Empty Pockets

Empty pockets never held anyone back.
Only empty heads
and empty hearts
can do that.

- Norman Vincent Peale

Peace

Peace,
to have meaning for many who have only known suffering
in both peace and war,
must be translated into bread or rice, shelter, health and education,
as well as freedom and human dignity.

- Ralph Johnson Bunche

Return of Spring

Spring has returned.

The Earth is like a child that knows poems.

~Rainer Maria Rilke

The Universe Conspires

When you want something,
all the universe conspires
in helping you to achieve it.

- Paulo Coelho (The Alchemist)

Nothing We Can't Handle

I know God will not give me anything I can't handle.
I just wish that He didn't trust me so much.

- Mother Teresa

Look Well to This Day

Yesterday is but a dream,

tomorrow but a vision.

But today well lived makes every yesterday

a dream of happiness,

and every tomorrow a vision of hope.

Look well, therefore, to this day.

- Indian Proverb

The Human Family

To put the world right in order, we must first put the nation in order;

to put the nation in order, we must first put the family in order;

to put the family in order, we must first cultivate our personal life;

we must first set our hearts right.

- Confucius

Golden Moments

The golden moments in the stream of life
rush past us and we see nothing but sand;
the angels come to visit us,
and we only know them when they are gone.

- George Eliot

Jump In With Gusto

To do anything truly worth doing,
I must not stand back shivering
and thinking of the cold and danger,
but jump in with gusto and scramble through
as well as I can.

- Og Mandino

Unselfishness

There is a magnet in your heart
that will attract true friends.
That magnet is unselfishness,
thinking of others first...
when you learn to live for others,
they will live for you.


- Paramahansa Yogananda

Share the Light

Thousands of candles can be lighted

from a single candle,

and the life of the candle will not be shortened.

Happiness never decreases by being shared.

- Buddha

Fight On

What we do not see, what most of us
never suspect of existing,
is the silent but irresistible power
which comes to the rescue of those
who fight on in the face of discouragement.

- Napoleon Hill

No Enemies

Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?

- Abraham Lincoln

Self Giving

When you become detached mentally from yourself

and concentrate on helping other people with their difficulties,

you will be able to cope with your own more effectively.

Somehow, the act of self-giving

is a personal power-releasing factor.

- Norman Vincent Peale

Contemplate

All you have to do is contemplate a simple grain of sand,

and you will see in it all the marvels of creation.

Listen to your heart.

It knows all things,

because it came from the Soul of the World,

and it will one day return there.

- Paulo Coelho

Dance

Dance as if no one were watching,

Sing as if no one were listening,

And live every day as if it were your last.

- Irish Proverb

Opportunity in Your Hand

I held a moment in my hand,

brilliant as a star,

fragile as a flower,

a tiny sliver of one hour.

I dripped it carelessly,

Ah! I didn't know,

I held opportunity.

~Hazel Lee

Value What You Are

Too many people overvalue what they are not
and undervalue what they are.

- Malcolm Forbes

Beauty of the Soul

Since love grows within you, so beauty grows.
For love is the beauty of the soul.

- Saint Augustine

Unlock Our Giving

In the long run we get no more than

we have been willing

to risk giving.

- Sheldon Kopp

Sharing and Caring

Man should not consider his material possession his own,
but as common to all,
so as to share them without hesitation
when others are in need.

- St. Thomas Aquinas

Connected

Just as the wave cannot exist for itself,
but is ever a part of the heaving surface of the ocean,
so must I never live my life for itself,
but always in the experience
which is going on around me.

- Albert Schweitzer

Gifts of Giving

Generosity brings happiness at every stage of its expression.
We experience joy in forming the intention to be generous.
We experience joy in the actual act of giving something.
And we experience joy in remembering the fact
that we have given.

- Buddha

Today is International Women's Day 2009

It is now more dangerous to be a woman
than to be a soldier
in modern conflict.

- Maj Gen Patrick Cammaert,
Former commander of UN forces, eastern Congo (DRC)

A day to remember women around the world, especially those who are suffering unspeakable pain and violence. View the slideshow from The UN Refugee Agency.

Happy Face

The only thing that will make you happy

is being happy with who you are,

and not who people think you are.

- Goldie Hawn

If We Had No Winter ...

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

Judging the Lives of Others

We can never judge the lives of others,

because each person knows only their own pain and renunciation.

It's one thing to feel that you are on the right path,

but it's another to think that yours is the only path.

- Paulo Coelho

Voice Within

It is then that you will hear a voice within yourself.

It was there all the time, but you never listened before.

