A Random Collection of Quotations(If there is no attribution either I lost it

or it was lost long before I came upon the quotation.)

If you want to be happy, be.Henry David Thoreau

Begin somewhere; you cannot build a reputation on what you intend to do.  Liz Smith Some people regard discipline as a chore. For me, it is a kind of order that sets me free to fly.

Julie Andrews

Each moment is already here in all its fullness, waiting for us to immerse ourselves in its sometimes muddy, but always restorative, waters.

Jerome Front

As human beings out greatness lies not so much in our being able to remake our world as in being able to remake ourselves.

Gandhi

We may in fact disappoint ourselves, may not meet our own expectations, but we do not cease to be a friend to ourselves.

Sharon Salzberg

Give me a fruitful error any time, full of seeds, bursting with its own corrections.

Pareto

Patience is waiting. Not passively waiting. That is laziness. But to keep going when the going is hard and slow - that is patience.

Anonymous

No matter how long your journey appears to be, there is never more than this:  one step, one breath, one moment--now.

Eckhart Tolle

Positive guilt occurs when we begin to break rules that need to be broken.

Dede Beasley

Motivation is a fire from within. If someone else tries to light that fire under you, chances are it will burn very briefly.

Stephen R. Covey

The distance is nothing; it's only the first step that is difficult.Marquise du Deffand

Definition of Burnout: Trying to change someone else’s life and being attached to the results.

Rules for Living: Show Up Pay Attention Tell the Truth Don’t Be Attached to the ResultsAngeles Arien

Don’t just do something, sit there.

Who you are is more important than what you do and far more important than what you say.

Instead of cursing the darkness, bring in the lightCarolyn Costin

When you relax, you can make miracles. Tan Dun

Behind every success is a succession of failures. Rick Beneteau

To receive gifts is to lose freedom.Sandi

You can get everything in life you want, if you'll just help enough other people get what they want.

Zig Ziglar

The person interested in success has to learn to view failure as a healthy, inevitable part of the process of getting to the top.

Dr. Joyce Brothers

The successful man will profit from his mistakes and try again in a different way. -Dale Carnegie

Even a mistake may turn out to be the one thing necessary to a worthwhile achievement.

Henry Ford

The man who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything. Theodore Roosevelt

Excellence is the gradual result of always striving to become better. Pat Riley

Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go. 

T. S. Eliot

Faith means living with uncertainty - feeling your way through life, letting your heart guide you like a lantern in the dark”

Dan Millman

Fear is like a hologram. It seems real, filled with substance. Then when you go beyond it, you realize it's only an illusion.

No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this present instant.Fra Giovanni

A guideline can be thought of as a signpost that leads us down the road—until we reach the next sign.

Donald Altman

When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable.  But to grow up is to accept vulnerability... To be alive is to be vulnerable.

Madeleine L'Engle ~

When you blame others, you give up your power to change. Douglas Noel Adams

He is not laughed at that laughs at himself first. Tomas Fuller

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

Herbert Otto

Stand for one distinctive thing that will give you a competitive advantage.

Harry Beckwith

Success is not a place at which one arrives but rather the spirit with which one undertakes and continues the journey.

Alex Noble

You can't fake listening. It shows. Raquel Welch

I have always sought to guide the future -- but it is very lonely sometimes trying to play God.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Desire, ask, believe, receive.Stella Terrill Mann

I feel the greatest reward for doing is the opportunity to do more.Jonas Salk

The farther away from here and now; the smaller is our human potential.

Rene Egli

Striving for excellence motivates you; striving for perfection is demoralizing.

Harriet Braiker

Celebrate what you want to see more of.Tom Peters

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

Benjamin Disraeli

People deal too much with the negative, with what is wrong... Why not try and see positive things, to just touch those things and make them bloom?

Thich Nhat Hanh

Listening, really listening, is tough and grinding work, often humbling, sometimes distasteful. It's a fairly sure bet that you won't like the lion's share of what you hear.

