“It is a true master who professes ignorance, for only an empty vessel can be filled.”

– Unknown

“It’s usually a dirt road that leads to the diamond mine.”

– Mike Dooley

“There are some things one can only achieve by a deliberate leap in the opposite direction. One has to go abroad in order to find the home one has lost.”

– Franz Kafka

“The truest expression of a people is in its dances and its music. Bodies never lie.”

– Agnes De Mille

“The web of life is a beautiful and meaningless dance. The web of life is a process with a moving goal. The web of life is a perfectly finished work of art right where I am sitting now.”

– Robert Anton Wilson

“We are called to be architects of the future, not its victims.”

– R. Buckminster Fuller

“Work requires effort. Things we love to do feel effortless. Only do the things you love and you’ll never have to work again.”

– Simon Sinek

“They can’t censor the gleam in my eye.”

– Charles Laughton

“Do you know how helpless you feel if you have a full cup of coffee in your hand and you start to sneeze?”

– Jean Kerr

“You never know what you can do until you have to do it.”

– Betty Ford

“People take different roads seeking fulfillment & happiness.  Just because they’re not on your road doesn’t mean they’ve gotten lost.”

– The Dalai Lama

“The real measure of our wealth is how much we’d be worth if we lost all our money.”

– Benjamin Jowett

“You can’t touch love, but you can feel the sweetness that it pours into everything.”

– Annie Sullivan

“Listen carefully to first criticisms made of your work. Note just what it is about your work that critics don’t like — then cultivate it. That’s the only part of your work that’s individual and worth keeping.”

-  Jean Cocteau

“God has such a deep reverence for our freedom that he’d rather let us freely go to Hell than be compelled to go to Heaven.”

– Archbishop Desmond Tutu

“Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good.”

– Thomas Paine

“If we value independence, if we are disturbed by the growing conformity of knowledge, of values, of attitudes, which our present system induces, then we may wish to set up conditions of learning which make for uniqueness, for self-direction, and for self-initiated learning.”

– Carl Rogers

“What man wants is simply independent choice, whatever that independence may cost and wherever it may lead.”

– Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“I often warn people: Somewhere along the way, someone is going to tell you, ‘There is no “I” in team.’ What you should tell them is, ‘Maybe not. But there is an “I” in independence, individuality and integrity.’”

– George Carlin

“You have the freedom, ability and authority to love your life.  Just be you, then wait.”

– Gangaji

“Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.”

– Bertrand Russell

“Somewhere there’s someone who dreams of your smile,

And finds in your presence that life is worth while

So when you are lonely, remember it’s true:

Somebody, somewhere, is thinking of you.”

– Amy Wettig

“We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over.”

– Ambrose Bierce

“Fight against something and you focus on the thing you hate. Fight for something and you focus on the thing you love.”

– Simon Sinek

“Wow, I do have all day and I get to choose.”

– Mary Morrissey

“I spring out of bed and fairly sizzle with zeal and enthusiasm and go forth this day to do the things that ought to be done by me.”

– Charles Fillmore on his 90th birthday

“I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.”

– Tagore

“It is best to act with confidence, no matter how little right you have to it.”

– Lillian Hellman

“I talk and talk and talk, and I haven’t taught people in 50 years what my father taught by example in one week.”

– Mario Cuomo

“A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single person contemplates it bearing within them the image of a cathedral”

– Antoine de St. Expiry

“What you can’t get out of, get into wholeheartedly.”

– Mignon McLaughlin

“Great leaders don’t try to be perfect. They try to be themselves. And that’s what makes them great.”

– Simon Sinek

“Be who you are and say what you feel,

because those who mind don’t matter,

and those who matter don’t mind.”

– Dr. Seuss

“Boredom is the feeling that everything is a waste of time; serenity, that nothing is.”

– Thomas Szasz

“It’s like everyone’s given seeds that are capable of growing into the garden of their dreams, but no one’s been told they even have them. Then, when they see their neighbor’s garden growing, whether it’s because their neighbor actually found their seeds or accidentally spilled them, there’s a rush to see what’s happening. In fact, whole industries are built around the buying, selling, and trading of other people’s gardens. Agents are hired, sales teams assembled, and sometimes stocks and bonds are issued. Vendors compete, lawyers are hired, and accountants are sued. There are mergers and acquisitions, buyouts and takeovers, and of course 401k’s, company picnics, and vacation days.

There are seeds that grow into private gardens. Seeds that grow into best sellers. And seeds that grow into happy families.

It’s quite a riot, and often good fun, but would you believe that one of the biggest impediments one has to discovering their own seeds, these days, is their fascination with the gardens of others?”

– Mike Dooley

Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

– Ferris Bueller

“God says, Through the gate of the mistake, most of My beloveds reach Me.”

– Sidi al Jamal – Sufi Sheikh

“Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.”

– Kahlil Gibran

“Every society honors its live conformists and its dead troublemakers.”

– Mignon McLaughlin

“While much is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened.”

– Thomas Hardy

“Knowledge is understanding based on what has been studied and learned. Wisdom is understanding based on what has been felt and experienced.”

– Simon Sinek

“I love to do the things the censors won’t pass.”

– Marilyn Monroe

“I’ve never fooled anyone. I’ve let people fool themselves. They didn’t bother to find out who and what I was. Instead they would invent a character for me. I wouldn’t argue with them. They were obviously loving somebody I wasn’t.”

– Marilyn Monroe

“If you always do what interests you, at least one person is pleased.”

– Katharine Hepburn

“When someone behaves poorly it’s always because they’ve forgotten how powerful they really are, how beautiful life is, and how much they’re loved.  Always.”

– Mike Dooley

“The mind can be convinced, but the heart must be won.”

– Simon Sinek

“As between mileage and experience, choose experience.”

– Clifton Fadlman

“Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason, which today arm you against the present.”

– Marcus Aurelius

“My mother had a wonderful sense of humor, and I learned from her that the highest forms of understanding we can achieve are laughter and human compassion.”

– Richard Feynman

“When I can allow another to take responsibility for their own life and their own pain… rather than feeling the need to ‘rescue’ them… I take my hand off and turn my heart on. Now I can really love.”

– Sage Lavine

“Effort + the courage to show up = enough.”

– Brene Brown

“When you travel, remember that a foreign country is not designed to make you comfortable. It is designed to make its own people comfortable.”

– Clifton Fadlman

“Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what’s right.”

– Isaac Asimov

“Never tell a young person that anything cannot be done. God may have been waiting centuries for someone ignorant enough of the impossible to do that very thing.”

