A Random Collection of Quotations
(If there is no attribution either I lost it
or it was lost long before I came upon the quotation.)
If you want to be happy, be.
Henry David Thoreau
Begin somewhere; you cannot build a reputation on what you intend to do.
Liz Smith
Some people regard discipline as a chore. For me, it is a kind of order that sets
me free to fly.
Julie Andrews
Each moment is already here in all its fullness, waiting for us to immerse
ourselves in its sometimes muddy, but always restorative, waters.
Jerome Front
As human beings out greatness lies not so much in our being able to remake our
world as in being able to remake ourselves.
Gandhi
We may in fact disappoint ourselves, may not meet our own expectations, but we
do not cease to be a friend to ourselves.
Sharon Salzberg
Give me a fruitful error any time, full of seeds, bursting with its own corrections.
Pareto
Patience is waiting. Not passively waiting. That is laziness. But to keep going
when the going is hard and slow - that is patience.
Anonymous
No matter how long your journey appears to be, there is never more than this:
one step, one breath, one moment--now.
Eckhart Tolle
Positive guilt occurs when we begin to break rules that need to be broken.
Dede Beasley
Motivation is a fire from within. If someone else tries to light that fire under you,
chances are it will burn very briefly.
Stephen R. Covey
The distance is nothing; it's only the first step that is difficult.
Marquise du Deffand
Definition of Burnout:
Trying to change someone else’s life and being attached to the results.
Rules for Living:
 Show Up
 Pay Attention
 Tell the Truth
 Don’t Be Attached to the Results
Angeles Arien
Don’t just do something, sit there.
Who you are is more important than what you do and far more important than
what you say.
Instead of cursing the darkness, bring in the light
Carolyn Costin
When you relax, you can make miracles.
Tan Dun
Behind every success is a succession of failures.
Rick Beneteau
To receive gifts is to lose freedom.
Sandi
You can get everything in life you want, if you'll just help enough other people
get what they want.
Zig Ziglar
The person interested in success has to learn to view failure as a healthy,
inevitable part of the process of getting to the top.
Dr. Joyce Brothers
The successful man will profit from his mistakes and try again in a different way.
-Dale Carnegie
Even a mistake may turn out to be the one thing necessary to a worthwhile
achievement.
Henry Ford
The man who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything.
Theodore Roosevelt
Excellence is the gradual result of always striving to become better.
Pat Riley
Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go.
T. S. Eliot
Faith means living with uncertainty - feeling your way through life, letting your
heart guide you like a lantern in the dark”
Dan Millman
Fear is like a hologram. It seems real, filled with substance. Then when you go
beyond it, you realize it's only an illusion.
No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this present instant.
Fra Giovanni
A guideline can be thought of as a signpost that leads us down the road—until
we reach the next sign.
Donald Altman
When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would
no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability... To be alive is
to be vulnerable.
Madeleine L'Engle ~
When you blame others, you give up your power to change.
Douglas Noel Adams
He is not laughed at that laughs at himself first.
Tomas Fuller
Change and growth take place when a person has risked himself and dares to
become
involved with experimenting with his own life.
Herbert Otto
Stand for one distinctive thing that will give you a competitive advantage.
Harry Beckwith
Success is not a place at which one arrives but rather the spirit with which one
undertakes and continues the journey.
Alex Noble
You can't fake listening. It shows.
Raquel Welch
I have always sought to guide the future -- but it is very lonely sometimes trying
to play God.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Desire, ask, believe, receive.
Stella Terrill Mann
I feel the greatest reward for doing is the opportunity to do more.
Jonas Salk
The farther away from here and now; the smaller is our human potential.
Rene Egli
Striving for excellence motivates you; striving for perfection is demoralizing.
Harriet Braiker
Celebrate what you want to see more of.
Tom Peters
The greatest good you can do for another is not just to share your riches, but to
reveal to him his own.
Benjamin Disraeli
People deal too much with the negative, with what is wrong... Why not try and
see positive things, to just touch those things and make them bloom?
Thich Nhat Hanh
Listening, really listening, is tough and grinding work, often humbling, sometimes
distasteful. It's a fairly sure bet that you won't like the lion's share of what you
hear.
