Tag: Assorted

When we seek a shortcut on the important things, we may fail to offer our dreams the time and intention they deserve.
AmyAnn Cadwell
 
 
 
 
The fires of suffering become the light of consciousness.
Eckhart Tolle
 
 
 
 
My experience is what I agree to attend to. Only those items which I notice shape my mind.
William James
 
 
 
 
If you look in the eyes of the young, you see flame. If you look in the eyes of the old, you see light
Victor Hugo
 
 
 
 
The privacy of the singular mind, the privacy of consciousness, is one of fiction’s exceptional gifts to us.
Maud Casey
 
 
 
 
You will be defined not just by what you achieve, but by how you survive.
Sheryl Sandberg – COO Facebook
 
 
 
 
Sooner or later I’m going to die, but I’m not going to retire.
Margaret Mead
 
 
 
 
“Art is never finished, only abandoned.”
Leonardo da Vinci
 
 
 
 
I’m a believer in the power of knowledge and the ferocity of beauty, so from my point of view, your life is already artful—waiting, just waiting, for you to make it art.
Toni Morrison
 
 
 
 
Who wants to hear about brave deeds when he’s ashamed of his own, and who likes an open, honest tale from someone he’s deceiving?
Watership Down
 
 
 
 
Synchronicity is a term used by Carl Jung to describe coincidences that are related by meaningfulness rather than by cause and effect.
David Richo
 
 
 
 
Any coincidence is worth noticing. You can throw it away later if it is only a coincidence.
Agatha Christie
 
 
 
 
For neither man nor angel can discern Hypocrisy, the only evil that walks Invisible, except to God alone.
John Milton
 
 
 
 
It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools can be so ingenious.
Attributed to Murphy’s Law
 
 
 
 
Just because one side of a coin is wrong, that doesn’t mean the other side is right.
Jonah Goldberg
 
 
 
 
O poor, unthinking human heart! Error will not go away, logic and reason are slow to penetrate. We cling with both arms to false hope, refusing to believe in the weightiest proofs against it, embracing it with all our strength. In the end it escapes, ripping our veins and draining our heart’s blood; until, regaining consciousness, we rush to fall into snares of delusion all over again
Rabindranath Tagore
 
 
 
 
False hopes are more dangerous than fears.
J. R. R. Tolkien
 
 
 
 
From this point forth, find me nowhere,
Socially unseen,
Just on the back porch, without a care
And without a screen
Eric Overby
 
 
 
 
“Music is the greatest communication in the world. Even if people don’t understand the language that you’re singing in, they still know good music when they hear it.” Lou Rawls
 
 
 
 
If your actions create a legacy that inspires others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, then, you are an excellent leader.
Dolly Parton – American Singer-Songwriter-Actress-Author
 
 
 
 
I say that religion isn’t about believing things. It’s ethical alchemy. It’s about behaving in a way that changes you, that gives you intimations of holiness and sacredness.
Karen Armstrong

“Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.”
Harry S. Truman
 
 
 
 
Define success on your own terms, achieve it by your own rules, and build a life you’re proud to live.
Anne Sweeney – American Business Woman-Former President of The Disney Channel
 
 
 
 
I just do the best job I can with what’s in front of me and follow the path that reveals itself.
Ina Garten – Author and Host of Barefoot Contessa
 
 
 
 
Hard times are coming, when we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope. We’ll need writers who can remember freedom – poets, visionaries – realists of a larger reality.

Right now, we need writers who know the difference between production of a market commodity and the practice of an art. Developing written material to suit sales strategies in order to maximise corporate profit and advertising revenue is not the same thing as responsible book publishing or authorship.

Yet I see sales departments given control over editorial. I see my own publishers, in a silly panic of ignorance and greed, charging public libraries for an e-book six or seven times more than they charge customers. We just saw a profiteer try to punish a publisher for disobedience, and writers threatened by corporate fatwa. And I see a lot of us, the producers, who write the books and make the books, accepting this – letting commodity profiteers sell us like deodorant, and tell us what to publish, what to write.

Books aren’t just commodities; the profit motive is often in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable – but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words.