Bob Waterman

Self-knowledge is not an aim in itself, but a means of liberating the forces of spontaneous growth.

Karen Horney

Facts are useless if you need advice on how to use them.Halla

They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel.

Carl W. Buechner

Discoveries are often made by not following instructions, by going off the main road, by trying the untried.

Frank Tyger

To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. To not dare is to lose oneself.

Soren kierkegaard

The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely.Carl Jung

If I could define enlightenment briefly I would say it is ''the quiet acceptance of what is.''"

Wayne Dyer

Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.

William James

The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.Plutarch

To have a vision, one needs to have a sense of possibility far beyond reasonable thinking.

Thomas Leonard

We don't stop playing when we grow old, we grow old when we stop playing.

Anonymous

Life is what we make it, always has been, always will be. Grandma Moses

When you lose, do not lose the lesson.The Dalai Lama

Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.

The Dalai Lama

Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.The Dalai Lama

Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.The Dalai Lama

Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon.The Dalai Lama

Any fact facing us is not as important as our attitude toward it, for that determines our success or failure. The way you think about a fact may defeat you before you ever do anything about it.  You are overcome by the fact because you think you are.

Norman Vincent Peale

When the universe knocks on your door, open it up and let it in, silly!Drew Rozell

As it is more blessed to give than receive, so it must be more blessed to receive than to give back. 

Robert Frost 

You can turn painful situations around through laughter. If you can find humor in anything - even poverty - you can survive it.

Bill Cosby

I not only use all the brains I have, but all I can borrow.Woodrow Wilson

To be nobody - but yourself - in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else - means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting.

e.e. cummings

That which one feels in himself to be different is precisely that which is rare, and this is his worth.

Andre Gide

Energy creates energy. It is by spending oneself that one becomes rich.

Sarah Bernhardt

The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but progress.

Joseph Joubert

As long as there is a chance of the world getting through its troubles, I hold that a reasonable man must behave as though he were sure of it. If at the end your cheerfulness was not justified, at any rate you will have been cheerful.William Shakespeare

Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left over by those who hustle.

Abraham Lincoln

Be with what is so that what is to be may become.Soren Kierkegaard

To climb steep hills requires slow pace at first.William Shakespeare

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

Aristotle

Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.

Mahatma Gandhi

Conditions for creativity are to be puzzled; to concentrate; to accept conflict and tension; to be born everyday; to feel a sense of self.

Erich Fromm

God does not require that you succeed. He only requires that you try.Mother Teresa

The human spirit is never finished when it is defeated…it is finished when it surrenders.

Ben Stein

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

Kahlil Gibran

That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you'd understood all your life, but in a new way.

Doris Lessing

The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.William James

They do not love that do not show their love. Shakespeare

We may miss a great deal of joy because we expect it to be unusual, dramatic, and spectacular. We are waiting for lights to flash and bells to ring. But the truth is that joy is here, right now, waiting for us to notice it.

Veronica Ray

Live out of your imagination, not your history. Stephen Covey

That something happened to you is of no importance to anyone, not even to you. The important thing about you is what you choose to make happen -- your values and choices.

Ayn Rand

If you can find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn't lead anywhere.

Frank A Clark

The ultimate lesson all of us have to learn is unconditional love, which includes not only others but ourselves as well.

Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

Do what you can, with what you have, where you are. Theodore Roosevelt

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

Aristotle

When we long for life without... difficulties, remind us that oaks grow strong in contrary winds, and diamonds are made under pressure.

Peter Marshall

There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hands. Richard Bach

The only ones among you who will be really happy are those who will have sought and found how to serve.

Albert Schweitzer

Praise and blame gain and loss pleasure and sorrow come and go like the wind. To be happy, rest like a great tree in the midst of them all.

The Buddha

Personally I'm always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.

Sir Winston Churchill

We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.