– John Andrew Holmes, Jr

“Never rely on your friends for money, or on your money for friends.”

– Mardy Grothe

“Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for truth.”

– Benjamin Disraeli

“My doctor tells me I should start slowing it down – but there are more old drunks than there are old doctors so let’s all have another round.”

-  Willie Nelson

“Every man has his follies – and often they are the most interesting thing he has got.”

– Josh Billings

Here’s the world’s oldest man’s secret to a long life:

• Embrace change, even when the change slaps you in the face. (“Every change is good.”)

• Eat two meals a day (“That’s all you need.”)

• Work as long as you can (“That money’s going to come in handy.”)

• Help others (“The more you do for others, the better shape you’re in.”)

Then there’s the hardest part: Accept death. “We’re going to die. Some people are scared of dying. Never be afraid to die. Because you’re born to die,”

– Walter Breuning – Died of natural causes at age of 114

“There was this huge world out there, independent of us human beings and standing before us like a great, eternal riddle, at least partly accessible to our inspection and thought. The contemplation of that world beckoned like a liberation.”

– Albert Einstein

“Nothing puzzles me more than the time and space; and yet nothing troubles me less.”

– Charles Lamb

“Knowledge is gained by learning; trust by doubt; skill by practice; and love by love.”

– Thomas Szasz

“The difference between taking baby steps and acting small is that one prepares you for success, the other for a fall.  Of course the baby steps feel silly, this is how we test to see how badly you want what you want.”

– Mike Dooley

“Some people live ninety years but most people live one year ninety times.”

– Unknown

“I don’t want to get involved in the racial situation at the expense of losing fans. I wouldn’t say anything too strong but I do know that God created us equal and we’re not living up to it.”

– Jayne Mansfield

‎”Life will bring you pain all by itself. Your responsibility is to create joy.”

– Unknown

“You can’t produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant.”

– Warren Buffet

“As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand.”

– Josh Billings

“Ninety-nine percent of the world’s lovers are not with their first choice. That’s what makes the jukebox play.”

– Willie Nelson

“We must each learn to hang out in the green, growing edges of our own becoming.”

– Hildegard Debringum

“Simple ideas are easier to understand. Ideas that are easier to understand are repeated. Ideas that are repeated change the world.”

– Simon Sinek

“In life you can only ever be scared, when you believe in limits.

You can only ever feel lonely, when you stop doing things.

You can only ever become bored, when you no longer follow your heart.

And you can only ever get overwhelmed, when you think the illusions are real.

And usually, it only ever seems hard, when you rush yourself.

Whew! Who knew it could be so easy to get back on track?”

– Mike Dooley

“If two angels were sent down from heaven –one to conduct an empire and the other to sweep the streets –they would feel no inclination to change employment because an angel would know that no matter what we are doing, it’s an opportunity to bring joy, deepen our understanding and expand our life.”

– Sir Isaac Newton

“Against the ruin of the world there is only one defense … the creative act.”

– Kenneth Rexroth

“I take it not only a day at a time, but a moment at a time, and keep it at that pace. If you can be happy right now, then you’ll always be happy, because it’s always in the now.”

– Willie Nelson

“Wise people learn when they can; fools learn when they must.”

-  Arthur Wellesley, First Duke of Wellington

“The events of your life are there because you have drawn them there. What you do with them is up to you.”

– Richard Bach

Make someone’s day by telling them this and meaning it – “The next time I see you, I will hug you with more eagerness, and release you with more reluctance.”

– Unknown

‎’I’m going to give you a little advice. There’s a force in the universe that makes things happen. And all you have to do is get in touch with it, stop thinking, let things happen, and be the ball.”

-  Ty Webb

“Life is a grindstone, and whether it grinds a man down or polishes him up depends on what he is made of.”

– Josh Billings

“We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.”

– Thornton Wilder

“Optimists focus on the place they are going. Pessimists focus on the obstacles along the route. To become an optimist simply look ahead.”

– Simon Sinek

“If you’re going to do something wrong, do it big, because the punishment is the same either way.”

– Jayne Mansfield

“Clear thinking requires courage rather than intelligence.”

– Thomas Szasz

“You wonder what I am doing? Well, so do I, in truth. Days seem to dawn, suns to shine, evenings to follow, and then I sleep. What I have done, what I am doing, what I am going to do, puzzle and bewilder me. Have you ever been a leaf and fallen from your tree in autumn and been really puzzled about it? That’s the feeling.”

– T. E. Lawrence

“There is one purpose to life and one only: to bear witness to and understand as much as possible of the complexity of the world- its beauty, its mysteries, its riddles.”

– Anne Rice

“It is human nature to think wisely and to act in an absurd fashion.”

– Anatole France

“Comparison is the death of joy.”

– Unknown

“People often say that this or that person has not yet found himself. But the self is not something one finds, it is something one creates.”

– Thomas Szasz

“Ever notice how those who give their all to just “getting by,” usually do?  Yeah. Then you must wonder, too, why they don’t just give their all to rocking the flippin’ world?  Costs the same.  Just another one of life’s mysteries.”

– Mike Dooley

“The greatest thing you can do is surprise yourself.”

– Steve Martin

“When we lose the right to be different, we lose the privilege to be free.”

– Charles Evans Hughes

“No matter how high or great the throne, what sits on it is the same as your own.”

– Yip Harburg

“Some see risk as a reason not to try. Some see it as an obstacle to overcome. The risk is the same; to try or not depends on your perspective.”

– Simon Sinek

‎”My only real job in life is to give love, everything else is just a cover.”

– Wakenda Willingham

“Sometimes I feel like I’ve waited forever, just to be you…”

– Mike Dooley

“Strength is the ability to break a chocolate bar into four pieces with your bare hands – and then eat just one of those pieces.“

– Judith Viorst

“He does not believe that does not live according to his belief.”

– Sigmund Freud

“…Every time there is opportunity to judge there is also an opportunity to see commonality, and when you find that, you build a bridge and not a dam.”

– Joshua Onsyko

“When you complain, you make yourself a victim.  Either leave the situation, change the situation or accept it –All else is madness.”

– Mary Manin Morrissey

“There is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.”

– Vincent van Gogh

“For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.”

– Kahlil Gibran

“At all times and in all places always be the first to smile.”

– Mike Dooley

“May this home be a place of happiness, healthy creativity, kindness and love.  May all who visit and live here know only blessings and peace.”

– Mary Mannin Morrissey

“Even the knowledge of my own fallibility cannot keep me from making mistakes. Only when I fall do I get up again.”

