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Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back-- Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth that 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 and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now."
( W. H. Murray in The Scottish Himalaya Expedition, 1951. )
Goethe in Faust, 1835
“To risk is to risk appearing the fool. To weep is to risk appearing sentimental. To expose feelings is to risk exposing our true self. To place your ideas, your dreams, before the crowd is to risk loss. To love is to risk not being loved in return. To live is to risk dying. To try at all is to risk failure. But to risk we must. Because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing. The man, the woman, who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, is nothing.”
( Emerson )
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate,
Our Deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light not our darkness that frightens us.
We ask ourselves. "Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous"?
Actually who are you not to be?
You are a child of God,
Your playing small does not serve the world.
There is nothing enlightening about shrinking.
So that other people won't feel insecure around you.
We are meant to shine as children do.
We are born to manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It is not just in some of us, it is in everyone,
And as we let our light shine, we unconsciously give
other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear
our presence automatically liberates others.
( Marianne Williamson, from her 1992 book, "Return to Love" (p. 165). )
To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.
( Ralph Waldo Emerson )
Today is a new day. You will get out of it just what you put into it..... If you have made mistakes, even serious mistakes, there is always another chance for you. And supposing you have tried and failed again and again, you may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing we call "failure" is not the falling down, but the staying down.
( Mary Pickford, 1893-1979, Canadian-born American Actress )
The possibility of stepping into a higher plane is quite real for everyone. It requires no force or effort or sacrifice. It involves little more than changing our ideas about what is normal.
( Deepak Chopra )
“If you advance confidently in the directions of your dreams, and endeavor to live the life you have imagined, you will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. You will pass an invisible boundary: New universal and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within you and you will live with the license of a higher order of beings. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundation under them.”
( Henry David Thoreau )
"There is a real magic in enthusiasm. It spells the difference between mediocrity and accomplishment."
( Norman Vincent Peale )
"Work does not kill you, food does. God does not kill you, food does. Food is your first and last enemy. If you take in more than you can handle, it takes all of your energy to digest it."
( Yogi Bhajan )
Security is mostly a superstition.
It does not exist in nature
Nor do children as a whole experience it.
Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run
Than outright exposure.
Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.
To keep our faces toward change and
Behave like free spirits in the presence of fate
Is strength undefeatable.
( Helen Keller, Let Us Have Faith (1940) )
"There is only one success - to be able to spend your life in your own way."
( Christopher Morley (American writer, 1890-1957) )
"Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body; but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming -- WOW--What a Ride!!!"
( check with Daniel unknown )
“..I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answers."
( Rainer Maria Rilke from letters to a young poet )
"The really happy (wo)man is the one who can enjoy the scenery when (s)he has to take a detour. Happiness is not a state to arrive at, but rather a manner of traveling."
( Samuel Johnson )
"Nature is the source of all true knowledge. She has her own logic, her own laws, she has no effect without cause nor invention without necessity."
( Leonardo DaVinci )
There is only one thing more powerful than all the armies of the world, that is an idea whose time has come.
( Victor Hugo )
Curiouser and curiouser!
( Lewis Carroll )
If those who lead you say to you, 'See, the Kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you. Rather, the Kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living Father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty and it is you who are that poverty.’
( Jesus, from "The Complete Jesus." )
I believe there is no source of deception in the investigation of nature which can compare with a fixed belief that certain kinds of phenomena are impossible.
( William James )
Your theory is crazy, but it's not crazy enough to be true.
( Niels Bohr )
Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.
( Lewis Carroll )
The opposite of a fact is falsehood, but the opposite of one profound truth may very well be another profound truth.
( Niels Bohr )
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mystical. It is the source of all true art and science.
( Albert Einstein )
Do you remember how electrical currents and 'unseen waves' were laughed at? The knowledge about man is still in its infancy.
( Albert Einstein )
It gives me a deep comforting sense that ‘things seen are temporal and things unseen are eternal.’
( Helen Keller )
You cannot see anything that you do not first contemplate as a reality.
( Ramtha )
The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes.
( William James )
Time is not a line, but a series of now points.
( Taisen Deshimaru )
Consciousness is a being, the nature of which is to be conscious of the nothingness of its being.
( Jean-Paul Sartre )
The mystery of life is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be experienced.
( Aart Van Der Leeuw )
Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.
