Simply Put Together Inspirational Quotes

Snow Quotes

2012-02-01T12:28:00.000-05:00

Snow has brought so many of us beautiful moments both in childhood and adulthood. Enjoy these quotes about snow and see what memories they bring on!

When I no longer thrill to the first snow of the season, I'll know I'm growing old.
-Lady Bird Johnson

The first fall of snow is not only an event, it is a magical event. You go to bed in one kind of world and wake up in another quite different, and if this is not enchantment then where is it to be found?

-J. B. (John Boynton) Priestley
Have you seen but a bright lily grow,
Before rude hands have touched it?
Have you marked but the fall o' the snow
Before the soil hath smutched it?
...O so white! O so soft! O so sweet is she!
-Ben Johnson

Genius is an African who dreams up snow.
-Vladimir Nabokov

And the poorest twig on the elm-tree
was ridged inch deep with pearl.
-James Russell Lowell

Don't complain about the snow on your neighbor's roof when your own doorstep is unclean.
-Confucius

No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.
-Stanislaw Lec

Snowmen fall from heaven... unassembled.
-Anonymous

A snowflake is one of God's most fragile creations, but look what they can do when they stick together!
-Anonymous

Where does the white go when the snow melts?
-Author Unknown

A lot of people like snow. I find it to be an unnecessary freezing of water.
-Carl Reiner

Even in winter an isolated patch of snow has a special quality.
-Andy Goldsworthy

Out of the bosom of the Air, Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken, Over the woodlands brown and bare, Over the harvest-fields forsaken, Silent, and soft, and slow Descends the snow.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Getting an inch of snow is like winning 10 cents in the lottery.
-Bill Watterson

I used to be Snow White, but I drifted.
-Mae West

Advice is like snow – the softer it falls, the longer it dwells upon, and the deeper in sinks into the mind.
-Samuel Taylor Coleridge

There’s one good thing about snow, it makes your lawn look as nice as your neighbor’s.
-Clyde Moore

I love snow, snow, and all the forms of radiant frost.
-P B Shelley

The snow goose need not bathe to make itself white. Neither need you do anything but be yourself.
-Lao Tzu

There is nothing in the world more beautiful than the forest clothed to its very hollows in snow. It is the still ecstasy of nature, wherein every spray, every blade of grass, every spire of reed, every intricacy of twig, is clad with radiance.”
-William Sharp

The snow itself is lonely or, if you prefer, self-sufficient. There is no other time when the whole world seems composed of one thing and one thing only.
-Joseph Wood Krutch

Minneapolis has two seasons: Road Removal and Snow Repair.
-Steven Brust

Snow provokes responses that reach right back to childhood.
-Andy Goldsworthy

It’s a pity one can’t imagine what one can’t compare to anything. Genius is an African who dreams up snow.
-Vladimir Nabokov

When snow falls, nature listens.
-Antoinette van Kleeff

Sunshine cannot bleach the snow, Nor time unmake what poets know
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Snowflakes are kisses from heaven.
-Author Unknown

Don’t knock the weather; nine-tenths of the people couldn’t start a conversation if it didn’t change once in a while.
-Kin Hubbard

Oh! the snow, the beautiful snow, Filling the sky and earth below, Over the housetops, over the street, Over the heads of the people you meet. Dancing, Flirting, Skimming along.
-Joseph Warren Watson

The Eskimos had fifty-two names for snow because it was important to them: there ought to be as many for love.
-Margaret Atwood

Snow and adolescence are the only problems that disappear if you ignore them long enough.
-Earl Wilson

Corruption is like a ball of snow, once it’s set a rolling it must increase.
-Charles Caleb Colton

Emerson Quotes

2012-01-04T13:33:00.000-05:00

Rebel with a Cause: Emerson was ahead of his time. A philosopher, writer, lecturer. He believed in humanity, in the value of the human experience, in nature. His words, though written over 150 years ago, are timeless reminders of how to live life well.

A friend is one before whom I may think aloud.

A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer.

All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.

All our progress is an unfolding, like a vegetable bud. You have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge as the plant has root, bud, and fruit. Trust the instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.

As we grow old…the beauty steals inward.

Be not the slave of your own past. Plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep and swim far, so you shall come back with self-respect, with new power, with an advanced experience that shall explain and overlook the old.

Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet.

Character is higher than intellect... A great soul will be strong to live, as well as to think.

Children are all foreigners.

Colleges hate geniuses, just as convents hate saints.

Conversation is an art in which a man has all mankind for his competitors, for it is that which all are practising every day while they live.

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.

For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.

To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and to endure the betrayal of false friends. To appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know that even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.

Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.

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

Always do what you are afraid to do.

What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.

When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.

Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.

Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.

Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.

Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs. Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them.

Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air.

The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, not the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when you discover that someone else believes in you and is willing to trust you with a friendship

It is not the length of life, but the depth.

The earth laughs in flowers.

Dare to live the life you have dreamed for yourself. Go forward and make your dreams come true.

All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.”

I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.

Life is a journey, not a destination.

The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.

Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.

The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.

Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.

Make the most of yourself....for that is all there is of you.

Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to give thanks continuously. And because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude.

You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.

The only way to have a friend is to be one.

Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it.

Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.

Be silly. Be honest. Be kind.

Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis.

Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.

Shallow men believe in luck or in circumstance. Strong men believe in cause and effect.

Most of the shadows of this life are caused by standing in one's own sunshine.”

Guard well your spare moments. They are like uncut diamonds. Discard them and their value will never be known. Improve them and they will become the brightest gems in a useful life.

When friendships are real, they are not glass threads or frost work, but the solidest things we can know.

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.

Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

Don't be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

Don't waste yourself in rejection, nor bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good.

Every great and commanding moment in the annals of the world is the triumph of some enthusiasm.

Every sweet has its sour; every evil its good.

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could.

Give all to love; obey thy heart.

God enters by a private door into every individual.

He has not learned the lesson of life who does not every day surmount a fear.

I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and the new.

I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the Stern Fact, the Sad Self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from.

If I have lost confidence in myself, I have the universe against me.

New Year's Quotes

2011-12-27T10:37:00.000-05:00

I hope you enjoy this collection of funny and inspirational
New Year's quotes Please feel free to comment or add on any that you might have yourself!

You have done what you could — some blunders and absurdities have crept in. Forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

An optimist stays up until midnight to see the new year in. A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves.
Bill Vaughan

Many people look forward to the new year for a new start on old habits. Author Unknown

A New Year's resolution is something that goes in one year and out the other.
Author Unknown

Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let each new year find you a better man.
Benjamin Franklin

No one ever regarded the First of January with indifference. It is that from which all date their time, and count upon what is left. It is the nativity of our common Adam.
Charles Lamb

I'm a little bit older, a little bit wiser, a little bit rounder, but still none the wiser.
Robert Paul

New Year's Day is every man's birthday.
Charles Lamb

Never tell your resolution beforehand, or it's twice as onerous a duty. John Selden

Year's end is neither an end nor a beginning but a going on, with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us.
Hal Borland

The merry year is born
Like the bright berry from the naked thorn.
Hartley Coleridge

If you asked me for my New Year Resolution, it would be to find out who I am.
Cyril Cusack

Your success and happiness lies in you. Resolve to keep happy, and your joy and you shall form an invincible host against difficulties.
Helen Keller

Celebrate what you want to see more of.
Tom Peters

Let us celebrate the occasion with wine and sweet words.
Plautus

Sometimes too much to drink is barely enough.
Mark Twain

New Year's eve is like every other night; there is no pause in the march of the universe, no breathless moment of silence among created things that the passage of another twelve months may be noted; and yet no man has quite the same thoughts this evening that come with the coming of darkness on other nights.
Hamilton Wright Mabie

The Old Year has gone. Let the dead past bury its own dead. The New Year has taken possession of the clock of time. All hail the duties and possibilities of the coming twelve months!
Edward Payson Powell

The bad news is time flies. The good news is you’re the pilot.
Michael Altshuler

Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right.
Oprah Winfrey

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 1850

The proper behavior all through the holiday season is to be drunk. This drunkenness culminates on New Year's Eve, when you get so drunk you kiss the person you're married to.
P.J. O'Rourke

Every man should be born again on the first day of January. Start with a fresh page. Take up one hole more in the buckle if necessary, or let down one, according to circumstances; but on the first of January let every man gird himself once more, with his face to the front, and take no interest in the things that were and are past.
Henry Ward Beecher

New Year's Day: Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.
Mark Twain

The new year begins in a snow-storm of white vows.
George William Curtis

For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
T.S. Eliot, "Little Gidding"

We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year's Day.
Edith Lovejoy Pierce

Yesterday, everybody smoked his last cigar, took his last drink and swore his last oath. Today, we are a pious and exemplary community. Thirty days from now, we shall have cast our reformation to the winds and gone to cutting our ancient shortcomings considerably shorter than ever.
Mark Twain

Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

People are so worried about what they eat between Christmas and the New Year, but they really should be worried about what they eat between the New Year and Christmas.
Author Unknown

And ye, who have met with Adversity's blast,
And been bow'd to the earth by its fury;
To whom the Twelve Months, that have recently pass'd
Were as harsh as a prejudiced jury -
Still, fill to the Future! and join in our chime,
The regrets of remembrance to cozen,
And having obtained a New Trial of Time,
Shout in hopes of a kindlier dozen.
Thomas Hood

Drop the last year into the silent limbo of the past. Let it go, for it was imperfect, and thank God that it can go.
Brooks Atkinson

Each age has deemed the new-born year
The fittest time for festal cheer.
Walter Scott

Good resolutions are simply checks that men draw on a bank where they have no account.
Oscar Wilde

Glory to God in highest heaven,
Who unto man His Son hath given;
While angels sing with tender mirth,
A glad new year to all the earth.
Martin Luther

A new oath holds pretty well; but... when it is become old, and frayed out, and damaged by a dozen annual retryings of its remains, it ceases to be serviceable; any little strain will snap it.
Mark Twain

When then is lost, as time is by,
we look upon the yearly wine
to see our substance in the lees.
Did tribe and purse most pleasing leave?
To look for clear and faithful sense,
that gives a bodied stance bouquet,
then see the vat at mirror's face
and find in it, the yearly pace.
E. Marshall, Vintner Epilogue (Happy Old Year)

Many years ago I resolved never to bother with New Year's resolutions, and I've stuck with it ever since.
Dave Beard

I do think New Year's resolutions can't technically be expected to begin on New Year's Day, don't you? Since, because it's an extension of New Year's Eve, smokers are already on a smoking roll and cannot be expected to stop abruptly on the stroke of midnight with so much nicotine in the system. Also dieting on New Year's Day isn't a good idea as you can't eat rationally but really need to be free to consume whatever is necessary, moment by moment, in order to ease your hangover. I think it would be much more sensible if resolutions began generally on January the second.
Helen Fielding, Bridget Jones's Diary

New Year's Eve, where auld acquaintance be forgot. Unless, of course, those tests come back positive.
Jay Leno

We meet today
To thank Thee for the era done,
And Thee for the opening one.
John Greenleaf Whittier

One resolution I have made, and try always to keep, is this: To rise above the little things.
John Burroughs

Of all sound of all bells... most solemn and touching is the peal which rings out the Old Year.
Charles Lamb

A happy New Year! Grant that I
May bring no tear to any eye
When this New Year in time shall end
Let it be said I've played the friend,
Have lived and loved and labored here,
And made of it a happy year.
Edgar Guest

It wouldn't be New Year's if I didn't have regrets.
William Thomas

We spend January 1 walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched. Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives... not looking for flaws, but for potential.
Ellen Goodman

May all your troubles last as long as your New Year's resolutions.
Joey Adams

He who breaks a resolution is a weakling;
He who makes one is a fool.
F.M. Knowles

The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes. Unless a particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions. Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective.
G.K. Chesterton

I think in terms of the day's resolutions, not the year's.
Henry Moore

Time has no divisions to mark its passage, there is never a thunder-storm or blare of trumpets to announce the beginning of a new month or year. Even when a new century begins it is only we mortals who ring bells and fire off pistols.
Thomas Mann

I made no resolutions for the New Year. The habit of making plans, of criticizing, sanctioning and molding my life, is too much of a daily event for me.
Anaïs Nin

New Year's is a harmless annual institution, of no particular use to anybody save as a scapegoat for promiscuous drunks, and friendly calls and humbug resolutions.
Mark Twain

Every man regards his own life as the New Year's Eve of time.
Jean Paul Richter

Star Wars Quotes

2011-12-23T06:09:00.002-05:00

Some quotes from my favorite movie series ever...

