Don't Wait

Don't wait. The time will never be just right.


- Napoleon Hill

Hero

That's what it takes to be a hero, a little gem of innocence inside you that makes you want to believe that there still exists a right and wrong, that decency will somehow triumph in the end.

- Lise Hand

And I Be

I still hear you humming, Mama. The color of your song calls me home. The color of your words saying, "Let her be. She got a right to be different. She gonna stumble on herself one of these days. Just let the child be." And I be, Mama.


- Sonia Sanchez

Heart of a Mother

The heart of a mother is a deep abyss at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness.

- Honoré de Balzac

Birth of a Mother

The moment a child is born, the mother is also born. She never existed before. The woman existed, but the mother, never. A mother is something absolutely new.

- Rajneesh

Start With Yourself

To end the misery that has afflicted the human condition for thousands of years, you have to start with yourself and take responsibility for your inner state at any given moment. That means now.
- Eckhart Tolle

Travel

Once you have traveled, the voyage never ends, but is played out over and over again in the quietest chambers. The mind can never break off from the journey.

– Pat Conroy

The Woods

If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.


- Henry David Thoreau

In Honour of our Earth

Earth Day Snax
We can be thankful to a friend for a few acres, or a little money; and yet for the freedom and command of the whole earth, and for the great benefits of our being, our life, health, and reason, we look upon ourselves as under no obligation.
- Lucius Annaeus Seneca

~~~

Sustainability means running the global environment - Earth Inc. - like a corporation: with depreciation, amortization and maintenance accounts. In other words, keeping the asset whole, rather than undermining your natural capital.

- Maurice Strong

~~~

The materials of wealth are in the earth, in the seas, and in their natural and unaided productions.


- Daniel Webster

Living Humanely

Over the years I have developed a picture of what a human being living humanely is like. She is a person who understands, values and develops her body, finding it beautiful and useful; a person who is real and is willing to take risks, to be creative, to manifest competence, to change when the situation calls for it, and to find ways to accommodate to what is new and different, keeping that part of the old that is still useful and discarding what is not.

- Virginia Satir

Useful Lives

Our lives are to be used and thus to be lived as fully as possible, and truly it seems that we are never so alive as when we concern ourselves with other people.

- Harry Chapin

Reaching Out

I will smile at friend and foe alike and make every effort to find, in him or her, a quality to praise, now that I realize the deepest yearning of human nature is the craving to be appreciated.


- Og Mandino

Prayer

Prayer is only another name for good, clean, direct thinking.
When you pray, think. Think well what you're saying.
Make your thoughts into things that are solid.
In that way, your prayer will have strength,
and that strength will become a part of you,
body, mind, and spirit.

- How Green Was My Valley, Richard Llewellyn

Dreams

The greatest achievement was at first and for a time a dream. The oak sleeps in the acorn; the bird waits in the egg; and in the highest vision of the soul a waking angel stirs. Dreams are the seedlings of realities.

-James Allen

Long View

Aldo Leopold, the early 20th century's Henry David Thoreau, said that we should think like a mountain, with a sense of permanence and a long view.

At the beginning of the 21st century, we are at a peak of human power, wealth and information...

We need to look back at our wonderful natural and human heritage, and cherish and protect the abundant values to be found there.

We need to look out to the sides and see other parts of the world that need our help and can provide good ideas to go forward...

We need to look ahead to be certain that our actions of today will make the world a better and richer and more varied place for our grandchildren and their grandchildren.


- Robert Bateman

Good Marriage

A good marriage is that in which each appoints the other guardian of his solitude.
Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue to exist,
a wonderful living side by side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole and against a wide sky.

- Rainer Maria Rilke

Being and Becoming

Life is not in having and getting, but in being and becoming.

- Matthew Arnold

Growing Old

To know how to grow old is the master-work of wisdom, and one of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living.

- Henri Amiel

Enemies

I destroy my enemies when I make them my friends.

- Abraham Lincoln

Anyway

People are unreasonable, illogical and self-centered.
Love them anyway.

If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.

If you are successful, you win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.