( Carl Gustav Jung )
I can see, and that is why I can be happy, in what you call the dark, but which to me is golden. I can see a God-made world, not a manmade world.
( Helen Keller )
The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing knowledge.
( Albert Einstein )
Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but usually manages to pick himself up, walk over or around it, and carry on.
( Winston Churchill )
Consciousness is the basis of all life and the field of all possibilities. Its nature is to expand and unfold its full potential. The impulse to evolve is thus inherent in the very nature of life.
( Maharishi Mahesh Yogi )
All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think, we become.
( Maharishi Mahesh Yogi )
It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.
( Giordano Bruno )
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.
( Chief Seattle )
Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity...and I'm not sure about the universe.
( Albert Einstein )
...perhaps there is a pattern set up in the heavens for one who desires to see it, and having seen it, to find one in himself.
( Plato )
Know thyself.
( Socrates )
A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.
( James Joyce, Ulysses )
I have yet to meet a single person from our culture, no matter what his or her educational background, IQ, and specific training, who had powerful transpersonal experiences and continues to subscribe to the materialistic monism of Western science.
( Albert Einstein )
A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depend upon the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the measure as I have received and am still receiving.
( Albert Einstein )
The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.
( Albert Einstein )
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness, in a descending spiral of destruction. The chain reaction of evil must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.
( Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. )
In the century now dawning, spirituality, visionary consciousness, and the ability to build and mend human relationships will be more important for the fate and safety of this nation than our capacity to forcefully subdue an enemy. Creating the world we want is a much more subtle but more powerful mode of operation than destroying the one we don't want.
( Marianne Williamson )
He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice.
( Albert Einstein )
To put the world in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must put the family in order; to put the family in order, we must cultivate our personal life; and to cultivate our personal life, we must first set our hearts right.
( Confucius )
The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.
( Winston Churchill )
Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assaults of thoughts on the unthinking.
( John Maynard Keynes )
All great truths begin as blasphemies.
( George Bernard Shaw )
What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters to what lies within us.
( Ralph Waldo Emerson )
What we are looking for is what is looking.
( St. Francis of Assisi )
“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 time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost.”
( Martha Graham )
"Anything that is connected with fear, a mature person should disconnect himself from. That's how maturity comes. Just watch all your acts, all your beliefs, and find out whether they are based in reality, in experience, or based in fear. And anything based in fear has to be dropped immediately without a second thought. It is your armor."
( Osho )
"Ring the Bell that still can ring, forget your perfect offering, there is a crack, a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in."
( Leonard Cohen )
"Speak your mind, even if your voice shakes"
( Maggie Kuhn, Social Activist )
"A great deal of talent is lost to the world for want of a little courage. Every day sends to their graves obscure men whose timidity prevented them from making a first effort."
( Sydney Smith )
"Genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration."
( Thomas Edison )
There is no chance, no destiny, no fate, that can hinder or control the firm resolve of a determined soul.
( Ella Wheeler Wilcox )
One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree. "Which road do I take?" she asked. "Where do you want to go?" was his response. "I don't know," Alice answered. "Then," said the cat, "it doesn't matter."
( Lewis Carroll )
"Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber."
( Plato )
"Health is the thing that makes you feel that now is the best time of the year."
( Franklin Pierce Adams )
"Only by caring for his mortal vehicle is man able to arrive at the realization of his highest potentialities."
( Babaji )
“Raising your vibration is a choice. You are the master of your own light. Within you lives this undeniable radiant beauty. Awaken to your gifts and share them as was intended.”
( Andanda Anahata )
“Where there is darkness, let there be light.”
( St. Francis of Assisi )
We've given up making a living, its all this crazy love poetry now!
( Rumi )
“Anytime you are feeling anything other than happiness and peace, it is only serving as a reminder to get back in touch with your Self.”
( Steven Sadleir )
“Every thought you have contributes to the truth or the illusion. It either extends the truth or multiplies the illusions.”
( A Course in Miracles )
“Wisdom is avoiding all thoughts that weaken you.”
( Dr. Wayne Dyer )
“There is only love; everything else is our resistance to it.”
( Terces Engelhart )
The rung of a ladder was never meant to rest upon, but only to hold a man's foot long enough to enable him to put the other somewhat higher.