I’ve had a long career as a writer, and a good one, in good company. Here at the end of it, I don’t want to watch American literature get sold down the river. We who live by writing and publishing want and should demand our fair share of the proceeds; but the name of our beautiful reward isn’t profit. Its name is freedom.
Ursula K Le Guin
 
 
 
 
Happiness is the highest level of success.
Unknown

“You’re entitled to your own opinion if you keep your opinion to yourself. If you decide to say it out loud, then I think you have a responsibility to be open to changing your mind in the face of better logic or stronger data. I think if you’re willing to voice an opinion, you should also be willing to change that opinion.”
Adam Grant on rethinking your position
 
 
 
 
I love to think about chance — about how one little overheard word, one pebble in a shoe, can change the universe.
Anne Tyler,
writer
 
 
 
 
Throw away the light, the definitions, and say what you see in the dark.
It is not everyday that the world arranges itself into a poem.
Wallace Stevens,
poet
 
 
 
 
Laughter is life-giving. It makes you breathe.
Kristin Chenoweth,
actor, singer
 
 
 
 
“I would rather walk with a friend in the dark, than alone in the light.”
Helen Keller
 
 
 
 
“The pain of parting is nothing to the joy of meeting again.”
Charles Dickens
 
 
 
 
“The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.”
Ernest Hemingway
 
 
 
 
“The real problem is not whether machines think, but whether men do.”
B.F. Skinner
 
 
 
 
Striving for success without hard work is like trying to harvest where you haven’t planted.
David Bly – Politician-Retired Teacher
 
 
 
 
I attribute my success to this: I never gave or took an excuse.
Florence Nightingale – 1820-1910 – Social Reformer-Founder of Modern Nursing-Organized Care for Wounded Soldiers at Constantinople
 
 
 
 
“The bosom of America is open to receive not only the Opulent and respected Stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted of all Nations and Religions; whom we shall welcome to a participation of all our rights and privileges.”
George Washington
 
 
 
 
Always believe something wonderful is about to happen.
Unknown

The pendulum of the mind alternates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.
Carl Jung
 
 
 
 
Genuine tragedies in the world are not conflicts between right and wrong. They are conflicts between two rights.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
 
 
 
 
Knitters use knitting to value-add to the world
There are twice as many knitters as golfers in North America. Still, if you walk into any airport in North America, you can find a golf magazine but not a knitting magazine, even though you can’t golf on a plane.
Stephanie Pearl-McPhee
 
 
 
 
“Our inward power, when it obeys nature, reacts to events by accommodating itself to what it faces—to what is possible. It needs no specific material. It pursues its own aims as circumstances allow; it turns obstacles into fuel. As a fire overwhelms what would have quenched a lamp. What’s thrown on top of the conflagration is absorbed, consumed by it—and makes it burn still higher.”
Marcus Aurelius in “Meditations”
 
 
 
 
In summer, the song sings itself.
William Carlos Williams,
poet, writer, physician
 
 
 
 
We find the Mayan pantheon peculiar. By our standards, suicide and human sacrifice are unacceptable. We tend not to notice the peculiarities of our own culture. We accept the thousands of children who wear braces to correct their teeth, yet we consider the Maya odd for filing teeth to beautify them. Each culture defines its own idiosyncrasies and then forgets that it has done so.
Pat Murphy
 
 
 
 
Only idiots are confident. It requires a great amount of wisdom and knowledge to be confused.
Abhishek Leela Pandey
 
 
 
 
It’s a very interesting space to live in, where you’re living in the questions and the universe is slipping you answers.
Jason Sudeikis,
actor, comedian, screenwriter, producer
 
 
 
 
“Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer.”
William Burroughs
 
 
 
 
“You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is like an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.”
Mahatma Gandhi
 
 
 
 
People see God every day; they just don’t recognize him.
Pearl Bailey

When we witness great acts of kindness or courage, it inspires us and elevates us to also want to be a kinder and braver ourselves.
Lea Waters – Researcher-Psychologist-Author-Speaker
 
 
 
 
What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.
Jane Goodall – English Primatologist
 
 
 
 
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention…
Mary Oliver
 
 
 
 
For love is not about merging. It’s a noble calling for the individual to ripen, to differentiate, to become a world in oneself in response to another.
Rainer Maria Rilke
 
 
 
 
Appreciation is a wonderful thing. It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.
Voltaire
 
 
 
 
Each culture is just like a tree whose essence and whole potential are already contained in the seed.
Peter Kingsley
 
 
 
 
To be without trees would, in the most literal way, to be without our roots.
Richard Mabey
 
 
 
 
It is only in an uncondemned state that any of us can change.
Leaf Seligman
 
 
 
 
“The clearest signal that a novel risk is emerging is anomalies—things that just don’t make sense. This sounds obvious, but most anomalies are difficult for people to recognize.”
The Risks You Can’t Foresee
Timeless Insight
 
 
 
 
“You don’t just reciprocate affection, you reciprocate animosity, and the whole thing can escalate.”
Charlie Munger
 
 
 
 
I’ve been imitated so well I’ve heard people copy my mistakes.
Jimmi Hendrix

Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.
Mark Twain – 1835-1910 – Journalist-Lecturer-Novelist-Humorist
 
 
 