Faintly it will speak to you at first,

but it will grow louder and clearer the more you take heed of its message

until one day it thunders inside you

and you will have come home.

- Rusty Berkus

One of Those March Days ...

It was one of those March days
when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold:
when it is summer in the light,
and winter in the shade.

- Charles Dickens

We Need Others

We need others.
We need others to love and we need to be loved by them.
There is no doubt that without it, we too,
like the infant left alone, would cease to grow,
cease to develop, choose madness and even death.

- Leo F. Buscaglia

March is Born

With rushing winds and gloomy skies
The dark and stubborn
Winter dies:
Far-off, unseen,
Spring faintly cries,
Bidding her earliest child arise;
March!

- Bayard Taylor

Ready to Radiate

There is nothing outside you.
That is what you must ultimately learn.
Deep within you
is everything that is perfect,
ready to radiate through you
and out into the world.

- A Course in Miracles

Live in the Present

You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave,

find your eternity in each moment.

- Henry David Thoreau

Be Happy in the Moment

Be happy in the moment - that's enough.
Each moment is all we need - not more.

- Mother Teresa

Last of Human Freedoms

"We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances - to choose one's own way."

- Victor Frankl

Death and Love

Death leaves a heartache no one can heal; love leaves a memory no one can steal.

~From a headstone in Ireland

Change

Change is inevitable; growth is optional.

- Unknown

Reap a Destiny

The law of harvest is to reap more than you sow.
Sow an act, and you reap a habit.
Sow a habit and you reap a character.
Sow a character and you reap a destiny.

- James Allen

Letting Go

Let go.

Why do you cling to pain?

There is nothing you can do

about the wrongs of yesterday.

It is not yours to judge.

Why hold on to the very thing which keeps you from hope and love?

- Leo Buscaglia

Mental Pathways

As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth,
so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind.
To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again.
To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over
the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.

- Henry David Thoreau

Live for Something

It's not enough to have lived.

We should be determined to live for something.

May I suggest that it be creating joy for others,

sharing what we have for the betterment of personkind,

ringing hope to the lost and love to the lonely.

- Leo F. Buscaglia

Be a Possibilitarian

Become a possibilitarian.
No matter how dark things seem to be or actually are,
raise your sights and see the possibilities --
always see them, for they're always there.

- Norman Vincent Peale

Limitations

Argue for your limitations, and sure enough,
they're yours!

- Richard Bach, Excerpt from Illusions, The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

Gifts of the Morning

When you arise in the morning,
think of what a precious privilege it is
to be alive -
to breathe,
to think,
to enjoy,
to love.

- Marcus Aurelius

Blue Print

Visualize this thing that you want.
See it, feel it, believe in it.
Make your mental blue print,
and begin to build.

- Robert Collier

Girl's Best Friend

I talk to him when I'm lonesome like;
and I'm sure he understands.
When he looks at me so attentively,
and gently licks my hands;
then he rubs his nose on my tailored clothes,
but I never say naught thereat.
For the good Lord knows I can buy more clothes,
but never a friend like that.

~W. Dayton Wedgefarth

More Than a Feeling

Love is more than just a feeling:
it's a process requiring continual attention.
Loving well takes laughter, loyalty,
and wanting more to be able to say,
"I understand" than to hear, "You're right."

- Molleen Matsumura

Dance for Joy

There are short-cuts to happiness, and dancing is one of them.

- Vicki Baum

The Right Attitude

Nothing can stop the man
with the right mental attitude
from achieving his goal;
nothing on earth can help the man
with the wrong mental attitude.

- Thomas Jefferson

Laughter

The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.

- e e cummings

Picture Success

Formulate and stamp indelibly on your mind
a mental picture of yourself as
succeeding.
Hold this picture tenaciously.
Never permit it to fade.
Your mind will seek to develop the picture...
Do not build up obstacles
in your imagination.

- Norman Vincent Peale

Soldiers For Peace

The soldier above all others prays for peace,
for it is the soldier who must suffer and bear
the deepest wounds and scars of war.

- Douglas Macarthur

Universe - New Only To Us

I am comforted by life's stability,
by earth's unchangeableness.
What has seemed new and frightening
assumes its place in the unfolding of knowledge.
It is good to know our universe.
What is new is only new to us.

- Pearl S. Buck

The Family

Call it a clan,

call it a network,

call it a tribe,

call it a family:

Whatever you call it,

whoever you are,

you need one.

- Jane Howard

Open Doors

Not knowing when the dawn will come,

I open every door.

- Emily Dickinson