Inspirational Quotes

There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One of these is roots,the other wings.

~Hodding Carter

We must treat hope as a renewable resource;

something we put on with our shoes every morning.

~Barbara Kingsolver

The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and
not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the
reflection of ourselves we find in them.
~Thomas Merton

“To cheat oneself out of love is the most terrible deception; it is an eternal loss for which there is no reparation, either in time or in eternity”

 ~Soren Kierkegaard

Most folks are about as happy as they make their minds up to be.

~ Abraham Lincoln

The true man wants two things: danger and play. 

For that reason he wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything.

~Nietzsche

If you want perfection, you must spell it paralysis."               

~Winston Churchill

Open and love, or close and suffer.
~David Deida

... you must give your gift to someone who you know will use it well, and who can learn that the only things that matter are those made of truth and joy, and not of tin and glass.
I cannot go to be with you because I am already there. You are not little because you are already grown, playing among lifetimes as do we all, for the fun of living.
You have no birthday because you have always lived; you were never born and never die. You are not the child of the people you call mother and father, but their fellow adventurer on a bright journey to understand the things that are.
Fly free and happy beyond birthdays and across forever, and we'll meet now and then when we wish, in the midst of the one celebration that never can end.”          

~Richard Bach

If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.

~E.B. White

Each child is born with great respect for himself.  Each child knows his worth, his intrinsic worth.  He is not worthy because his like Buddha or Krishna or Christ - he simply knows he has worth because he is, he has being.  That's enough!  And each child loves himself, respects himself.

It is you who teach him just the opposite.  First you destroy all that is beautiful in him, and then you make him absolutely false.  Why is this done? Because only false people can follow the stupid politicians, only false people can be victims of utterly ignorant priests.  If people are real, they cannot be exploited and cannot be oppressed.

~OSHO

One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.
~Bertrand Russell

Let no man imagine that he has no influence. Whoever he may be, and wherever he may be placed, the man who thinks becomes a light and a power.

~Henry George

Never discourage anyone who continually makes progress, no matter how slow. 

~Aristotle

Use what talent you possess: the woods would be very silent if no birds sang except those that sang best. 

~Henry Van Dyke 

Self-pity gets you nowhere. One must have the adventurous daring to accept oneself as a bundle of possibilities and undertake the most interesting game in the world -- making the most of one's best. 

~Harry Emerson Fosdick

There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”

~Albert Einstein

Be a Goddess or be a doormat. 

~Picasso!

If you do not offer your loved ones freedom, you do not offer them love.

~Neal Donald Walsh, author of the Conversations with God books

Freedom must be the center and love the circumference of healthy relationships.

~OSHO

One must learn to love and go through a good

deal of suffering to get to it...and the journey

is always towards the other soul....

~D.H. Lawrence

A true friend overlooks your broken fence

to admire your flowers.

~Unknown

This is the fundamental law:  if you are happy, more happiness comes to you.  If you are joyous, you attract more joyousness.  Like attracts like.  If you are miserable, more misery starts moving towards you.  You create your world.

~OSHO

Be who you are and say what you think, because those that matter don't mind and those that mind don't matter

~Dr. Seuss

People are like stained glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.

~Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

Have faith.  Things fall apart so that things can fall together.  

~Dan Zadra

Use what talent you possess. The woods would be very silent if no birds sang except those that sang best.

~Henry Van Dyke

If you are not scared, it's not brave!

God respects us when we work, but loves us when we dance.

~old Sufi adage

Real happiness is cheap enough, yet how dearly we pay for its counterfeit.

~Hosea Ballou

So difficult it is to show the various meanings and imperfections of words

when we have nothing else but words to do it with. 

~John Locke, philosopher (1632-1704)

Your task is not to seek for love,

but merely to seek and find all

the barriers within yourself

that you have built against it.

~Rumi

Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass...

It's about learning to dance in the rain.

Inside of a ring or out, ain't nothing wrong with going  down. It's staying down that's wrong. ~Muhammad Ali

The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to 

change; the realist adjusts the sails

~William Arthur Ward, college administrator, writer (1921-1994)

"Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing."