– Vincent van Gogh

“I decided today that I should take life more seriously…. but then I started laughing….”

– Jeffrey Allen

“ Everything will be okay in the end.  If it’s not okay, it’s not the end.”

– Unknown

“What if you are exactly what the moment calls for?”

– Lissa Boles

“Success is a great deodorant. It takes away all your past smells.”

– Elizabeth Taylor

“Outside advice can only tell you how a decision looks. Only you can know how it feels. The best decisions look and feel right.”

– Simon Sinek

“A mind, like a home, is furnished by its owner, so if one’s life is cold and bare he can blame none but himself.”

– Louis L’Amour

“Eloquent speech is not from lip to ear, but rather from heart to heart.”

– William Jennings Bryan

“Never opt for change simply to leave something you don’t like. Change works best when you go toward something, even if it is the unknown.”

– Simon Sinek

“Sticks and stones are hard on bones,

aimed with angry art,

words can sting like anything

but silence breaks the heart.”

– Phyllis McGinley

“In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.”

– Margaret Atwood

“Destiny is not a matter of chance; it is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for; it is a thing to be achieved.”

– William Jennings Bryan

“Each time you judge yourself, you break your own heart.”

– Hindu Monk

“Living consciously involves being genuine.  It involves listening and responding to others honestly and openly.  It involves being in the moment.”

– Sidney Poitier

“The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.”

– Anna Quindlen

“We must not allow the clock and the calendar to blind us to the fact that each moment of life is a miracle and mystery.”

– H. G. Wells

“Never memorize what you can look up in books.”

– Albert Einstein

“First, choose from the options that thrill you.  Then, choose the ones that also teach you.  And from these choose the scariest. Butterflies in your tummy are good. That’s how I got earth rolling.”

– Mike Dooley

“Go on a living spree. While you’re here, why not live it up? Make your list, then go be, do, and have everything you want. Live life to the fullest. Live a life of no regrets. Strive toward your potential. NO restrictions apply. This offer is good for a limited time only. Don’t miss this opportunity. Go on a living spree!”

– Clifton Anderson

“The reason people find it so hard to be happy is that they always see the past better than it was, the present worse than it is, and the future less resolved than it will be!”

– Unknown

“Humans think they are smarter than dolphins because we build cars and buildings and start wars etc., and all that dolphins do is swim in the water, eat fish and play around. Dolphins believe that they are smarter for exactly the same reasons.”

– Douglas Adams

“Several times I’ve risked giving up everything I know to find one thing I didn’t yet know. It’s been worth it every time! What a great way to live.”

– Jeffrey Allen

“Reputation is what men and women think of us; character is what God and angels know of us.”

– Thomas Paine

“I enjoy working in a quiet and subversive way.”

– Andy Goldsworthy

“All of us are watchers – of television, of time clocks, of traffic on the freeway – but few are observers. Everyone is looking, not many are seeing.”

– Peter M. Leschak

“It isn’t love when another person cannot give you the space to live your own life.”

– Deepak Chopra

“You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.”

– Mark Twain

“Do not follow the ideas of others, but learn to listen to the voice within yourself.

Your body and mind will become clear and you will realize the unity of all things.”

– Unkonwn

“Won’t you come into my garden? I would like my roses to see you.”

– Richard Brinsley Sheridan

“Knowing that we can be loved exactly as we are gives us all the best opportunity for growing into the healthiest of people.”

– Mr. Rogers

“To be authentic is to be at peace with your imperfections.”

– Simon Sinek

“You can’t have two truths.”

– David Neagle

“Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.”

– Dr. Seuss

“If I were a medical man, I should prescribe a holiday to any patient who considered his work important.”

– Bertrand Russell

“As you enter positions of trust and power, dream a little before you think.”

– Toni Morrison

“You can only be as good as you dare to be bad.”

– John Barrymore

“Be happy. It’s one way of being wise.”

– Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette

“Life was meant to be lived, and curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.”

– Hyman G. Rickover

“Being driven is not the same as being passionate. Passion is a love for the journey. Drive is a need to reach the destination.”

– Simon Sinek

“The pursuit of money as a means to anything usually means (almost always means) that someone, somewhere, at least momentarily, has taken their “eye” off of what it is they really want.  Tricky that way, huh?”

– Mike Dooley

“The day you catch an idea you fall in love with, even a small one, is a beautiful day.”

– David Lynch

“Love is not blind; it is an extra eye, which shows us what is most worthy of regard.”

– James Matthew Barrie

“If you don’t like the road you’re walking, start paving another one.”

– Dolly Parton

“Water and words are easy to pour but impossible to recover.”

– Chinese proverb

“Humility isn’t thinking less of yourself, it’s thinking of yourself less.”

– Mike Dooley

“Most of us, like the assembly line worker, have jobs that are too small for our spirit. Jobs are not big enough for people.”

– Studs Terkel

“You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm.”

– Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette

“Every man is a damned fool for at least five minutes every day.  Wisdom consists in not exceeding the limit.”

– Elbert Hubbard

“A young man who is unable to commit a folly is already an old man.”

– Paul Gauguin

“You can’t base your life on other people’s expectations.“

– Stevie Wonder

“I do not believe in a fate that will fall on us no matter what we do. I do believe in a fate that will fall on us if we do nothing.”

– Ronald Reagan

“When I moved to L. A. with this little wimpy garage band, the first people we met were the Doors. Then we met Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin. All of the people who died of excess were our big brothers and sisters. So I said to myself: How do you become a legend and enjoy it? The answer is to create a character as legendary as those guys and leave that character on the stage.”

– Alice Cooper

‎”When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.”

– Helen Keller

“Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony.”

– Thomas Merton

“A happy marriage is the union of two good forgivers.”

– Socrates

“Tension is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who you are.”

– Chinese proverb

“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”

– Plato

“Always laugh when you can, it is cheap medicine.”

-  Lord Byron

“My mother refused to give me coloring books as a child. She probably saved me, Because when you think about it, what a coloring book does is completely kill creativity.”

– David Lynch

“Whenever something doesn’t work out the way you thought it would instead of thinking that something went wrong, see it as something that went unexpectedly well, but for reasons that are not yet apparent.  Everything plays to your favor. “

– Mike Dooley

“If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.”

– J.R.R.Tolkien

“If there is a fear of falling, the only safety consists in deliberately jumping.”

– Carl Jung

“Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending.”

– Carl Bard

“We should all start to live before we get too old. Fear is stupid. So are regrets.”

