Our real duty is always found running in the direction of our worthiest desires. -
If you have not often felt the joy of doing a kind act, you have neglected much, and most of all yourself. - A. Neilen
To live in the presence of great truths and eternal laws, to be led by permanent ideals - that is what keeps a man patient when the world ignores him, and calm and unspoiled when the world praises him. - Honore De Balzac
He who reigns within himself and rules his passions, desires, and fears is more than a king. - John Milton
Embrace it all. When Aurobindo was bitten by a scorpion he said, "Ah, a message from my Beloved." - Andrew Harvey in The Way of Passion
Trouble is a part of your life, and if you don't share it, you don't give the person who loves you a chance to love you enough. -
Live your life each day as you would climb a mountain. An occasional glance towards the summit keeps the goal in mind, but many beautiful scenes are to be observed from each new vantage point. - Harold B. Melchart
The beauty of the soul shines out when a man bears with composure one heavy mischance after another, not because he does not feel them, but because he is a man of high and heroic temper. - Aristotle
The world of achievement has always belonged to the optimist. - J. Harold Wilkins
Class is an aura of confidence that is being sure without being cocky. Class has nothing to do with money. Class never runs scared. It is self-discipline and self-knowledge. It's the sure footedness that comes with having proved you can meet life. - Ann Landers
When you come to the end of all the light you know, and 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 to fly. - Edward Teller
No love, no friendship can cross the path of our destiny without leaving some mark on it forever.- Francois Muriac
We need spiritual heroes to give us working images of different types of sanctified lives that we can hold before our eyes for inspiration. - Sam Keen in Hymns to an Unknown God
No one would ever have crossed the ocean if he could have gotten off the ship in the storm. -Charles Kettering
The abundant life does not come to those who have had a lot of obstacles removed from their path by others. It develops from within and is rooted in strong mental and moral fiber. - William Mather Lewis
A happy person is not a person in a certain set of circumstances, but rather a person with a certain set of attitudes. - Hugh Downs
Not the owner of many possessions will you be right to call happy: he more rightly deserves the name of happy who knows how to use the Gods' gifts wisely and to put up with rough poverty, and who fears dishonor more than death. - Horace (65-8 BC)
There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. - Anais Nin
Never "for the sake of peace and quiet" deny your own experience or convictions. - Dag Hammarskjold
The first virtue of all really great men is that they are sincere. They eradicate hypocrisy from their hearts. - Anotole France
A life without purpose is a languid, drifting thing; Every day we ought to review our purpose, saying to ourselves: This day let me make a sound beginning, for what we have hitherto done is naught! - Thomas A. Kempis
"Rats and roaches live by competition under the laws of supply and demand; it is the privilege of human beings to live under the laws of justice and mercy." - Wendell Berry
The thing you fear most has no power. Your fear of it is what has the power. Facing the truth really will set you free. - Oprah Winfrey
If I have learned one thing in this life, it is that God will not tie my shoes without me. -Doug Boyd
If instead of a gem, or even a flower, we should cast the gift of a loving thought into the heart of a friend, that would be giving as the angels give. - George MacDonald
"I believe that there is a plan and a purpose for each person's life and that there are forces working in the universe to bring about good and to create a community of love and brotherhood. Those who can attune themselves to these forces - to God's purpose - can become special instruments of his will." - Coretta Scott King
If a man be gracious to strangers, it shows that he is a citizen of the world, and his heart is no island, cut off from other islands, but a continent that joins them. - Francis Bacon
Any society which does not insist upon respect for all life must necessarily decay. - Albert Einstein
He is your friend, your partner, your defender, your dog. You are his life, his love, his leader. He will be yours, faithful and true, to the last beat of his heart. You owe it to him to be worthy of such devotion. - Anonymous
Trials, temptations, disappointments -- all these are helps instead of hindrances, if one uses them rightly. They not only test the fibre of a character, but strengthen it. Every conquered temptation represents a new fund of moral energy. Every trial endured and weathered in the right spirit makes a soul nobler and stronger than it was before. - James Buckham
