Ever since I can remember, I have collected quotes – words
spoken by others that have moved me in some way. This is a
place for me to share this rather quirky obsession.
There is no rhyme, reason or order to the selection of quotes that
follow – it is a whimsically random list. Hopefully it
will grow and change over time – as I grow and change! – and
as I continue to unearth those saved precious words hidden in old
journals and stuck between the pages of loved books. Take what has
meaning for you and gently disregard the rest. Occasionally
I may even share musings of my own...
| Quotes to Ponder: |
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“Don’t
ask yourself what the world needs – ask yourself what
makes you come alive, and then go do it. Because what the world
needs are people who have come alive.”
– Harold Thurman Whitman |
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“Be
brave enough to live creatively. The creative is the place
where no one else has ever been. You have to leave the city
of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition.
You can’t get there by bus, only by hard work, risking,
and by not quite knowing what you are doing. What you discover
will be wonderful: yourself.”
– Alan Alda |
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"Truth
is for tailors and shoemakers… I, on the
contrary, have always held that the Lord has a penchant for
masquerades."
– Isak Dinesen |
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“Our
work is to show we have been breathed upon—to show it,
give it out, sing it out, to live it out in the topside world
what we have received through our sudden knowings from story,
from body, from dreams and journeys of all sorts.”
– Clarrissa Pinkola Estes |
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“Anything
you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you.
You open your safe and find ashes.”
– Annie Dillard |
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“Writers
need faith that a kingdom of significance stands within.”
– Bonnie Friedman |
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“It
may be when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our
real work, and that when we no longer know which way to go,
we have begun our real journey.”
– Wendell Berry |
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“There
is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated
through you into action, and because there is only one of you
in all time, this expression is unique. If you block it, it
will never exist through any other medium. It will be lost.
The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine
how good it is, nor how valuable it is, nor how it compares
with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours
clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.
You do not even
have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep
open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep
the channel open. There is no satisfaction whatever at any
time. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed
unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive.”
– Martha Graham to Agnes DeMille |
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“Wherever
you stand is where you hold up the sky.”
– Malaysian proverb |
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“Just as the
ocean can be found in each single drop of water, so can the whole
of humanity be found within each human being.”
– Indian
proverb |
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“Your vision will become clear
only when you look into your heart.”
– Carl Jung |
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“It takes
courage to grow up and turn out to be who you really are.”
– e.e.
cummings |
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“Trust that the same Power
that gifted you with your dream knows how to help you make
it come true.”
– Sarah Ban Breathnach |
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"We
each have the choice in any setting to step back and let go
of the mind-set of scarcity. Once we let go of scarcity, we
discover the surprising truth of sufficiency. By sufficiency,
I don't mean a quantity of anything. Sufficiency isn't two
steps up from poverty or one step short of abundance. It isn't
a measure of barely enough or more than enough. Sufficiency
isn't an amount at all. It is an experience, a context we generate,
a declaration, a knowing that there is enough, and that we
are enough."
– Lynne Twist |
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"When
you know who you are; when your mission is clear and you burn
with the inner fire of unbreakable will; no cold can touch
your heart; no deluge can dampen your purpose."
– Chief Seattle |
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"To think creatively,
we must be able to look afresh at what we normally take for granted."
– George
Kneller |
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"Only
when your consciousness is totally focused on the moment you
are in can you receive whatever gift, lesson, or delight that
moment has to offer."
– Barbara de Angelis |
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"Come now,
noble souls, and take a look at the splendor you are carrying
within yourselves! But if you do not let go of yourself completely,
if you do not drown yourself in this bottomless sea of the Godhead,
you cannot get to know this divine light."
– Meister Eckhart |
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“A religion is a ladder
that is used to climb the heights of spirituality, but it must
not be confused with those heights. People very seldom get
into arguments over spirituality, but they often get into conflicts—even
wars—over religion.
There are an infinite number of paths to Truth, but only one
journey. In spirit, we are one.”
– Greg Barrette |
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“Every
happening, great and small, is a parable whereby God speaks
to us, and the art of life is to get the message.”