– Marilyn Monroe

“If you hear a voice within you say ‘you cannot paint,’ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.”

– Vincent Van Gogh

“Rarely are the first steps in a journey anything like the final ones, either in direction, pace or grace.  So please believe me when I tell you that none of those things are even half as important as the fact that there are steps at all.  By the time you’re really rolling, it will be in a direction you cannot even imagine now.  So please for the time being, just roll.  Tallyho!”

– Mike Dooley

“… you can never get enough of what you don’t really want.”

– Marcia Bench

“Thinking big but acting small is the same as thinking small.”

– Mike Dooley

“Earthly possessions dazzle our eyes and delude us into thinking that they can provide security and freedom from anxiety. Yet all the time they are the very source of anxiety.”

– Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“I was afraid that by observing objects with my eyes and trying to comprehend them with each of my other senses I might blind my soul altogether.”

– Socrates

“Authentic peace is always initiated personally as a felt-experience.

Those who sincerely seek an awareness of what peace is receive its blessings in waves and this feeling of peacefulness grows exponentially throughout the body like a rising tide.

However, to receive a felt-awareness of peacefulness, we are required to consciously choose peace over and above our desire to be right, to understand, to win, to be successful, to have what we want, to be acknowledged, to be in control, and even to be safe.”

– A plaque in the bathroom of the Universe

“Most people seek after what they do not possess and are enslaved by the very things they want to acquire.”

– Anwar el-Sadat

“Focus on where you’re going and you’ll know what steps to take. Focus on the steps you’re taking and you won’t know where you’re going.”

– Simon Sinek

“It is never too late to be what you might have been.”

– George Eliot

“The hatred we bear our enemies injures their happiness less than our own.”

– John Petit-Senn

“When we see others as the enemy, we risk becoming what we hate. When we oppress others, we end up oppressing ourselves. All of our humanity is dependent upon recognizing the humanity in others.”

– Desmond Tutu

“Sometimes I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It’s beyond me.”

– Zora Neale Hurston

“If you get to the top on your own, who’ll take the picture?”

– Thomas Robert Dewar

“Of all the liars in the world, sometimes the worst are your own fears.”

– Rudyard Kipling

“Putting yourself first is not selfish. Quite the opposite. You must put your happiness and health first before you can be of help to anyone else.”

– Simon Sinek

“As I look back upon my life, I see that every part of it was a preparation for the next. The most trivial of incidents fits into the larger pattern like a mosaic in a preconceived design.”

– Margaret Sanger

“I think she must have been very strictly brought up, she’s so desperately anxious to do the wrong thing correctly.”

– Saki (Hector Hugh Munro)

“I may not be totally perfect, but parts of me are excellent.”

– Ashleigh Brilliant

“Education must provide the opportunities for self-fulfillment; it can at best provide a rich and challenging environment for the individual to explore, in his own way.”

– Noam Chomsky

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it’s time to pause and reflect.”

– Mark Twain

“It is possible to be different and still be all right.”

– Anne Wilson Schaef

“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

“The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider’s web…. We must pick out what is good for us where we can find it.”

– Pablo Picasso

“None of us suddenly becomes something overnight. The preparations have been in the making for a lifetime.”

– Gail Godwin

“There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.”

– Beverly Sills

“All our Western thought is founded on this repulsive pretence that pain is the proper price of any good thing.”

– Rebecca West

“Every reformation must have its victims. You can’t expect the fatted calf to share the enthusiasm of the angels over the prodigal’s return.”

– Saki (Hector Hugh Munro)

“Did St. Francis preach to the birds? Whatever for? If he really liked birds he would have done better to preach to the cats.”

– Rebecca West

“Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt.”

– William Shakespeare

“What good is having a belly if there’s no fire in it. Wake up, drink your passion, light a match and get to work.”

– Simon Sinek

“If you practice an art, be proud of it and make it proud of you…. It may break your heart, but it will fill your heart before it breaks it.”

– Maxwell Anderson

“Some people live 99 years, while others live 1 year 99 times.”

– Mike Dooley

“Why not seize the pleasure at once? How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation!”

– Jane Austen

“I have been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.”

– Mark Twain

“What’s your intention?  Why not live it every moment?”

– Diane Israel

“Condemning is like adding glue to the Goo.”

– Alison Armstrong

“You have the freedom, ability and authority to love your life.  Just be you, then wait.”

– Gangaji

“Strangely enough, this is the past that somebody in the future is longing to go back to.”

– Ashleigh Brilliant

“Ask your question. Feel the answer. Ask, feel. Ask, feel. Ask, feel.  OK?”

– Mike Dooley

“Why do you have to be a nonconformist like everybody else?”

– James Thurber

“If we choose, we can live in a world of comforting illusion.”

– Noam Chomsky

“A sense of humor keen enough to show a man his own absurdities, as well as those of other people, will keep him from the commission of all sins, or nearly all, save those that are worth committing.”

– Samuel Butler

“There are only miracles, Ken, and to one degree or another they all soothe, pamper, and enrich. However, to avoid blowing too many minds at once, some are disguised as unpleasant surprises, botched circumstances, and twisted acquaintances that can rarely be seen for who or what they truly are until the pendulum has fully swung.

Yes… don’t I think of everything?  Duck! “

– Mike Dooley

“If you want to achieve anything in this world, you have to get used to the idea that not everyone will like you.”

– Simon Sinek

“Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.”

– Mark Twain

“If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get down to our work. The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavorable. Favorable conditions never come.”

– C. S. Lewis

“When you’re happy and maintain it, there is no price.”

– Nicole Shostak

“Creativity comes from trust. Trust your instincts. And never hope more than you work.”

– Rita Mae Brown

“Two things a man cannot hide: that he is drunk, and that he is in love.”

– Antiphanes

“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

“True friendship multiplies the good in life and divides its evils. Strive to have friends, for life without friends is like life on a desert island … to find one real friend in a lifetime is good fortune; to keep him is a blessing.”

– Baltasar Gracian

“Not what we have, but what we enjoy, constitutes our abundance.”

– John Petit-Senn,

“Don’t walk in front of me, I may not follow. Don’t walk behind me, I may not lead. Just walk beside me and be my friend.”

– Albert Camus

“People who cannot invent and reinvent themselves must be content with borrowed postures, secondhand ideas, fitting in instead of standing out.”

– Warren G. Bennis

“Don’t wait for perfection before you start. Start somewhere so you can have something tangible you can work to perfect.”

– Simon Sinek

“What is to give light must endure burning.”