Bob Waterman
Self-knowledge is not an aim in itself, but a means of liberating the forces of
spontaneous growth.
Karen Horney
Facts are useless if you need advice on how to use them.
Halla
They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them
feel.
Carl W. Buechner
Discoveries are often made by not following instructions, by going off the main
road, by trying the untried.
Frank Tyger
To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. To not dare is to lose oneself.
Soren kierkegaard
The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely.
Carl Jung
If I could define enlightenment briefly I would say it is ''the quiet acceptance of
what is.''"
Wayne Dyer
Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the
consequences of any misfortune.
William James
The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.
Plutarch
To have a vision, one needs to have a sense of possibility far beyond reasonable
thinking.
Thomas Leonard
We don't stop playing when we grow old, we grow old when we stop playing.
Anonymous
Life is what we make it, always has been, always will be.
Grandma Moses
When you lose, do not lose the lesson.
The Dalai Lama
Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of
luck.
The Dalai Lama
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
The Dalai Lama
Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.
The Dalai Lama
Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon.
The Dalai Lama
Any fact facing us is not as important as our attitude toward it, for that
determines our success or failure. The way you think about a fact may defeat you
before you ever do anything about it. You are overcome by the fact because you
think you are.
Norman Vincent Peale
When the universe knocks on your door, open it up and let it in, silly!
Drew Rozell
As it is more blessed to give than receive, so it must be more blessed to receive
than to give back.
Robert Frost
You can turn painful situations around through laughter. If you can find humor in
anything - even poverty - you can survive it.
Bill Cosby
I not only use all the brains I have, but all I can borrow.
Woodrow Wilson
To be nobody - but yourself - in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to
make you everybody else - means to fight the hardest battle which any human
being can fight, and never stop fighting.
e.e. cummings
That which one feels in himself to be different is precisely that which is rare, and
this is his worth.
Andre Gide
Energy creates energy. It is by spending oneself that one becomes rich.
Sarah Bernhardt
The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but progress.
Joseph Joubert
As long as there is a chance of the world getting through its troubles, I hold that
a reasonable man must behave as though he were sure of it. If at the end your
cheerfulness was not justified, at any rate you will have been cheerful.
William Shakespeare
Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left over by those who
hustle.
Abraham Lincoln
Be with what is so that what is to be may become.
Soren Kierkegaard
To climb steep hills requires slow pace at first.
William Shakespeare
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without
accepting it.
Aristotle
Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.
Mahatma Gandhi
Conditions for creativity are to be puzzled; to concentrate; to accept conflict and
tension; to be born everyday; to feel a sense of self.
Erich Fromm
God does not require that you succeed. He only requires that you try.
Mother Teresa
The human spirit is never finished when it is defeated…it is finished when it
surrenders.
Ben Stein
To understand the heart and mind of a person, look not at what he has already
achieved, but at what he aspires to do.
Kahlil Gibran
That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you'd understood
all your life, but in a new way.
Doris Lessing
The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.
William James
They do not love that do not show their love.
Shakespeare
We may miss a great deal of joy because we expect it to be unusual, dramatic,
and spectacular. We are waiting for lights to flash and bells to ring. But the truth
is that joy is here, right now, waiting for us to notice it.
Veronica Ray
Live out of your imagination, not your history.
Stephen Covey
That something happened to you is of no importance to anyone, not even to you.
The important thing about you is what you choose to make happen -- your
values and choices.
Ayn Rand
If you can find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn't lead anywhere.
Frank A Clark
The ultimate lesson all of us have to learn is unconditional love, which includes
not only others but ourselves as well.
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Theodore Roosevelt
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.
Aristotle
When we long for life without... difficulties, remind us that oaks grow strong in
contrary winds, and diamonds are made under pressure.
Peter Marshall
There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hands.
Richard Bach
The only ones among you who will be really happy are those who will have
sought and found how to serve.
Albert Schweitzer
Praise and blame
gain and loss
pleasure and sorrow
come and go like the wind.
To be happy,
rest like a great tree in the midst of them all.
The Buddha
Personally I'm always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.