 
You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose.
Dr. Seuss – 1904-1991 – Author-Political Cartoonist-Illustrator-Poet-Animator-Filmmaker
 
 
 
 
“A good traveller has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving.”
Lao Tzu
 
 
 
 
“There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature—the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.”
Rachel Carson
 
 
 
 
“Never cut what you can untie.”
Joseph Joubert
 
 
 
 
“Sometimes people don’t want to hear the truth because they don’t want their illusions destroyed.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
 
 
 
 
I Worried: Poem by Mary Oliver

“I worried a lot. Will the garden grow, will the rivers
flow in the right direction, will the earth turn
as it was taught, and if not how shall
I correct it?
Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven,
can I do better?
Will I ever be able to sing, even the sparrows
can do it and I am, well,
hopeless.
Is my eyesight fading or am I just imagining it,
am I going to get rheumatism,
lockjaw, dementia?
Finally, I saw that worrying had come to nothing.
And gave it up. And took my old body
and went out into the morning,
and sang.”
Mary Oliver
 
 
 
 
“The purpose of listening across lines of difference is not agreement or compromise. It is understanding.”
“Deep listening is an act of surrender. We risk being changed by what we hear. When I really want to hear another person’s story, I try to leave my preconceptions at the door and draw close to their telling. I am always partially listening to the thoughts in my own head when others are speaking, so I consciously quiet my thoughts and begin to listen with my senses. Empathy is cognitive and emotional—to inhabit another person’s view of the world is to feel the world with them. But I also know that it’s okay if I don’t feel very much for them at all. I just need to feel safe enough to stay curious. The most critical part of listening is asking what is at stake for the other person. I try to understand what matters to them, not what I think matters. Sometimes I start to lose myself in their story. As soon as I notice feeling unmoored, I try to pull myself back into my body, like returning home. As Hannah Arendt says, ‘One trains one’s imagination to go visiting.’ When the story is done, we must return to our skin, our own worldview, and notice how we have been changed by our visit. So I ask myself, What is this story demanding of me? What will I do now that I know this?”
Valarie Kaur
 
 
 
 
“For nearly fifty years, I’ve been teaching canoeing up in Canada. The first rule is clearly the most important: the best way to learn is to get into the boat.”
Seth Godin, Where does creativity come from?
 
 
 
 
Highly recommend surrounding yourself with honorable, courageous, generous, supportive, no-bullshit women who make you want to show up to their level. Above all of changes I’ve made, and the personal work I’ve done, this has made the greatest difference in my life.
Jennifer Romolini (@jennromolini) November 11, 2020
 
 
 
 
The Internet is the most important single development in the history of human communication since the invention of call waiting.
Dave Barry
 
 
 
 
“Be patient with yourself, nothing in nature blooms all year.”
Unknown

“Memories are like a garden. Regularly tend the pleasant blossoms, and remove the invasive weeds.”
Linda Fifer Ralphs
 
 
 
 
There is no faith which has never yet been broken, except that of a truly faithful dog.
Konrad Lorenz
 
 
 
 
The more simple we are, the more complete we become.
August Rodin
 
 
 
 
He who opens a school door, closes a prison.
Victor Hugo
 
 
 
 
In loving ourselves, we love the world.
Mark Nepo
 
 
 
 
I do not understand the mystery of grace — only that it meets us where we are and does not leave us where it found us.
Anne Lamott
 
 
 
 
My definition for “leadership” is anyone who wants to take responsibility for their influence in the world.
Diana Chapman
 
 
 
 
I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, It’s a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope.
Dr. Seuss
 
 
 
 
Everything that slow us down and forces patience, everything that sets us back into the slow circles of nature, is a help. Gardening is an instrument of grace.
May Sarton
 
 
 
 
The world’s continual breathing is what we hear and call silence.
Clarice Lispector
 
 
 
 
Our brokenness summons light into the deepest crevices in our hearts.
Shauna L. Hoey
 
 
 
 
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.
Albert Einstein
 
 
 
 
Life in our universe is a flash in the pan, a few moments in the vast unfolding of time and space in the cosmos…A realization of the scarcity of life makes me feel some ineffable connection to other living things.
Alan Lightman
 
 
 
 
My brain is only a receiver, in the Universe there is a core from which we obtain knowledge, strength and inspiration. I have not penetrated into the secrets of this core, but I know that it exists.
Nikola Tesla

We learn from each other, spur each other, help each other, and frequently amaze each other.
ServiceSpace
 
 
 
 
“Just living is not enough,” said the butterfly, “one must have sunshine, freedom and a little flower.”
Hans Christian Anderson
 
 
 
 
For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.
Kahlil Gibran
 
 
 
