Be the Change

Yesterday I was clever,
so I wanted to change the world.

Today I am wise,
so I am changing ....
myself.

 - Rumi

Never Give Up

Photo courtesy TMBrown

When you get into a tight place 

and everything goes against you, 

till it seems as though you could not 

hang on a minute longer,

never give up then, 

for that is just the place and time 

that the tide will turn.

- Harriet Beecher Stowe

Simple Philosophy

I have a simple philosophy.
Fill what's empty.
Empty what's full.
Scratch where it itches.

 - Alice Roosevelt Longworth

Parenting

There is one thing you and I as parents cannot do,
nor do we want to do if we really think about it,
and that's control our children's will - that spirit that
lets them be themselves
apart from you and me.
They are not ours to possess, control, manipulate,
or even to make mind.

 - Barbara Coloroso

Love

Love is not a product of reasonings and statistics.
It just comes--none knows whence--and cannot explain itself.

- Mark Twain (Eve's Diary)

Seasons

I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape - the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn't show.

 - Andrew Wyeth

Strength

Many people think that patience is a sign of weakness.
I think this is a mistake.
It is anger that is a sign of weakness,
whereas patience is a sign of strength.

- Dalai Lama

Faith

Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase.

- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Busy Life

He, who every morning plans the
transactions of the day, and follows that
plan carries a thread that will guide him
through a labyrinth of the most busy life.

- Victor Hugo

Eternal Life

Life is an endless cycle of souls, swirling along the path of the universe, being reborn, but never truly dying before being reborn again. As long as this cycle continues, we will never really die.

- Ameila Wolfe

Change and Growth

Change and growth take place
when a person has risked himself and
dares to become involved with
experimenting with his own life.

- Herbert Otto

Perseverance

Keep on going, and the chances are that you will stumble on something, perhaps when you are least expecting it. I never heard of anyone ever stumbling on something sitting down.

- Charles F. Kettering

My Creed

My Creed

To live as gently as I can;
To be, no matter where, a man;
To take what comes of good or ill
And cling to faith and honor still;
To do my best, and let that stand
The record of my brain and hand;
And then, should failure come to me,
Still work and hope for victory.

To have no secret place wherein
I stoop unseen to shame or sin;
To be the same when I’m alone
As when my every deed is known
To live undaunted, unafraid
Of any step that I have made;
To be without pretense or sham
Exactly what men think I am.

To leave some simple mark behind
To keep my having lived in mind,
If enmity to aught I show,
To be an honest, generous foe,
To play my little part, nor whine
That greater honors are not mine.
This, I believe, is all I need
For my philosophy and creed.

By Edgar A. Guest

Give

Give what you have.
To someone, it may be better than you dare to think.

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Peace

Peace is not something you wish for;
It's something you make,
Something you do,
Something you are,
And something you give away.

- Robert Fulghum

Clarity

In the attitude of silence
the soul finds the path in a clearer light,
and what is elusive and deceptive resolves itself
 into crystal clearness.

 - Mahatma Gandhi

Love

The Eskimos have 52 words for snow
because it is so special to them;
there ought to be as many for love.

-  Margaret Atwood

Opportunities

We are continually faced by great opportunities brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems.

 - Lee Iacocca

Good Deeds

How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a weary world.

- William Shakespeare

Dream

Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so shall you become.

- James Allen

Forgiveness

Forgiveness is not the misguided act of condoning irresponsible, hurtful behavior. Nor is it a superficial turning of the other cheek that leaves us feeling victimized and martyred. Rather it is the finishing of old business that allows us to experience the present, free of contamination from the past.

- Joan Borysenko

Soulful Person

You have to resist the demands of the work-oriented, often defensive, element in your psyche that measures life only in terms of output -- how much you produce -- not in terms of the quality of your life experiences.

To be a soulful person means to go against all the pervasive, prove-yourself values of our culture and instead treasure what is unique and internal and valuable in yourself and your own personal evolution.

- Jean Shinoda Bolen

Environmental Legacy

This is the moment when we must come together to save this planet. Let us resolve that we will not leave our children a world where the oceans rise and famine spreads and terrible storms devastate our lands.

