INSPIRATIONAL QUOTES
Meditation is being happy with yourself for no reason at all.
The joy of cherishing your being, happy that you are.
You are simply in love with yourself, in love with existence.
TISHAN
I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches.
If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers.
To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness,
and a willingness to remain vulnerable.
ANNE MORROW LINDBERGH
That I would be loved even when I numb myself. That I would be good even when I am overwhelmed. That I would be loved even when I was fuming. That I would be good even if I was clingy.
ALANIS MORISETTE
…for a child can only experience his feelings when there is somebody there who accepts him fully, understands and supports him. If that is missing, if the child must risk losing the mother’s love, or that of her substitute, then he cannot experience these feelings secretly “just for himself” but fails to experience them at all.
But nevertheless…something remains.
ALICE MILLER
Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: That the moment one definitely commits oneself, the providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way.
W.H. MURRAY
Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it; Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
MARK TWAIN
I gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which I must stop and look fear in the face…
I say to myself, I’ve lived through this and can take the next thing that comes along…
We must do the things that we think we cannot do.
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT
Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths.
It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it.
Once we truly know that life is difficult – once we truly understand and accept it – then life is no longer difficult.
Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.
M. SCOTT PECK
It is not necessary to deny anothers’ reality in order to affirm your own.
ANNE WILSON SCHAEF
The lesson which life repeats and constantly enforces is “look under foot.”
You are always nearer the divine and the true sources of your power than you think.
The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive.
The great opportunity is where you are.
Do not despise your own place and hour.
Every place is under the stars, every place is the center of the world.
JOHN BURROUGHS
In the end, nothing we do or say in this lifetime will matter as much as the way we have loved one another.
DAPHNE ROSE KINGMAN
Learning to love differently is hard, love with the hands wide open, love with the doors banging on their hinges, the cupboard unlocked, the windroaring and whimpering in the rooms.
MARGE PIERCY
This world conceals everything, unless you’re ready to undo it.
Then, everything appears as a piece of the infinite and you are no different from it.
BRITA LATONA
To see the world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wildflower,
hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour.
WILLIAM BLAKE
The world we have created is a product of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
The drop grows happy by losing itself in the river.
MIRZA GHALIB
There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle.
The other is as if everything is.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.
WOLGANG AMADEUS MOZART
The snow goose need not bathe to make itself white. Neither need you do anything but be yourself.
LAO TZU
I was always looking outside myself for strength and confidence, but it comes from within. It is there all the time.
ANNA FREUD
Truly it is in the darkness that one finds the light, so when we are in sorrow, then this light is nearest of all to us.
MEISTER ECKHART
Stop leaving and you will arrive. Stop searching and you will see. Stop running away and you will be found.
LAO TZU
What if the question is not “why am I so infrequently the person I really want to be”,
but “why do I so infrequently want to be the person I really am”?
ORIAH MOUNTAIN DREAMER
You need not do anything. Remain sitting at your table and listen.
You need not even listen, just wait.
You need not even wait, just learn to be quiet, still and solitary.
And the world will freely offer itself to you unmasked.
It has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.
FRANZ KAFKA
You are me, and I am you. Isn’t it obvious that we “inter-are”?
You cultivate the flower in yourself, so that I will be beautiful.
I transform the garbage in myself, so that you will not have to suffer.
THICH NHAT HANH
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase ‘each other’ doesn’t make any sense.
RUMI
When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.
When actions come from another section, the feeling disappears.
RUMI
…once again we face a paradox, for it appears that softening your heart and gently tending its wounds will protect you from evil. Building a fortress and defending yourself behind it will only make you more vulnerable.
Healing your own heart is the single most powerful thing you can do to change the world. Your own transformation will enable you to withdraw so completely from evil that you contribute to it by not one word, one thought, or one breath. This healing process is like recovering your soul.
DEEPAK CHOPRA
Do not stand at my grave and forever weep. I am not there; I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow. I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain. I am the gentle autumn’s rain.
