Inspirational Quotes

 

Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can’t see from the center. Big, undreamed-of things— the people on the edge see them first.” ~ Kurt Vonnegut

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” for me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.” ~ George Bernard Shaw

If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.
~ Albert Einstein

Don’t drink at the water’s edge, throw yourself in. Become the water. Only then will your thirst be quenched.” ~ Jeanette Berson

Yesterday is gone and its tale told. Today new seeds are growing.” ~ Rumi

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

You were born with wings. Why prefer to crawl through life?” ~ Rumi

We are all inventors, each sailing out on a voyage of discovery, guided each by a private chart, of which there is no duplicate. The world is all gates, all opportunities.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The one thing you can’t take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me. The last of one’s freedoms is to choose one’s attitude in any given circumstance.”  ~ Viktor E. Frankl

Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies.”
~ Nelson mandella

The words you speak become the house you live in.” ~Hafiz

When I dare to be powerful – to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.” ~ Audre Lorde

Your life is determined not so much by what life brings to you as by the attitude you bring to life; not so much by what happens to you as by the way your mind looks at what happens.” ~ Kahlil Gibran

When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.” ~ Lao Tzu

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” ~ J. Krishnamurti

It takes courage to endure the sharp pains of self discovery, rather than to chose the dull pain of unconsciousness that would last the rest of our lives.” ~ Marianne Williamson

In just the last three weeks, a quadrillion atoms have gone through your body, that have gone through the body of every other species on this planet. The atoms in your fingernails could have come from one galaxy, and the atoms in your nose, the same carbon, could have come from another galaxy.

You are the total universe, recycling at this moment, as this body, which is constantly and ever, never the same.

So being a dynamic process, in consciousness, through consciousness, we can change the physical body. Our moods, our feelings, our emotions, the images we have, our thoughts, our personal relationships, are affecting this wholistic system that is at the same time, mind, brain, epigenome, genome, microbiome — the whole of your biology and the totality of the Universe.” ~ Deepak Chopra, MD

Your destiny is eternal expansion. Whether you do it in joy, or not, is up to you. But you cannot stop expansion. In the same you you can’t stop the Earth from spinning. Expansion is our destiny.” ~Esther Hicks

To forgive is the highest, most beautiful form of love. In return, you will receive untold peace and happiness.” ~ Robert Muller

Peace is not something you wish for;
it’s something you make,
Something you do,
Something you are,
and something you give away.
~ John Lennon

Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.” ~ Edmund Burke

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 the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” ~ Viktor E. Frankl

What is to give light must endure burning.” ~ Viktor E. Frankl

Love is what we were born with. Fear is what we learned here.” ~Marianne Williamson

You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.” ~ Henry David Thoreau

People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child — our own two eyes. All is a miracle.” ~ Thích Nhất Hạnh

Each side thinks it’s the other side who are the ‘bad guys’… this is I guess part of the mythology of our culture. It’s a formula for making the world a better place. And the formula says, first, find the bad guy, blame something, and then go to war against it, control that thing… What’s missing here is the deeper matrix of causes that is much more complicated. So, two things happen when you realize the causes. One is that you don’t know what to do. The usual solution of finding the bad guy, and fighting the bad guy, doesn’t work…. The second thing that happens is that you realize that I’m part of the problem too, or we’re part of the problem too. It’s not just some other person.
~ Charles Eisenstein.

To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don’t need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself.” ~ Thích Nhất Hạnh

Inter-meditation provides many methods for closing the gaps between self and others, allowing us to see through the illusory veils beyond the individual—the “small self”—into the universal—the “Big Self”—obliterating the borders between the two. This boundary-less, shared spirituality takes us into the infinite space and buoyancy of the transpersonal—what my old friend, the Venerable Thich Nhat Hanh, has termed interbeing. To understand both the Big Self and the small self simultaneously is to see beyond the limits of our egos and recognize that there is no separation between us and the rest of the cosmos—the entire population of the earth, the microbes in our digestive systems, the stars in galaxies we can’t even imagine. In the Indian epic theRamayana, Hanuman, the monkey god embodying selfless devotion to a higher purpose, says, “When I forget who I am, I serve God. When I remember who I am, I am God.” This is how our small selves are part of our Big Selves. And it’s the essence of the spiritual path, the ongoing dialogue between our human and Divine nature.” ~ Lama Surya Das

Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.” ~ Pierre-Marc-Gaston

The true sign of intelligence isn’t knowledge but imagination.” ~ Albert Einstein

When we run away from difficulties in our relationship, we’re actually running away from ourselves and our own path of potential breakthroughs. Constantly escaping discomfort like this keeps us moving in circles, not forward. Avoiding the wounded places in ourselves because we don’t think we can handle them is a form of self-sabotage, self-rejection, and internal weakness. Personal intimacy is like a spark flashing out across the divide between self and other; the spark’s development, growth, enhancement, and continuity depend on strong, courageous individuals making warm, personal contact, mutually sparking and enriching each other with complementary qualities and synchronizing energies throughout the entire dance of relationship, regardless of temporary ups and downs or sidesteps.” ~ Lama Surya Das

Maharajji said, “We look for God in all the wrong places. He’s hiding in the last place we ever look, within our own hearts and souls. We think we’re chasing after and following Him, but it’s more like He’s trying to catch us and we’re running away!

Fear is the cheapest room in the house.
I would like to see you living
In better conditions.
~ Rumi

Be content with what you have;
rejoice in the way things are.
When you realize there is nothing lacking,
the whole world belongs to you.
~ Lao Tzu

So often we look for God in all the wrong places — in the shadows of our fear, in the illusion of safety, in the comfort of the familiar, in the confines of judgment and exclusion. And then we wonder why our lives seem so dark and fearful and small. But when we turn our attention outward and take the risk of opening ourselves to the wild and dangerous oneness with all of creation, we will find ourselves coming face to face with the God of life and love and abundance. We can live life in the outer darkness or we can live it in the joy of our master. We can live in fear or we can live in faith. The choice is ours. May our choices be filled with wild, reckless abandon. May our choices be filled with God.” ~ Pastor Roger Lynn

Forgiveness is giving up all hope for a better past.” ~  Jack Korenfield.