( Thomas Henry Huxley, biologist and writer (1825-1995) )
A word has its use, / Or, like a man, it will soon have a grave.
( Edwin Arlington Robinson, poet (1869-1935) )
The man who strikes first admits that his ideas have given out.
( Chinese Proverb )
Don't say you don't have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.
( H. Jackson Brown, Jr., writer )
Every cask smells of the wine it contains.
( Spanish proverb )
There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or behavior, like the wish to scatter joy and not pain around us.
( Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882) )
Take chances. When rowing forward, the boat may rock.
( Chinese Proverb )
"I have no doubt that it is part of the destiny of the human race in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came into contact with the more civilized."
( Henry David Thoreau 1817-1862 (essayis, naturalist, poet) )
When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us.
( Alexander Graham Bell, inventor (1847-1922) )
Our admiration of fine writing will always be in proportion to its real difficulty and its apparent ease.
( Charles Caleb Colton, author and clergyman (1780-1832) )
Soon silence will have passed into legend. Man has turned his back on silence. Day after day he invents machines and devices that increase noiseand distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation. Tooting, howling, screeching, booming, crashing, whistling, grinding, and trilling bolster his ego.
( Jean Arp, artist and poet (1887-1948) )
"Nature is the source of all true knowledge. She has her own logic, her own laws, she has no effect without cause nor invention without necessity."
( Leonardo DaVinci )
Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.
( Kahlil Gibran, mystic, poet, and artist (1883-1931) )
The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity... and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself.
( William Blake, poet, engraver, and painter (1757-1827) )
A kiss can be a comma, a question mark or an exclamation point.
( Mistinguett, singer (1875-1956) )
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 will reach your destiny.
( Carl Schurz, general and politician (1829-1906) )
One father is more than a hundred schoolmasters.
( English Proverb )
Nature is slow, but sure; she works no faster than need be; she is the tortoise that wins the race by her perseverance.
( Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862) )
"The indifference of children towards meat is one proof that the taste for meat is unnatural; their preference is for vegetable foods...Beware of changing this natural taste and making children flesh-eaters, if not for their health's sake, for the sake of their character; for how can one explain away the fact that great meat-eaters are usually fiercer and more cruel than other men; this has been recognised at all times and in all places."
( Jean Jacques Rousseau 1712-1788 (philosopher) )
The days come and go like muffled and veiled figures sent from a distant friendly party, but they say nothing, and if we do not use the gifts they bring, they carry them as silently away.
( Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882) )
Secrecy, being an instrument of conspiracy, ought never to be the system of a regular government.
( Jeremy Bentham, jurist and philosopher (1748-1832) )
"Love feels no burden, thinks nothing of trouble and attempts what is above its strength."
( Thomas A Kempis )
'Vegetarianism serves as the criterion by which we know that the pursuit of moral perfection on the part of humanity is genuine and sincere."
( Leo Tolstoy 1828-1910 (Novelist, moral philosopher, playwright and essayist) )
The shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that their interests and his own are the same.
( Stendal (Marie Henri Beyle), novelist (1783-1842) )
Never let your zeal outrun your charity. The former is but human, the latter is divine.
( Hosea Ballou, preacher (1771-1852) )
Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind.
( James Russell Lowell, poet, editor, and diplomat (1819-1891) )
Nothing so completely baffles one who is full of trick and duplicity himself, than straightforward and simple integrity in another.
( Charles Caleb Colton, author and clergyman (1780-1832) )
"They've a temper, some of them--particularly verbs, they're the proudest -- adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs -- however, I can manage the whole lot of them!" boasts Humpty-Dumpty
( Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass". )
"My refusing to eat flesh occasioned an inconveniency, and I was frequently chided for my singularity, but, with this lighter repast, I made the greater progress, from greater clearness of head and quicker comprehension."
( Benjamin Franklin 1706-1790 (statesman, author, inventor) )
A man said to the universe: "Sir I exist!" "However," replied the universe, "The fact has not created in me A sense of obligation."
( Stephen Crane, writer (1871-1900) )
You can out-distance that which is running after you, but not what is running inside you.
( Rwandan Proverb )
To keep your marriage brimming,
With love in the loving cup,
Whenever you're wrong, admit it;
Whenever you're right, shut up.
( Ogden Nash, author (1902-1971) )
What's done to children, they will do to society.