– Malcolm Muggeridge |
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“Don’t
look at your feet to see if you are doing it right. Just
dance.”
– Anne Lamott |
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“Our
lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things
that matter.”
– Dr. Martin Luther King |
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“Throw
yourself like seed... from your work you will be able one
day to gather yourself.”
– Miguel de Unamuno, translated by Robert Bly |
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“We
shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring
will be to arrive where we started... and know the place for
the first time.”
– T.S. Eliot |
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“When
you come to the edge of all the light you know and are about
to drop off into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing
that one of two things will happen: There will be something
solid to stand on or you will be taught how to fly.”
– Anonymous |
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“I
shall allow no man to belittle my soul by making me hate him.”
– Booker T. Washington |
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“If
you bring forth what lies within your soul it will save you.
If you do not, it will destroy you.”
– Jesus, in the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas |
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“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 some day
in life you will have been all of these.”
– George Washington Carver |
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“Story
is a medicine which strengthens and arights the individual
and the community.”
– Clarissa Pinkola Estes |
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“As
long as there’s one to sing and one to dance, one to
speak and one to listen, life will go on.”
– Oren Lyons to Bill Moyers |
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“Stories
differ from advice in that once you get them, they become a
fabric of your whole soul. That is why they heal you.”
– Alice Walker |
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“It
is wisdom to believe the heart.”
– George Santayana
|
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“Re-examine
all you have been told in school or church or in any book,
and dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh
shall be a great poem...”
– Walt Whitman
|
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“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
|
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“A
woman in harmony with her spirit is like a river flowing. She
goes where she will without pretense and arrives at her destination
prepared to be herself and only herself.”
– Maya Angelou
|
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“Help
us to be ever faithful gardeners of the spirit, who know that
without darkness nothing comes to birth, and without light
nothing flowers.”
– May Sarton
|
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“There
are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or
the mirror that reflects it.”
– Edith Wharton
|
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“The
universe is made of stories, not atoms.”
– Muriel Rukeyser
|
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“Those
who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who could
not hear the music.”
– Angela Monet
|
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“The
illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot
read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and re-learn.”
– Alvin Toffler
|
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“The
theatre is the last forum where idealism is still an open question:
many audiences all over the world will answer positively from
their own experience that they have seen the face of the invisible
through an experience on the stage that transcended their experience
in life.”
– Peter Brook
|
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“You
just have to keep dancing, keep working ... There will always
be someone there willing to give you a hand.”
– Morgan
Freeman |
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“Stories
go to work on you like arrows.”
– Benson Lewis
|
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“Don’t
let schooling interfere with your education.”
– Mark Twain
|
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“Before
our world became reified and compartmentalized, the doctor,
artist... and storyteller were united in one role, that of
shaman or healer.”
– Celia Coates
|
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“You
do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through
the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal
of your body love what it loves.”
– Mary Oliver in “Wild Geese”
|
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“Myth
is the song of the imagination inspired by the energies of
the body.”
– Joseph Campbell
|
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“What
wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?”
– Jean Jacques Rousseau
|
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“What
we learn with pleasure we never forget.”
– Alfred Mercier
|
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“Play
is the only way the highest intelligence of humankind can unfold.”
– Joseph Chilton Pearce
|
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“In
the end, the secret to learning is so simple: forget about
it. Think only about whatever you love. Follow
it, do it, dream about it. One day, you will glance up
at your collection of Japanese literature, or trip over the
solar oven you built, and it will hit you: Learning was there
all the time, happening by itself.”
– Grace Llewellyn
|
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“Be
patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart. Try
to love the questions themselves...”
– Rainer Maria Rilke
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“This
is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized
by yourself as a mighty one; the being a force of nature instead
of a feverish selfish clod of ailments and grievances complaining
that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.
I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community
and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever
I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for
the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life
for its own sake. Life is no ‘brief candle’ to
me. It is sort of a splendid torch which I have hold
of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as
possible before handing it over to future generations.”
– George Bernard Shaw
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“It’s
ok to wake up laughing.”
– me
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