Fear is the path to the Dark Side. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.
YODA, Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace

Death is a natural part of life. Rejoice for those around you who transform into the Force.
YODA, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith

Truly wonderful the mind of a child is.
YODA, Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones

Always in motion is the future.
YODA, Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back

Only a Sith Lord deals in absolutes.
Obi-Wan Kenobi, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith

The fear of loss is a path to the Dark Side.
YODA, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith

Your eyes can deceive you; don't trust them.
OBI-WAN KENOBI, Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope

Size matters not. Look at me. Judge me by my size, do you?
YODA, Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back

What if the democracy we thought we were serving no longer exists, and the Republic has become the very evil we've been fighting to destroy?
PADME AMIDALA, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith

Who's the more foolish: the fool, or the fool who follows him?
OBI-WAN KENOBI, Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope

Death is a natural part of life. Rejoice for those around you who transform into the Force. Mourn them do not. Miss them do not. Attachment leads to jealousy. The shadow of greed that is. Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose.
YODA, Star Wars Episode III, Revenge of the Sith

There's always a bigger fish.
QUI-GON JINN, Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace

R2-D2, it is you, It Is You!
C3PO to R2-D2, Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope

The force is an energy field created by all living things, it surrounds us, it penetrates us, it binds the galaxy together.
OBI-WAN KENOBI, Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope

They were at the wrong place at the wrong time naturally they became heroes.
GEORGE LUCAS

Star Trek?” I asked her. “Really?”
“What?” she demanded, bending unnaturally black eyebrows together.
“There are two kinds of people in the universe, Molly,” I said. “Star Trek fans and Star Wars fans. This is shocking.”
She sniffed. “This is the post-nerd-closet world, Harry. It’s okay to like both.”
“Blasphemy and lies,” I said.”
Jim Butcher, Ghost Story

“Bet you can't even name one romantic movie you like," she teased.
She felt smug when a few minutes went by and Oliver was still unable to name one romantic movie he could profess to enjoy.
The Empire Strikes Back," Oliver finally declared, tapping his horn at a Prius that wandered over the line.
The Empire Strikes Back? The Star Wars movie? That's not romantic!" Schuyler huffed, fiddling with the air conditioner controls.
Au contraire, my dear, it's very romantic. The last scene, you know, when they're about to put Han in that freezing cryogenic chamber or whatever? Remember?"
Schuyler mmm-hmmmed.
And Leia leans over the ledge and says, 'I love you.'"
That's cheesy, not romantic," Schuyler argued, although she did like that part.
Let me explain. What's romantic is what Han says back. Remember what he says to her? After she says 'I love you'?"
Schuyler grinned. Maybe Oliver had a point. "Han says, 'I know.'"
Exactly," Oliver tapped the wheel. "He doesn't have to say anything so trite as 'I love you." Because that's already understood. And that's romantic.”
― Melissa de la Cruz, Revelations

What's your favorite Star Wars Quote? Add them into the comments section below!

2011-11-13T22:16:00.001-05:00

Here are some simple quotes about Thanksgiving for you to stop for a minute and enjoy.

Maria

It is literally true, as the thankless say, that they have nothing to be thankful for. He who sits by the fire, thankless for the fire, is just as if he had no fire. Nothing is possessed save in appreciation, of which thankfulness is the indispensable ingredient. But a thankful heart hath a continual feast.
W.J. Cameron

If you want to turn your life around, try thankfulness. It will change your life mightily.
Gerald Good

The Pilgrims made seven times more graves than huts. No Americans have been more impoverished than these who, nevertheless, set aside a day of thanksgiving.
H.U. Westermayer

If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, "thank you," that would suffice.
Meister Eckhart

As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.
JF Kennedy

Thanksgiving Day comes, by statute, once a year; to the honest man it comes as frequently as the heart of gratitude will allow.
Edward Sandford Martin

What we're really talking about is a wonderful day set aside on the fourth Thursday of November when no one diets. I mean, why else would they call it Thanksgiving?
Erma Bombeck

Thanksgiving, after all, is a word of action.
W.J. Cameron

He who thanks but with the lips
Thanks but in part;
The full, the true Thanksgiving
Comes from the heart.
J.A. Shedd

Thanksgiving was never meant to be shut up in a single day.
Robert Caspar Lintner

For each new morning with its light,
For rest and shelter of the night,
For health and food, for love and friends,
For everything Thy goodness sends.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve minutes. Half-times take twelve minutes. This is not coincidence. Erma Bombeck

For flowers that bloom about our feet;
For tender grass, so fresh, so sweet;
For song of bird, and hum of bee;
For all things fair we hear or see,
Father in heaven, we thank Thee!
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Thou hast given so much to me,
Give one thing more, - a grateful heart;
Not thankful when it pleaseth me,
As if Thy blessings had spare days,
But such a heart whose pulse may be Thy praise.
George Herbert

Ah! on Thanksgiving day....
When the care-wearied man seeks his mother once more,
And the worn matron smiles where the girl smiled before.
What moistens the lips and what brightens the eye?
What calls back the past, like the rich pumpkin pie?
John Greenleaf Whittier

Thanksgiving comes to us out of the prehistoric dimness, universal to all ages and all faiths. At whatever straws we must grasp, there is always a time for gratitude and new beginnings.
J. Robert Moskin

Thanksgiving. It's like we didn't even try to come up with a tradition. The tradition is, we overeat. 'Hey, how about at Thanksgiving we just eat a lot?' 'But we do that every day!' 'Oh. What if we eat a lot with people that annoy the hell out of us?'
Jim Gaffigan

Let us remember that, as much has been given us, much will be expected from us, and that true homage comes from the heart as well as from the lips, and shows itself in deeds.
Theodore Roosevelt

We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.
Thornton Wilder

Thanksgiving is the holiday of peace, the celebration of work and the simple life... a true folk-festival that speaks the poetry of the turn of the seasons, the beauty of seedtime and harvest, the ripe product of the year - and the deep, deep connection of all these things with God.
Ray Stannard Baker (David Grayson)

On Thanksgiving Day, all over America, families sit down to dinner at the same moment - halftime.
Author Unknown

Dear Lord; we beg but one boon more:
Peace in the hearts of all men living,
peace in the whole world this Thanksgiving.
Joseph Auslander

On Thanksgiving Day we acknowledge our dependence.
William Jennings Bryan

Lord, 'tis Thy plenty-dropping hand
That soils my land,
And giv'st me for my bushel sowne
Twice ten for one.
All this, and better, Thou dost send
Me, to this end,
That I should render, for my part,
A thankful heart.
Robert Herrick

Thanksgiving is America's national chow-down feast, the one occasion each year when gluttony becomes a patriotic duty.
Michael Dresser

Forever on Thanksgiving Day
The heart will find the pathway home.
Wilbur D. Nesbit

Grace isn't a little prayer you chant before receiving a meal. It's a way to live.
Attributed to Jacqueline Winspear

Give thanks for unknown blessings already on their way.
Native American Saying

To speak gratitude is courteous and pleasant, to enact gratitude is generous and noble, but to live gratitude is to touch Heaven.
Johannes A. Gaertner

A thankful heart is not only the greatest virtue, but the parent of all the other virtues.
Cicero

But see, in our open clearings, how golden the melons lie;
Enrich them with sweets and spices, and give us the pumpkin-pie!
Margaret Junkin Preston

Coexistence: what the farmer does with the turkey - until Thanksgiving. Mike Connolly

God has two dwellings; one in heaven, and the other in a meek and thankful heart.
Izaak Walton

I have strong doubts that the first Thanksgiving even remotely resembled the "history" I was told in second grade. But considering that (when it comes to holidays) mainstream America's traditions tend to be over-eating, shopping, or getting drunk, I suppose it's a miracle that the concept of giving thanks even surfaces at all.
Ellen Orleans

If you want to turn your life around, try thankfulness. It will change your life mightily.
Gerald Good

Thanksgiving, man. Not a good day to be my pants.
Kevin James

Stand up, on this Thanksgiving Day, stand upon your feet. Believe in man. Soberly and with clear eyes, believe in your own time and place. There is not, and there never has been a better time, or a better place to live in. Phillips Brooks

Nothing is more honorable than a grateful heart.
Seneca

All that we behold is full of blessings.
William Wordsworth

For what I give, not what I take,
For battle, not for victory,
My prayer of thanks I make.
Odell Shepard

Happy We-Stole-Your-Land-and-Killed-Your-People Day!
Thanksgiving toast, from the movie Sweet November

O Lord that lends me life,
Lend me a heart replete with thankfulness.
William Shakespeare

None is more impoverished than the one who has no gratitude. Gratitude is a currency that we can mint for ourselves, and spend without fear of bankruptcy.
Fred De Witt Van Amburgh

Hem your blessings with thankfulness so they don't unravel.
Author Unknown

The funny thing about Thanksgiving, or any huge meal, is that you spend 12 hours shopping for it and then chopping and cooking and braising and blanching. Then it takes 20 minutes to eat it and everybody sort of sits around in a food coma, and then it takes four hours to clean it up.
Ted Allen

The thing I'm most thankful for right now is elastic waistbands.
Author Unknown

For, after all, put it as we may to ourselves, we are all of us from birth to death guests at a table which we did not spread. The sun, the earth, love, friends, our very breath are parts of the banquet.... Shall we think of the day as a chance to come nearer to our Host, and to find out something of Him who has fed us so long?
Rebecca Harding Davis

Gratitude is the sign of noble souls.
Aesop

Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.
William Arthur Ward

You can tell you ate too much for Thanksgiving when you have to let your bathrobe out.
Jay Leno

May your stuffing be tasty
May your turkey plump,
May your potatoes and gravy
Have nary a lump.
May your yams be delicious
And your pies take the prize,
And may your Thanksgiving dinner
Stay off your thighs!
Author Unknown

But whether we have less or more,
Always thank we God therefor.
Author Unknown

Small cheer and great welcome makes a merry feast.
William Shakespeare

God gave you a gift of 86,400 seconds today. Have you used one to say "thank you?"
William A. Ward

How To Cook A Turkey:
Step 1: Go buy a turkey
Step 2: Take a drink of whiskey
Step 3: Put turkey in the oven
Step 4: Take another 2 drinks of whiskey
Step 5: Set the degree at 375 ovens
Step 6: Take 3 more whiskeys of drink
Step 7: Turk the bastey
Step 8: Whiskey another bottle of get
Step 9: Ponder the meat thermometer
Step 10: Glass yourself a pour of whiskey
Step 11: Bake the whiskey for 4 hours
Step 12: Take the oven out of the turkey
Step 13: Floor the turkey up off of the pick
Step 14: Turk the carvey
Step 15: Get yourself another scottle of botch
Step 16: Tet the sable and pour yourself a glass of turkey
Step 17: Bless the dinner and pass out

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow.
Melody Beattie

It is delightfully easy to thank God for the grace we ourselves have received, but it requires great grace to thank God always for the grace given to others.
James Smith

When our perils are past, shall our gratitude sleep?
George Canning

Thanksgiving is an emotional holiday. People travel thousands of miles to be with people they only see once a year. And then discover once a year is way too often.
Johnny Carson

We can always find something to be thankful for, and there may be reasons why we ought to be thankful for even those dispensations which appear dark and frowning.
Albert Barnes

Got no check books, got no banks. Still I'd like to express my thanks - I got the sun in the morning and the moon at night.
Irving Berlin

If you count all your assets, you always show a profit.
Robert Quillen

Not what we say about our blessings, but how we use them, is the true measure of our thanksgiving.
W.T. Purkiser

Steve Jobs Quotes

2011-10-22T22:43:00.001-04:00

Steve Jobs was many things. One thing is certain. His innovation, tenacity and drive made him successful at putting a "ding in the universe." Steve taught us all a few things too. He taught us to discover and follow our passions and to accept nothing but excellence, especially from ourselves.