The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.

Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.

What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.

People really need help but may attack you if you help them.
Help people anyway.

Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you've got anyway.

- Mother Teresa

Growth

Be not afraid of growing slowly,
be afraid only of standing still.


- Chinese Proverb

Love is a Cure

Love cures people -
both the ones
who give it
and the ones
who receive it.

This intangible thing love...
enters into every theraputic relationship.
It is an element which finds and heals,
which comforts and restores,
which works what we have to call for now,
miracles

- Dr. Karl Menninger

What You Are Made Of

Life is like a grindstone
- whether it grinds you down
or polishes you up depends
on what you are made of.

- Anonymous

Gratitude

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity.

It turns problems into gifts, failures into success, the unexpected into perfect timing, and mistakes into important events.

Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow.


- Melodie Beattie

Friendship

I do not wish to treat friendships daintily,
but with the roughest courage.
When they are real, they are not glass threads or frost-work,
but the solidest thing we know.


- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Do Your Job Well

If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.


- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Perfect Love

We come to love not by finding a perfect person,
but by learning to see an imperfect person
perfectly.

- Sam Keen

As You Dream So You Shall Become

Dream lofty dreams,
and as you dream,
so you shall become.
Your vision is the promise of what you shall one day be;
your ideal is the prophecy of what you shall at last unveil.


- James Allen

Circumstances

Your present circumstances don't determine where you can go;
they merely determine where you start.

- Nido Qubein

Peace

When the power of love overcomes the love of power,
the world will know peace.

- Sri Chinmoy Ghose

Someday

How far you go in life depends on your being
tender with the young,
compassionate with the aged,
sympathetic with the striving, and
tolerant of the weak and strong.
Because someday in your life
you will have been all of these.

- George Washington Carver

We Belong to Earth

What befalls the earth befalls all the sons of the earth.
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 does not weave this web of life. He is merely a strand of it.
Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.

- Chief Seattle (1786-1866)

Friendship

I keep my friends as misers do their treasure, because, of all the things granted us by wisdom, none is greater or better than friendship.


- Pietro Aretino

Self Esteem

Well, we all know that self-esteem comes from
what you think of you,
not what other people think of you.


- Gloria Gaynor

Aspirations

To understand the heart and mind of a person,
look not at what he has already achieved,
but at what he aspires to.

- Kahlil Gibran

Love

Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving.


- Kahlil Gibran

Olympic Idea

The real glory is being knocked to your knees and then coming back.
That's real glory.
That's the essence of it.

- Vince Lombardi

Gift in Aging

In youth we learn,
in age we understand.

- Marie von Ebner- Eschenbach

Love Steps Forth

When our eyes see our hands doing the work of our hearts,
the circle of Creation is completed inside us,
the doors of our souls fly open,
and love steps forth
to heal everything in sight.

- Michael Bridge

Creating Your Future

The future is not a result of choices among alternative paths offered by the present, but a place that is created; created first in the mind and will, created next in activity.

The future is not some place we are going to, but one we are creating. The paths are not to be found, but made, and the activity of making them, changes both the maker and the destination.

- John Schaar

Create the life you want to live ...

Stillness

No thought, no action, no movement, total stillness: only thus can one manifest the true nature and law of things from within and unconsciously, and at last become one with heaven and earth.

- Lao Tzu

Peace

Of all our dreams today there is none more important - or so hard to realise - than that of peace in the world. May we never lose our faith in it or our resolve to do everything that can be done to convert it one day into reality.

The choice, however, is as clear now for nations as it was once for the individual: peace or extinction.

- Lester B. Pearson (14th Prime Minister of Canada)

This Generation

For this generation, ours, life is nuclear survival, liberty is human rights, the pursuit of happiness is a planet whose resources are devoted to the physical and spiritual nourishment of its inhabitants.


- Jimmy Carter

Becoming More

What a man can be, he must be. This need we may call self-actualization…It refers to the desire for self-fulfillment, namely, to the tendency for him to become actualized in what he is potentially. This tendency might be phrased as the desire to become more and more what one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming.
- Maslow

Blessings

There's no disaster that can't become a blessing, and no blessing that can't become a disaster.