- Barack Obama

Environment

We're in a giant car heading towards a brick wall and everyones arguing over where they're going to sit.

- David Suzuki

Remind Thyself

Remind thyself, in the darkest moments, that every failure is only a step toward success, every detection of what is false directs you toward what is true, every trial exhausts some tempting form of error, and every adversity will only hide, for a time, your path to peace and fulfillment.

— Og Mandino

Fear

I have learned that feat is the mother of fearlessness, and the beginning of possibility.

- Paul Hogan

Learn to Love

Happy Birthday to Nelson Mandela on his 93rd birthday.

No one is born hating another person
because of the color of his skin,
or his background, or his religion.

People must learn to hate,
and if they can learn to hate,
they can be taught to love,
for love comes more naturally
to the human heart
than its opposite.

- Nelson Mandela

Speech and Silence

There are two kinds of speeches and two kinds of silences.

Speech is either truth or a falsification,
and silence is either fruition or heedlessness.

If one speaks the truth,
his words are better than his silence,
but he who invents falsifications,
his silence is better than his speech.

- Pakistani proverb

Freedom

In my mind I have always been free. Inner freedom comes from following a course in harmony with one’s conscience.
- Aung San Suu Kyi

Challenges

Challenges come so we can grow
and be prepared for things
we are not equipped to handle now.

When we face our challenges with faith,
prepared to learn, willing to make changes,
and if necessary, to let go,
we are demanding our power
be turned on.

- Iyanla Vanzant

Humanitarian

Humanitarian action is more than simple generosity, simple charity. It aims to build spaces of normalcy in the midst of what is abnormal.

More than offering material assistance, we aim to enable individuals to regain their rights and dignity as human beings. ... But we act not in a vacuum, and we speak not into the wind, but with a clear intent to assist, to provoke change, or to reveal injustice. Our action and our voice is an act of indignation, a refusal to accept an active or passive assault on the other.

- James Orbinski

Remembering

Your job on Earth, therefore,
is not to learn (because you already know),
but to remember
Who You Are.

And to remember
who everyone else is.

- Neale Donald Walsch

Aging

This world is swept away by aging, by illness, by death.
For one swept on by aging, no shelters exist.

Keeping sight of this danger in death,
do meritorious deeds that bring bliss.

Make merit while alive.

When the world is on fire with aging and death, one should salvage [future wealth] by giving.

- Buddha

Truth

There are very few human beings who receive the truth, complete and staggering, by instant illumination. Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cellularly, like a laborious mosaic.

- Anaïs Nin

Believe

To accomplish great things,
we must not only act,
but also dream,
not only plan,
but also believe.

- Anatole France

Oppression

We must remember that any oppression, any injustice, any hatred, is a wedge designed to attack our civilization.

- Franklin D. Roosevelt

Abundance

Whatever we are waiting for - peace of mind, contentment, grace, the inner awareness of simple abundance - it will surely come to us, but only when we are ready to receive it with an open and grateful heart.

- Sarah Ban Breathnach

Courage and Compassion

Courage is not demonstrated by domination of others,
but in mastery of our deepest emotions.
Transforming fear and hate into compassion
for all human beings is a powerful way
to turn the world way from darkness.

–Author Unknown

Answering to Mother Earth

We are all fools!
Blinded with greed,
we rape the earth and declare ourselves its masters.
We glut ourselves with the riches,
cut the forests down like wheat,
and jingling our dollars.
We cannot hear the voice of intolerable unrest
within us.
Beware!
The earth too has a voice
which someday we must answer.

- Frank Waters (1940)

Key to Failure

I don't know the key to success,
but the key to failure is to try to please everyone.

- Bill Cosby

Happiness

Happiness is not a station you arrive at,
but a manner of traveling.