If you judge people, you have no time to love them. - Mother Teresa
Everything that is worthwhile in life is scary. Choosing a school, choosing a career, getting married, having kids--all those things are scary. If it is not fearful, it is not worthwhile. - Paul Tornier
Hard things are put in our way, not to stop us, but to call out our courage and strength. - Anonymous
I don't want to get to the end of my life and find that I lived just the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well. - Diane Ackerman
Following the course of least resistance makes for crooked rivers and crooked men. - Lanny Henninger
Out of your vulnerabilities will come your strength. - Sigmund Freud
Because I've always felt, whether the fatwa or whatever, the writer's great weapon is the truth and integrity of his voice. And as long as what you're saying is what you truly, honestly believe to be the case, then whatever the consequences, that's fine. That's an honorable position. - Salman Rushdi
He who is outside the door has already got a good part of his journey behind him. - Dutch proverb
Nobody grows old merely by living a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals. - Samuel Ullman
Imagination was given to us to compensate for what we are not; a sense of humor was given to us to console us for what we are. - Mark McGinnis
You can find on the outside only what you possess on the inside. - Adolfo Montiel Ballesteros
Sometimes you have to take the leap, and build your wings on the way down. - Kobi Yamada
When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall, always. -Mahatma Gandhi
In work, the greatest satisfaction lies - the satisfaction of stretching yourself, using your abilities and making them expand, and knowing that you have accomplished something that could have been done only by your unique apparatus. This is really the center of life, and those who never orient themselves in this direction are missing more than they ever know. - Kenneth Alsop
Humility does not mean you think less of yourself. It means you think of yourself less. - Ken Blanchard
To think bad thoughts is really the easiest thing in the world. If you leave your mind to itself it will spiral down into ever increasing unhappiness. To think good thoughts, however, requires effort. This is one of the things that discipline - training – is about. - James Clavell
God enters the human heart by its own ways: He enters the wise through wisdom. He enters the simple through simplicity. - Oscar Romero in The Violence of Love
Courage does not always roar. Sometimes, it is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, "I will try again tomorrow". - Anonymous
No trumpets sound when the important decisions of our life are made. Destiny is made known silently. - Agnes DeMille
Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh, and the greatness which does not bow before children. - Khalil Gibran
Any person capable of angering you becomes your master; he can anger you only when you permit yourself to be disturbed by him. - Epictetus
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
The manner in which it is given is worth more than the gift. - Pierre Corneille
Genuine security arises from actual, first-hand knowledge that one is both capable and worthy of achieving happiness (through conscious, responsible action) and, once having attained it, that he deserves
it. - Michael J. Hurd
Maybe others want God to be black-and-white, a figure of neat divisions and clear-cut Law, but I want God to be in flagrant swirling Technicolor. — Molly Wolf in Angels and Dragons
Where nature is concerned, familiarity breeds love and knowledge, not contempt. - Stewart L. Udall (1920- ) American Politician
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. - Buddha
The trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more. - Erica Jong
All you need is deep within you waiting to unfold and reveal itself. All you have to do is be still and take time to seek for what is within, and you will surely find it. - Eileen Caddy
What ought one to say then as each hardship comes? I was practicing for this, I was training for this. – Epictetus
People may fail many times, but they become failures only when they begin to blame someone else. -Unknown
In our era, the road to holiness necessarily passes through the world of action. -Dag Hammarskjold
We may pass violets looking for roses. We may pass contentment looking for victory. -
The more you have, the more you're occupied; the less you have, the more free you are. -Mother Teresa
If I try to be like him, who will be like me? -Yiddish proverb
"Nothing preaches better than the act." ~ Benjamin Franklin