- Richard Bach

Joy

When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.

- Rumi

Family

In every conceivable manner, the family is link to our past, bridge to our future.

- Alex Haley

Writing

If you would not be forgotten,
as soon as you are dead and rotten,
either write things worth reading,
or do things worth the writing.

- Benjamin Franklin

Educate Girls

Once you educate the boys, they tend to leave the villages and go search for work in cities. But the girls stay home, become leaders in the community and pass on what they've learned. If you really want to change a culture, to empower women, improve basic hygiene and health care, and fight high rates of infant mortality, the answer is to educate girls.


- Greg Mortenson (co-author, Three Cups of Tea)

Fear

We fear things in proportion to our ignorance of them.

- Christian Nevell Bovee

Lessons

Remember, there are no mistakes, only lessons.
Love yourself, trust your choices,
and everything is possible.

- Cherie-Carter Scotts

Growing Up

Youth is a circumstance you can't do anything about.
The trick is to grow up without getting old.

- Frank Lloyd Wright

Opportunities

Opportunities multiply as they are seized.

- Sun Tzu

Hunger

There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.


- Mahatma Gandhi

Perspective

One sees great things from the valley,

only small things from the peak.

- G. K. Chesterton

New Beginnings

We must be willing to get rid
of the life we've planned,
so as to have the life that is waiting for us.
The old skin has to be shed
before the new one can come.


- Joseph Campbell

Gratitude

When you are grateful fear disappears and abundance appears.

- Anthony Robbins

Age

Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.

- Mark Twain

Sharing

Life has taught me that respect, caring and love must be shared, for it's only through sharing that friendships are born.


- Donna A. Favors

Childhood Memories

And even if you were in some prison, the walls of which let none of the sounds of the world come to your senses - would you not then still have your childhood, that precious, kingly possession, that treasure-house of memories?

- Rainer Maria Rilke

Christmas

The best of all gifts around any Christmas tree is the presence of a happy family all wrapped up in each other.

Burton Hillis

Best Things

The best things in life aren't things.

- Art Buchwald

Abundant Life

The abundant life does not come to those who have had a lot of obstacles removed from their path by others. It develops from within and is rooted in strong mental and moral fiber.

- William Mather Lewis

Never Give In

It's not what they take away from you that counts.
It's what you do with what you have left.
Never give up and never give in.

- Hubert H. Humphrey

Life's Challenges

Life's challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they're supposed to help you discover who you are.

- Bernice Johnson Reagon

Zest in Living

Nothing else matters much -- not wealth, nor learning, nor even health -- without this gift: the spiritual capacity to keep zest in living. This is the creed of creeds, the final deposit and distillation of all important faiths: that you should be able to believe in life.

- Harry Emerson Fosdick

True to Your Vision

Cherish your visions. Cherish your ideals. Cherish the music that stirs in your heart, the beauty that forms in your mind, the loveliness that drapes your purest thoughts, for out of them will grow all delightful conditions, all heavenly environment, of these, if you but remain true to them your world will at last be built.

- James Allen

Another Kind of Poverty

We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty.

We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty.


- Mother Teresa

Leadership

The task of leadership is not to put greatness into people, but to elicit it, for the greatness is there already.

- John Buchan

Exercise for the Heart

There is no exercise better for the heart than reaching down and lifting people up.
- John Andrew Holmes Jr.

Helping

Look up and not down.
Look forward and not back.
Look out and not in,
and lend a hand.

- Edward Everett Hale

Live Today

Cherish yesterday, dream tomorrow, live today.

Light

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 light from within.

- Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

Attracting Greater Good

When your heart is focused on love for all living things, you're magnetically attracting your own greater good. Simply know that.

- Marianne Williamson

Gaps

Negativity is born in the gap where love has been excluded.
Gaps occur in places where we are afraid to see ourselves.