Thank you Steve.

Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.

Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me … Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful… that’s what matters to me.

Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.

I want to put a ding in the universe.

My job is not to be easy on people. My jobs is to take these great people we have and to push them and make them even better.

That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.

Why join the navy if you can be a pirate?

Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower

We don’t get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent. Because this is our life. Life is brief, and then you die, you know? And we’ve all chosen to do this with our lives. So it better be damn good. It better be worth it.

Almost everything–all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure–these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

In most people’s vocabularies, design means veneer. It’s interior decorating. It’s the fabric of the curtains of the sofa. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a human-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service.

So we went to Atari and said, ‘Hey, we’ve got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or we’ll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we’ll come work for you.’ And they said, ‘No.’ So then we went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, ‘Hey, we don’t need you. You haven’t got through college yet.”

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

I’m the only person I know that’s lost a quarter of a billion dollars in one year…. It’s very character-building.

I’m as proud of what we don’t do as I am of what we do.

Quality is more important than quantity. One home run is much better than two doubles.

It comes from saying no to 1,000 things to make sure we don’t get on the wrong track or try to do too much.

I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance.

I feel like somebody just punched me in the stomach and knocked all my wind out. I’m only 30 years old and I want to have a chance to continue creating things. I know I’ve got at least one more great computer in me. And Apple is not going to give me a chance to do that.

I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?

Fear Quotes

2011-10-22T21:26:00.008-04:00

If fear is holding you back, take a look at this collection of some of my favorite quotes about fear and see how that can help you take the steps you are seeking in your own life!

Maria

Also, check out these helpful articles.

Three Steps to Change the Voice in your Head

Take the Zen Challenge

7 Tips for Meeting the Zen Challenge

Fear Quotes

Go back a little to leap further.
John Clarke

It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.
Theodore Roosevelt

Half of the failures in life come from pulling one's horse when he is leaping.
Thomas Hood

I failed my way to success.
Thomas Edison

You block your dream when you allow your fear to grow bigger than your faith.
Mary Manin Morrissey

Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.
Marie Curie

Fear is a darkroom where negatives develop.
Usman B. Asif

Keep your fears to yourself but share your courage with others.
Robert Louis Stevenson

Panic at the thought of doing a thing is a challenge to do it.
Henry S. Haskins

There is a time to take counsel of your fears, and there is a time to never listen to any fear.
George S. Patton

Many of our fears are tissue-paper-thin, and a single courageous step would carry us clear through them.
Brendan Francis

There is much in the world to make us afraid. There is much more in our faith to make us unafraid.
Frederick W. Cropp

There are very few monsters who warrant the fear we have of them.
Andre Gide

Fear is faith that it won't work out.
Sister Mary Tricky

Fear is the highest fence.
Dudley Nichols

Obstacles are like wild animals. They are cowards but they will bluff you if they can. If they see you are afraid of them... they are liable to spring upon you; but if you look them squarely in the eye, they will slink out of sight.
Orison Swett Marden

To fear is one thing. To let fear grab you by the tail and swing you around is another.
Katherine Paterson

Fear has a large shadow, but he himself is small.
Ruth Gendler

Fear makes strangers of people who would be friends.
Shirley Maclaine

To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.
Bertrand Russell

Every man, through fear, mugs his aspirations a dozen times a day.
Brendan Francis

Fear cannot take what you do not give it.
Christopher Coan

Fear is just your feelings asking for a hug.
Danielle Sanchez-Witzel and Michael Pennie

He has not learned the lesson of life who does not every day surmount a fear.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Those who fear life are already three parts dead.
Bertrand Russell

If we let things terrify us, life will not be worth living.
Seneca

The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.
Nelson Mandela

Fear is the parent of cruelty.
James Anthony Froude

Cowards die many times before their deaths
The valiant never taste of death but once.
William Shakespeare

No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear. Edmund Burke

Living fearlessly is not the same thing as never being afraid. It's good to be afraid occasionally. Fear is a great teacher.
Michael Ignatieff

Fear is the path to the Dark Side. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.
Yoda

To him who is in fear everything rustles.
Sophocles

The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.
Joseph Campbell

There is no living thing that is not afraid when it faces danger. The true courage is in facing danger when you are afraid.
L. Frank Baum

The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.
H.P. Lovecraft

If there is one thing which I would banish from the earth it is fear.
Henry Ford

Fearlessness requires attention and receptivity--it takes focus to stand in the still eye of a tornado and not be swept away by it.
Susan Piver

The big lesson in life, baby, is never be scared of anyone or anything.
Frank Sinatra

Fear can't hurt you any more than a dream.
William Golding

If you turned the fabric of our lives over, I imagined the design on the backside would be woven in the bleak grays of doubt and fear.
Stephanie Meyer

You see something scary, you should stand up and step toward it, not away from it. Instinctively, reflexively, in a raging fury.
Lee Child

Fear is contagious. You can catch it.
Neil Gaiman

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
Frank Herbert

A thing may be dreaded as long as it has not overtaken you.
Chanakya

Fear makes us feel our humanity.
Benjamin Disraeli

A cheerful frame of mind, reinforced by relaxation... is the medicine that puts all ghosts of fear on the run.
George Matthew Adams

Fear is static that prevents me from hearing myself.
Samuel Butler

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

Fear makes the wolf bigger than he is.
German Proverb

If a man harbors any sort of fear, it percolates through all thinking, damages his personality and makes him a landlord to a ghost.
Lloyd Douglas

I have learned over the years that when one's mind is made up, this diminishes fear.
Rosa Parks

You are the one giving fear a leg to stand on.
Dodinsk

Who is more foolish, the child afraid of the dark or the man afraid of the light?
Maurice Freehill

Fear: False Evidence Appearing Real.
Author Unknown

Fear is a slinking cat I find beneath the lilacs of my mind.
Sophie Tunnell

I would sort out all the arguments and see which belonged to fear and which to creativeness. Other things being equal, I would make the decision which had the larger number of creative reasons on its side.
Katharine Butler Hathaway

He who fears something gives it power over him.
Moorish Proverb

Feed your faith and your fears will starve to death.
Author Unknown

He who fears to suffer, suffers from fear.
French Proverb

There are several good protections against temptation, but the surest is cowardice.
Mark Twain

Fear can be headier than whiskey, once man has acquired a taste for it.
Donald Dowes

The wise man in the storm prays God, not for safety from danger, but for deliverance from fear.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Anything I've ever done that ultimately was worthwhile... initially scared me to death.
Betty Bender

To lead is difficult when you're a follower of fear.
T.A. Sachs

I have accepted fear as a part of life - specifically the fear of change.... I have gone ahead despite the pounding in the heart that says: turn back.
Erica Jong

Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.
William Shakespeare

Every failure brings with it the seed of an equivalent success.
Napoleon Hill

Failure is blindness to the strategic element in events; success is readiness for instant action when the opportune moment arrives.
Newell D. Hillis

They fail, and they alone, who have not striven.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich

We learn wisdom from failure much more than success. We often discover what we will do, by finding out what we will not do.
Samuel Smiles

Loss of a Loved One Quotes

2011-10-02T23:05:00.000-04:00

Listed below are some of he most inspiring and kind sympathy quotes I have found. The first poem I came across soon after the death of my father and it has always brought me to tears and offered me great comfort. Hope these quotes and poems offer you the same.

Maria

Do not stand at my grave and 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 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 cry;
I am not there, I did not die.
Mary Frye

Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, love leaves a memory no one can steal.
From a headstone in Ireland

In the night of death, hope sees a star, and listening love can hear the rustle of a wing.
Robert Ingersoll

When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.
Kahlil Gibran

He spake well who said that graves are the footprints of angels.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

A human life is a story told by God.
Hans Christian Andersen

To live in hearts we leave behind
Is not to die.
Thomas Campbell

While we are mourning the loss of our friend, others are rejoicing to meet him behind the veil.
John Taylor

Tears water our growth.
William Shakespeare

Life is eternal, and love is immortal,
and death is only a horizon;
and a horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight.
Rossiter Worthington Raymond

Say not in grief "he is no more," but live in thankfulness that he was.
Hebrew proverb

Oh heart, if one should say to you that the soul perishes like the body, answer that the flower withers, but the seed remains.
Kahlil Gibran

Tears are God’s gift to us. Our holy water. They heal us as they flow. Rita Schiano

When someone you love becomes a memory, the memory becomes a treasure. Author Unknown

The memory of a good person is a blessing.
Proverbs 10:7

If tears could build a stairway,
And memories a lane,
I'd walk right up to Heaven
And bring you home again.
Author Unknown

It is the will of God and Nature that these mortal bodies be laid aside, when the soul is to enter into real life; 'tis rather an embrio state, a preparation for living; a man is not completely born until he be dead: Why then should we grieve that a new child is born among the immortals? Benjamin Franklin

Grieve not, nor think of me with tears, but laugh
and talk of me as if I were beside you. I loved you so-
'Twas heaven here with you.
Isla Paschal Richardson

We shall find peace. We shall hear angels, we shall see the sky sparkling with diamonds.
Chekov

Until we meet again, may God hold you in the palm of His hand.
Irish prayer

For some moments in life there are no words.
David Seltzer, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

And with the morn those angel faces smile
Which I have loved long since and lost awhile.
John Henry Newman

The angels are always near to those who are grieving, to whisper to them that their loved ones are safe in the hand of God.
Eileen Elias Freeman

Good-night! good-night! as we so oft have said
Beneath this roof at midnight, in the days
That are no more, and shall no more return.
Thou hast but taken up thy lamp and gone to bed;
I stay a little longer, as one stays
To cover up the embers that still burn.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Unable are the loved to die. For love is immortality.
Emily Dickinson

Perhaps they are not the stars, but rather openings in Heaven where the love of our lost ones pours through and shines down upon us to let us know they are happy.
Author Unknown

When he shall die
Take him and cut him out in little stars
And he will make the face of heav'n so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun.
William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

Although it's difficult today to see beyond the sorrow,
May looking back in memory help comfort you tomorrow.
Author Unknown

For death is no more than a turning of us over from time to eternity. William Penn

Freedom Quotes

2011-09-15T12:44:00.000-04:00

Today seemed like a good day to get some inspiration about the importance of freedom and a reminder of what freedom means to all of us.