The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires. - William Arthur Ward
I had rather do and not promise than promise and not do. - Arthur Warwick
Let no man turn aside, ever so slightly, from the broad path of honour, on the plausible pretence that he is justified by the goodness of his end. All good ends can be worked out by good means. - Charles Dickens
Risk! Risk anything! ...Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth. - Katherine Mansfield
Whether you be man or woman you will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor. - James Lane Allen
When we accept tough jobs as a challenge to our ability and wade into them with joy and enthusiasm, miracles can happen. - Arland Gilbert
Life is ten percent what happens to you and ninety percent how you respond to it. - Lou Holtz
I have learned to seek my happiness by limiting my desires, rather than in attempting to satisfy them. - John Stuart Mill
The person who removes a mountain begins by carrying away small stones. - Chinese proverb
True happiness is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose. - Helen Keller
Worrying is like a rocking chair: it gives you something to do, but it doesn't get you anywhere. -Unknown
Too many people overvalue what they are not and undervalue what they are. - Malcolm Forbes
Don't let life discourage you; everyone who got where he is had to begin where he was. - Richard L Evans
Most conversations are simply monologues delivered in the presence of witnesses. - Margaret Millar
The man who removes a mountain begins by carrying away small stones. - William Faulkner
People say, "What is the sense of our small effort?" They cannot see that we must lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time. — Dorothy Day quoted in Words to Live By by Eknath Easwaran
Often the difference between a successful marriage and a mediocre one consists of leaving about three or four things a day unsaid. - Harlan Miller
Only those who dare to fail greatly can achieve greatly. - Robert F. Kennedy
The shortest and surest way to live with honor in the world is to be in reality what we would appear to be. – Socrates
We have worked at full speed since May. And that is I'm persuaded the root and source and origin of all health and happiness, provided of course that one rides work as a man rides a great horse, in a
spirited and independent way; not a drudge, but a man with spurs to his heels. (Writing in her journal about her life as a publisher and writer.) - Virginia Woolf
First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do. – Epictetus
Courage is not the towering oak that sees storms come and go; it is the fragile blossom that opens in the snow. -Alice Mackenzie Swaim
You can tell more about a person by what he says about others than you can by what others say about him. -Leo Aikman
When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail. -Abraham Maslow
The dew on the grass is present in the moment without any drama. The full harvest moon on the water is both simple and profound. . . . We will never be able to live the paradox of how the ordinary and the extraordinary come together if we are not willing to accept life as it is. — Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee in Awakening the World
Great is the road I climb, but the garland offered by an easier effort is not worth the gathering. - Sextus Propertius (50BC-16AD) Roman Poet
It is easy to love the people far away. It is not always easy to love those close to us...Bring love into your home for this is where our love for each other must start. - Mother Teresa
Life is a great big canvas, and you should throw all the paint on it you can. - Danny Kaye
On no account brood over your wrongdoing. Rolling in the muck is not the best way of getting clean. - Aldous Huxley
Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances. - Thomas Jefferson
I have always been delighted at the prospect of a new day, a fresh try, one more start, with perhaps a bit of magic waiting somewhere behind the morning. - J.B. Priestly
It is better by noble boldness to run the risk of being subject to half the evils we anticipate than to remain in cowardly listlessness for fear of what might happen. - Herodotus (485 - 425BC) Greek Historian
You should not suffer the past. You should be able to wear it like a loose garment, take it off and let it drop. - Eva Jessye
Life leaps like a geyser for those willing to drill through the rock of inertia. - Alexis Carrel
I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship. - Louisa May Alcott
Man has never made any material as resilient as the human spirit. - Bernard Williams
In dreams and in love there are no impossibilities. - Janos Arany
I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. - Thomas Paine
The greatest use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it. -William James