– Viktor Frankl

“If I love you, is that a fact or a weapon?”

– Margaret Atwood

“We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question which divides us is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being correct. My own feeling is that it is not crazy enough.”

– Niels Bohr

“I believe in the sun even when it’s not shining.  I believe in love even when I cannot feel it.”

– Written by 16^th century prisoner on wall of prison cell

“Risk deters those who see what they could lose. Those focused on the gain see it as a necessary part of their journey, even if the possibility of loss exists.”

– Simon Sinek

“If your head tells you one thing, and your heart tells you another, before you do anything, you should first decide whether you have a better head or a better heart.”

– Marilyn vos Savant

“I have done my best: that is about all the philosophy of living one needs.”

– Lin-yutang

“Fix your eyes forward on what you can do, not back on what you cannot change.”

– Tom Clancy

“Just as the acorn existed within the oak, even when the oak was a seedling; and as the oak existed within the earth, even before there were trees; and as the earth existed within the galaxy, even before there were planets… there has never been a time when you did not exist within me… during which we dreamed all else into being.  Love You”

– Mike Dooley

“One of the illusions of life is that the present hour is not the critical, decisive hour. Write it on your heart that every day is the best day of the year.”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

“When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.”

– Lao Tzu

“Don’t be afraid to go where you’ve never gone and do what you’ve never done, because both are necessary to have what you’ve never had and be who you’ve never been.”

– Mike Dooley

“There is nothing your highest self wants more than peace.”

– Wayne Dyer

“Obstacles don’t have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don’t turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it.”

– Michael Jordan

“When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute – and it’s longer than any hour. That’s relativity.”

– Albert Einstein

“I don’t believe in pessimism. If something doesn’t come up the way you want, forge ahead. If you think it’s going to rain, it will.”

– Clint Eastwood

“The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.”

– Eden Phillpotts

“The path to enlightenment is not a path at all, it’s actually a metaphor for the time it takes for you to allow yourself to be happy with who you already are, where you’re already at, and what you already have – no matter what.”

– Mike Dooley

“Pulled a tiny splinter out from under my right pinkie fingernail. Now the whole day is looking better. Sometimes just taking care of a little irritation can make the big ones less irksome.”

– John Goggin

“Man is not what he thinks he is, he is what he hides.”

РAndr̩ Malraux

“The sword conquered for a while, but the spirit conquers for ever!”

– Sholem Asch

“Those in pursuit of Why are inspired to do what is right. Those in pursuit of What are driven to do what is easy.”

– Simon Sinek

“A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him.”

– Ezra Pound

“Instead of this absurd division into sexes they ought to class people as static and dynamic.”

-  Evelyn Waugh

“If you are truly serious about preparing your child for the future, don’t teach him to subtract, teach him to deduct.”

-  Fran Lebowitz

“Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.”

– Mahatma Gandhi

“Whatever is in the way, is the way.”

– Jeffrey Van Dyk

“A free society cherishes nonconformity. It knows that from the non-conformist, from the eccentric, have come many of the great ideas of freedom. Free society must fertilize the soil in which non-conformity and dissent and individualism can grow.”

– Henry Steele Commager

“Life is pretty good, if I pay attention.”

– Dorita Bechtel (My Mom)

“All the mistakes I ever made were when I wanted to say ‘no’ and said ‘yes’.”

– Moss Hart

“I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear destruction. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.”

– Martin Luther King, Jr

“The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think, than what to think — rather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than to load the memory with the thoughts of other men.”

– John Dewey

“To not forgive is to drink a little poison each day and expect the other person to die.”

– Mary Morrissey

“Talent is God-given. Be humble. Fame is man-given. Be grateful. Conceit is self-given. Be careful.”

– John Wooden

“The only real knowledge is who you really are – a spiritual being created in the image in the likeness of a loving God. If you know that, everything you do will honor the wisdom and beauty you already own.”

– Alan Cohen

“A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.”

– John Lennon

“Courage is doing what you are afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you are scared.”

– Eddie Rickenbacker

“There is a vitality, a life-force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost.”

– Martha Graham

“None of us really changes over time. We only become more fully what we are.”

– Anne Rice

“Sometimes I pretend to be normal, but it gets boring. So I go back to being me.”

– Unknown

“Since no one can ever know for certain whether or not his own view of life is the correct one, it is absolutely impossible for him to know if someone else’s is the wrong one.”

– Gore Vidal

“My father always used to say, “Don’t raise your voice. Improve your argument.” Good sense does not always lie with the loudest shouters, nor can we say that a large, unruly crowd is always the best arbiter of what is right.”

– Desmond Tutu

“The small man thinks that small acts of goodness are of no benefit, and does not do them; and that small deeds of evil do no harm, and does not refrain from them. Hence, his wickedness becomes so great that it cannot be concealed, and his guilt so great that it cannot be pardoned.”

– Confucius

“A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk, I have a work station.”

– William Faulkner

“He who loses wealth loses much; he who loses a friend loses more; but he that loses his courage loses all.”

– Miguel de Cervantes

“If you cannot find it in yourself, where will you go for it?”

– Confucious

“I get up every morning determined to both change the world and have one

hell of a good time. Sometimes this makes planning my day difficult.”

– E. B. White

“Never slap a man who’s chewing tobacco.”

– Will Rogers

“Don’t ever think you know what’s right for the other person.  He might start thinking he knows what’s right for you!”

-Paul Williams

“An ounce of action out weighs a ton of words every time.”

– Martin Sexton

“Great leaders don’t try to be perfect, they try to be themselves. And that’s what makes them great.”

– Simon Sinek

“Whenever possible, practice kindness; and remember, it is always possible.”

– His Holiness the Dalai Lama

“Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt.”

– William Shakespeare

“Forget about likes and dislikes. They are of no consequence. Just do what must be done. This may not be happiness, but it is greatness.”

– George Bernard Shaw

“I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I’m awake, you know?”

– Ernest Hemingway

“Some people are making such thorough preparation for rainy days that they aren’t enjoying today’s sunshine.”

– William Feather

“Talent is cheap; dedication is expensive. It will cost you your life.”

– Irving Stone

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

– George Washington Carver

“If you are lonely while you’re alone, you are in bad company.”

– Jean-Paul Sartre

“What exactly is ‘viewer discretion’? If viewers had discretion, most television shows would not be on the air.”

– George Carlin

“Whose property is my body? Probably mine. I so regard it. If I experiment with it, who must be answerable? I, not the State. If I choose injudiciously, does the state die? Oh, no.”

