The greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions and not our circumstances.
Martha Washington
Our life is what our thoughts make it.
Marcus Aurelius
Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world.
George Bernard Shaw
Fill your mind with the meaningless stimuli of a world preoccupied with meaningless things, and it will not be easy to feel peace in your heart.
Marianne Williamson
Always we hope someone else has the answer. Some other place will be better, it will all turn out.
This is it. No one else has the answer. No other place will be better, and it has already turned out.
Lao Tzu
Conscience is the root of all true courage; if a man would be brave let him obey his conscience.
James F. Clarke
Even in a time of elephantine vanity and greed, one never has to look far to see the campfires of gentle people.
Garrison Keillor
We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.
Thornton Wilder
One hour of thoughtful solitude may nerve the heart for days of conflict - girding up its armor to meet the most insidious foe.
Percival
There is no chance, no destiny, no fate, that can hinder or control the firm resolve of a determined soul.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.
Aristotle
The habit of viewing things cheerfully, and of thinking about things hopefully, may be made to grow in us like any other habits.
Samuel Smiles
People wish to be settled. It is only as far as they are unsettled that there is any hope for them.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence.
Erich Fromm
The mature person pays attention to what is happening in the innermost self.
Tzu Ssu
The only way to find the limits of the possible is by going beyond them to the impossible.
Arthur C. Clarke
Success is not built on what we accomplish for ourselves. Its foundation lies in what we do for others.
Danny Thomas
To enjoy good health, to bring true happiness to one's family, to bring peace to all, one must first discipline and control one's own mind. If a man can control his mind he can find the way to Enlightenment, and all wisdom and virtue will naturally come to him.
Buddha
Conscience is the root of all true courage; if a man would be brave let him obey his conscience.
James F. Clarke
The best preparation for a better life next year is a full, complete, harmonious, joyous life this year.
Thomas Dreier
Only in quiet waters do things mirror themselves undistorted. Only in a quiet mind is adequate perception of the world.
Hans Margolius
Love is the condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.
Robert Heinlein
When you choose one way out of many, all the ways you don't take are snuffed out like candles, as if they'd never existed.
Philip Pullman
One of the most lasting pleasures you can experience is the feeling that comes over you when you genuinely forgive an enemy - whether he knows it or not.
O. A. Battista
In the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures. For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.
Kahlil Gibran
Great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance.
Samuel Johnson
Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others.
Robert Louis Stevenson
How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.
Anne Frank
By the accident of fortune a man may rule the world for a time, but by virtue of love he may rule the world forever.
Lao-Tzu
Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is success.
Henry Ford
You are the sky. Everything else--it's just the weather.
Pema Chodron
The remarkable thing we have is a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past. We cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude.
Charles Swindoll
No matter how insignificant the thing you have to do, do it as well as you can, give it as much of your care and attention as you would give to the thing you regard as most important. For it will be by those small things that you shall be judged.
Mahatma Gandhi
It is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult task which, more than anything else, will affect its successful outcome.
William James
Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.
Thomas Huxley
Why should we look to the past in order to prepare for the future? Because there is nowhere else to look.
James Burke
The values by which we are to survive are not rules for just and unjust conduct, but are those deeper illuminations in whose light justice and injustice, good and evil, means and ends are seen in fearful sharpness of outline.
Jacob Bronowski
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.
Mother Teresa
Precept is instruction written in the sand. The tide flows over it, and the record is gone. Example is graven on the rock, and the lesson is not soon lost.
William E. Channing
Enjoy when you can, and endure when you must.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
Here it is--right now. Start thinking about it and you miss it.
Huang Po
There can never be peace between nations until there is first known that true peace which...is within the souls of men.
Black Elk
There is a destiny that makes us brothers: none goes his way alone,
Edwin Markham
All that we send into the lives of others comes back into our own.
Men are not punished for their sins, but by them.
Elbert Hubbard
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.
Aristotle
Let us always meet each other with smile, for the smile is the beginningof love.
Mother Teresa
To love another person is to see the face of God.
Victor Hugo
There is one thing in life that you can always rely on: life being as it is.