They always talk who never think - Matthew Prior
When we tire of well-worn ways, we seek for new. This restless craving in the souls of men spurs them to climb, and to seek the
The man who views the world at fifty the same as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life. - Muhammad Ali
Some people are born on third base and go through life thinking they hit a triple. - Barry Switzer
Happiness comes of the capacity to feel deeply, to enjoy simply, to think freely, to risk life, to be needed. - Storm Jameson
It is no longer good enough to cry peace, we must act peace, live peace, and live in peace. - Shenandoah proverb
A timid person is frightened before a danger, a coward during the time, and a courageous person afterward. - Jean Paul Richter
Be of good cheer. Do not think of today's failures, but of the success that may come tomorrow. You have set yourselves a difficult task, but you will succeed if you persevere; and you will find a joy in overcoming obstacles. - Helen Keller
Pain nourishes courage. You can't be brave if you've only had wonderful things happen to you. - Mary Tyler Moore
All I would tell people is to hold onto what was individual about themselves, not to allow their ambition for success to cause them to try to imitate the success of others. You've got to find it on your own terms. - Harrison Ford
The fragrance always stays in the hand that gives the rose. - Hadia Bejar
Don't try to solve serious matters in the middle of the night.- Philip K. Dick
Life does not have to be perfect to be wonderful. - Annette Funicello
The best portion of a good man's life: his little, nameless unremembered acts of kindness and love. - William Wordsworth
Many of our fears are tissue paper thin, and a single courageous step would carry us clear through them. - Brendan Francis
'Twas her thinking of others that made you think of her. - Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Our dilemma is that we hate change and love it at the same time; what we really want is for things to remain the same but get better. -
Sometimes it is harder to deprive oneself of a pain than of a pleasure. - F. Scott Fitzgerald
He is a man of sense who does not grieve for what he has not, but rejoices in what he has. – Epictetus
The purpose of life is not to be happy. The purpose of life is to matter, to be productive, to have it make some difference that you lived at all. -Arthur H. Prince
A prudent man will think more important what fate has conceded to him, than what it has denied. - Baltasar Gracian
If God brings you to it, God will bring you through it. - Robert Schuller
To be alive, to be able to see, to walk,...it's all a miracle. - Arthur Rubinstein
Slight not what is near though aiming at what is far. – Euripides
No man remains quite what he was when he recognizes himself. - Thomas Mann
I have lost friends, some by death... others through sheer inability to cross the street. - Virginia Woolf
Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo. - HG Wells
Great hopes make great men. - Thomas Fuller
The world is not yet exhausted; let me see something tomorrow which I never saw before. -Samuel Johnson
The great thing and the hard thing is to stick to things when you have outlived the first interest, and not yet got the second, which comes with a sort of mastery. - Janet Erskine Stuart
Speech is conveniently located midway between thought and action, where it often substitutes for both. - John Andrew Holmes
I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We've created life in our own image. - Stephen Hawking
There are two ways to slide easily through life; to believe everything or to doubt everything. Both ways save us from thinking. - Alfred Korzybski
If I won't be myself, who will? - Alfred Hitchcock
I find that it is not the circumstances in which we are placed, but the spirit in which we face them, that constitutes our comfort. - Elizabeth T. King
Anger or hatred is like a fisherman's hook. It is very important for us to ensure that we are not caught by it. - Dalai Lama
Most of us spend our lives as if we have another one in the bank. - Ben Irwin
To be capable of steady friendship or lasting love, are the two greatest proofs, not only of goodness of heart, but of strength of mind. - William Hazlitt (1778-1830) English Essayist
When you arise in the morning, give thanks for the morning light, for your life and strength. Give thanks for your food, and the joy of living. If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies with yourself. -Tecumseh, Shawnee Chief
Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control. These three alone lead to sovereign power. - Lord Alfred Tennyson
No pressure, no diamonds. - Mary Case
Life's most urgent question is: what are you doing for others? - Martin Luther King, Jr.
