In August, for reasons unknown, I began jotting down quotes that appealed to me. I didn't go looking for them, or not many of them, anyway. They are things I ran across on the Internet or in the paper. When I saw them, I copied them into a small notebook.
Because I am - and have always been - a less-than-organized soul, I thought it best to put them into the computer before I threw them away in a fit cleaning. Thus, I have placed them here for my convenience. If you should take a few minutes to read them, I hope you find them as full of meaning as I did.
"If you asked me for my New Year Resolution, it would be to find out who I am."
Cyril Cusack, Irish actor
". . . always tell the truth, do no harm to others, don't think you are the most important being on earth. Rich or poor, you can then look anyone in the eye and say, 'I'm probably no better than you, but I'm certainly your equal.'"
"As sure as time, history is repeating itself, and as sure as man is man, history is the last place he'll look for his lessons."
Harper Lee - Go Set a Watchman
"Courage is not a man with a gun in his hand. It's knowing you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do."
Harper Lee - To Kill a Mockingbird
"Remember this also, it's always easy to look back and say what we were yesterday, ten years ago. It is hard to see what we are. If you can master that trick, you'll get along."
Harper Lee - Go Set a Watchman
"Before I can live with other folks I've got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience."
Harper Lee - To Kill a Mockingbird
"If you didn't want much, there was plenty."
Harper Lee - Go Set a Watchman
"About the time we can make ends meet, somebody moves the ends."
"The most valuable possession you can own is an open heart. The most powerful weapon you can be is an instrument of peace."
"Live in the sunshine, swim in the sea, drink the wild air."
"Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened."
Dr. Seuss
"Despite the forecast, live like it's spring."
Lily Pulitzer
"A good laugh and a long sleep are the two best cures for anything."
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"Paradoxical as it may seem, to believe in youth is to look backward; to look forward we must believe in age."
Dorothy L. Sayers
"Success is not final, failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts."
Winston Churchill
"Night air, good conversation, and a sky full of stars can heal almost any wound."
Beau Taplin
"The three best things in life are: A good landing, a good orgasm, and a good bowel movement. A night carrier landing is one of the few opportunities in life when you get to experience them all at the same time."
Ready Room sign - USS Enterprise 1969
"Don't dance around the perimeter of the person you want to be - Dive in fully and completely."
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"Eat better. Run more. Make a good breakfast. Drink water. Eat fruit. Read books. Adventure. Talk less. Listen more. Feel deeper. Love better. Open your eyes. Experience life. Be happy."
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"The human body is 90% water. We're basically cucumbers with anxiety."
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"If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, forever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never."\
Soren Kierkegaard
"When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping." To this day, especially in times of disaster, I remember my mother's words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers - so many caring people in the world."
Fred Rogers
"The old forget. The young don't know."
Japanese proverb
"Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can."
Arthur Ashe
"Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall."
F. Scott Fitzgerald
"A man is like a fraction whose numerator is what he is and whose denominator is what he thinks of himself. The bigger the denominator the smaller the fraction."
Leo Tolstoy
"Talking comes by nature, silence by wisdom."
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"An expert is a man who has made all mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field."
Niels Bohr
"It's good to have money and the things that money can buy, but it's good, too, to check once in a while and make sure you haven't lost the things that money can't buy."
George H. Lorimer
"They say, with age comes wisdom, so, therefore, I don't have wrinkles, I have wise cracks."
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"It's not how much we have, but how much we enjoy, that makes happiness."
Charles Spurgeon
"The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant. His culture is based on, "I am not sure."
H. L. Mencken
"Start by doing what's necessary, then do what's possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible."
Francis of Assisi
"Do not grow old, no matter how long you live. Never cease to stand like curious children before the Great Mystery into which we were born."
Alfred Einstein
"Men make counterfeit money; in many more cases, money makes counterfeit men."
Syndey J. Harris
"Would the boy you were be proud of the man you are?"
Laurence J. Peters
"Don't watch the clock; do what it does. Keep going."
Sam Levenson
"Very little is needed to make a happy life; it's all within yourself, your way of thinking."
Marcus Aurelius
"It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop."
Confucius
"The world cares very little about what a man or woman knows; it is what the man or woman is able to do."
Booker T. Washington
"Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm, but the harm does not interest them."
T.S. Eliot
"Many are called, but few get up."
Oliver Herford
"One can be very happy without demanding that others agree with him."
Ira Gershwin
"What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult for each other."
George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans)
"If there is a God, I don't think He would demand that anyone bow down or stand up to Him."
Rebecca West
"Life is easier to take than you'd think; all that is necessary is to accept the impossible, do without the indispensable, and bear the intolerable."
Kathleen Norris Emil
"My friends are my 'estate.' Forgive me then the avarice to hoard them."
Emily Dickinson
"Slow down and enjoy life. It's not only the scenery you miss by going too fast - you also miss the sense of where you are and where you are going."
Eddie Cantor
"You can tell the size of a man by the size of the thing that makes him mad."
Adlai Stevenson
"If we would have new knowledge, we must get us a whole world of new questions."
Susanne Langer
"By all these lovely tokens
September days are here.
With summer's best of weather
And autumn's best of cheer."
Helen Hunt Jackson
"Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough."
Franklin D. Roosevelt
"Time is a created thing. To say, 'I don't have time,' is like saying, 'I don't want.'"
Lau Tzu
"Life is just a short walk from the cradle to the grave and it sure behooves us to be kind to one another along the way."
Alice Childress
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities"
Voltaire
"Better to trust a man who is frequently in error over one who is never in doubt."
Eric Sevareid
"Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens."
Jimi Hendrix
"A tart temper never mellows with age, and a sharp tongue is the only edged tool that grows keener with age."
Washington Irving
"A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject."
Winston Churchill
"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
Winston Churchill
"Notice that the stiffest tree is the most easily cracked, while the bamboo or willow survives by bending with the wind."
Bruce Lee
"I prefer someone who burns the flag and wraps themselves in the Constitution over someone who burns the Constitution and then wraps themselves in the flag."
Molly Ivins
"Be weird. Be random. Because you never know who would love the person you hide."
C.S. Lewis
"You're only given a small spark of madness. You must not lose it,"
Robin Williams
"Forget safety. Live where you fear to live. Destroy your reputation. Be notorious."
Rumi
"The great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages you've been."
Madeleine L'Engle
"Surplus wealth is a sacred trust which its possessor is bound to administer in his lifetime for the good of the community."
Andrew Carnegie
"Death is one of the few things that can be done lying down. The difference between sex and death is that with death you can do it alone and no one is going to make fun of you."
Woody Allen
"His lack of education is more than compensated for by his keenly developed moral bankruptcy."
Woody Allen
"Fairy tales are more than true, not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us dragons can be beaten."
G.K. Chesterton
"I'm not young enough to know everything."
Sir James Matthew Barrie
"My faith demands that I do whatever I can, wherever I am, whenever I can with whatever I have to try to make a difference."
Jimmy Carter
"To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make the soul grow. So do it."
Kurt Vonnegut
"You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream."
C.S. Lewis
"Authenticity is the daily practice of letting go of who we think we are supposed to be and embracing who we actually are."
Brene Brown