Charlotte Joko Beck
Anger is mistaken as a friend because it brings extra energy, but the consequences are almost always negative.
The Dalai Lama
You can't control things by being nervous about it.
Tina Fey
The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.
Mahatma Gandhi
Play consists of whatever a body is not obligated to do.
Mark Twain
Meditation is to be aware of what is going on--in our bodies, in our feelings, in our minds, and in the world...Life is both dreadful and wonderful. To practice meditation is to be in touch with both aspects. Please do not think we have to be solemn to meditate. In fact, to meditate well, we have to smile a lot.
Thich Nhat Hanh
The world and its beings are the spontaneous overflow of creative, imaginative energy.
Houston Smith
The world is indeed a mixture of truth and make-believe. Discard the make-believe and take the truth.
Ramakrishna
If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door.
Milton Berle
There is sometimes a peculiar confusion in the West that equates progress to whatever is recent or whatever is new, and it is time we understood that progress has nothing to do with the chronology of an idea.
Barbara Amiel
Time is a created thing. To say "I don't have time," is like saying, "I don't want to."
Lao Tzu
It must be obvious... that there is a contradiction in wanting to be perfectly secure in a universe whose very nature is momentariness and fluidity.
Alan Watts
Because our entire universe is made up of consciousness, we never really experience the universe directly we just experience our consciousness of the universe, our perception of it, so right, our only universe is perception.
Alan Moore
Consciousness is a phase of mental life which arises in connection with the formation of new habits. When habit is formed, consciousness only interferes to spoil our performance.
William Ralph Inge
Do unto others 20% better than you would expect them to do unto you, to correct for subjective error.
Linus Pauling
We are here to awaken from the illusion of our separateness.
Thich Nhat Hanh
Earth's crammed with heaven,
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
And every common bush afire with God:
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes,
The rest sit round it, and pluck blackberries...
When we quit thinking primarily about ourselves and our own self-preservation, we undergo a truly heroic transformation of consciousness.
Joseph Campbell
We waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead of becoming the perfect love.
Tom Robbins
What a father says to his children is not heard by the world, but it will be heard for posterity.
Richter
Your work is to discover your world and then with all your heart give yourself to it.
Buddha
Enhance and intensify one's vision of that synthesis of truth and beauty which is the highest and deepest reality.
Ovid
Beauty is truth's smile when she beholds her own face in a perfect mirror.
Rabindranath Tagore
Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful, for beauty is God's handwriting.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Practice is just hearing, just seeing, just feeling. This is what Christians call the face of God: simply taking in this world as it manifests. We feel our body; we hear the cars and birds. That's all there is.
Charlotte Joko Beck
Imperfection is not our personal problem -- it is a natural part of existing.
Tara Brach
The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green earth, dwelling deeply in the present moment and feeling truly alive.
Thich Nhat Hanh
Emotions are like waves. Watch them come and go on the vast ocean of existence.
Hindu proverb
We are involved in a life that passes understanding and our highest business is our daily life.
John Cage
Blessed are they who see beautiful things in humble places where other people see nothing.
Camille Pissarro
The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.
William Butler Yeats
If you walk, just walk. If you sit, just sit; but whatever you do, don't wobble.
Ummon
(Infinite Love) is a weapon of matchless potency. It is the Summum Bonum of life. It is an attribute of the brave. In fact it is their all. It does not come within the reach of the coward. It is no wooden or lifeless dogma but a living and life-giving force. It is the special attribute of the heart.
Mohandes Gandhi
I find hope in the darkest of days, and focus in the brightest. I do not judge the universe.
Dalai Lama
What stay we on earth except to grow.
Robert Browning
Nourish beginnings, let us nourish beginnings. Not all things are blest, but the seeds of all things are blest.The blessing is in the seed.
Muriel Rukeyser
He travels best that knows when to return.
Thomas More
There is no labor a person does that is undignified; if they do it right.
Bill Cosby
We are sick with fascination for the useful tools of names and numbers, of symbols, signs, conceptions and ideas. Meditation is therefore the art of suspending verbal and symbolic thinking for a time, somewhat as a courteous audience will stop talking when a concert is about to begin.