~Arundhati Roy

To the well organized mind, death is but the next great adventure." 

~Dumbledore (JK Rowling)

Being on the tightrope is living; 

everything else is waiting. 

--Karl Wallenda

Once you make a decision, the Universe conspires to make it happen.

~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Time is a created thing.  To say, ‘I don't have time’ is to say, ‘I don't want to.’

~Lao Tzu

The opportunity to experience yourself differently is always available.

~Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

You create your own universe as you go along.

~Winston Churchill

All that we are is a result of what we have thought.

~Buddha

What we think about and THANK about is what we bring about.   

~The Secret

Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.

~Albert Einstein

Be the change you wish to see in the world.

~Ghandi

Knowledge is better than riches.

~Cameroomian Proverb

It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.
~Chinese proverb

It is better to be happy than to be right!

A woman is like a teabag- you can't tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water.

~Eleanor Roosevelt

Dear God,

Thank you for the sunshine and moonlight and great food and most of all for the smiles of our friends and family. We appreciate the complicated and wonderful gifts you give us in each other.  And we appreciate the task you put down before us, of loving each other the best we can.

~From the children's book Because of Winn-Dixie, read by Suzy at Thanksgiving '03

The purpose of life on earth is that the soul should grow- so grow!  By doing what is right.

~Zelda Fitzgerald

If you ask me what I came to do in this world, as an artist, I will tell you, 'I am here to live out loud.'
~Émile Zola

You create your own universe as you go along.

~Winston Churchill

 It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.

~Marcus Annaeus Seneca

ENERGY FOLLOWS ATTENTION!

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to bloom.

~Anais Nin

The MIND creates the abyss and the HEART crosses it.

~Sri Nisaragadatta

The classroom is no smaller than the world which God created.

~Noah Ben Shea

One is grateful because the universe is.  One is grateful because the sun rises and the birds sing and the flowers bloom and the clouds float and in the night sky becomes full of stars.  One is simply grateful because there are mountains and rivers and oceans and deserts.  One is simply grateful because there are animals and humans beings.  Such an incredible existence, so far out!  Such a celebration, so psychedelic, so colorful!  Such a dance of energy!

~Osho Rajneesh

Start living in the moment more and more.  Old tendencies, old habits, will force you to go into the future and into the past.  The moment you remember, relax in the now.  Laugh at the ridiculousness of the old habits.  I'm not saying to fight with them.  If you fight you will create anxiety.  Whenever you catch hold of yourself red-handed - again in the future and again in the past - slip out of it, just as a snake slips out of the old skin.

~OSHO

When someone enters your life seemingly from nowhere and you wonder how you ever got along without them- that is god! 

~ Neale Patrick Walsch

Laugh, because that is your purpose in life. Love, because that is what you came here for. Shine, because that is important.

~Yogi Bhajan (The father of American Kundalini Yoga.)

"It is a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it." 

-- W. Somerset Maugham

True peace is not merely the absence of tension.  It is the presence of justice.

~Martin Luther King, Jr.

Generally what we call love, it's not true love.

We ask, we demand.

Ordinary love is a kind of begging:  "Give me more, give me more!"

True love says: "Ask me more, take more."

When love is giving, it is true.  When it longs to have, it is false.

And when love is giving, it spreads, it pulsates.

~OSHO

When the hearing stops at the ears, the mind stops at the symbol.
~Chuang Tzu

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.

~Mahatma Gandhi

Be Seen

When two lovers are really open to each other, when they are not afraid of each other and not hiding anything from each other, that is intimacy.  When they can say each and everything without any fear that the other will be offended or hurt....If the lover thinks the other will be offended, then the intimacy is not yet deep enough.  Then it is a kind of arrangement, which can be broken by anything.  But when two lovers start feeling that there is nothing to hide and everything can be said, and the trust has come to such a depth where even if you don't say it the other is going to know, then they start becoming one."

~OSHO

Politicians, like diapers, should be changed often  -  and for the same reason.

~Robin Williams

As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

~ H.L. Mencken

Tree planting is not only useful in itself, it is a symbol, almost a sacrament of long-term consistent investment in a slowly revealed good.