– Mark Twain

“It’s one trick to manifest exactly what you want.  It’s another to bring about something even better.  Leave the door open.  How? Expect miracles. Don’t attach to unimportant details. Don’t insist “how” your dreams will come true. Prepare to be amazed. Feel the joy when you daydream. Take baby steps in the dark. Every single day physically do something about your dreams.”

– Mike Dooley

“The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when someone asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer.”

– Henry David Thoreau

“Love is a force that connects us to every strand of the universe, an unconditional state that characterizes human nature, a form of knowledge that is always there for us if only we can open ourselves to it.”

– Emily H. Sell

“We can’t buy one minute of time with cash; if we could, rich people would live longer.”

– O. Henry

“The objection to Puritans is not that they try to make us think as they do, but that they try to make us do as they think.”

– Henry Louis Mencken

“Don’t postpone joy until you have learned all of your lessons. Joy is your lesson.”

– Alan Cohen

“To fulfill a dream, to be allowed to sweat over lonely labor, to be given a chance to create, is the meat and potatoes of life. The money is the gravy.”

– Bette Davis

“A child educated only at school is an uneducated child.”

– George Santayana

“A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.”

– Henry Brooks Adams

“I have a lifetime appointment and I intend to serve it. I expect to die at 110, shot by a jealous husband.”

– Former Supreme Court Justice – Thurgood Marshall

“It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.”

– Albert Einstein

“There is something about inside information which seems to paralyze a man’s reasoning powers.”

– Bernard Baruch

“Accumulating love brings luck, accumulating hatred brings calamity.”

– Paulo Coelho

“There’s plenty of intelligence in the world, but the courage to do things differently is in short supply.”

– Marilyn vos Savant

“They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.”

– Andy Warhol

“Success is achieved by developing our strengths, not by eliminating our weaknesses.”

– Marilyn vos Savant

“The longer I live, the more uninformed I feel. Only the young have an explanation for everything.”

– Isabel Allende

“It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot, irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known, but to question it.”

– Jacob Bronowski

“The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of an eye. The more light you shine on it, the more it will contract.”

– Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

“Somebody is in the hospital begging God for the opportunity you have right now. Step into your moment.”

- Unknown

If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read: “President Can’t Swim.”

– Lyndon Baines Johnson

“All claims of education notwithstanding, the pupil will accept only that which his mind craves.”

– Emma Goldman

“You can’t transform that which you condemn.”

– Alison Armstrong

“It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it.”

– Joseph Joubert, 1754 – 1824

“I have known men who could see through the motivations of others with the skill of a clairvoyant; only to prove blind to their own mistakes. I have been one of those men.”

– Bernard Baruch

“You cannot find yourself by going into the past. You can find yourself by coming into the present.”

– Eckhart Tolle

“Usually, terrible things that are done with the excuse that progress requires them are not really progress at all, but just terrible things.”

– Russell Baker

“Love is but the discovery of ourselves in others, and the delight in the recognition.”

– Alexander Smith

“When you look up at the sky, you have a feeling of unity, which delights you and makes you giddy.”

– Ferdinand Hodler

“Only in growth, reform, and change, paradoxically enough, is true security to be found.”

– Anne Morrow Lindbergh

“We find comfort among those who agree with us; growth among those who don’t.”

– Frank A. Clark

“I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.”

– Galileo Galilei

“Time is really the only capital that any human being has, and the one thing that he can’t afford to lose.”

– Thomas Edison

“Everybody is in the valley of something right now.”

– Claudia Langford

“When you walk with someone, something unspoken happens.  Either you match their pace or they match yours.”

– Sydney Potier

“If you look at what you have in life, you’ll always have more. If you look at what you don’t have in life, you’ll never have enough.”

– Oprah Winfrey

“Offer your strengths to others and you’ll be amazed how many people offer their strengths to you.”

– Simon Sinek

“No one cares what time it is in paradise.”

– Mike Dooley

“To be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing”

– Raymond Williams

“Intelligence is like four-wheel drive. It only allows you to get stuck in more remote places.”

– Garrison Keillor

“When people are ready to, they change. They never do it before then, and sometimes they die before they get around to it. You can’t make them change if they don’t want to, just like when they do want to, you can’t stop them.”

– Andy Warhol

“Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.”

– Pema Chodron

“Young souls learn to accept responsibility for their actions.  Mature souls learn to accept responsibility for their thoughts.  And old souls learn to accept responsibility for their happiness.”

– Mike Dooley

“Resistance has no strength of its own. Every ounce of juice it possesses comes from us. We feed it with power by our fear of it. Master that fear and we conquer Resistance.”

– Steven Pressfield, from The War of Art

“Fear is inevitable, I have to accept that, but I cannot allow it to paralyze me.”

– Isabel Allende

‎”To know the pain of too much tenderness, To be wounded by your own understanding of love; And to bleed willingly and joyfully. To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;”

– Gibran

“Sometimes I think we’re alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we’re not.  In either case the idea is quite staggering.”

– Arthur C. Clarke

“We’re all one thing, Lieutenant.  That’s what I’ve come to realize.  Like cells in a body.  ‘Cept we can’t see the body.  The way fish can’t see the ocean.  And so we envy each other.  Hurt each other. Hate each other.  How silly is that?  A heart cell hating a lung cell.”

– Cassie from THE THREE from the movie ADAPTATION

“And now, here is my secret, a very simple secret: It’s only at the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye.”

РAntoine de Saint-Exup̩ry

“If you are patient in one moment of anger, you will escape 100 days of sorrow.”

– Chinese Proverb

“The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that’s the essence of inhumanity.”

– George Bernard Shaw

“The family. We were a strange little band of characters trudging through life sharing diseases and toothpaste, coveting one another’s desserts, hiding shampoo, borrowing money, locking each other out of our rooms, inflicting pain and kissing to heal it in the same instant, loving, laughing, defending, and trying to figure out the common thread that bound us all together.”

- Erma Louise Bombeck

“An answer is invariably the parent of a whole family of new questions.”

– John Steinbeck

“Life is a storm, my young friend. You will bask in the sunlight one moment, be shattered on the rocks the next. What makes you a man (or woman) is what you do when that storm comes.”

– Alexandre Dumas

“We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.”

– Ernest Hemingway

“Success is when reality catches up to your imagination.”

– Simon Sinek

“Time you enjoyed wasting was not wasted.”

– John Lennon

“Changing your attitude from wanting something to having it is simple. You just have to decide that it’s already within you, in spirit.”

