Quotes For You

The function of genius is not to give new answers, but to pose new questions which time and mediocrity can resolve. -Hugh Trevor-Roper

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

Stride forward with a firm, steady step knowing with a deep, certain inner knowing that you will reach every goal you set yourselves, that you will achieve every aim . -Eileen Caddy, Spiritual guide and author

Gratitude helps you to grow and expands; gratitude brings you and laughter into your life and into the lives of all those around you. -Eileen Caddy, Spiritual guide and author

Expect your every need to be met. Expect the answer to every problem, expect abundance on every level. -Eileen Caddy, Spiritual guide and author

Cease trying to work everything out with your minds. It will get you nowhere. Live by intuition and inspiration and let your whole life be Revelation. -Eileen Caddy, Spiritual guide and author

Nothing is by chance. There is a perfect pattern and plan running through the whole life, and you're part of that wholeness and therefore part of that perfect pattern & plan. When you see strange things happening in your life and wonder why they should happen to you, take time to see how it all fits in, and you will see a reason for everything. The reason may not be always what you expected, but never- theless be willing to accept them and to learn by them, and do not fight against them. Life should be effortless. A flower does not struggle to unfold in the rays of the sun, so why should you struggle to unfold in the rays of My limitless love? -Eileen Caddy, Spiritual guide and author

Set your sights high, the higher the better. Expect the most wonderful things to happen, not in the future but right now. Realize that nothing is too good. Allow absolutely nothing to hamper you or hold you up in any way. -Eileen Caddy, Spiritual guide and author

Life is not a static thing. The only people who do not change their minds are incompetents in asylums, and those in cemeteries. - Everett McKinley Dirksen

Desire is half of life, indifference is half of death. - Khalil Gibran

Ambition drove many men to become false; to have one thought locked in the breast, another ready on the tongue. -Sallust (86 BC - 34 BC)

What we call the secret of happiness is no more a secret than our willingness to choose life. -Leo Buscaglia

I'm doing what I think I was put on this earth to do. And I'm really grateful to have something that I'm passionate about and that I think is profoundly important. -Marian Wright Edelman

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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

Live and work but do not forget to play, to have fun in life and really enjoy it. -Eileen Caddy, Spiritual guide and author

Loving involves commitment. We are not automatic lovers of self, others, world, or God. Love does not just happen. We are not love machines, puppets on the strings of a deity called "love." Love is a choice, not simply, or necessarily, a rational choice, but rather a willingness to be present to others without pretense or guile. -Carter Heywood

Just as a tree without roots is dead, a people without history or culture also become a dead people. -Malcolm X

Ambition drove many men to become false; to have one thought locked in the breast, another ready on the tongue. -Sallust (86 BC - 34 BC)

All the world wondered as they witnessed... a people lift themselves from humiliation to the greatest pride. -Corazon C. Aquino

The history of our race, and each individual's experience, are sown thick with evidence that a truth is not hard to kill and that a lie told well is immortal. -Mark Twain (1835 - 1910), Advice to Youth

False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil. -Plato, Dialogues

A great wind swept over the ghetto, carrying away shame, invisibility and four centuries of humiliation. But when the wind dropped people saw it had been only a little breeze, friendly, almost gentle. -Jean Genet

It has always been a mystery to me how men can feel themselves honored by the humiliation of their fellow beings. -Mohandas Gandhi

Poverty should not be viewed by us as a humiliation and even less so as a position of honor or a fatality. -Mathieu Kerekou

He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed. - Albert Einstein

To be surprised, to wonder, is to begin to understand. -Jose Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955), Spanish philosopher

Not all those who wonder are lost. -J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973)

I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today - my own government...There is something strangely inconsistent about a nation and a press that would praise you when you say, 'Be nonviolent toward Jim Clark,' but will curse and damn you when you say, 'Be non- violent toward little brown Vietnamese children!' There is something wrong with that press... - Martin Luther King, Jr.

At times, it is better to keep your mouth shut and let people wonder if you're a fool than to open it and remove all doubt. -James G. Sinclair

Those who voluntarily put power into the hands of a tyrant or an enemy, must not wonder if it be at last turned against themselves. -Aesop (620-560 BC)

It was through the feeling of wonder that men now and at first began to philosophize. -Aristotle (384-322 BC)

The wonder is that we can see these trees and not wonder more. -Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

I wonder why it is that we are not all kinder to each other than we are. How much the world needs it! How easily it is done! -Henry Drummond (1851-1897)

True, we love life, not because we are used to living, but because we are used to loving. There is always some madness in love, but there is also always some reason in madness. - Friedrich Nietzsche