Sir Winston Churchill
We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned, so as to have the life that
is waiting for us.
Joseph Cambbell
If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do
not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.
attributed to Jesus in the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas
It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not
dare that they are difficult.
Seneca
Every object, every being, is a jar full of delight. Be a connoisseur.
Rumi
There can be no knowledge without emotion. We may be aware of a truth, yet
until we have felt its force, it is not ours. To the cognition of the brain must be
added the experience of the soul.
Arnold Bennett
Life is not holding a good hand; Life is playing a poor hand well.
Danish proverb
Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space lies our freedom
and power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom.
Victor Frankl
Begin everyday expecting to be surprised and you will be.
Never deprive someone of hope; it might be all they have.
H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart and can sing it back to
you when you have forgotten the words.
If you have a talent, use it in every which way possible. Don’t hoard it. Don’t dole
it out like a miser. Spend it lavishly like a millionaire intent on going broke.
Brendan Francis
Follow your instincts. That's where true wisdom manifests itself.
Oprah Winfrey
The more love we project, the more loving people we will attract. Guess what we
attract when we project neediness, judgment, or any of those other lovedestroying qualities?
Susan Jeffers
I look to the future because that's where I'm going to spend the rest of my life.
George F. Burns
Instead of waiting for the perfect opportunity, I should work toward a realization
that every opportunity is perfect.
Suzan-Lori Parks
Life is to be lived. If you have to support yourself, you had bloody well better find
some way that is going to be interesting.
Katherine Hepburn
The question is not what a man can scorn, or disparage, or find fault with, but
what he can love, and value, and appreciate.
John Ruskin
We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give.
Sir Winston Churchill
Blame is demeaning; responsibility is empowering.
Victoria Moran, Author
Long life is indeed a blessing, but maybe we overdo our concern for the length of
our lives and give insufficient attention to the passion we bring to whatever time
we have.
Thomas Moore
Every day brings a chance to live free of regret, and with as much joy, fun and
laughter as you can stand.
Oprah Winfrey
All cruelty springs from weakness.
Seneca
If it ain't broke... make it better.
Byron Katie
When you learn to love hell, you will be in heaven.
Thaddeus Golas
Do what you fear and your fear will die.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
If you are going through hell, keep going.
Winston Churchill
Whatever you expect, it will be different.
The Buddha
Anyone can become angry. That is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to
the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose and in the right way that is not easy.
Aristotle
Conditions for creativity are to be puzzled; to concentrate; to accept conflict and
tension; to be born everyday; to feel a sense of self.
Erich Fromm
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 coarse, 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
What we anticipate seldom occurs; what we least expected generally happens.
Benjamin Disraeli
A professional is a person who can do his best at a time when he doesn't
particularly feel like it.
Alistaire Cooke
Doubt is the vestibule which all must pass before they can enter the temple of
wisdom. When we are in doubt and puzzle out the truth by our own exertions, we
have gained something that will stay by us and will serve us again. But if to avoid
the trouble of the search we avail ourselves of the superior information of a
friend, such knowledge will
not remain with us; we have not bought, but borrowed it.
Charles Caleb Cotton
I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than
other things do.
Willa Cather
You can do very little with faith, but you can do nothing without it.
Samuel Butler
The happiness of life is made up of minute fractions - the little, soon forgotten
charities of a kiss or a smile, a kind look or heartfelt compliment.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The supreme accomplishment is to blur the line between work and play.
Arnold Toynbee
Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around in awareness.
James Thurber
Do not think that what your thoughts dwell on does not matter. Your thoughts
are making you.
Bishop Steere
Forgiveness is not the misguided act of condoning irresponsible, hurtful
behavior. Nor is it a superficial turning of the other cheek that leaves us feeling
victimized and martyred. Rather it is the finishing of old business that allows us
to experience the present, free of contamination from the past.
Joan Borysenko, Ph.D.
And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight inside the bud was more
painful than the risk it took to blossom.
Anais Nin
In the face of uncertainty, there is nothing wrong with hope.
O. Carl Simonton
If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is a part of yourself. What
isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us.