From “You Are the Answer” by Michael J Tamura

“Most children threaten at times to run away from home. This is the only thing that keeps some parents going.”

– Phyllis Diller

“If you don’t go fishing because you thought it might rain you will never go fishing. This applies to more than fishing.”

– Gary Sow

“If I were a serious person, I’d probably have a real job.”

– Harrison Ford

“It isn’t our position but our disposition which makes us happy.”

– Unknown

“Your sense of responsibility to others can never be excessive.”

– Dean Koontz

“I was educated in line with the basic premise: work work work. You are only a valuable human being if you work. This is utterly wrong. Half working, half dancing – that is the right mixture. I myself have danced and played too little.”

– Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

“The sane understand that human beings are incapable of sustaining conspiracies on a grand scale, because some of our most defining qualities as a species are inattention to detail, a tendency to panic, and an inability to keep our mouths shut.”

– Dean Koontz

“There is an incessant influx of novelty into the world, and yet we tolerate incredible dullness.”

– Henry David Thoreau

“If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito.”

– His Holiness the Dalai Lama

“Abundance is not something we acquire. It is something we tune into.”

– Dr. Wayne Dyer

“I tell you, the more I think, the more I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.”

– Vincent Van Gogh

“Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself and know that everything in this life has a purpose.”

– Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

“I never studied anything, really. I didn’t study the drums. I joined bands and made all the mistakes onstage.”

– Ringo Starr

“Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good.”

– Thomas Paine

“When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.”

– Lao Tzu

“I like things to happen
And if they don’t happen, I like to make them happen.”

– Winston Churchill

“True love is inexhaustible; the more you give, the more you have. And if you go to draw at the true fountainhead, the more water you draw, the more abundant is its flow.”

РAntoine de Saint-Exup̩ry

“When we get too caught up in the busyness of the world we lose connection with one another – and ourselves.”

– Jack Kornfield

“When people sing together, community is created. Together we rejoice, we celebrate, we mourn and we comfort each other. Through music, we reach each others hearts and souls. Music allows us to find a connection.”

– Peter Yarrow

“I define joy as a sustained sense of well-being and internal peace, a connection to what matters.”

– Oprah Winfrey

“Your task is not to seek love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”

– Rumi

“A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs; jolted by every pebble in the road.”

– Henry Ward Beecher

“Our entire life consists ultimately in accepting ourselves as we are.”

– Jean Anouilh

“When you are living a life other then what people can Identify with, they don’t always see the value in what you are doing.”

– Paul Caire

“Don’t be afraid to take a big step if one is indicated. You can’t cross a chasm in two small jumps.”

– David Lloyd George

“Just because a man lacks the use of his eyes doesn’t mean he lacks vision.”

– Stevie Wonder

I caught the happy virus last night.

When I was out singing beneath the stars.

It is remarkably contagious – So kiss me.

– Hafiz

“Adventurer” — he that goes out to meet whatever may come. Well, that is what we all do in the world one way or another.”

– H. Rider Haggard

“Desire for perfection is the greatest illness that afflicts the human mind.”

– Mike Dooley

“Don’t plan.  Just listen really carefully.”

– Jeffrey Allen

“He has achieved success who has worked well, laughed often, and loved much.”

– Elbert Hubbard

“Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young.”

– Paul McCartney

“I love quotations because it is a joy to find thoughts one might have, beautifully expressed with much authority by someone recognized wiser than oneself.”

– Marlene Dietrich

“We never really know what stupidity is until we have experimented on ourselves.”

– Paul Gauguin

“Outside advice can only tell you how a 
decision looks. Only you can know how it feels. The best decisions look and feel right.”

– Simon Sinek

“When you get in a tight place and everything goes against you till it seems as though you could not hold on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the time and the place the tide will turn.”

– Harriet Beecher Stowe

“Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: What! You, too? Thought I was the only one.”

– Clive Staples Lewis

“Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; Courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.”

– Carl Hermann Voss

“The walls we build around us to keep sadness out also keep out the joy.”

– Jim Rohn

“We must believe that we are gifted for something, and that this thing, at whatever cost, must be attained.”

– Marie Curie

“The only time to eat diet food is while you’re waiting for the steak to cook.”

– Julia Child

“Opportunity is missed by most people because it shows up dressed in overalls and looks an awful lot like work.  Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”

– Thomas Edison

“It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.”

– John Wooden

“Forgiveness is all the cash you’ll ever need.”

– Hafiz

“A ‘No’ uttered from the deepest conviction is better than a ‘Yes’ merely uttered to please, or worse, to avoid trouble.”

– Gandhi

“Competing pressures tempt one to believe that an issue deferred is a problem avoided; more often it is a crisis invited.”

– Henry Kissinger

“The hardest challenge is to be yourself in a world where everyone is trying to make you be somebody else.  Just so you know, fate is a choice, you chose one way and life reacted to what you picked. There is no f’ed up little Fate Fairy flyin’ around screwing with people.”

– Unknown

“Some things are strange to me, and some things are odd. But I don’t condemn. If you can accept me, I can accept you.”

– Dolly Parton

“Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.”

– John F. Kennedy

“Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It’s perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we’ve learned something from yesterday.”

– John Wayne

“People keep asking me, ‘What evil lurks in you to play such bad characters?’ There is no evil in me, I just wear tight underwear.”

– Dennis Hopper

“If I had a formula for bypassing trouble, I would not pass it around. Trouble creates a capacity to handle it. I don’t say embrace trouble; that’s as bad as treating it as an enemy. But I do say meet it as a friend, for you’ll see a lot of it and you had better be on speaking terms with it.”

– Oliver Wendell Holmes

“Majority rule is a precious, sacred thing worth dying for. But – like other precious, sacred things, such as the home and the family – it’s not only worth dying for; it can make you wish you were dead. Imagine if all of life were determined by majority rule. Every meal would be a pizza. Every pair of pants, even those in a Brooks Brothers suit, would be stonewashed denim. Celebrity diet and exercise books would be the only thing on the shelves at the library. And – since women are a majority of the population – we’d all be married to Mel Gibson.”

– P. J. O’Rourke

“To succeed, jump as quickly at opportunities as you do at conclusions.”

– Benjamin Franklin

“The most beautiful discovery true friends make is that they can grow separately without growing apart.”

– Elisabeth Foley

“When a true genius appears in this world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.”

– Jonathan Swift

“I am going to make the right choice.  And whatever I choose will be right for me now.”

– Unknown

“The world is full of abundance and opportunity, but far too many people come to the fountain of life with a sieve instead of a tank car, a teaspoon instead of a steam shovel. They expect little and as a result they get little.”