Alan Watts
If you want to be happy, be.
Aleksy Konstantinovich Tolstoy
Half of the confusion in the world comes from not knowing how little we need...I live more simply now, and with more peace.
Richard E. Byrd, explorer
Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy.
Joseph Campbell
...happiness doesn't depend upon who you are or what you have; it depends solely upon what you think.
Dale Carnegie
True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Neurosis is the inability to tolerate ambiguity.
Sigmund Freud
When the mind is possessed of reality, it feels tranquil and joyous even without music or song, and it produces a pure fragrance even without incense or tea.
Hung Tzu-ch'eng
Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create that fact.
William James
Time is not a line, but a series of now points.
Taisen Deshimaru
Man is not born to solve the problem of the universe, but to find out what he has to do; and to restrain himself within the limits of his comprehension.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
When I dare to be powerful--to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.
Audre Lorde
Action is the antidote to despair.
Joan Baez
I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.
Bill Cosby
There is nothing to do. Just be. Do nothing. Be. No climbing mountains and sitting in caves. I do not even say 'be yourself' since you do not know yourself. Just be.
Nisargadatta
Motivation is the art of getting people to do what you want them to do because they want to do it.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Beginning today, treat everyone you meet as if they were going to be dead by midnight. Extend to them all the care, kindness and understanding you can muster, and do it with no thought of any reward. Your life will never be the same again.
Og Mandino
Perseverance is the ability to follow through on an idea long after the mood has passed.
Anonymous
Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after another.
Walter Elliott
Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won't be the victim of needless suffering.
Miguel Ruiz
One man may hit the mark, another blunder; but heed not these distinctions. Only from the alliance of the one, working with and through the other, are great things born.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened.
Dr. Seuss
Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dream.
Paulo Coelho
Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.
Winston Churchill
There is no great achievement that is not the result of patient working and waiting.
J. G. Holland
Be miserable. Or motivate yourself. Whatever has to be done, it's always your choice.
Wayne Dyer
And so you touch this limit, something happens and you suddenly can go a little bit further. With your mind power, your determination, your instinct, and the experience as well, you can fly very high.
Ayrton Senna
When we are motivated by goals that have deep meaning, by dreams that need completion, by pure love that needs expressing, then we truly live life.
Greg Anderson
Life is a song - sing it. Life is a game - play it. Life is a challenge - meet it. Life is a dream - realize it. Life is a sacrifice - offer it. Life is love - enjoy it.
Sai Baba
If my dreams can happen to me, your dreams can happen to you. Champions are not made on the track or field; champions are made by the things you accomplish and the way you use your abilities in everyday life situations.
Bob Beamon
He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life.
Muhammad Ali
It is not sacrifice if you love what you're doing.
Mia Hamm
We all have dreams. But in order to make dreams come into reality, it takes an awful lot of determination, dedication, self-discipline, and effort.
Jesse Owens
If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.
Henry David Thoreau
The vision of a champion is someone who is bent over, drenched in sweat, at the point of exhaustion when no one else is watching.
Anson Dorrance
Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.
Jim Ryun
Achievement is not always success, while reputed failure often is. It is honest endeavor, persistent effort to do the best possible under any and all circumstances.
Orison Swett Marden
Go to your bosom; Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know.
William Shakespeare
Nor do I regret that I have lived, since I have so lived that I think I was not born in vain, and I quit life as if it were an inn, not a home.
Cicero
Habit is habit and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time.
Mark Twain
Flow with whatever may happen and let your mind be free: Stay centered by accepting whatever you are doing. This is the ultimate.
Chuang Tzu
First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.
Epictetus
There is nothing noble in being superior to some other person. True nobility is being superior to your former self.
Hindu Proverb
Everything you need you already have. You are complete right now, you are a whole, total person, not an apprentice person on the way to someplace else. Your completeness must be understood by you and experienced in your thoughts as your own personal reality.
Beverly Sills
I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness because it shows me the stars.
Og Mandino
The grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love and something to hope for.
Joseph Addison
Without deviation progress is not possible.
Frank Zappa
Adversity is like a strong wind. It tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that we see ourselves as we really are.