Herman Hesse
Getting to the source of our negative self-talk is the key to ridding ourselves of it
forever.
Scott W. Ventrella
There's a powerful transformative effect when you surround yourself with likeminded people. Peer pressure is a great thing when it helps you accomplish your
goals instead of distracting you from them.
Po Bronson
Tears are often the telescope by which men see far into heaven.
Henry Ward Beecher
When the mind talks, the body listens. We literally talk ourselves into and out of
every victory or defeat in the game of life.
Denis Waitley
By listening to our self-talk, we can discover whether or not our responses,
especially to tough, challenging situations, are rational and constructive or
irrational and destructive. How you talk to yourself all day long has a major
impact on how you feel and perform.
Scott W. Ventrella
Simply put, if you want to feel good and be as effective and efficient as possible,
talk to yourself in a positive manner. This requires seeing the positive side of
situations and people, not just the negative.
Scott W. Ventrella
Do not wait; the time will never be ‘just right’. Start where you stand, and work
with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be
found as you go along."
Napoleon Hill
We tell ourselves stories in order to live.
Joan Didion
Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being
unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from
holding certain views which others find inadmissible.
Carl Jung
Perhaps once in a hundred years a person may be ruined by excessive praise, but
surely once every minute someone dies inside for lack of it.
Cecil G. Osborne
When women try to get smaller and men try to get bigger, someone is saying
something but no one is listening.
You've got to be careful if you don't know where you're going,
because you might not get there.
Yogi Berra
Everything has something to teach you.
Wayne Dyer
The great advantage of being in a rut is that when one is in a rut, one knows
exactly where one is.
Arnold Bennett
Accept everything about yourself -- I mean everything. You are you and that is
the beginning and the end. No apologies, no regrets.
Clark Moustakas
In the attitude of silence the soul finds the path in a clearer light, and what is
elusive and deceptive resolves itself into crystal clearness.
Mahatma Ghandi
The aspects of things that are most important to us are hidden because of their
simplicity and familiarity.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
There are certain emotions that will kill your drive; frustration and confusion. You
can change these to a positive force. Frustration means you are on the verge of a
breakthrough. Confusion can mean you are about to learn something. Expect
the breakthrough and expect to learn.
Kathleen Spike
Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you plant.
Robert Louis Stevenson
The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to
get along with people.
Theodore Roosevelt
When no answer satisfies, and people continue to act as if they do not
understand,
then the wrong question is being asked.
Peter Block
We either make ourselves miserable or we make ourselves strong. The amount
of work is the same.
Carlos Casteneda
What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what
lies within us.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.
Thomas Alva Edison
When the Japanese mend broken objects they aggrandize the damage by filling
the cracks with gold, because they believe that when something's suffered
damage and has a history it becomes more beautiful.
Barbara Bloom
If thou art pained by any external thing, it is not this that disturbs thee, but thy
own judgment about it.
Marcus Aurelius
For me happiness does not come from wealth and fame; it comes from being
helpful.
Fred Rogers
Our lives begin to end the day we are silent about things that matter
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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
The best way to get something done is to begin.
Reacting is an emotional reflex. Response requires thought.
Gail Pursell Elliott
You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it
within himself.
Galileo
There are two educations. One should teach us how to make a living and the
other how to live.
John Adams
Integrity is when what you do, who you are, what you say, what you feel, and
what you think all come from the same place.
Madelyn Griffith Haney
You grow up the day you have your first real laugh at yourself.
Ethel Barrymore
Happiness is not a destination. It is a method of life.
Burton Hills
Those who cannot forgive others break the bridge over which they themselves
must pass.
Confucius
When you judge another, you do not define them, you define yourself.
Wayne Dyer
We cannot change anything until we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate,
it oppresses.”
Carl Jung
Behind every difficult person or situation is a blessing just waiting to be revealed.
Cheryl Richardson
If you concentrate on finding whatever is good in every situation, you will
discover that your life will suddenly be filled with gratitude, a feeling that
nurtures the soul.
Rabbi Harold Kushner
Clarity of observation is possible only when we are able to suspend judgment.
Shale Paul
Anyone who doesn't believe in miracles is not a realist.