 
Yoga is about realizing who you really are aside from your persona.
James Fox
 
 
 
 
The heart that breaks open can contain the whole universe.
Joanna Macy
 
 
 
 
I was really on death’s door. It brought very vividly to mind how extremely precious this life is, and what tremendous potential we have in this lifetime for purifying our hearts and our minds our souls–and for knowing reality.
Alan Wallace
 
 
 
 
If we are to teach real peace in this world…we shall have to begin with the children.
Mahatma Gandhi
 
 
 
 
Awareness is like the sun. When it shines on things, they are transformed.
Thich Nhat Han
 
 
 
 
It is spring again. The earth is like a child that knows poems by heart.
Rainer Maria Rilke
 
 
 
 
Our task must be to free ourselves…by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
Albert Einstein
 
 
 
 
Since the horse is always learning, we need to be aware of what our actions are teaching him.
John Lyons
 
 
 
 
Transformed people transform people.
Richard Rohr
 
 
 
 
Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it.
Bruce Lee
 
 
 
 
When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be. When I let go of what I have, I receive what I need.
Tao Te Ching
 
 
 
 
Caregiving often calls us to lean into love we didn’t know possible.
Tia Walker
 
 
 
 
My free soul may use her wing.
George Herbert
 
 
 
 
There is no passion in playing small–in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.
Nelson Mandela

The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.
Joseph Campbell – 1904-1987 – American Professor
 
 
 
 
We are told to let our light shine, and if it does, we won’t need to tell anybody it does. Light houses don’t fire cannons to call attention to their shining – just shine.
Dwight L. Moody – 1837-1899, Evangelist and Publisher
 
 
 
 
Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future.
Paul Boese – 1923-1976, Businessman and Writer
 
 
 
 
“I learned some useful things … though they were mostly about what not to do. I learned that it’s better for technology companies to be run by product people than sales people (though sales is a real skill and people who are good at it are really good at it), that it leads to bugs when code is edited by too many people, that cheap office space is no bargain if it’s depressing, that planned meetings are inferior to corridor conversations, that big, bureaucratic customers are a dangerous source of money, and that there’s not much overlap between conventional office hours and the optimal time for hacking, or conventional offices and the optimal place for it. But the most important thing I learned … is that the low end eats the high end: that it’s good to be the “entry level” option, even though that will be less prestigious, because if you’re not, someone else will be, and will squash you against the ceiling. Which in turn means that prestige is a danger sign.”
Paul Graham
 
 
 
 
“We are in the habit of imagining our lives to be linear, a long march from birth to death in which we mass our powers, only to surrender them again, all the while slowly losing our youthful beauty. This is a brutal untruth. Life meanders like a path through the woods. We have seasons when we flourish and seasons when the leaves fall from us, revealing our bare bones. Given time, they grow again.”
Author Katherine May on the seasons of life
 
 
 
 
“Find out who you are and do it on purpose.”
Dolly Parton
 
 
 
 
“The teacher learns more than the student.

The author learns more than the reader.

The speaker learns more than the attendee.

The way to learn is by doing.”

“The desire to improve does not have to come from a place of self-loathing.”

“Whenever you are stuck searching for the optimal plan, remember:

Getting started changes everything.”
James Clear
 
 
 
 
You’re free when no one can buy your time.
Farnam Street Blog

There are eight million Shinto gods
who secretly travel this earth of ours.
These modest beings come to touch us.
They touch us. Then they wander on.
Jorge Luis Borges
 
 
 
 
I have found the heart and will never leave this house of light.
Rumi
 
 
 
 
I’ve always loved the definition for contemplation: “a long, loving look.” And when you take a long, loving look anywhere, you feel more bonded with whatever you’ve looked at.
Naomi Shihab Nye
 
 
 
 
may my heart always be open to little birds who are the secrets of living
e.e. cummings
 
 
 
 
If the universe is movement, it will not be in one direction only. We think of our lives as linear but it is the spin of the earth that allows us to observe time.
Jeanette Winterson
 
 
 
 
I will live for love and the rest will take care of itself.
Marina Keegan
 
 
 
 
To slow down is to be taken into the soul of things.
Terry Tempest Williams
 
 
 
 
Once the mind has seen through all fear and all hope, it finds peace within itself, in a state of awareness beyond thought.
Alan Watts
 
 
 
 
At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.
Albert Schweitzer
 
 
 
 
Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am.
Parker Palmer
 
 
 
 
Perhaps the most important thing we bring to another person is the silence in us, not the sort of silence that is filled with unspoken criticism or hard withdrawal. The sort of silence that is a place of refuge, of rest, of acceptance of someone as they are. We are all hungry for this other silence.
Rachel Naomi Remen