- Deepak Chopra

Gift of Friendship

I keep my friends as misers do their treasure,
because, of all the things granted us by wisdom,
none is greater or better than friendship.
- Pietro Aretino

Failure - A Step Toward Success

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

Adversity

Adversity is like a strong wind. I don't mean just that it holds us back from places we might otherwise go. It also tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that afterward we see ourselves as we really are, and not merely as we might like to be.

- Arthur Golden

Impact of Our Choices

Spirit is the Life, Mind is the Builder, and the Physical is the Result.
In other words, spirit is the source of all life.
The mind focuses that energy into creative (positive)
or destructive (negative) avenues of expression.
The impact of our choices will eventually find expression in the physical,
affecting ourselves and our relationships with one another.

- Edgar Cayce

Only You

There is a place that you are to fill that no one else can fill -
something you are to do that no one else can do.
- Plato

Live ...

Live a life as a monument to your soul.

- Ayn Rand

Rent

Activism is my rent for living on this planet.

- Alice Walker

Generosity

Generosity consists not the sum given,
but the manner in which it is bestowed.

- Unknown

World AIDS Day

Ignorance and prejudice are fuelling
the spread of a preventable disease.

World AIDS Day, December 1 is an opportunity
for people worldwide to unite in the fight
against HIV and AIDS.

It's up to you, me and us to stop the spread
of HIV and
end prejudice.

~worldaidsday.org, 2006

Prejudice is the child of ignorance.

~William Hazlitt

Photo courtesy of http://www.worldaidsday.org/MediaCentre.aspx

This Amazing Day

I thank you God for this most amazing day,
for the leaping greenly spirits of trees,
and for the blue dream of sky
and for everything which is natural,
which is infinite,
which is yes.

- e.e. cummings

Self Righteousness

Self righteous morality is jealousy with a halo.

- HG Wells

Each Day - A Miracle

You can become blind by seeing
each day as a similar one.
Each day is a different one,
each day brings a miracle of its own.
It's just a matter of paying attention
to this miracle.


- Paulo Coelho

Secret of Health

The secret of health for both mind and body
is not to mourn for the past,
not to worry about the future,
or not to anticipate troubles,
but to live in the present moment
wisely and earnestly.

- Buddha

Keep All Things Positive

Keep your thoughts positive because
your thoughts become your words.

Keep your words positive because
your words become your behaviors.

Keep your behaviors positive because
your behaviors become your habits.

Keep your habits positive because
your habits become your values.

Keep your values positive because
your values become your destiny.

- Gandhi

What You Think

You may believe that you are responsible for what you do,
but not for what you think.
The truth is that you are responsible for what you think,
because it is only at this level that you can exercise choice.
What you do comes from what you think.

- From a Course in Miracles

Let Life Flow Through You

Lighten up and let life flow through you, and be on the waves as they go up and down.

A great image in mythology is Tristan (Tristan and Isolde).
He's out there on a little boat without an oar,
without a rudder, on the Irish sea . . .

You float your way. You drift.
... be extravagantly
accepting and forgiving
of yourself and others.

Ride the waves and let life take you
where it has good things for you.

- Thomas Moore

Happiness

There is only one way to happiness
and that is to cease worrying about things
which are beyond the power of our will.

-  Epictetus

Wind to thy wings

Wind to thy wings. Light to thy path. Dreams to thy heart.
 
- Anonymous

Aim Big

Aim for the moon.
If you miss, you may hit a star.

- W. Clement Stone

Reading

Reading is to the mind
what exercise is to the body.

- Sir Richard Steele

On Children

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

- Khalil Gibran,  from The Prophet

Friends

Each friend represents a world in us,
a world possibly not born until they arrive,
and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born

- Anais Nin

Change

There is nothing like returning
to a place that remains
unchanged
to find the ways in which
you yourself have altered.


- Nelson Mandela

Determination

If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair.
Few things are impossible to diligence and skill.
Great works are performed not by strength,
but perseverance.

- Samuel Johnson

Writing

The act of putting pen to paper encourages pause for thought,
 this in turn makes us think more deeply about life,
which helps us regain our equilibrium.

 ~ Norbet Platt