( Karl A. Menninger, psychiatrist (1893-1990) )
"Only a person who risks is free. The pessimist
complains about the wind; the optimist expects
it to change and the realist adjusts the sails.”
( Unknown, Daniel )
Doubt everything at least once, even the proposition that two times two equals four.
( Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, scientist and philosopher (1742-1799) )
God builds his temple in the heart on the ruins of churches and religions.
( Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882) )
None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.
( Johann Wolfgang van Goethe, poet, dramatist, novelist, and philosopher (1749-1832) )
'If you ask me what I came to do in this world, I, an artist, will answer, 'I am here to live out loud'.'
( Emile Zola )
"Always will I dig for reasons to applaud; never will I scratch for excuses to gossip. When I am tempted to criticize I will bite on my tongue; when I am moved to praise I will shout from the roofs."
( Og Mandino )
"Let your food be your medicine and your medicine be your food."
( Hippocrates, father of modern medicine, 4th century BC )
It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence to practice neither.
( Mark Twain, author and humorist (1835-1910) )
Nothing is so impenetrable as laughter in a language you don't understand.
( William G. Golding, novelist (1911-1993) )
Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity; and that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life.
( John Muir, naturalist, explorer, and writer (1838-1914) )
The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions.
( Robert Lynd, writer (1879-1949) )
True religion is the life we lead, not the creed we profess.
( Louis Nizer, lawyer (1902-1994) )
Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.
( Thomas Edison )
If people knew how badly animals were treated in today’s factory farms, if people knew how completely confined and immobilized these creatures are for their entire lives, if people knew how severe and unrelenting is the cruelty these animals are forced to endure, there would be change. If people knew. But too many of us choose to look the other way, to keep the veil in place, to remain unconscious and caught in the cultural trance. That way we are more comfortable. That way is convenient. That way we don’ t have to risk too much. This is how we keep ourselves asleep.
( John Robbins )
The human commitment to harmony, justice, peace and love is ironic as long as we continue to support the suffering and shame of the slaughterhouse and its satellite operations.
( Karen Davis, Poisoned chickens, Poisoned Eggs )
Some people misinterpret empathy for animals as weakness. Standing up against cruelty is actually an act of strength – especially when most people merely follow the crowd. We are the lucky ones – we are not standing day after day in a tiny space breathing the stench of our own waste, waiting only to be slaughtered. Our actions can make a powerful public statement against the current treatment of animals.
( Why Vegan? )
I do not believe any sensitive human being could see what is actually being done to cows, chickens, pigs and turkeys in today’s factory farms and slaughterhouses, and remain unmoved. We treat these animals, each one of them a sentient being, as if they were so much garbage. We subject them to conditions that frustrate every one of their natural instincts and urges, and that are a violation o fthe human-animal bond. In the name of cheap meat, poultry and dairy products, we are committing a crime against nature, against these animals, and against our own humanity. I cannot tell you how grateful I am that we are able to make food choices that do not collude and participate in this nightmare and that, at the same time, help improve our own health.
( John Robbins )
The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.
( Mahatma Gandhi )
As long as we are the living graves of murdered animals, slaughtered to satisfy our appetites, how can we hope in this world to attain the peace we say we are so anxious for?
( George Bernard Shaw, Living Graves )
In order to be kind, one must do. There is no point in thinking good thoughts and not acting on them. There is no currency in wishing things were better but not rolling up one’s sleeves and helping to change them.
( Ingrid Newkirk, You Can Save the Animals. )
The Guru said to the disciple:
“You have three jobs.
Your first was to find me.
Your second is to love me.
Your third is to leave me.”
( Indian proverb )
“We are the bees of the invisible. We madly gather the honey of the visible to store it in the great golden hive of the invisible."
( Rainer Maria Rilke )
I know you have a hundred
complex cases against God
in court, but never mind,
let's just get out of this mess.
( Hafiz )
When you can make others
laugh with jokes that belittle
no one and your words always
unite, Hafiz will vote for you
to be God.
( Hafiz )
You are a divine elephant
with amnesia trying to live
in an ant hole.
( Hafiz )
Blame keeps the
Sad game going.
It keeps stealing
All your wealth--
(like) giving it to
An imbecile with
No financial skills.
Dear one, Wise Up!
( Hafiz )
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