When you awaken in the morning’s hush,
I am the swift uplifting rush of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and forever cry.
I am not there. I did not die.
MELINDA SUE PACHO
If I shed a tear I won’t cage it. I won’t fear love. If I feel a rage I won’t deny it. I won’t fear love.
SARAH McLACHLAN
If I accept the sunshine and warmth, then I must also accept the thunder and lightning.
KAHLIL GIBRAN
May the stars carry your sadness away. May the flowers fill your heart with beauty.
May hope forever wipe away your tears. And, above all, may silence make you strong.
CHIEF DAN GEORGE
…in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart.
ANNE FRANK
When you follow your bliss…doors will open where you would not have thought there would be doors; and where there wouldn’t be a door for anyone else.
JOSEPH CAMPBELL
To be yourself – in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting.
E.E. CUMMINGS
It is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye.
ANTOINE deSAINT EXUPERY
There is in all visible things…a hidden wholeness.
THOMAS MERTON
Love is the way messengers from the mystery tell us things.
NISARGADATTA MAHARA
When one is pretending, the entire body revolts.
ANAIS NIN
Our deepest wishes are whispers of our authentic selves.
We must learn to respect them. We must learn to listen.
SARAH BAN BREATHNACH
Let everything about you breathe the calm and peace of the soul.
PAUL GAUGUIN
Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear…
an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring…
all of which have the potential to turn a life around.
LEO BUSCAGLIA
Nothing is so strong as gentleness and nothing is so gentle as real strength.
RALPH W. SOCKMAN
To make peace, our hearts must be at peace with the world.
THICH NHAT HANH
Find a place (inside) where there’s joy, and the joy will burn out the pain.
JOSEPH CAMPBELL
The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature.
JOSEPH CAMPBELL
The liveness in me just loves to feel the liveness in growing things, in grass and rain and leaves and flowers and sun and feathers and furs and earth and sand and moss.
EMILY CARR
It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life.
Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.
JOSEPH CAMPBELL
Opportunities to find deeper powers within ourselves come when life seems most challenging.
JOSEPH CAMPBELL
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
Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrity’s.
The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices by honestly and courageously using his intelligence.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
We must not ignore the small daily differences we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee.
MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN
Opportunity stands beside you every moment, and one of its favorite disguises is that of obstacles.
AUTHOR UNKNOWN
Be the change you want to see in the world.
MAHATMA GANDHI
Civilization is just a slow process of learning to be kind.
CHARLES L. LUCAS
I wouldn’t have seen it if I hadn’t believed it.
MARSHALL McLUHAN
To overcome difficulties is to experience the full delight of existence.
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER
The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart.
HELEN KELLER
When one door of happiness closes another opens, but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which is opened before us.
HELEN KELLER
We are each a gift, exactly as we are in this moment, with no improvements!
SARK
You gotta dance like nobody’s watching, dream like you will live forever, live like you’re going to die tomorrow,
and love like it’s never going to hurt.
MEME GRIFSTERS
We are living in enchanted time. With our spirits right.
BEN OKRI
Your hearts know in silence the secrets of the days and nights.
But your ears thirst for the sound of your heart’s knowledge.
KAHLIL GIBRAN
Just don’t give up trying to do what you really want to do.
Where there is love and inspiration, I don’t think you can go wrong.
ELLA FITZGERALD
We have more possibilities available in each moment than we realize.
THICH NHAT HANH
The most authentic thing about us Is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure,
to transform, to love, and to be greater than our suffering.
BEN OKRI
You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.
THE BUDDHA
When we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard or welcomed.
But when we are silent, we are still afraid. So it is better to speak.
AUDRE LORDE
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.
MARIANNE WILLIAMSON
One can never consent to creep when one feels the impulse to soar.
HELEN KELLER
A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart
and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words.
JACQUIE
The appearance of things change according to the emotions, and thus we see magic and beauty in them, while the magic and beauty are really in ourselves.
KAHLIL GIBRAN
…and then the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
ANAIS NIN
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world:
indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.