- Margaret B. Runbeck

Letting Go

As I started to picture the trees in the storm, the answer began to dawn on me. The trees in the storm don't try to stand up straight and tall and erect. They allow themselves to bend and be blown with the wind. They understand the power of letting go. Those trees and those branches that try too hard to stand up strong and straight are the ones that break. Now is not the time for you to be strong, or you, too, will break.
- Julia Butterfly Hill

Dreams

We grow great by dreams. All big men are dreamers. They see things in the soft haze of a spring day or in the red fire of a long winter's evening. Some of us let these great dreams die, but others nourish and protect them; nurse them through bad days till they bring them to the sunshine and light which comes always to those who sincerely hope that their dreams will come true.

- Woodrow Wilson

How fitting to have dreams be the theme for this 500th post. I started this blog originally as a vehicle to match some of my favourite quotes with pictures I've taken and I certainly never expected it to grow to 500 posts! Thank you to all of you who drop by from time to time. Really - thanks.

Tenderness and Kindness

Tenderness and kindness are not signs
of weakness and despair
but manifestations
of strength and resolution.

- Kahlil Gibran

What Kind of Giver Are You?

There are three kinds of givers -- the flint, the sponge and the honeycomb. To get anything out of a flint you must hammer it. And then you get only chips and sparks. To get water out of a sponge you must squeeze it, and the more you use pressure, the more you will get. But the honeycomb just overflows with its own sweetness. Which kind of giver are you?


- unknown

Lifetime of Happiness

If you want happiness for a lifetime - help the next generation.

- Chinese Proverbs

Spring

If we had no winter,
the spring would not be so pleasant;
if we did not sometimes taste of adversity,
prosperity would not be so welcome.

- Anne Bradstreet

Aging

I am convinced that the degree of enthusiasm with which you embrace aging is directly proportionate to your level of satisfaction with, and contentment in your life. 

Aging to someone who is living the life they want to be living is a footnote; a gentle scorekeeper of more good things to come.Aging to someone who is living the life they want to be living is a footnote; a gentle scorekeeper of more good things to come. 


- Lifepixels

One's Philosophy

One's philosophy is not best expressed in words;
it is expressed in the choices one makes ...
and the choices we make are ultimately our responsibility.

- Eleanor Roosevelt

Change

If you don’t like something, change it; if you can’t change it, change the way you think about it.

- Mary Engelbreit

Greatest Good

The greatest good you can do for another is not just share your riches, but reveal to them their own. 


- Benjamin Disraeli

Power of Small

I am done with great things and big things, great institutions and big success, and I am for those tiny invisible molecular moral forces that work from individual to individual, creeping through the crannies of the world like so many rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, yet which if you give them time, will rend the hardest monuments of man's pride.
- William James

Do Good

Go into the world and do well.
But more importantly,
go into the world and do good.

-Minor Myers

Start Living

It's time to start living the life you've imagined.

- Henry James

Listen to Your Heart

When your heart speaks, take good notes.
-  Greg Mortenson

On World Water Day

When the well's dry, we know the worth of water.
- Benjamin Franklin

The Young

The young do not know enough to
be prudent, and therefore they attempt
the impossible -- and achieve it,
generation after generation.

- Pearl S. Buck

Free the Children Founder Craig Kielburger likens it to being a shameless idealist, and it just may save the world.

St Paddy's Day

May love and laughter light your days
And warm your heart and home.

May good and faithful friends be yours,
Wherever you may roam.

May peace and plenty bless your world
With joy that long endures.

May all life's passing seasons
Bring the best to you and yours!

- Irish Family Blessing

Do From the Heart

Do the kinds of things that come from the heart.
When you do, you won't be dissatisfied,
you won't be envious,
you won't be longing for
somebody else's things.

On the contrary,
you'll be overwhelmed with what
comes back.

- Morrie Schwartz

Disaster

Noble souls, through dust and heat, rise from disaster and defeat the stronger.


- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Forgiveness

The weak can never forgive.
Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.


- Mahatma Gandhi

Making Noise for Women

In honour of International Women's Day

One woman can change anything. Many women can change everything.

- Christine Karumba


We've begun to raise daughters more like sons... but few have the courage to raise our sons more like our daughters.

- Gloria Steinem

Empathy

Empathy is the love fire of sweet remembrance and shared understanding.