Enjoy!

Maria

Liberty is the possibility of doubting, of making a mistake,... of searching and experimenting,... of saying No to any authority - literary, artistic, philosophical, religious, social, and even political.
~Ignazio Silone, The God That Failed, 1950

Liberty: One of Imagination's most precious possessions.
~Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

The patriot's blood is the seed of Freedom's tree.
~Thomas Campbell

Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide.
~Napoleon Bonaparte

Don't regard yourself as a guardian of freedom unless you respect and preserve the rights of people you disagree with to free, public, unhampered expression.
~Gerard K. O'Neill

Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.
~Abraham Lincoln

I wish that every human life might be pure transparent freedom.
~Simone de Beauvoir

My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.
~Adlai Stevenson, speech, Detroit, 1952

It is easy to take liberty for granted, when you have never had it taken from you.
~Author unknown, sometimes attributed to M. Grundler

We on this continent should never forget that men first crossed the Atlantic not to find soil for their ploughs but to secure liberty for their souls.
~Robert J. McCracken

For what avail the plough or sail, or land or life, if freedom fail? ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.
~Thomas Paine

In the truest sense, freedom cannot be bestowed; it must be achieved. ~Franklin D. Roosevelt

Freedom is the oxygen of the soul.
~Moshe Dayan

There are two freedoms - the false, where a man is free to do what he likes; the true, where he is free to do what he ought.
~Charles Kingsley

No one is free when others are oppressed.
~Author Unknown

Freedom means choosing your burden.
~Hephzibah Menuhin

Men fight for freedom, then they begin to accumulate laws to take it away from themselves.
~Author Unknown

Freedom is that instant between when someone tells you to do something and when you decide how to respond.
~Jeffrey Borenstein

Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have.
~Harry Emerson Fosdick

Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of it. The history of liberty is a history of resistance. ~Woodrow Wilson

The sound of tireless voices is the price we pay for the right to hear the music of our own opinions.
~Adlai Stevenson, speech, New York City, 28 August 1952

We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it. ~William Faulkner

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
~Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759

The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.
~Louis D. Brandeis

Freedom is the will to be responsible to ourselves.
~Friedrich Nietzsche

Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.
~George Bernard Shaw

We anarchists do not want to emancipate the people; we want the people to emancipate themselves.
~Errico Malatesta

We are free, truly free, when we don't need to rent our arms to anybody in order to be able to lift a piece of bread to our mouths.
~Ricardo Flores Magon, 1914

Many politicians are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim.
~Thomas Macaulay

We have enjoyed so much freedom for so long that we are perhaps in danger of forgetting how much blood it cost to establish the Bill of Rights. ~Felix Frankfurter

No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck.
~Frederick Douglass, 1883

Let freedom never perish in your hands.
~Joseph Addison

Who speaks of liberty while the human mind is in chains?
~Francis Wright, 1828

Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth.
~George Washington

I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.
~James Madison, 1788

Liberty doesn't work as well in practice as it does in speeches.
~Will Rogers

Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err. ~Mahatma Gandhi

Order without liberty and liberty without order are equally destructive. ~Theodore Roosevelt

We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.
~Edward R. Murrow

Freedom has a thousand charms to show,
That slaves, howe'er contented, never know.
~William Cowper

The contest for ages has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power.
~Daniel Webster

Freedom is nothing else but a chance to be better.
~Albert Camus

Men fight for liberty and win it with hard knocks. Their children, brought up easy, let it slip away again, poor fools. And their grandchildren are once more slaves.
~D.H. Lawrence, Classical American Literature, 1922

I prefer liberty with danger to peace with slavery.
~Author Unknown

The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.
~Louis D. Brandeis

Freedom is never free.
~Author Unknown

Labor Day Quotes

2011-09-05T23:12:00.000-04:00

Here are some quotes to remind us the importance of work and the equal value of rest.

If all the cars in the United States were placed end to end, it would probably be Labor Day Weekend.
~Doug Larson

My grandfather once told me that there were two kinds of people: those who do the work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was much less competition.
~ Indira Gandhi

Men are made stronger on realization that the helping hand they need is at the end of their own right arm.
~ Sidney J. Phillips

I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.
~ Thomas Jefferson

The man who doesn't relax and hoot a few hoots voluntarily, now and then, is in great danger of hooting hoots and standing on his head for the edification of the pathologist and trained nurse, a little later on.
~Elbert Hubbard

Work isn't to make money; you work to justify life.
~Marc Chagall

Without labor nothing prospers.
~Sophocles

All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.
~ Martin Luther King Jr.

Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.
~ Confucius

Take rest; a field that has rested gives a bountiful crop.
~Ovid

The man who rolls up his shirt sleeves is rarely in danger of losing his shirt.
~ Anonymous

A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depend on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving.
~ Albert Einstein

No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level–I mean the wages of decent living.
~Franklin D. Roosevelt

Work is no disgrace; the disgrace is idleness.
~ Greek proverb

Each morning sees some task begin,
Each evening sees it close;
Something attempted, some done,
Has earned a night’s repose.
~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

No great achievement is possible without persistent work.
~ Bertrand Russell

There is no substitute for hard work.
~ Thomas Edison

A mind always employed is always happy. This is the true secret, the grand recipe, for felicity.
~Thomas Jefferson

A man is not paid for having a head and hands, but for using them.
~ Elbert Hubbard

I believe in the dignity of labor, whether with head or hand; that the world owes no man a living but that it owes every man an opportunity to make a living.
~ John D. Rockefeller

Under the spreading chestnut tree
The village smithy stands;
The smith a mighty man is he
With large and sinewy hands.
And the muscles of his brawny arms
Are strong as iron bands.
He earns whatever he can,
His brow is wet with honest sweat,
And looks the whole world in the face,
For he owes not any man.
~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Before the reward there must be labor. You plant before you harvest. You sow in tears before you reap joy.
~ Ralph Ransom

Motivational Quotes

2011-08-11T11:15:00.000-04:00

Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict.
William E. Channing

It is surmounting difficulties that makes heroes.
Louis Kossuth

Life's challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they're supposed to help you discover who you are.
Bernice Johnson Reagon

We would accomplish many more things if we did not think of them as impossible.
C. Malesherbes

Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.
Dale Carnegie

If not us, who? If not now, when?
Kennedy, John F.

Never be satisfied with what you achieve, because it all pales in comparison with what you are capable of doing in the future.
Rabbi Nochem Kaplan

All our dreams can come true - if we have the courage to pursue them.
Walt Disney

Dream as if you'll live forever. Live as if you'll die tomorrow.
James Dean

If you're going to be thinking, you may as well think big.
Donald Trump

Where there's a will there's a way.
English Proverb

If you really want something, you can figure out how to make it happen.
Cher

So long as there is breath in me, that long I will persist. For now I know one of the greatest principles on success; if I persist long enough I will win.
Og Mandino

We will either find a way, or make one!
Hannibal

Desire is the starting point of all achievement, not a hope, not a wish, but a keen pulsating desire which transcends everything.
Napoleon Hill

Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish.
John Quincy Adams

That some achieve great success, is proof to all that others can achieve it as well.
Abraham Lincoln

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.
Thomas Edison

The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
Winston Churchill

When written in Chinese, the word 'crisis' is composed of two characters—one represents danger, and the other represents opportunity.
John F. Kennedy

He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else.
Benjamin Franklin

Ninety-nine percent of failures come from people who have the habit of making excuses.
George W. Carver

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
Mark Twain

It was a high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, "Always do what you are afraid to do."
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Take calculated risks.
That is quite different from being rash.
George S. Patton

Storms make oaks take roots.
Proverb

If you do not hope, you will not find what is beyond your hopes.
St. Clement of Alexandra

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

Seek the lofty by reading, hearing and seeing great work at some moment every day.
Thornton Wilder

The only way of finding the limits of the possible is by going beyond them into the impossible.
Arthur C. Clarke

Without inspiration the best powers of the mind remain dormant. There is a fuel in us which needs to be ignited with sparks.
Johann Gottfried Von Herder

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

Hope is like the sun, which, as we journey toward it, casts the shadow of our burden behind us.
Samuel Smiles

Work spares us from three evils: boredom, vice, and need.
Voltaire

If the wind will not serve,
take to the oars.
Destitutus ventis, remos adhibe
Latin Proverb

Men's best successes come after their disappointments.
Henry Ward Beecher

You cannot plough a field by
turning it over in your mind.
Author Unknown

The best way out is always through.
Robert Frost

Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking.
William B. Sprague

Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.
Samuel Johnson

Fortune favors the brave.
Publius Terence

When the best things are not possible, the best may be made of those that are. - Richard Hooker

He who hesitates is lost.
Proverb

If you want to succeed in the world must make your own opportunities as you go on. The man who waits for some seventh wave to toss him on dry land will find that the seventh wave is a long time a coming. You can commit no greater folly than to sit by the roadside until some one comes along and invites you to ride with him to wealth or influence.
John B. Gough

Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.
Albert Einstein

Believe with all of your heart that you will do what you were made to do.
Orison Swett Marden

Knowing is not enough; we must apply.
Willing is not enough; we must do.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

We are still masters of our fate.
We are still captains of our souls.
Winston Churchill

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

For hope is but the dream
of those that wake.
Matthew Prior

Constant dripping hollows out a stone.
Lucretius

Nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose--
a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.
Mary Shelley

Spring Quotes

2011-04-08T22:44:00.000-04:00

Springtime is the land awakening. The March winds are the morning yawn. ~Quoted by Lewis Grizzard in Kathy Sue Loudermilk, I Love You

Spring is nature's way of saying, "Let's party!" ~Robin Williams

Spring makes its own statement, so loud and clear that the gardener seems to be only one of the instruments, not the composer. ~Geoffrey B. Charlesworth

April prepares her green traffic light and the world thinks Go. ~Christopher Morley, John Mistletoe

It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade. ~Charles Dickens

Everything is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices instead of colors, there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night. ~Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke

It's spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you've got it, you want - oh, you don't quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so! ~Mark Twain

Hoe while it is spring, and enjoy the best anticipations. It is not much matter if things do not turn out well. ~Charles Dudley Warner

I love spring anywhere, but if I could choose I would always greet it in a garden. ~Ruth Stout

No matter how long the winter, spring is sure to follow. ~Proverb

Spring is when you feel like whistling even with a shoe full of slush. ~Doug Larson

Science has never drummed up quite as effective a tranquilizing agent as a sunny spring day. ~W. Earl Hall

If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant; if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome. ~Anne Bradstreet

The year's at the spring
And day's at the morn;
Morning's at seven;
The hillside's dew-pearled;
The lark's on the wing;
The snail's on the thorn;
God's in His heaven -
All's right with the world!
~Robert Browning

No winter lasts forever; no spring skips its turn. ~Hal Borland

Spring shows what God can do with a drab and dirty world. ~Virgil A. Kraft

April is a promise that May is bound to keep. ~Hal Borland

Where man sees but withered leaves,
God sees sweet flowers growing.
~Albert Laighton