The way you overcome shyness is to become so wrapped up in something that you forget to be afraid. - Lady Bird Johnson
You can't stop the waves, but you can learn to surf. –Unknown
We may not be able to give much but we can always give the joy that springs in a heart that is in love with God. -Mother Teresa
To give real service you must add something which cannot be bought or measured with money, and that is sincerity and integrity. - Donald A. Adams
It is the still, small voice that the soul heeds, not the deafening blasts of doom. - William Dean Howells
Friends are relatives you make for yourself. - Eustache Deschamps
It is the nature of man to rise to greatness if greatness is expected of him. - John Steinbeck
Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and you'll help them to become what they are capable of becoming. - Goethe
Conditions are never just right. People who delay action until all factors are favorable are the kind who do nothing. - William Feather
If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything. - Steve Bartkowski
In every person who comes near you look for what is good and strong; honor that; try to imitate it, and your faults will drop off like dead leaves when their time comes. - John Ruskin
I do not understand the mystery of grace--only that it meets us where we are, but does not leave us where it found us. - Anne Lamott
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. -
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. - Robert Frost
Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you plant. - Robert Louis Stevenson
The one resolution, which was in my mind long before it took the form of a resolution, is the key-note of my life. It is this, always to regard as mere impertinences of fate the handicaps which were placed upon my life almost at the beginning. I resolved that they should not crush or dwarf my soul, but rather be made to blossom, like Aaron's rod, with flowers. - Helen Keller
We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people. - Arthur Schopenhauer
The denunciation of the young is a necessary part of the hygiene of older people, and greatly assists in the circulation of their blood. - Logan Pearsall Smith
The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but progress. - Joseph Joubert
Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers, but to be fearless in facing them. Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain, but for the heart to conquer it. - Rabindranath Tagore
Face your deficiencies and acknowledge them; but do not let them master you. Let them teach you patience, sweetness, insight. - Helen Keller
Nothing makes you like other human beings so much as doing things for them. - Zora Neale Hurston
Trials, temptations, disappointments -- all these are helps instead of hindrances, if one uses them rightly. They not only test the fibre of a character, but strengthen it. Every conquered temptation represents a new fund of moral energy. Every trial endured and weathered in the right spirit makes a soul nobler and stronger than it was before. - James Buckham
A real friend never gets in your way--unless you happen to be on the way down. - Dr. Wayne Dyer
One of the secrets of a long and fruitful life is to forgive everybody, everything, every night before you go to bed. -Bernard M. Baruch
Blessed are the flexible, for they shall not be bent out of shape. - Anonymous
The man who can't dance thinks the band is no good. - Polish Proverb
Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future. - Paul Boese
Anger is never without a reason, but seldom a good one. - Benjamin Franklin
What is beautiful is not always good, but what is good is always beautiful. - Unknown
Life is overflowing with the new. But it is necessary to empty out the old to make room for the new to enter. -Eileen Caddy
A thought is often original, though you have uttered it a hundred times. - Oliver Wendell Holmes
There is much satisfaction in work well done, but there can be no happiness equal to the joy of finding a heart that understands. - Victor Robinsoll
Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire, called conscience. - George Washington
I have found that if you love life, life will love you back. - Arthur Rubenstein
If you can't accept losing, you can't win. - Vince Lombardi
You are not happy because you are well. You are well because you are happy. You are not depressed because trouble has come to you, but trouble has come to you because you are depressed. You can change your thoughts and feelings, and then the outer things will come to correspond, and indeed there is no other way of working. - Emmet Fox
Waste your money and you're only out of money, but waste your time and you've lost part of your life. - Michael Leboeuf
You can find on the outside only what you possess on the inside. - Adolfo Montiel Ballesteros
Use your imagination not to scare yourself to death but to inspire yourself to life. - Adele Brookman
A childlike man is not a man whose development has been arrested; on the contrary, he is a man who has given himself a chance of continuing to develop long after most adults have muffled themselves
in the cocoon of middle aged habit and convention. - Aldous Huxley
In work, the greatest satisfaction lies - the satisfaction of stretching yourself, using your abilities and making them expand, and knowing that you have accomplished something that could have been done only by your unique apparatus. This is really the center of life, and those who never orient themselves in this direction are missing more than they ever know. - Kenneth Alsop
It is better to be hated for what you are than loved for what you are not. - Andre Gide
If you have made mistakes, even serious mistakes, 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
Sometimes our light goes out but is blown into flame by an encounter with another human being. Each of us owes the deepest thanks to those who have rekindled this inner light. - Albert Schweitzer