– Ben Sweetland

“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.”

– Ambrose Redmoon

“You gain strength, and courage, and confidence by each experience in which we really stop to look fear in the face…. You must do that which we think we cannot.”

– Eleanor Roosevelt

“Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother.”

– Kahlil Gibran

“Allowance is not a passive acceptance of things as they are, but the recognition that there is something quite beautiful at work. There is an intelligence, a Love that knows you better than you know yourself and is presenting you, moment by moment, with blessings and lessons. Breathe and find the love offered in each moment.”

– Mary Bell Nyman

“Some people see things that are and ask, why?  Some people dream of things that never were and ask, why not? Some people have to go to work and don’t have time for all that.”

– George Carlin

“In order to be free, we must learn how to let go. Release the hurt. 
Release the fear. Refuse to entertain your old pain. The energy it takes
to hang onto the past is holding you back from a new life.”

– Mary Manin Morrissey

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

~ Buckminster Fuller

“The world is divided into people who do things, and people who get credit. Try, if you can, to belong to the first class, there is far less competition.”

– Dwight Morrow

“A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.”

– H. Albright

“As you walk and eat and travel, be where you are. Otherwise you will miss most of your life.”

– Buddha

“There are two kinds of dreams. One that’s always going to be just a dream. Then there’s a dream that’s more like a map.”

– Robert Cooper

“I believe a strong woman may be stronger than a man, particularly if she happens to have love in her heart. I guess a loving woman is indestructible.”

– John Steinbeck

“The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that one is loved; loved for oneself, or better yet, loved despite oneself.”

– Victor Hugo, 1802 – 1885

“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

“To achieve the impossible, it is precisely the unthinkable that must be thought.
”

– Tom Robbins

“Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly.”

– Albert Einstien

“One of the greatest discoveries a man makes, one of his great surprises, is to find he can do what he was afraid he couldn’t do.”

– Henry Ford

Exhilaration is that feeling you get just after a great idea hits you, and just before you realize what’s wrong with it.

– Rex Harrison

“This is the true joy of life.  Being used up for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one.  Being a force of nature, instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making me happy.  I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the community and it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can.  For life is not brief candle to me.  It is a splendid torch of which I have hold of for a moment and I wish to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generation.”

– George Bernard Shaw

“Although men are accused of not knowing their own weakness, yet perhaps as few know their own strength. It is in men as in soils, where sometimes there is a vein of gold, which the owner knows not of.”

– Jonathan Swift

“I see humans living their lives like chickens.  Most of us are too scared to do things that we really want to do.  At one time, chickens were free, wild animals.  Now they’re raised in farms.  Even cage-free chickens belong to someone.  Maybe if chickens can learn to ride bikes, they can learn to be free.”

– Cache, bike messenger and graffiti artist in LA.

“If we can recognize that change and uncertainty are basic principles, we can greet the future and the transformation we are undergoing with the understanding that we do not know enough to be pessimistic.”

– Hazel Henderson

“As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life – so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls.”

– Matt Cartmill

“Isn’t it queer: there are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before; like the larks in this country, that have been singing the same five notes over for thousands of years.”

– Willa Cather

“Judging others makes us blind, whereas love is illuminating. By judging others, we blind ourselves to our own evil and to the grace which others are just as entitled to as ourselves.”

– Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“Not what we have, but what we enjoy, constitutes our abundance.”

- John Petit-Senn

“It is amazing that when someone else spouts the nonsense you yourself believe you can readily perceive it as nonsense.”

– Philip K. Dick

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

– Benjamin Disraeli

“Life’s challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they’re supposed to help you discover who you are.”

- Bernice Johnson Reagon

“Another belief of mine: That everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise.”

– Margaret Atwood

“There is a fountain of youth: It is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will have truly defeated age.”

– Sophia Loren

“That’s the risk you take if you change: that people you’ve been involved with won’t like the new you.  But other people who do will come along.”

– Lisa Alther

“Treat people as if they were what they could be, and you help them become what they are capable of being.”

– Unknown

“The secret of getting ahead is getting started.”

– Agatha Christie, 1890 – 1976

“Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.”

 

– Arthur Ashe 1943 – 1993

You may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing that we call “failure” is not the falling down, but the staying down.

– Mary Pickford

“Half of what I say is meaningless; but I say it so that the other half may reach you.”

– Kahlil Gibran

“Man must feel the earth to know himself and recognize his values… God made life simple. It is man who complicates it.”

– Charles Lindbergh

“Release old concepts and energies that keep you in self-punishment patterns.  Release old stories and create from a place of love and self-validation. You are worth it!”

– The Buddha

“If you are not prepared to be wrong, you will never come up with anything original.”

– Sir Ken Robinson

“Light 
will someday split you open,
even if your life is now a cage.”

-Hafiz

“It is difficult to say what is impossible, for the dreams of yesterday are the hopes of today and the reality of tomorrow.”

- Robert H. Goddard

“The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second best time is today.”

– African Proverb

“If you’re facing what looks like a large problem, receive it as a compliment from the Universe.  What a great soul you must be!”

– Mary Morrissey

“The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that one is loved; loved for oneself, or better yet, loved despite oneself.”

– Victor Hugo

“No matter how any situation works out it is always a win-win situation.  We just have to figure out how to score it.”

– Ken Bechtel

“There is no defense against adverse fortune which is so effectual as an habitual sense of humor.”

- Thomas W. Higginson

“Character is like the tree; reputation its shadow.”

– Abraham Lincoln

“Be good to yourself and others will know how to treat you.”

– Unknown

“The man who views the world at fifty the same as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life. “

– Mohammad Ali

“You can’t fail if you don’t give up.”

– Unknown

“You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you’ll discover will be wonderful. What you’ll discover is yourself.”

– Alan Alda

“Humor is the closest feeling to love, because it allows for many different levels of communication. It always starts with a smile.  Afterwards, the soul sees the beauty of that which made it smile.  In this game of humor, you manage to inject joy into areas that you would have never thought you could.”

– Mabel Iam

“If they can make penicillin out of moldy bread, they can sure make something out of you.”

– Mohammad Ali

“I do not live for what the world thinks of me, but for what I think of myself.”

– Jack London

“While one person hesitates because he feels inferior, the other is busy making mistakes and becoming superior.”

— Henry C. Link

“Genius, in truth, means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.”

– William James

“You don’t get to choose how you’re going to die. Or when. You can only decide how you’re going to live. Now.”

– Joan Baez