That God once loved a garden we learn in Holy writ.
And seeing gardens in the Spring I well can credit it.
~Winifred Mary Letts

In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt. ~Margaret Atwood

And Spring arose on the garden fair,
Like the Spirit of Love felt everywhere;
And each flower and herb on Earth's dark breast
rose from the dreams of its wintry rest.
~Percy Bysshe Shelley, "The Sensitive Plant"

Every spring is the only spring - a perpetual astonishment. ~Ellis Peters

Spring is sooner recognized by plants than by men. ~Chinese Proverb

The naked earth is warm with Spring,
And with green grass and bursting trees
Leans to the sun's kiss glorying,
And quivers in the sunny breeze.
~Julian Grenfell

In the spring I have counted one hundred and thirty-six different kinds of weather inside of four and twenty hours. ~Mark Twain

O, wind, if winter comes, can spring be far behind? ~Percy Bysshe Shelley

I think that no matter how old or infirm I may become, I will always plant a large garden in the spring. Who can resist the feelings of hope and joy that one gets from participating in nature's rebirth? ~Edward Giobbi

Spring has returned. The Earth is like a child that knows poems. ~Rainer Maria Rilke

The sun was warm but the wind was chill.
You know how it is with an April day.
~Robert Frost

The first day of spring is one thing, and the first spring day is another. The difference between them is sometimes as great as a month. ~Henry Van Dyke

If you've never been thrilled to the very edges of your soul by a flower in spring bloom, maybe your soul has never been in bloom. ~Terri Guillemets

April hath put a spirit of youth in everything. ~William Shakespeare

Out with the cold, in with the woo. ~E. Marshall, "Spring Thought"

The day the Lord created hope was probably the same day he created Spring. ~Bern Williams

Yesterday the twig was brown and bare;
To-day the glint of green is there;
Tomorrow will be leaflets spare;
I know no thing so wondrous fair,
No miracle so strangely rare.
I wonder what will next be there!
~L.H. Bailey

If I had my life to live over, I would start barefoot earlier in the spring and stay that way later in the fall. ~Nadine Stair

Poor, dear, silly Spring, preparing her annual surprise! ~Wallace Stevens

Now every field is clothed with grass, and every tree with leaves; now the woods put forth their blossoms, and the year assumes its gay attire. ~Virgil

First a howling blizzard woke us,
Then the rain came down to soak us,
And now before the eye can focus -
Crocus. ~Lilja Rogers

You can't see Canada across lake Erie, but you know it's there. It's the same with spring. You have to have faith, especially in Cleveland. ~Paul Fleischman

People ask me what I do in winter when there's no baseball. I'll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring. ~Rogers Hornsby

The seasons are what a symphony ought to be: four perfect movements in harmony with each other. ~Arthur Rubenstein

Holiday Quotes

2010-12-07T08:25:00.001-05:00

As we struggle with shopping lists and invitations, compounded by December's bad weather, it is good to be reminded that there are people in our lives who are worth this aggravation, and people to whom we are worth the same.
-- Donald E. Westlake

At Christmas play and make good cheer, for Christmas comes but once a year.
-- Thomas Tusser

Blessed is the season which engages the whole world in a conspiracy of love.
-- Hamilton Wright Mabie

Christmas gift suggestions: To your enemy, forgiveness. To an opponent, tolerance. To a friend, your heart. To a customer, service. To all, charity. To every child, a good example. To yourself, respect.
-- Oren Arnold

Christmas is for children. But it is for grownups too. Even if it is a headache, a chore, and nightmare, it is a period of necessary defrosting of chill and hide-bound hearts.
-- Lenora Mattingly Weber

Christmas is not a time nor a season, but a state of mind. To cherish peace and goodwill, to be plenteous in mercy, is to have the real spirit of Christmas.
-- Calvin Coolidge

Every piece of the universe, even the tiniest little snow crystal, matters somehow. I have a place in the pattern, and so do you…Thinking of you this holiday season!
-- T.A. Barron

Good news from heaven the angels bring,
Glad tidings to the earth they sing:
To us this day a child is given,
To crown us with the joy of heaven.
- Martin Luther

I wish we could put up some of the Christmas spirit in jars and open a jar of it every month.
-- Harlan Miller

If I were a medical man, I should prescribe a holiday to any patient who considered his work important.
-- Bertrand Russell

Love the giver more than the gift.
-- Brigham Young

May your walls know joy, may every room hold laughter, and every window open to great possibility
-- Mary Anne Radmacher

Our hearts grow tender with childhood memories and love of kindred, and we are better throughout the year for having, in spirit, become a child again at Christmas-time.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart. Wishing you happiness.
-- Helen Keller

The holiest of all holidays are those
Kept by ourselves in silence and apart;
The secret anniversaries of the heart,
When the full river of feeling overflows;--
The happy days unclouded to their close;
The sudden joys that our of darkness start
As flames from ashes; swift desires that dart
Like swallows singing down each wind that blows!
-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The joy of brightening other lives, bearing each others' burdens, easing other's loads and supplanting empty hearts and lives with generous gifts becomes for us the magic of Christmas.
-- W. C. Jones

There is no ideal Christmas; only the one Christmas you decide to make as a reflection of your values, desires, affections, traditions.
-- Bill McKibben

This is my wish for you: peace of mind, prosperity through the year, happiness that multiplies, health for you and yours, fun around every corner, energy to chase your dreams, joy to fill your holidays!
-- D.M. Dellinger

Time for work- yet take much holiday for art's and friendship's sake.
-- George James De Wilde

Quotes about Giving

2010-11-29T19:01:00.000-05:00

Check out all these great quotes to get you into the giving mood!

A bit of fragrance always clings to the hand that gives you roses.
Proverb

You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.
Kahlil Gibran

The value of a man resides in what he gives and not in what he is capable of receiving.
Albert Einstein

It is better to give than receive- especially advice.
Mark Twain

Life is a gift, and it offers us the privilege, opportunity, and responsibility to give something back by becoming more.
Anthony Robbins

Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present.
Albert Camus

To give without any reward, or any notice, has a special quality of its own.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh

A man who gives his children habits of industry provides for them better than by giving them fortune.
Richard Whately

The manner of giving is worth more than the gift.
Pierre Corneille

I have found that among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver.
Maya Angelou

Give to the world the best you have and the best will come back to you.
Madeline Bridges

Giving pays the highest interest rate, and has the longest term, of any investment available.
Jeffrey K. Wilson

It's important to give it all you have while you have the chance.
Shania Twain

For it is in giving that we receive.
St. Francis of Assisi

Don't say that you want to give, but go ahead and give! You'll never catch up with a mere hope.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

To give and then not feel that one has given is the very best of all ways of giving. Max Beerbohm

Getting what you want is not nearly as important as giving what you have.
Tom Krause

Happiness... consists in giving, and in serving others.
Henry Drummond

No one has ever become poor by giving.
Anne Frank

A handful of pine-seed will cover mountains with the green majesty of forests. I too will set my face to the wind and throw my handful of seed on high.
Fiona Macleod

All that this world knows of living lies in giving -- and more giving; He that keeps, be sure he loses -Friendship grows by what it uses.
Alexander Maclaren

All who joy would win must share it. Happiness was born a Twin.
Lord Byron

Always think in terms of what the other person wants.
James Van Fleet

Any person who contributes to prosperity must prosper in turn.
Earl Nightingale

Blessed are those who give without remembering. And blessed are those who take without forgetting.
Bernard Meltzer

Complete possession is proved only by giving. All you are unable to give possesses you.
Andre Gide

Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.
George Bernard Shaw

Do unto the other feller the way he'd like to do unto you, and do it fast.
Edward Noyes Westcott

EARN as much as you can. SAVE as much as you can. INVEST as much as you can. GIVE as much as you can.
Rev. John Wellesly

For it is in giving that we receive.
St. Francis of Assisi

For of those to whom much is given, much is required.
John F. Kennedy

For true love is inexhaustible; the more you give, the more you have. And if you go to draw at the true fountainhead, the more water you draw, the more abundant is its flow.
Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Fragrance clings to the hand that gives the rose.
Anonymous

From what we get, we can make a living; what we give, however, makes a life.
Arthur Ashe

Getters don't get -- givers get.
Eugene Benge

Gifts must affect the receiver to the point of shock.
Walter Benjamin

Funny and Poignant Quotes

2010-11-08T19:53:00.000-05:00

Here are some funny and touching quotes to get your day going!

Maria

Always laugh when you can. It is the cheapest medicine.

Laughter is the shock absorber that eases the blows of life.

An optimist is someone who falls off the Empire State Building, and after 50 floors says, 'So far so good!'

You can't have everything....where would you put it?

If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything.
Mark Twain

If you can't see the bright side of life, polish the dull side.

When everything's coming your way, you're in the wrong lane.

It a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.
W. Sommerset Morgan

College is a refuge from hasty judgment.
Robert Frost

I’d like to help you out. Which way did you come in?

Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself.
Henry David Thoreau

I found a great way to attract money... work!
Curtis D. Tucker

Where there are no swamps there are no frogs.
German Proverb

To err is human; to admit it, superhuman.
Doug Larson

I grew up with six brothers. That's how I learned to dance - waiting to get into the bathroom.
Bob Hope

Albert Einstein Quotes

2010-08-24T08:03:00.001-04:00

Einstein was brilliant, creative and playful and so were his quotes. Check out some of these.

The secret of creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all art and science.

Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. THAT'S relativity.

Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.

Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.

Example isn't another way to teach, it is the only way to teach.

Human beings, vegetables, or comic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible player.

Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction.

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.

The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.

The only real valuable thing is intuition.

A person starts to live when he can live outside himself.

Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character.

Quotes about Summer

2010-08-02T08:12:00.000-04:00

Summer is such a wonderful time. It brings back the joy of lazy summers as a child. Enjoy these quotes.