Joseph Cambbell

If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.

attributed to Jesus in the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas

It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.

Seneca

Every object, every being, is a jar full of delight. Be a connoisseur.Rumi

There can be no knowledge without emotion. We may be aware of a truth, yet until we have felt its force, it is not ours. To the cognition of the brain must be added the experience of the soul.

Arnold Bennett

Life is not holding a good hand; Life is playing a poor hand well. Danish proverb

Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space lies our freedom and power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom.

Victor Frankl

Begin everyday expecting to be surprised and you will be.

Never deprive someone of hope; it might be all they have. H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words.

If you have a talent, use it in every which way possible. Don’t hoard it. Don’t dole it out like a miser. Spend it lavishly like a millionaire intent on going broke.

Brendan Francis

Follow your instincts. That's where true wisdom manifests itself. Oprah Winfrey

The more love we project, the more loving people we will attract. Guess what we attract when we project neediness, judgment, or any of those other love-destroying qualities?

Susan Jeffers

I look to the future because that's where I'm going to spend the rest of my life.

George F. Burns

Instead of waiting for the perfect opportunity, I should work toward a realization that every opportunity is perfect.

Suzan-Lori Parks

Life is to be lived. If you have to support yourself, you had bloody well better find some way that is going to be interesting.

Katherine Hepburn

The question is not what a man can scorn, or disparage, or find fault with, but what he can love, and value, and appreciate.

John Ruskin

We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give. Sir Winston Churchill

Blame is demeaning; responsibility is empowering. Victoria Moran, Author

Long life is indeed a blessing, but maybe we overdo our concern for the length of our lives and give insufficient attention to the passion we bring to whatever time we have.

Thomas Moore

Every day brings a chance to live free of regret, and with as much joy, fun and laughter as you can stand.

Oprah Winfrey

All cruelty springs from weakness. Seneca

If it ain't broke... make it better. Byron Katie

When you learn to love hell, you will be in heaven. Thaddeus Golas

Do what you fear and your fear will die. Ralph Waldo Emerson

If you are going through hell, keep going. Winston Churchill

Whatever you expect, it will be different. The Buddha

Anyone can become angry.  That is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose and in the right way - that is not easy.   Aristotle

Conditions for creativity are to be puzzled; to concentrate; to accept conflict and tension; to be born everyday; to feel a sense of self.   Erich Fromm

Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better. What if they are a little coarse, and you may get your coat soiled or torn? What if you do fail, and get fairly rolled in the dirt once or twice. Up again, you shall never be so afraid of a tumble.   Ralph Waldo Emerson

What we anticipate seldom occurs; what we least expected generally happens.  Benjamin Disraeli

A professional is a person who can do his best at a time when he doesn't particularly feel like it.

Alistaire Cooke

Doubt is the vestibule which all must pass before they can enter the temple of wisdom. When we are in doubt and puzzle out the truth by

our own exertions, we have gained something that will stay by us and will serve us again. But if to avoid the trouble of the search we avail ourselves of the superior information of a friend, such knowledge will not remain with us; we have not bought, but borrowed it.

Charles Caleb Cotton

I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do.

Willa Cather

You can do very little with faith, but you can do nothing without it. Samuel Butler

The happiness of life is made up of minute fractions - the little, soon forgotten charities of a kiss or a smile, a kind look or heartfelt compliment.   Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The supreme accomplishment is to blur the line between work and play.

Arnold Toynbee

Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around in awareness.

James Thurber

Do not think that what your thoughts dwell on does not matter. Your thoughts are making you.

Bishop Steere

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, Ph.D.

And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight inside the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.

Anais Nin

In the face of uncertainty, there is nothing wrong with hope. O. Carl Simonton  If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is a part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us.

Herman Hesse

Getting to the source of our negative self-talk is the key to ridding ourselves of it forever. Scott W. Ventrella There's a powerful transformative effect when you surround yourself with like-minded people.  Peer pressure is a great thing when it helps you accomplish your goals instead of distracting you from them.