~Patrick Dolan

Those who do not know how to weep with their whole heart don't know how to laugh either.

~Golda Meir

 In this world, if a man sits down to think, he is immediately asked if he has a headache.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation

are men who want rain without thunder and lightning.

They want the ocean without the roar of its many waters.

~Frederick Douglass

It is too close, so we overlook it. 

It seems too good to be true, so we cannot believe it. 

It is too profound, so we cannot fathom it. 

It is not outside ourselves, so we cannot attain it anew.

~Lama Jamgon Kongtrul Lodro Thaye 

Praise and blame, gain and loss, pleasure and sorrow come and go like the wind. To be happy, rest like a giant tree in the midst of them all.

~The Buddha

Holding on to anger is like holding on to a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned. 

-~the Buddha

So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable,

and then when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable.

~Christopher Reeve

 If we are to keep our democracy, there must be one commandment: Thou shalt not   ration justice.

~ Judge Learned Hand

Only a creative person knows how to drop boredom, the creative person knows no boredom at all.  He is thrilled, enchanted, he is constantly in  a state of adventure.

~ OSHO

It's not the perfect but the imperfect that is in need of our love.

~Oscar Wilde

All time not spent on love is wasted.         

~Tasso

"Too many have dispensed with generosity in order to practice charity."

~ Albert Camus

Problems cannot be solved at the same level of thinking that created them in the first place.

~Albert Einstein

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."

"Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal."

"The time is always right to do what is right."

~Martin Luther King

The Winds of Fate

One ship sails east, and the other west

On the selfsame winds that blow.
'Tis the set of the sails and not the gales
That decide the way to go.

Like the winds of the seas are the ways of fate,

As they voyage along through life.

'Tis the will of the soul that sets its goals

And not the calm or the strife.

~Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.      

~Helen Keller

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.
~Robert Frost 

"An investment in knowledge pays the best interest."

"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security, will deserve neither and lose both."

"Life's tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late."

"All mankind is divided into three classes: those that are immoveable, those that are moveable, and those that move."

"Words may show a man's wit but actions his meaning."

"Take time for all things: great haste makes great waste."

"He does not possess wealth; it possesses him."

"Never leave that till tomorrow which you can do today."

"Be slow in choosing a friend, slower in changing."

"Well done is better than well said."

~Benjamin Franklin

Here is my secret:  I don't mind what happens.  

Krishnamurti

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
~from A Return to Love, by Marianne Williamson

[IF]

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you

But make allowance for their doubting too,

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,

Or being hated, don't give way to hating,

And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!

~Rudyard Kipling

Abou Ben Adhem

Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
And saw, within the moonlight of his room,
Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,
An angel writing in a book of gold:-
Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,
And to the presence in the room he said,
'What writest thou?' - The vision raised its head,
And with a look made of all sweet accord,
Answered 'The names of those who love the Lord.'
'And is mine one?' said Abou. 'Nay, not so,'
Replied the angel. Abou spoke more low,
But cheerly still; and said 'I pray thee then,
Write me as one that loves his fellow-men.'

The angel wrote, and vanished. The next night
It came again with a great wakening light,
And showed the names who love of God had blessed,
And lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest.

~Leigh Hunt

How Did You Die?

Did you tackle that trouble that came your way

With a resolute heart and cheerful?

Or hide your face from the light of day

With a craven soul and fearful?

Oh, a trouble's a ton, or a trouble's an ounce,

Or a trouble is what you make it.

And it isn't the fact that you're hurt that counts,

But only how did you take it?

You are beaten to earth? Well, well, what's that?

Come up with a smiling face.

It's nothing against you to fall down flat,

But to lie there -- that's disgrace.

The harder you're thrown, why the higher you bounce;

Be proud of your blackened eye!

It isn't the fact that you're licked that counts;

It's how did you fight and why?

And though you be done to death, what then?

If you battled the best you could;

If you played your part in the world of men,

Why, the Critic will call it good.

Death comes with a crawl, or comes with a pounce,

And whether he's slow or spry,

It isn't the fact that you're dead that counts,

But only, how did you die?

~Edmund Vance Cook (1866-1932)