A perfect summer day is when the sun is shining, the breeze is blowing, the birds are singing, and the lawn mower is broken. ~James Dent

If a June night could talk, it would probably boast it invented romance. ~Bern Williams

A summer's sun is worth the having.
French proverb

Summer set lip to earth's bosom bare,
And left the flushed print in a poppy there.
~Francis Thompson

To see the Summer Sky
Is Poetry, though never in a Book it lie -
True Poems flee.
~Emily Dickinson

What is one to say about June, the time of perfect young summer, the fulfillment of the promise of the earlier months, and with as yet no sign to remind one that its fresh young beauty will ever fade. ~Gertrude Jekyll

I question not if thrushes sing,
If roses load the air;
Beyond my heart I need not reach
When all is summer there.
~John Vance Cheney

Oh, the summer night
Has a smile of light
And she sits on a sapphire throne.
~Barry Cornwall

In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer. ~Albert Camus

There shall be eternal summer in the grateful heart. ~Celia Thaxter

The summer night is like a perfection of thought. ~Wallace Stevens

In summer, the song sings itself. ~William Carlos Williams

Deep summer is when laziness finds respectability. ~Sam Keen

A life without love is like a year without summer. ~Swedish Proverb

Press close, bare-bosomed Night! Press close, magnetic,
nourishing Night!
Night of south winds! Night of the large, few stars!
Still, nodding Night! Mad, naked, Summer Night!
~Walt Whitman

Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass on a summer day listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is hardly a waste of time. ~John Lubbock

Summer afternoon - summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language. ~Henry James

Love is to the heart what the summer is to the farmer's year - it brings to harvest all the loveliest flowers of the soul. ~Author Unknown

Then followed that beautiful season... Summer....
Filled was the air with a dreamy and magical light; and the landscape
Lay as if new created in all the freshness of childhood.
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Summer is the time when one sheds one's tensions with one's clothes, and the right kind of day is jeweled balm for the battered spirit. A few of those days and you can become drunk with the belief that all's right with the world. ~Ada Louise Huxtable

Patriotic Quotes

2010-07-06T09:40:00.000-04:00

I like to see a man proud of the place in which he lives. I like to see a man live so that his place will be proud of him. ~Abraham Lincoln

We can't all be Washingtons, but we can all be patriots. ~Charles F. Browne

What is the essence of America? Finding and maintaining that perfect, delicate balance between freedom "to" and freedom "from." ~Marilyn vos Savant, in Parade

[P]atriotism... is not short, frenzied outbursts of emotion, but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime. ~Adlai Stevenson

A man's country is not a certain area of land, of mountains, rivers, and woods, but it is a principle; and patriotism is loyalty to that principle. ~George William Curtis

When an American says that he loves his country, he means not only that he loves the New England hills, the prairies glistening in the sun, the wide and rising plains, the great mountains, and the sea. He means that he loves an inner air, an inner light in which freedom lives and in which a man can draw the breath of self-respect. ~Adlai Stevenson

There are those, I know, who will say that the liberation of humanity, the freedom of man and mind, is nothing but a dream. They are right. It is the American dream. ~Archibald MacLeish

This nation will remain the land of the free only so long as it is the home of the brave. ~Elmer Davis

If our country is worth dying for in time of war let us resolve that it is truly worth living for in time of peace. ~Hamilton Fish

The cement of this union is the heart-blood of every American. ~Thomas Jefferson

America is much more than a geographical fact. It is a political and moral fact - the first community in which men set out in principle to institutionalize freedom, responsible government, and human equality. ~Adlai Stevenson

From every mountain side
Let Freedom ring.
~Samuel F. Smith, "America"

Ours is the only country deliberately founded on a good idea. ~John Gunther

America is a passionate idea or it is nothing. America is a human brotherhood or it is chaos. ~Max Lerner, Actions and Passions, 1949

Then join hand in hand, brave Americans all!
By uniting we stand, by dividing we fall.
~John Dickinson

The skies of happiness shine upon these United States of America. ~Terri Guillemets

Where liberty dwells, there is my country. ~Benjamin Franklin

Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable! ~Daniel Webster

If you take advantage of everything America has to offer, there’s nothing you can’t accomplish. ~Geraldine Ferraro

Sometimes people call me an idealist. Well, that is the way I know I am an American. America is the only idealistic nation in the world. ~Woodrow Wilson

This, then, is the state of the union: free and restless, growing and full of hope. So it was in the beginning. So it shall always be, while God is willing, and we are strong enough to keep the faith. ~Lyndon B. Johnson

We sleep peacefully at night, cradled by the big strong hands of America. ~Val Saintsbury

America is another name for opportunity. Our whole history appears like a last effort of divine providence on behalf of the human race. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

I love my freedom. I love my America. ~Jessi Lane Adams

This country will not be a good place for any of us to live in unless we make it a good place for all of us to live in. ~Theodore Roosevelt

He loves his country best who strives to make it best. ~Robert G. Ingersoll

It is the love of country that has lighted and that keeps glowing the holy fire of patriotism. ~J. Horace McFarland

"Our country, right or wrong." When right to be kept right; when wrong to be put right. ~Carl Schurz

It is the flag just as much of the man who was naturalized yesterday as of the men whose people have been here many generations. ~Henry Cabot Lodge

My God! How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy! ~Thomas Jefferson

America, for me, has been the pursuit and catching of happiness. ~Aurora Raigne

I wish that every human life might be pure transparent freedom. ~Simone de Beauvoir

There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America. ~William J. Clinton

My favorite thing about the United States? Lots of Americans, one America. ~Val Saintsbury

Our country is not the only thing to which we owe our allegiance. It is also owed to justice and to humanity. Patriotism consists not in waving the flag, but in striving that our country shall be righteous as well as strong. ~James Bryce

Our great modern Republic. May those who seek the blessings of its institutions and the protection of its flag remember the obligations they impose. ~Ulysses S. Grant

Those who won our independence believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty. ~Louis D. Brandeis

Territory is but the body of a nation. The people who inhabit its hills and valleys are its soul, its spirit, its life. ~James Garfield

Ev'ry heart beats true
'neath the Red, White and Blue,
~George M. Cohan

I believe in America because we have great dreams - and because we have the opportunity to make those dreams come true. ~Wendell L. Wilkie

To me, being an American means feeling safe. ~Currielene Armstrong

We on this continent should never forget that men first crossed the Atlantic not to find soil for their ploughs but to secure liberty for their souls. ~Robert J. McCracken

It is sweet to serve one's country by deeds, and it is not absurd to serve her by words. ~Sallust

We need an America with the wisdom of experience. But we must not let America grow old in spirit. ~Hubert H. Humphrey

May I never wake up from the American dream. ~Carrie Latet

A real patriot is the fellow who gets a parking ticket and rejoices that the system works. ~Bill Vaughan

I think there is one higher office than president and I would call that patriot. ~Gary Hart

My patriotic heart beats red, white, and blue. ~Author Unknown

Each man must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn't. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your conviction is to be an unqualified and excusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let men label you as they may. ~Mark Twain

All we have of freedom, all we use or know - This our fathers bought for us long and long ago.
~Rudyard Kipling, The Old Issue, 1899

What we need are critical lovers of America - patriots who express their faith in their country by working to improve it. ~Hubert H. Humphrey

You cannot spill a drop of American blood without spilling the blood of the whole world.... We are not a nation, so much as a world. ~Herman Melville

He is a poor patriot whose patriotism does not enable him to understand how all men everywhere feel about their altars and their hearthstones, their flag and their fatherland. ~Harry Emerson Fosdick

We have enjoyed so much freedom for so long that we are perhaps in danger of forgetting how much blood it cost to establish the Bill of Rights. ~Felix Frankfurter

Patriotism is easy to understand in America - it means looking out for yourself by looking out for your country. ~Calvin Coolidge

We dare not forget that we are the heirs of that first revolution. ~John F. Kennedy

The American Revolution was a beginning, not a consummation. ~Woodrow Wilson

Altruism Quotes

2010-06-01T10:43:00.002-04:00

Hope you like these altruism quotes I have collected! If you want further reading, consider my article "Kindness, 5 reasons why you want to practice it and 5 Ways How"

To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children...to leave the world a better place...to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

If any civilization is to survive, it is the morality of altruism that men have to reject.

Ayn Rand

What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others and the world remains and is immortal.

Albert Pine

Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish.

Richard Dawkins

The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.

Mitch Albom

Love is when the other person's happiness is more important than your own.

H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

Be an opener of doors for such as come after thee.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Most men have always wanted as much as they could get; and possession has always blunted the fine edge of their altruism.

Katherine Fullerton Gerould

To read my article, How to be a One Minute Volunteer, click here.

Beach Quotes

2010-05-23T18:21:00.000-04:00

The beach is a special place always the same, yet somehow each moment is uniquely different. Check out these beautiful quotes.

“Don't grow up too quickly, lest you forget how much you love the beach.”

Michelle Held

“I am you; you are ME. You are the waves; I am the ocean. Know this and be free, be divine.”

Sri Sathya Sai Baba

“The cure for anything is salt water - sweat, tears, or the sea.”

Isak Dinesen

“I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.”

T. S. Eliot

“My life is like a stroll on the beach...as near to the edge as I can go.”

Thoreau

“Our memories of the ocean will linger on, long after our footprints in the sand are gone.”

Anonymous

“The Sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever.”

Jacques Cousteau

“I dropped a tear in the ocean, and whenever they find it I'll stop loving you, only then.”

Anonymous

“We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.”

Mother Teresa

“Even the upper end of the river

believes in the ocean.”

William Stafford

“The waves of the sea

Help me get back to me.”

Jill Davis

“One cannot collect all the beautiful shells on the beach; one can collect only a few, and they are more beautiful if they are few”

Anne Morrow Lindbergh

“Eternity begins and ends with the ocean's tides.”

Unknown

"In every outthrust headland, in every curving beach, in every grain of sand there is the story of the earth."

Rachel Carson

“Roll on, deep and dark blue ocean, roll. Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain. Man marks the earth with ruin, but his control stops with the shore.”

Lord Byron

“As the ocean is never full of water, so is the heart never full of love”

Unknown

“Thank God for the food and for the hands that prepared it and also for the ocean.”

Bode Dykens (age 2)

“Play in the sand; splash in the water; get dirty; get wet. The beach is the only place my mom doesn’t get mad about me doing that stuff. Of course I love the beach!”

Dixie Dykens (age 5)

"Do I love you? My God, if your love were a grain of sand, mine would be a universe of beaches."

~From "The Princess Bride" - Wesley to Buttercup

“The three great elemental sounds in nature are the sound of rain, the sound of wind in a primeval wood, and the sound of outer ocean on a beach”

Henry Beston

"On the beach, you can live in bliss."

- Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys

"At the beach, life is different. Time doesn't move hour to hour but mood to moment. We live by the currents, plan by the tides and follow the sun."

Unknown

"Let your waves crash down on me and take me away"

Ocean Avenue, Yellowcard

Sleep Quotes

2010-05-04T00:37:00.000-04:00

If you can't sleep, then get up and do something instead of lying there worrying. It's the worry that gets you, not the lack of sleep. ~Dale Carnegie

No day is so bad it can't be fixed with a nap. ~Carrie Snow

There is more refreshment and stimulation in a nap, even of the briefest, than in all the alcohol ever distilled. ~Edward Lucas

People who say they sleep like a baby usually don't have one. ~Leo J. Burke

Life is something that happens when you can't get to sleep. ~Fran Lebowitz

It's a cruel season that makes you get ready for bed while it's light out. ~Bill Watterson

The bed is a bundle of paradoxes: we go to it with reluctance, yet we quit it with regret; we make up our minds every night to leave it early, but we make up our bodies every morning to keep it late. ~Charles Caleb Colton

A good laugh and a long sleep are the best cures in the doctor's book. ~Irish Proverb

Most people do not consider dawn to be an attractive experience - unless they are still up. ~Ellen Goodman

Life is too short to sleep on low thread-count sheets. ~Leah Stussy

And if tonight my soul may find her peace
in sleep, and sink in good oblivion,
and in the morning wake like a new-opened flower
then I have been dipped again in God, and new-created.
~D.H. Lawrence

Consciousness: that annoying time between naps. ~Author Unknown

There is no snooze button on a cat who wants breakfast. ~Author Unknown

Insomnia is a gross feeder. It will nourish itself on any kind of thinking, including thinking about not thinking. ~Clifton Fadiman

If people were meant to pop out of bed, we'd all sleep in toasters. ~Author unknown, attributed to Jim Davis

Sleep is a symptom of caffeine deprivation. ~Author Unknown

A flock of sheep that leisurely pass by
One after one; the sound of rain, and bees
Murmuring; the fall of rivers, winds and seas,
Smooth fields, white sheets of water, and pure sky -
I've thought of all by turns, and still I lie
Sleepless...
~William Wordsworth, "To Sleep"

If a man had as many ideas during the day as he does when he has insomnia, he'd make a fortune. ~Griff Niblack