Arthur Golden
Because our entire universe is made up of consciousness, we never really experience the universe directly we just experience our consciousness of the universe, our perception of it, so right, our only universe is perception.
Alan Moore
You want to know how to overcome despair? I will tell you. By helping others overcome despair.
Elie Wiesel
Live your life each day as you would climb a mountain. An occasional glance toward the summit keeps the goal in mind, but many beautiful scenes are to be observed from each new vantage point.
Harold V Melchert
Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.
Helen Keller
In the power to change yourself is the power to change the world around you.
Anwar Sadat
The first step toward change is acceptance. Once you accept yourself, you open the door to change. That's all you have to do. Change is not something you do, it's something you allow.
Will Garcia
This we know: the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.
attributed to Chief Seattle
He is the greatest man who is the servant of all.
Sivananda
Emotions are like waves. Watch them come and go in the vast ocean of existence.
Hindu saying
The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in seeing with new eyes.
Marcel Proust
Fun is fundamental. There is no way around it. You absolutely must have fun. Without fun, there is no enthusiasm. Without enthusiasm, there is no energy. Without energy, there are only shades of gray.
Doug Hall, from Jump Start Your Brain
I like to see a man proud of the place in which he lives. I like to see a man live so that his place will be proud of him.
Abraham Lincoln
You have to accept whatever comes and the only important thing is that you meet it with the best you have to give.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Real activity is combined with calmness which can't be ruffled. It is a balance of mind which is never disturbed, whatever happens. Only when the mind is calm and collected is the whole of its energy spent in doing good work.
Swami Vivekananda
Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain cool and unruffled under all circumstances.
Thomas Jefferson
Whatever a person's mind dwells on intensely and with firm resolve, that is exactly what he becomes.
Shankaracharya
Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.
Scott Adams
Once you realize that the road is the goal and that you are always on the road, not to reach a goal, but to enjoy its beauty and its wisdom, life ceases to be a task and becomes natural and simple, in itself an ecstasy.
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
In every seed is the promise of thousands of forests. But the seed must not be hoarded; it must give its intelligence to the fertile ground. Through its giving, its unseen energy flows into material manifestation.
Deepak Chopra in The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success
Everything you do should be done with peace. That is the best medicine for your body, mind, and soul. It is the most wonderful way to live.
Paramahansa Yogananda
The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.
Elbert Hubbard
Believe nothing merely because you have been told it. Do not believe what your teacher tells you merely out of respect for the teacher. But whatever, after due examination and analysis, you find to be kind, conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings - that doctrine believe and cling to, and take it as your guide.
Buddha
The world is not to be put in order. The world is in order. It is for us to put ourselves in unison with this order.
Henry Miller
Whether one believes in a religion or not, and whether one believes in rebirth or not, there isn't anyone who doesn't appreciate kindness and compassion.
Dalai Lama
The ability to be in the present moment is a major component of mental wellness.
Abraham Maslow
The morning glory which blooms for an hour differs not at heart from the giant pine, which lives for a thousand years.
Teitoko Matsunaga
The widest possibilities for spiritual growth lie in the give-and-take of everyday relationships.
Eknath Easwaran
Genius means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.
William James
Patience is the homely background on which most of the brilliant achievements are woven in beautiful harmony.
Allyn King Foster
Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make our world.
Buddha
The creation of someting new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.
Carl Jung
One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. The bamboozle has captured us. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.
Carl Sagan
We don't have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.
Howard Zinn
God grant me the courage not to give up what I think is right even though I think it is hopeless.
Admiral Chester W. Nimitz
There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly.
R. Buckminster Fuller
Man's folly hath enhanced the value of gold and silver because of their scarcity; whereas nature, like a kind parent, hath freely given us the best things, such as air, earth, and water, but hath hidden from us those which are vain and useless.
Sir Thomas More, in Utopia
If I have ever made any valuable discoveries, it has been owing more to patient attention than to any other talent.
Isaac Newton
To truly know the world, look deeply within your own being; to truly know yourself, take real interest in the world.
Rudolf Steiner
People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.
Albert Einstein
©2012 Tom Barrett