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will find them gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer. - Rainer Maria Rilke

You should always learn, with life comes wisdom and with wisdom comes the courage to live your life selflessly. The more you learn about yourself and the experiences surrounding your life the more opportunities you have to make your life better and more fulfilling. -Amy Candy

Life without love is like a tree without blossom and fruit. - Khalil Gibran

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. -Steven Jobs, Founder of Apple Computer

You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. -Steven Jobs, Founder of Apple Computer

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life. -Steven Jobs, Founder of Apple Computer

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life. -Steven Jobs, Founder of Apple Computer

For those that believe, no explanation is necessary. For those who do not, none will suffice. -Joseph Dunninger, Master magician

War is a defeat for humanity. -Pope John Paul II

No amount of ability is of the slightest avail without honor. - Andrew Carnegie

Better keep yourself clean and bright. You are the window through which you must see the world. - George Bernard Shaw

No man can tell whether he is rich or poor by turning to his ledger. It is the heart that makes a man rich. He is rich according to what he is, not according to what he has. - Henry Ward Beecher

Truth has no special time of its own. Its hour is now - always. - Albert Schweitzer

People are often unreasonable, illogical and self-centered; Forgive them anyway. - Mother Teresa

A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams. -John Barrymore, actor

Faced with crisis, the man of character falls back upon himself. - CHARLES DE GAULLE (1890-1970), French President

What actually urges [the scientific investigator] on is not some brummagem idea of Service, but a boundless, almost pathological thirst to penetrate the unknown, to uncover the secret, to find out what has not been found out before. His prototype is not the liberator releasing slaves, the good Samaritan lifting up the fallen, but a dog sniffing tremendously at an infinite series of rat-holes. -H L Mencken

To change masters is not to be free. -Jose Martin Perez

If you reach an admirable end through the wrong means, the ends ultimately turn to dust in your hands. -Stephen R. Covey

Conscience teaches us that ends and means are inseparable, that ends actually preexist in the means. -Stephen R. Covey

No man can purchase his virtue too dear, for it is the only thing whose value must ever increase with the price it has cost us. Our integrity is never worth so much as when we have parted with our all to keep it. - Charles Caleb Colton

My strength is as the strength of ten, because my heart is pure. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that the host of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well. - Martin Luther King, Jr.

The time is always right to do what is right. - Martin Luther King, Jr.

There is no pillow so soft as a clear conscience. - French Proverb

If you have much, give of your wealth; if you have little, give of your heart. - Arab Proverb

A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean question: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well - or ill? - John Steinbeck

Moral courage and character go hand in hand .... a man of real character is consistently courageous, being imbued with a basic integrity and a firm sense of principle. - Martha Boaz

The most important human endeavor is the striving for morality in our actions. Our inner balance, and even our very existence depends on it. Only morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity to our lives. - Albert Einstein

Live so that when your children think of fairness and integrity, they think of you. - H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

The best index to a person's character is (a) how he treats people who can't do him any good, and (b) how he treats people who can't fight back. - ABIGAIL VAN BUREN ("Dear Abby") advice columnist

The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically... Intelligence plus character - that is the goal of true education. - Martin Luther King Jr.

It is a strange thing to come home. While yet on the journey, you cannot at all realize how strange it will be. -Selms Lagerlof

There are no days in life so memorable as those which vibrated to some stroke of the imagination. -Ralph Waldo Emerson

Fame is a vapor, popularity an accident, riches take wing, and only character endures. -HORACE GREELEY (1811-1872), New York newspaper editor

It is not the road ahead that wears you out – It is the grain of sand in your shoe. -Arab proverb

We don't receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take us or spare us. -Marcel Proust

Journeys at youth are part of the education; but at maturity, are part of the experience. - Francis Bacon

The longest journey is the journey inwards of him who has chosen his destiny. -Dag Hammarskjold

Things are always different from what they might be. -Henry James

Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old, seek what they sought. -Matsuo Basho

People wander about what you are pursuing. You have to explain about the thread. -William Stafford, American poet (1914-1993)

Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder. - George Washington

A man's character is his fate. - HERACLITUS (c. 540 - c. 480 BC), Greek philosopher

The qualities of a great man are "vision, integrity, courage, understanding, the power of articulation, and profundity of character. - DWIGHT EISENHOWER (1890-1969)

Our men ... have killed to exterminate men, women, children, prisoners and captives, active insurgents and suspected people from lads of 10 up.... Our soldiers have pumped salt water into men to "make them talk," and have taken prisoners people who held up their hands and peacefully surrendered, and an hour later. . .stood them on a bridge and shot them down one by one, to drop into the water below and float down, as examples to those who found their bullet-loaded corpses. -Philadelphia Ledger newspaper in 1901, from its Manila correspondent during the US war with Spain for the control of the Philippines

