back time, when we should be celebrating the miracle of being here in this world, now. - Paulo Coelho

Awaken to the mystery of being here And enter the quiet immensity of your own presence….Take time to celebrate the quiet miracles that seek no attention….Experience each day as a sacred gift woven around the heart of wonder. - John O’Donohue

Peace is present right here and now, in ourselves and in everything we do and see. The question is whether or not we are in touch with it. We don’t have to travel far away to enjoy the blue sky. We don’t have to leave our city or even our neighborhood to enjoy the eyes of a beautiful child. Even the air we breathe can be a source of joy. - Thich Nhat Hanh

In the hopes of reaching the moon, men fail to see the flowers that blossom at their feet. - Albert Schweitzer

If your everyday practice is to be open to all your emotions, to all the people you meet, to all the situations you encounter, without closing down, trusting that you can do that – then that will take you are far as you can go. And then you’ll understand all the teachings that anyone has ever taught. - Pema Chodron

You cannot be present in an abstract way. Presence is not about disappearing into nothingness. You can only be present with something that is actually here. - Leonard Jacobson

Focus attention on the feeling inside you.
Know that it is the pain-body.
Accept that it is there.
Don’t think about it – don’t let the feeling turn into thinking.
Don’t judge or analyze.
Don’t make an identity for yourself out of it.
Stay present, and continue to be the observer of what is happening inside you.
Become aware not only of the emotional pain but also of “the one who observes,” the silent watcher.
This is the power of the Now, the power of your own conscious presence. -Eckhart Tolle

Let go of the idea that the path will lead you to your goal. The truth is that with each step we take, we arrive. Repeat that to yourself every morning: ‘I’ve arrived.’ That way you’ll find it much easier to stay in touch with each second of your day. - Paulo Coelho

If we refuse to think of anything except what we are doing or the person that we are with, we develop the habit of being present to the present moment. In a way, the present moment becomes as sacred as being in church. Far better to be present to your duty if you are a bartender, than to be present in church and to be thinking about being in a bar. At least you are present to yourself when you are paying attention to what you are doing. - Thomas Keating

We’ve come to believe that the core capacity needed for accessing the field of the future is presence. We first thought of presence as being fully conscious and aware in the present moment. Then we began to appreciate presence as deep listening, of being open beyond one’s preconceptions and historical ways of making sense. We came to see the importance of letting go of old identities and the need to control….Ultimately, we came to see all these aspects of presence as leading to a state of “letting come,”of consciously participating in a larger field for change. When this happens, the field shifts, and the forces shaping a situation can shift from re-creating the past to manifesting or realizing an emerging future. - Peter Senge

True listening…is the arising of alert attention, a space of presence in which the words are being received. The words now become secondary. They may be meaningful or they may not make sense. Far more important than what you are listening to is the act of listening itself, the space of conscious presence that arises as you listen. That space is a unifying field of awareness in which you meet the other person without the separative barriers created by conceptual thinking. And now the other person is no longer “other.” In that space, you are joined together as one awareness, one consciousness. - Eckhart Tolle

Once there is a certain degree of Presence, of still and alert attention in human beings’ perceptions, they can sense the divine life essence, the one indwelling consciousness or spirit in every creature, every life-form, recognize it as one with their own essence and so love it as themselves. - Eckhart Tolle

The most precious gift we can offer others is our presence. When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers. - Thich Nhat Hanh

Empathy is full presence to what’s alive in the other person at this moment. - John Cunningham

The Difference

I got up early one morning and rushed right into the day;
I had so much to accomplish, I didn’t have time to pray.
Problems just tumbled about me and grew heavier with each task;
Why doesn’t God help me, I wondered; He answered, “You didn’t ask.”
I wanted to see joy and beauty, but the day toiled on, gray and bleak;
I wondered why God didn’t show me – He said, “But you didn’t seek.”
I tried to come into God’s presence; I used all my keys at the lock;
God gently and lovingly chided, “My child, you didn’t knock.”
I woke up early this morning and paused before entering the day;
I had so much to accomplish that I had to take time to pray.
- Unknown

I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
Into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass.
How to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
Which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?
- Mary Oliver

The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.- Henry Miller

Transitions:

The object of a new year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul.
- G.K. Chesterton

Any transition serious enough to alter your definition of self will require not just small adjustments in your way of living and thinking but a full-on metamorphosis. - Martha Beck

Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death. - Anais Nin

Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be. - John Wooden

What locks itself in sameness has congealed. Is it safer to be gray and numb? What turns hard becomes rigid
and is easily shattered. Loyalty to a petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.
- Mark Twain

Men are born soft and supple; dead, they are stiff and hard. Plants are born tender and pliant; dead, they are brittle and dry.
Thus whoever is stiff and inflexible is a disciple of death. Whoever is soft and yielding is a disciple of life.

The hard and stiff will be broken. The soft and supple will prevail. - Tao Te Ching, translated by Stephen Mitchell

Pour yourself out like a fountain.