- John Eaton

Gratitude

Gratitude can transform common days into thanksgivings, turn routine jobs into joy, and change ordinary opportunities into blessings.

- William Arthur Ward

There Comes a Time

In the course of history, there comes a time when humanity is called to shift to a new level of consciousness, to reach a higher moral ground. A time when we have to shed our fear and give hope to each other. That time is now.


- Dr. Wangari Maathai

Love

Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength,
while loving someone deeply gives you courage.

- Lao Tzu

You are as young and old ...

You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt,
as young as your self-confidence, as old as your fear,
as young as your hope, as old as your despair.

- Samuel Ullman

Light Within

People are like stained-glass windows.
They sparkle and shine when the sun is out,
but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed
only if there is a light from within.

- Elizabeth Kübler-Ross

Life is about ...

Life isn’t about finding yourself.
Life is about creating yourself.

- George Bernard Shaw

Love as an Eraser

Love is the biggest eraser there is. Love erases even the deepest imprinting because love goes deeper than anything. If your childhood imprinting was very strong, and you keep saying: "It's their fault. I can't change," you stay stuck.

- Louise Hay

Live Fully

It's only when we truly know and understand that we have a limited time on earth - and that we have no way of knowing when our time is up, we will then begin to live each day to the fullest, as if it was the only one we had.

- Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Potential

The potential of the average person is like a huge ocean unsailed,
a new continent unexplored,
a world of possibilities waiting to be released
and channeled toward some
great good.

-Brian Tracy

Love -- What Else?

If you have it [love],
you don't need to have anything else,
and if you don't have it,
it doesn't matter much what else you have.

- Sir James M. Barrie

Hatred & Love

Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it.

Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it.

Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it.

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

What not to believe

Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it.

Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many.

Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books.

Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders.

Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations.

But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.

- Buddha

Success

Success is peace of mind
which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing
you did your best to become the best
you are capable of becoming.


- John R. Wooden

Dreams

Hold fast to dreams - for if dreams die - life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly.

- Langston Hughes

Ever There



Smile and Heart by Me - Photo by MIH

To live in hearts we leave behind, is not to die.

- Thomas Campbell

Big Picture

My country is the world, and my religion is to do good.

- Thomas Paine

Seeds of Happiness

Everything is material for the seed of happiness, if you look into it with inquisitiveness and curiosity. The future is completely open, and we are writing it moment to moment. There always is the potential to create an environment of blame - or one that is conducive to loving-kindness.

- Pema Chodron

Compassion

What I've come to learn is that the world is never saved in grand messianic gestures, but in the simple accumulation of gentle, soft, almost invisible acts of compassion, everyday acts of compassion.

In South Africa they have a phrase called ubuntu. Ubuntu comes out of a philosophy that says, the only way for me to be human is for you to reflect my humanity back at me.


- Chris Abani

Paradox, Possibility and Hope

We live in a time of profound paradox, but also profound possibility,
and profound hope.

The paradox is that this (extreme poverty) continues
in a world of vast wealth and knowledge.

The hope is the fact that we live in
an age of vast possibility.


If we choose correctly,
this kind of extreme poverty
could be ended
in our generation.

- Jeffrey Sachs, Economist, Director of the UN Millennium Project

Take the First Step

Take the first step in faith....you don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step. 


- Martin Luther King Jr

Compassion

Compassion is sometimes the fatal capacity for feeling what it is like to live inside somebody else's skin. It is the knowledge that there can never really be any peace and joy for me until there is peace and joy finally for you too.


- Frederick Buechner

Kindness

Sometimes our light goes out
but is blown into a flame by another human being.
Each of us owes deepest thanks
to those who have
rekindled this light.

– Albert Schweitzer

Peace

Peace comes from being able to contribute
the best that we have,
and all that we are,
toward creating a world that supports everyone.

But it is also securing the space for others
to contribute the best that they have
and all that they are.


-  Hafsat Abiola

Sowing Seeds

This body of mine is my field.
I sow good thoughts and actions,
and in my body I reap the results.

- Quote from The Bhagavad Gita

Thanks Harmony