Po Bronson

Tears are often the telescope by which men see far into heaven. Henry Ward Beecher

When the mind talks, the body listens.  We literally talk ourselves into and out of every victory or defeat in the game of life.

Denis Waitley

By listening to our self-talk, we can discover whether or not our responses, especially to tough, challenging situations, are rational and constructive or irrational and destructive.  How you talk to yourself all day long has a major impact on how you feel and perform.

Scott W. Ventrella

Simply put, if you want to feel good and be as effective and efficient as possible, talk to yourself in a positive manner.  This requires seeing the positive side of situations and people, not just the negative.

Scott W. Ventrella

Do not wait; the time will never be ‘just right’. Start where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along."

Napoleon Hill

We tell ourselves stories in order to live.Joan Didion

Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible.

Carl Jung

Perhaps once in a hundred years a person may be ruined by excessive praise, but surely once every minute someone dies inside for lack of it.

Cecil G. Osborne

When women try to get smaller and men try to get bigger, someone is saying something but no one is listening.

You've got to be careful if you don't know where you're going,because you might not get there.

Yogi Berra

Everything has something to teach you.Wayne Dyer

The great advantage of being in a rut is that when one is in a rut, one knows exactly where one is.

Arnold Bennett

Accept everything about yourself -- I mean everything.  You are you and that is the beginning and the end.  No apologies, no regrets.

Clark Moustakas

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 Ghandi   The aspects of things that are most important to us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

There are certain emotions that will kill your drive; frustration and confusion.  You can change these to a positive force.  Frustration means you are on the verge of a breakthrough.  Confusion can mean you are about to learn something.  Expect the breakthrough and expect to learn.

Kathleen Spike

Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you plant.

Robert Louis Stevenson

The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people.

Theodore Roosevelt  When no answer satisfies, and people continue to act as if they do not understand, then the wrong question is being asked.

Peter Block

We either make ourselves miserable or we make ourselves strong.  The amount of work is the same.

Carlos Casteneda

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.

Ralph Waldo Emerson 

I have not failed.  I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work. Thomas Alva Edison

When the Japanese mend broken objects they aggrandize the damage by filling the cracks with gold, because they believe that when something's suffered damage and has a history it becomes more beautiful.

Barbara Bloom

If thou art pained by any external thing, it is not this that disturbs thee, but thy own judgment about it.

Marcus Aurelius

For me happiness does not come from wealth and fame; it comes from being helpful.

Fred Rogers

Our lives begin to end the day we are silent about things that matterMartin Luther King, Jr.

There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.

Albert Einstein

The best way to get something done is to begin.

Reacting is an emotional reflex.  Response requires thought. Gail Pursell Elliott

You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within himself.

Galileo

There are two educations. One should teach us how to make a living and the other how to live.

John Adams 

Integrity is when what you do, who you are, what you say, what you feel, and what you think all come from the same place.

Madelyn Griffith Haney

You grow up the day you have your first real laugh at yourself.Ethel Barrymore

Happiness is not a destination. It is a method of life.

Burton Hills

Those who cannot forgive others break the bridge over which they themselves must pass.

Confucius

When you judge another, you do not define them, you define yourself. Wayne Dyer

We cannot change anything until we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses.”

Carl Jung

Behind every difficult person or situation is a blessing just waiting to be revealed.

Cheryl Richardson

If you concentrate on finding whatever is good in every situation, you will discover that your life will suddenly be filled with gratitude, a feeling that nurtures the soul.

Rabbi Harold Kushner Clarity of observation is possible only when we are able to suspend judgment.

Shale Paul

Anyone who doesn't believe in miracles is not a realist.David Ben-Gurion

All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter into another!