David Ben-Gurion
All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave
behind is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter into
another!
Gail Sheehy
It takes courage to demand time for yourself. At first glance, it may seem to be
the ultimate in selfishness, a real slap in the face to those who love and depend
on you. It's not. It means you care enough to want to see the best in yourself
and give only the best to others.
Shale Paul
Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you've imagined.
Henry David Thoreau
Weakness fixing might prevent failure, but strength building leads to excellence.
Focus on strength, and manage around weaknesses.
Marcus Buckingham
This time like all times is a very good one if we but know what to do with it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.
Ellen Parr
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it.
Pablo Picasso
When you get to the end of all the light you know it's time to step into the
darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing that one of two things shall happen:
either you will be given something solid to stand on, or you will be taught how to
fly.
Edward Teller
Beginning today, treat everyone you meet as if they are going to be dead by
midnight. Extend to them all the care, kindness, and understanding you can
muster, and do it with no thought of any reward. Your life will never be the same
again.
Og Mandino
Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.
Anais Nin
Education is ... doing anything that changes you.
George Leonard
I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education.
Wilson Mizner
The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.
Joseph Campbell
Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of
purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the
commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary.
Sir Cecil Beaton
What we focus on expands... If we focus on how tired and exhausted we are, we
just become all the more tired and exhausted.
Chellie Campbell
Feelings come with us. They're "factory installed." We ask others how they feel
but we forget to ask ourselves.
Rev. Sally Taylor
Love is an expression of the willingness to create faith in which something is
allowed to change.
The greatest use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.
William James
We collect marbles, baseball cards, and antiques in order to hold on to them
while they increase in value. The purpose of collecting contacts, however, is just
the opposite: to give them away--to match them with other contacts.
Tim Sanders
Seek the wisdom of the ages, but look at the world through the eyes of a child.
Ron Wild
Eternity is a mere moment, just long enough for a joke.
Hermann Hesse
The mind is its own place and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.
John Milton
Everywhere is walking distance if you have the time.
Steven Wright
We can love and accept ourselves and still work like mad to change ourselves.
Dave Ellis
The way we choose to live our next moment is the way we live our lives.
Dave Ellis
I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems
don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life
is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best
of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious Ambiguity.
Gilda Radner
If I have inside of me what it takes to make a cocoon, then I also have what it
takes to make me a butterfly.
Mari Clements
You have to know how to accept rejection and reject acceptance.
Ray Bradbury
A good listener is not only popular everywhere, but after a while he gets to know
something.
Wilson Mizner
It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.
James Thurber
Hell, there are no rules here-- we're trying to accomplish something.
Thomas A. Edison
FEAR is
False Evidence Appearing Real
Forgetting Everything is All Right
Begin to weave and God will give you the thread.
German proverb
If one is out of touch with oneself, then one can not touch others.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Total absence of humor renders life impossible.
Collette
Optimism is the one quality more associated with success and happiness than
any other.
Brian Tracy
The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Go to your bosom: Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know.
William Shakespeare
Difficulties increase the nearer we approach our goal.
Goethe
In the small matters trust your mind; in the large ones, the heart.
Sigmund Freud
There's no substitute for getting smarter faster. And the way that you get smarter
is to screw around vigorously. Try stuff. See what works. See what fails miserably.
Learn. Rinse. Repeat.
Tom Peters
The more you focus on learning, joy, and preferences, instead of control,
effectiveness and goals...the more you'll achieve, and you'll have a much better
journey on the way, as well.
If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.
Meister Eckhart
When we are motivated by goals that have deep meaning, by dreams that need
completion, by pure love that needs expressing, then we truly live life.
Greg Anderson
The power of intention is a critical factor in all areas of life. Simply by intending
to create synchronicity in your life, you can nurture that result.
Deepak Chopra
While we wait for tomorrow, we must act for today.
A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and does what he wants to do.
Bob Dylan
Serenity is not freedom from the storm, but peace amid the storm.
The best preparation for good work tomorrow is to do good work today.
Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take
the first step.
Martin Luther King
It takes courage to grow up and turn out to be who you really are.
e.e.cummings