A ruffled mind makes a restless pillow. ~Charlotte Brontë

Sleep is the golden chain that ties health and our bodies together. ~Thomas Dekker

People who snore always fall asleep first. ~Author Unknown

Without enough sleep, we all become tall two-year-olds. ~JoJo Jensen, Dirt Farmer Wisdom, 2002

When you have insomnia, you're never really asleep, and you're never really awake. ~From the movie Fight Club, based on the novel by Chuck Palahniuk

The best cure for insomnia is a Monday morning. ~Author Unknown

Now, blessings light on him that first invented sleep! It covers a man all over, thoughts and all, like a cloak; it is meat for the hungry, drink for the thirsty, heat for the cold, and cold for the hot. It is the current coin that purchases all the pleasures of the world cheap, and the balance that sets the king and the shepherd, the fool and the wise man, even. ~Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote, 1605

The worst thing in the world is to try to sleep and not to. ~F. Scott Fitzgerald

O bed! O bed! delicious bed!
That heaven upon earth to the weary head.
~Thomas Hood, Miss Kilmansegg - Her Dream

There is no hope for a civilization which starts each day to the sound of an alarm clock. ~Author Unknown

Nothing cures insomnia like the realization that it's time to get up. ~Author Unknown

It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it. ~John Steinbeck

Sleep, rest of things, O pleasing Deity,
Peace of the soul, which cares dost crucify,
Weary bodies refresh and mollify.
~Ovid, attributed

Don't fight with the pillow, but lay down your head
And kick every worriment out of the bed.
~Edmund Vance Cooke

All men whilst they are awake are in one common world: but each of them, when he is asleep, is in a world of his own. ~Plutarch

Then, the cool kindliness of sheets, that soon
Smooth away trouble; and the rough male kiss
Of blankets....
~Rupert Brooke, "The Great Lover,"

The best bridge between despair and hope is a good night's sleep. ~E. Joseph Cossman

Oh sleep! it is a gentle thing,
Beloved from pole to pole.
~Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Sleep lingers all our lifetime about our eyes, as night hovers all day in the boughs of the fir-tree. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Fatigue is the best pillow. ~Benjamin Franklin

I'm not asleep... but that doesn't mean I'm awake. ~Author Unknown

Sleep: a poor substitute for caffeine. ~Author Unknown

The amount of sleep required by the average person is five minutes more. ~Wilson Mizener

In its early stages, insomnia is almost an oasis in which those who have to think or suffer darkly take refuge. ~Colette

Leisure time is that five or six hours when you sleep at night. ~George Allen

How do people go to sleep? I'm afraid I've lost the knack. I might try busting myself smartly over the temple with the night-light. I might repeat to myself, slowly and soothingly, a list of quotations beautiful from minds profound; if I can remember any of the damn things. ~Dorothy Parker

There are twelve hours in the day, and above fifty in the night. ~Marie de Rabutin-Chantal

Sleeplessness is a desert without vegetation or inhabitants. ~Jessamyn West

The feeling of sleepiness when you are not in bed, and can't get there, is the meanest feeling in the world. ~Edgar Watson Howe

Loss of Pet Quotes

2009-11-09T22:36:00.003-05:00

For anyone who has ever lost a dear pet, here are some quotes to ease the pain. I dedicate this to Fa, I and Fre.

I am so very grateful for the reception to this post and all the readers who have written in about the comfort it has given them. I have written a handful of articles that may help in this time of great loss. Links are at the end of this post.

A pet is never truly forgotten until it is no longer remembered.
Lacie Petitto

There is no psychiatrist in the world like a puppy licking your face.
Ben Williams

Not the least hard thing to bear when they go from us, these quiet friends, is that they carry away with them so many years of our own lives.
John Galsworthy

Ask the beasts and they will teach you the beauty of this earth.
St. Francis of Assisi.

A home without a cat — and a well fed, well petted and properly revered cat —
may be a home, perhaps, but how can it prove title?
Mark Twain

Of all God's creatures there is only one that cannot be made the slave of the leash.
That one is the cat. If man could be crossed with a cat it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat.
Mark Twain

Many who have spent a lifetime in it can tell us less
of love than the child that lost a dog yesterday.
Thornton Wilder

Agreeable friends-they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms.
George Elliot

We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.
Immanual Kant

There is no death. Only a change of worlds.
-Chief Seattle

It is not just that animals make the world more scenic or picturesque. The lives of animals are woven into our very being - closer than our own breathing - and our soul will suffer when they are gone.
Gary Kowalski, Author of The Souls of Animals

If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went.
Will Rogers

Dogs love their friends and bite their enemies, quite unlike people, who are incapable of pure love and always have to mix love and hate.
Sigmund Freud

If there is a heaven, it's certain our animals are to be there. Their lives become so interwoven with our own, it would take more than an archangel to detangle them.
Pam Brown

Agreeable friends-they asks no questions, they pass no criticisms.
George Elliot

If having a soul means being able to feel love and loyalty and gratitude, then animals are better off than a lot of humans.
James Herriot.

His ears were often the first thing to catch my tears.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning

No heaven will not ever Heaven be, unless my cats are there to welcome me.
Anonymous.

Until one has loved an animal, a part of one's soul remains unawakened.
Anatole France

No one loves you unconditionally as your beloved pet.
Cynthia S. Dobesh.

Grief is so painfully real, regardless of its origin. The love of, and attachment to, an animal friend can equal that of human relationships. Likewise, the loss of an animal can be just as devastating.
Rev. Joel L. Morgan

If I have any beliefs about immortality it is that certain dogs I know will go to heaven, and very few people.
James Thurber

With eye upraised his master's look to scan, The joy, the solace, and the aid of man: The rich man's guardian and the poor man's friend, The only creature faithful to the end.
George Crabbe

Old men miss many dogs.
Steve Allen

A good dog never dies. He always stays. He walks besides you on crisp autumn days when frost is on the fields and winter's drawing near. His head is within our hand in his old way.
Mary Carolyn Davies

And if I go, while you are still here...
Know that I still live on,
Vibrating to a different measure,
Behind a thin veil that you cannot see through.
You will not see me, so you must have faith.
I will wait there for the time when we can soar together again, both aware of each other.
Until then, live your life to the fullest.
And when you need me, just whisper my name in your heart,
...I will be there.

Other Helpful Reading:

Pet Loss: 3 Tips to Ease your Pain

Pet Loss: How to Handle the Stupid Things People Say

Pet Loss: 5 Things you Need to Know

Pet Loss: 4 Things You Can Do To Help Yourself Survive

Autumn Quotes

2009-11-04T07:08:00.001-05:00

Fall is here! There is nothing quite like the beauty of autumn. Here are some quotes to wrap around you as the weather gets a little crisper and the days get shorter.

Maria

Come said the wind to
the leaves one day,
Come o're the meadows
and we will play.
Put on your dresses
scarlet and gold,
For summer is gone
and the days grow cold.
A Children's Song of the 1880's

A few days ago I walked along the edge of the lake and was treated to the crunch and rustle of leaves with each step I made. The acoustics of this season are different and all sounds, no matter how hushed, are as crisp as autumn air.
Eric Sloane

All those golden autumn days the sky was full of wings. Wings beating low over the blue water of Silver Lake, wings beating high in the blue air far above it . . . bearing them all away to the green fields in the South.
Laura Ingalls Wilder

Autumn is a second spring where every leaf is a flower.
Albert Camus

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Autumn is the eternal corrective. It is ripeness and color and a time of maturity; but it is also breadth, and depth, and distance. What man can stand with autumn on a hilltop and fail to see the span of his world and the meaning of the rolling hills that reach to the far horizon?
Hal Borland

Autumn, the year's last, loveliest smile.
William Cullen Bryant

Bittersweet October. The mellow, messy, leaf-kicking, perfect pause between the opposing miseries of summer and winter.
Carol Bishop Hipps

October's poplars are flaming torches lighting the way to winter.
Nova Bair

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.
John Muir

Clouds of insects danced and buzzed in the golden autumn light, and the air was full of the piping of the song-birds. Long, glinting dragonflies shot across the path, or hung tremulous with gauzy wings and gleaming bodies.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.
George Eliot

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Everyone must take time to sit and watch the leaves turn.
Elizabeth Lawrence

The wind-blown leaves turn
Dancing the golden sunlight
across the tired floor.
Matt Dimmic

For man, autumn is a time of harvest, of gathering together. For nature, it is a time of sowing, of scattering abroad.
Edwin Way Teale

Then summer fades and passes and October comes. We'll smell smoke then,
and feel an unexpected sharpness, a thrill of nervousness, swift elation, a
sense of sadness and departure.
Thomas Wolfe

I cannot endure to waste anything as precious as autumn sunshine by staying in the house. So I spend almost all the daylight hours in the open air.
Nathaniel Hawthorne

Splitting dry kindling
on a damp November day -
wind-chimes tinkling.
Michael P. Garofalo, Cuttings

In the garden, Autumn is, indeed the crowning glory of the year, bringing us the fruition of months of thought and care and toil. And at no season, safe perhaps in Daffodil time, do we get such superb colour effects as from August to November.
Rose G. Kingsley

Once more the liberal year laughs out
O'er richer stores than gems or gold:
Once more with harvest song and shout
Is nature's boldest triumph told.
John Greenleaf Whittier

I've never known anyone yet who doesn't suffer a certain restlessness when autumn rolls around... We're all eight years old again and anything is possible.
Sue Grafton

No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace
As I have seen in one autumnal face.
John Donne

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October is a symphony of permanence and change.
Bonaro W. Overstreet

The foliage has been losing its freshness through the month of August, and here and there a yellow leaf shows itself like the first gray hair amidst the locks of a beauty who has seen one season too many.
Oliver Wendell Holmes

The lands are lit with all the autumn blaze of golden-rod, and everywhere the purple asters nod and bend and wave and flit.
Helen Hunt

Every leaf speaks bliss to me, fluttering from the autumn tree.
Emily Bronte

The leaves fall, the wind blows, and the farm country slowly
changes from the summer cottons into its winter wools.
Henry Beston, Northern Farm

There is a harmony in autumn, and a luster in its sky, which through the summer is not heard or seen, as if it could not be, as if it had not been!
Percy Bysshe Shelley

I cannot endure to waste anything as precious as autumn sunshine by staying in the house. So I spend almost all the daylight hours in the open air.
Nathaniel Hawthorne

Winter is an etching, spring a watercolor, summer an oil painting and autumn a mosaic of them all.
Stanley Horowitz

Mother Teresa Quotes

2009-07-22T17:25:00.000-04:00

Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.

We, the unwilling, led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much, for so long, with so little, we are now qualified to do anything with nothing.

Words which do not give the light of Christ increase the darkness.

Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat.

Do not think that love, in order to be genuine, has to be extraordinary. What we need is to love without getting tired.

Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person.

Each one of them is Jesus in disguise.

Even the rich are hungry for love, for being cared for, for being wanted, for having someone to call their own.

Everytime you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing.

God doesn't require us to succeed; he only requires that you try.

Good works are links that form a chain of love.

I am a little pencil in the hand of a writing God who is sending a love letter to the world.

I do not pray for success, I ask for faithfulness.

I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.

I know God will not give me anything I can't handle. I just wish that He didn't trust me so much.

I try to give to the poor people for love what the rich could get for money. No, I wouldn't touch a leper for a thousand pounds; yet I willingly cure him for the love of God.