Flow into the knowledge that what you are seeking
finishes often at the start, and, with ending, begins.

Every happiness is the child of a separation
it did not think it could survive….
- Ranier Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus XII translated by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows

The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers. - M. Scott Peck

If we are growing, we’re always going to be out of our comfort zone. - John Maxwell

Learn the alchemy
true human beings know.
The moment you accept
what troubles you’ve been given,
the door will open.

Welcome difficulty as a familiar comrade.
Joke with torment brought by the Friend.
Sorrows are the rags of old clothes and jackets
That serve to cover, then are taken off.

That undressing
And the beautiful naked body underneath,
Is the sweetness that comes after grief.
The hurt you embrace
Becomes joy.
Call it to your arms where it can change.
- Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks.

A person needs at intervals to separate from family and companions and go to new places. One must go without familiars in order to be open to influences, to change. - Katharine Butler Hathaway

You’ve got to do your own growing, no matter how tall your grandfather was. - Irish proverb

You may wonder: How can I leave it all behind if I am just coming back to it? How can I make a new beginning if I simply return to the old? The answer lies in the return. You will not come back to the same old thing. What you return to has changed because you have changed. Your perceptions will be altered. You will not incorporate into the same body, status, or world you left behind. [There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.- Nelson Mandela] The river has been flowing while you were gone. Now it does not look like the same river. - Steven Foster

When you do things from your soul
You feel a river moving in you, a joy.

When actions come from another place
The feeling disappears.
- Rumi

May my life flow like a river, ever surprised by its own unfolding. - John O’Donohue

To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.- Henri Bergson

Change and growth take place when a person has risked himself and dares to become involved with experimenting with his own life. - Herbert Otto

We know what we are, but know not what we may be. - William Shakespeare

The most important thing to remember is this: To be ready at any moment to give up what you are for what you might become. - W.E.B Dubois

So long as a person is capable of self-renewal, they are a living being. - Henri-Frederic Amiel

Our consciousness rarely registers the beginning of a growth within us any more than without us; there have been many circulations of the sap before we detect the smallest sign of the bud. - George Eliot

The universe is change; life is understanding. - Marcus Aurelius

Nothing in the world is permanent, and we’re foolish when we ask anything to last, but surely we’re still more foolish not to take delight in it while we have it. If change is the essence of existence one would have thought it only sensible to make it the premise of our philosophy. - W. Somerset Maugham

Life is change. Growth is optional. Choose wisely. - Anon.

Do one thing every day that scares you. - Eleanor Roosevelt

Again and again
some people in the crowd
wake up.

They have no ground in the crowd,
and they emerge according to
much broader laws.

They carry strange customs with them
and demand room for bold gestures.

The future speaks ruthlessly
through them
- Ranier Maria Rilke

Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars…to change the world. - Harriet Tubman

Trust:
You must trust and believe in people or life becomes impossible. - Anton Chekhov

You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live in torment if you don’t trust enough. - Frank Crane

No soul is desolate as long as there is a human being for whom it can feel trust and reverence. - T.S. Eliot

It is impossible to go through life without trust; that is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself.
- Graham Greene

A person who trusts no one can’t be trusted. - Jerome Blattner

One must be fond of people and trust them if one is not to make a mess of life. - E. M. Forster

It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust. - Samuel Johnson

To be trusted is a greater compliment than to be loved. - George MacDonald

The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand nor the kindly smile, or the joy of companionship; it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when you discover that someone else believes in you and is willing to trust you with a friendship. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

We’re never so vulnerable as when we trust someone, but paradoxically, if we cannot trust, neither can we find love or joy. - Walter Anderson

A man who doesn’t trust himself can never really trust anyone else. - Cardinal De Retz

Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do. - Benjamin Spock

Trust you own instinct. Your mistakes might as well be your own, instead of someone else’s. - Billy Wilder

No matter how deep a study you make, what you really have to rely on is your own intuition and when it comes down to it, you really don’t know what’s going to happen until you do it. - Konosuke Matsushita

Trust that little voice in our head that says, “Wouldn’t it be interesting if…” and then do it. - Duane Michals

Self-trust is the essence of heroism. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Wonder:

People travel to wonder at the height of the mountains, at the huge waves of the seas, at the long course of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars, and yet they pass by themselves without wondering. - St. Augustine

The world will never starve for want of wonders, but for want of wonder. - G. K. Chesterton

People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child – our own two eyes. All is a miracle. - Thich Nhat Hanh

There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle. 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 is awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed. - Albert Einstein

If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children, I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life. - Rachel Carson

Work That Changes the World:

I long to accomplish great and noble tasks, but it is my chief duty to accomplish humble tasks as though they
were great and noble. The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker. -Helen Keller

I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was
joy. -Rabindranath Tagore

We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give. -Winston Churchill

There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is
only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. If you block it, it will never exist through any other
medium. It will be lost. The world will never have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor
how it compares to other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. -Martha Graham

Live your beliefs, and you can turn the world around. -Henry David Thoreau