Gail Sheehy

It takes courage to demand time for yourself.  At first glance, it may seem to be the ultimate in selfishness, a real slap in the face to those

who love and depend on you.  It's not.  It means you care enough to want to see the best in yourself and give only the best to others.

Shale Paul Go confidently in the direction of your dreams.  Live the life you've imagined.

Henry David Thoreau   Weakness fixing might prevent failure, but strength building leads to excellence.  Focus on strength, and manage around weaknesses.

Marcus Buckingham This time like all times is a very good one if we but know what to do with it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.Ellen Parr

I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it.

Pablo Picasso

When you get to the end of all the light you know it's time to step into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing that one of two things shall happen: either you will be given something solid to stand on, or you will be taught how to fly.

Edward Teller

Beginning today, treat everyone you meet as if they are going to be dead by midnight.  Extend to them all the care, kindness, and understanding you can muster, and do it with no thought of any reward.  Your life will never be the same again.

Og Mandino

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.  Anais Nin

Education is ... doing anything that changes you.George Leonard

I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education.Wilson Mizner

The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.

Joseph Campbell   Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary.

Sir Cecil Beaton

What we focus on expands... If we focus on how tired and exhausted we are, we just become all the more tired and exhausted.

Chellie Campbell Feelings come with us.  They're "factory installed."  We ask others how they feel but we forget to ask ourselves.

Rev. Sally Taylor  Love is an expression of the willingness to create faith in which something is allowed to change.

The greatest use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.William James

We collect marbles, baseball cards, and antiques in order to hold on to them while they increase in value.  The purpose of collecting contacts, however, is just the opposite: to give them away--to match them with other contacts.

Tim Sanders 

Seek the wisdom of the ages, but look at the world through the eyes of a child.

Ron Wild

Eternity is a mere moment, just long enough for a joke.Hermann Hesse

The mind is its own place and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.

John Milton

Everywhere is walking distance if you have the time.Steven Wright

We can love and accept ourselves and still work like mad to change ourselves.

Dave Ellis

The way we choose to live our next moment is the way we live our lives.

Dave Ellis

I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious Ambiguity.

Gilda Radner

If I have inside of me what it takes to make a cocoon, then I also have what it takes to make me a butterfly.

Mari Clements

You have to know how to accept rejection and reject acceptance.Ray Bradbury

A good listener is not only popular everywhere, but after a while he gets to know something.

Wilson Mizner

It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.James Thurber

Hell, there are no rules here-- we're trying to accomplish something.Thomas A. Edison

FEAR isFalse Evidence Appearing RealForgetting Everything is All Right

Begin to weave and God will give you the thread. German proverb

 If one is out of touch with oneself, then one can not touch others.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Total absence of humor renders life impossible.Collette

Optimism is the one quality more associated with success and happiness than any other.

Brian Tracy  The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.

Eleanor Roosevelt

Go to your bosom: Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know. William Shakespeare

 Difficulties increase the nearer we approach our goal.

Goethe

In the small matters trust your mind; in the large ones, the heart.Sigmund Freud

 There's no substitute for getting smarter faster. And the way that you get smarter is to screw around vigorously. Try stuff. See what works. See what fails miserably. Learn. Rinse. Repeat.

Tom Peters  The more you focus on learning, joy, and preferences, instead of control, effectiveness and goals...the more you'll achieve, and you'll have a much better journey on the way, as well. 

If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.

Meister Eckhart 

When we are motivated by goals that have deep meaning, by dreams that need completion, by pure love that needs expressing, then we truly live life.

Greg Anderson

The power of intention is a critical factor in all areas of life. Simply by intending to create synchronicity in your life, you can nurture that result.

Deepak Chopra

While we wait for tomorrow, we must act for today.

A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and does what he wants to do.

Bob Dylan

Serenity is not freedom from the storm, but peace amid the storm.

The best preparation for good work tomorrow is to do good work today.

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

Martin Luther King

It takes courage to grow up and turn out to be who you really are.e.e.cummings