Governments, like clocks, go from the motion that men give them. Therefore, governments rather depend upon men, than men upon governments. Let the men be good, then the government cannot be bad; if the men be bad, then government will never be good. I know some say 'let us have good laws and no matter for the people who execute them.' But let them consider that though good laws do well, good men do better. For good laws may lack good men, but good men will never lack good laws nor allow bad ones. - William Penn in 1681, America, Character Counts

If you're not failing every now and again, it's a sign you're not doing anything very innovative. -Woody Allen

There is little that bureaucrats hate more than innovation, especially innovation that produces better results than the old routines. Improvements always make those at the top of the heap look inept. Who enjoys appearing inept? -Frank Herbert

If the world should blow itself up, the last audible voice would be that of an expert saying it can't be done. -Peter Ustinov

You never change something by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. -Buckminster Fuller

You can be discouraged by failure, or you can learn from it. So go ahead and make mistakes, make all you can. Because, remember that's where you'll find success – on the far side of failure. -Thomas J Watson Sr

Character is an essential tendency. It can be covered up, it can be messed with, it can be screwed around with, but it can't be ultimately changed. It's the structure of our bones, the blood that runs through our veins. - SAM SHEPARD -- American actor/playwright

The true test of civilization is not the census, nor the size of cities, nor the crops - no, but the kind of man the country turns out. -RALPH WALDO EMERSON (1803-1882), American writer and philosopher

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved. - HELEN KELLER (1880-1968), Blind and deaf writer/lecturer

The white hot energy of youth, which saw in obstacles but inspirations, and in the enemy but the gage to battle, becomes too complacent with age. The result of mathematical calculation and metaphysical erudition; of knowledge he never had and plans he never made. -George S. Patton

[I]t is impossible to organize things if you yourself are not in order. When you do things in the right way, at the right time, everything else will be organized. --Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Master from Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind

Make it a rule of life never to regret and never to look back. Regret is an appalling waste of energy; you can't build on it; it's only for wallowing in. -Katherine Mansfield

Every great personality I have ever known who has demonstrated the capacity for prodigious work has been a person in tune with the Infinite. Every person seems in harmony with Nature. -Norman Vincent Peale

Passions are the only advocates that always persuade. A simple man with passion will be more persuasive than the most eloquent without. -Rene Descartes

There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it and no happiness in any place except what you bring to it yourself. - Henry David Thoreau

He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life. -Ralph Waldo Emerson

In times of great crisis there are two types of men: those who are overwhelmed by the crisis and those who rise up to resist the trend of events and so change the course of history. -Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, Doctor

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, Dutch Post-Impressionist Painter

I'd rather regret the things I have done than the things that I haven't. -Lucille Ball

Ideals are like stars; you will not succeed in touching them with your hands, but like the seafaring man on the desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them, you reach your destiny. -Carl Schurz, US Senator from Wisconsin

No matter how qualified or deserving we are, we will never reach a better life until we can imagine it for ourselves and allow ourselves to have it. - Richard Bach

Carpe diem! Rejoice while you are alive; enjoy the day; live life to the fullest; make the most of what you have. It is later than you think. -Horace

May you live all the days of your life. -Jonathan Swift

Learn from the past, set vivid, detailed goals for the future, and live in the only moment of time over which you have any control: now. -Denis Waitley

It is one of the strange ironies of this strange life [that] those who work the hardest, who subject themselves to the strictest discipline, who give up certain pleasurable things in order to achieve a goal, are the happiest people. -Brutus Hamilton

Do not wait; the time will never be 'just right'. Start where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along. - Napoleon Hill

Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you plant. - Robert Louis Stevenson

Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow that talent to dark place where it leads. -Erica Jong

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

Accomplishment and success are often the result of commitment and perseverance rather than skill or talent. -George Van Valkenburg

If you have a talent, use it in every which way possible. Don't hoard it. Don't dole it out like a miser. Spend it lavishly, like a millionaire intent on going broke. -Brenda Francis

Political language . . . is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. -George Orwell

Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don't give up. -Anne Lamott, Author

If one dream should fall and break into a thousand pieces, never be afraid to pick one of those pieces up and begin again. -Flavia Weedn, Flavia and the Dream Maker

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

Expect to have hope rekindled. Expect your prayers to be answered in wondrous ways. The dry seasons in life do not last. The spring rains will come again. -Sarah Ban Breathnach

The first step toward success is taken when you refuse to be a captive of the environment in which you first find yourself. -Mark Caine