I want you to be concerned about your next door neighbor. Do you know your next door neighbor?

If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.

If we want a love message to be heard, it has got to be sent out. To keep a lamp burning, we have to keep putting oil in it.

In this life we cannot do great things. We can only do small things with great love.

Intense love does not measure, it just gives.

It is a kingly act to assist the fallen.

It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish.

It is impossible to walk rapidly and be unhappy.

It is not the magnitude of our actions but the amount of love that is put into them that matters.

Jesus said love one another. He didn't say love the whole world.

Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls.

Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.

Let us always meet each other with smile, for the smile is the beginning of love.

Let us more and more insist on raising funds of love, of kindness, of understanding, of peace. Money will come if we seek first the Kingdom of God - the rest will be given.

Let us not be satisfied with just giving money. Money is not enough, money can be got, but they need your hearts to love them. So, spread your love everywhere you go.

Let us touch the dying, the poor, the lonely and the unwanted according to the graces we have received and let us not be ashamed or slow to do the humble work.

Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty.

Loneliness is the most terrible poverty.

Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do... but how much love we put in that action.

Love begins by taking care of the closest ones - the ones at home.

Love is a fruit in season at all times, and within reach of every hand.

Many people mistake our work for our vocation. Our vocation is the love of Jesus.

One of the greatest diseases is to be nobody to anybody.

If you can't feed a hundred people, then feed just one.

If you judge people, you have no time to love them.

Peace begins with a smile.

Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier.

Sweetest Lord, make me appreciative of the dignity of my high vocation, and its many responsibilities. Never permit me to disgrace it by giving way to coldness, unkindness, or impatience.

The biggest disease today is not leprosy or tuberculosis, but rather the feeling of being unwanted.

The greatest destroyer of peace is abortion because if a mother can kill her own child, what is left for me to kill you and you to kill me? There is nothing between.

The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread.

The miracle is not that we do this work, but that we are happy to do it.

The most terrible poverty is loneliness and the feeling of being unloved.

The success of love is in the loving - it is not in the result of loving. Of course it is natural in love to want the best for the other person, but whether it turns out that way or not does not determine the value of what we have done.

There are no great things, only small things with great love. Happy are those.

There is always the danger that we may just do the work for the sake of the work. This is where the respect and the love and the devotion come in - that we do it to God, to Christ, and that's why we try to do it as beautifully as possible.

There is more hunger in the world for love and appreciation in this world than for bread.

There must be a reason why some people can afford to live well. They must have worked for it. I only feel angry when I see waste. When I see people throwing away things that we could use.

We are all pencils in the hand of God.

We can do no great things, only small things with great love.

We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature - trees, flowers, grass- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence... We need silence to be able to touch souls.

We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.

We shall never know all the good that a simple smile can do.

We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty.

If you want a love message to be heard, it has got to be sent out. To keep a lamp burning, we have to keep putting oil in it.

Margaret Mead Quotes

2009-07-18T08:30:00.000-04:00

Margaret Mead was an American cultural anthropologist. Born in 1901, she died in NYC in 1978. She was both respected and controversial. An adademic, a writer. Here are some of her most popular quotes

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.

There is no greater insight into the future than recognizing...when we save our children, we save ourselves.

Instead of being presented with stereotypes by age, sex, color, class, or religion, children must have the opportunity to learn that within each range, some people are loathsome and some are delightful.

We are continually faced with great opportunities which are brilliantly disguised as unsolvable problems.

Young people are moving away from feeling guilty about sleeping with somebody to feeling guilty if they are *not* sleeping with someone.

Never depend upon institutions or government to solve any problem. All social movements are founded by, guided by, motivated and seen through by the passion of individuals.

You know you love someone when you cannot put into words how they make you feel.

We won't have a society if we destroy the environment.

If the future is to remain open and free, we need people who can tolerate the unknown, who will not need the support of completely worked out systems or traditional blueprints from the past.

Never doubt that a small group of committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

I learned to observe the world around me, and to note what I saw.

I was brought up to believe that the only thing worth doing was to add to the sum of accurate information in the world.

Women have an important contribution to make.

I used to say to my classes that the ways to get insight are: to study infants; to study animals; to study primitive people; to be psychoanalyzed; to have a religious conversion and get over it; to have a psychotic episode and get over it; or to have a love affair with an old Russian. And I stopped saying that when a little dancer in the front row put up her hand and said, 'Does he have to be old?'

Every time we liberate a woman, we liberate a man.

Inspirational Quote of the Week

2009-07-05T10:17:00.001-04:00

Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.
T. S. Eliot

Apology Quotes

2008-11-13T21:59:00.001-05:00

Apology, apology.....one of the hardest words in the English language. Here are a some great apology quotes. Also, consider reading my article, The Masterful Apology.

When you realize you've made a mistake, make amends immediately. It's easier to eat crow while it's still warm. ~Dan Heist

Keep your words soft and tender because tomorrow you may have to eat them. ~Author Unknown

Never ruin an apology with an excuse. ~Kimberly Johnson

In some families, please is described as the magic word. In our house, however, it was sorry. ~Margaret Laurence

True remorse is never just a regret over consequence; it is a regret over motive. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960

There's one sad truth in life I've found
While journeying east and west -
The only folks we really wound
Are those we love the best.
We flatter those we scarcely know,
We please the fleeting guest,
And deal full many a thoughtless blow
To those who love us best.
~Ella Wheeler Wilcox

The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and for deeds left undone. ~Harriet Beecher Stowe, Little Foxes, 1865

Forgiveness is the sweetest revenge. ~Isaac Friedmann

An apology is a good way to have the last word. ~Author Unknown

An apology is the superglue of life. It can repair just about anything. ~Lynn Johnston

The only correct actions are those that demand no explanation and no apology. ~Red Auerbach

Apology is a lovely perfume; it can transform the clumsiest moment into a gracious gift. ~Margaret Lee Runbeck

Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future. ~Paul Boese

Remember, we all stumble, every one of us. That's why it's a comfort to go hand in hand. ~Emily Kimbrough

It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission. ~Grace Hopper

If you were going to die soon and had only one phone call you could make, who would you call and what would you say? And why are you waiting? ~Stephen Levine

For every minute you are angry, you lose sixty seconds of happiness. ~Author Unknown

Not the fastest horse can catch a word spoken in anger. ~Chinese Proverb

It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend. ~William Blake

True friends stab you in the front. ~Oscar Wilde

Friendship isn't a big thing - it's a million little things. ~Author Unknown

The most important trip you may take in life is meeting people halfway. ~Henry Boye

You can make up a quarrel, but it will always show where it was patched. ~Edgar Watson Howe

A stiff apology is a second insult... The injured party does not want to be compensated because he has been wronged; he wants to be healed because he has been hurt.
G. K. Chesterton

Maturity is the ability to reap without apology and not complain when things don't go well.
Jim Rohn

Never ruin an apology with an excuse.
Kimberly Johnson

The best apology against false accusers is silence and sufferance, and honest deeds set against dishonest words
John Milton

For tips on how to make a beautiful apology, read here.

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Forgiveness Quotes

2008-11-13T21:44:00.000-05:00

Here are some of the best forgiveness quotes that I could find. True forgiveness is tough business. These quotes are great reminders of the importance of forgiveness.

I can forgive, but I cannot forget, is only another way of saying, I will not forgive. Forgiveness ought to be like a cancelled note - torn in two, and burned up, so that it never can be shown against one. ~Henry Ward Beecher

Forgiveness is the fragrance the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it. ~Mark Twain

Once a woman has forgiven her man, she must not reheat his sins for breakfast. ~Marlene Dietrich

It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission. ~Grace Hopper

The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong. ~Mahatma Gandhi

To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you. ~Lewis B. Smedes, "Forgiveness - The Power to Change the Past," Christianity Today, 7 January 1983 (Thanks, Donna)

Forgiveness is a funny thing. It warms the heart and cools the sting. ~William Arthur Ward

Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future. ~Paul Boese

You can make up a quarrel, but it will always show where it was patched. ~Edgar Watson Howe, Country Town Sayings, 1911

It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend. ~William Blake, Jerusalem

Forgiveness is the sweetest revenge. ~Isaac Friedmann

Forgive all who have offended you, not for them, but for yourself. ~Harriet Nelson

He who cannot forgive breaks the bridge over which he himself must pass. ~George Herbert

There's no point in burying a hatchet if you're going to put up a marker on the site. ~Sydney Harris

Nobody forgets where he buried the hatchet. ~Frank McKinney "Kin" Hubbard, Abe Martin's Broadcast, 1930

Yes, this is what good is: to forgive evil. There is no other good. ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin

What we forgive too freely doesn't stay forgiven. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960

It's far easier to forgive an enemy after you've got even with him. ~Olin Miller

Forgiving is love's toughest work, and love's biggest risk. If you twist it into something it was never meant to be, it can make you a doormat or an insufferable manipulator. Forgiving seems almost unnatural. Our sense of fairness tells us people should pay for the wrong they do. But forgiving is love's power to break nature's rule. ~Lewis B. Smedes

There is no revenge so complete as forgiveness. ~Josh Billings

Without forgiveness life is governed by... an endless cycle of resentment and retaliation. ~Roberto Assagioli

One thing you will probably remember well is any time you forgive and forget. ~Franklin P. Jones

Never does the human soul appear so strong as when it forgoes revenge, and dares forgive an injury. ~E.H. Chapin

To err is human, to forgive, divine.
~ Alexander Pope

To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.
~ Lewis B. Smedes

Holding resentment is like eating poison and waiting for the other person to keel over.
~ Unknown

A heart filled with anger has no room for love.
~ Unknown

I can forgive, but I cannot forget, is only another way of saying, I will not forgive. Forgiveness ought to be like a cancelled note - torn in two, and burned up, so that it never can be shown against one.
~ Henry Ward Beecher

Forgive all who have offended you, not for them, but for yourself.
~ Harriet Nelson

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

Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future.
~ Paul Boese

To forgive and not to forget is like burying the hatchet with the handle sticking out.
~ Unknown

Anger makes you smaller, while forgiveness forces you to grow beyond what you were.
~ Cherie Carter-Scott

Forgiveness means letting go of the past.
~ Gerald Jampolsky

We may not know how to forgive, and we may not want to forgive; but the very fact we say we are willing to forgive begins the healing practice.
~ Louise Hay

Let us forgive each other - only then will we live in peace.
~ Leo Tolstoy

There is no love without forgiveness, and there is no forgiveness without love.
~ Bryant H. McGill

Forgive many things in others; nothing in yourself. - Ausonius

If you haven't forgiven yourself something, how can you forgive others? - Dolores Huerta

To err is human; to forgive, infrequent. - Franklin P. Adams (1881 - 1960)

'Tis the most tender part of love, each other to forgive. - John Sheffield

There is no revenge so complete as forgiveness. - Josh Billings

Forgiveness is almost a selfish act because of its immense benefits to the one who forgives. - Lawana Blackwell

The hatred you're carrying is a live coal in your heart - far more damaging to yourself than to them. Lawana Blackwell

The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong. - Mahatma Gandhi
Life is an adventure in forgiveness. - Norman Cousins

Forgiveness is the healing of wounds caused by another. You choose to let go of a past wrong and no longer be hurt by it. Forgiveness is a strong move to make, like turning your shoulders sideways to walk quickly on a crowded sidewalk. It's your move. Real Live Preacher

It really doesn't matter if the person who hurt you deserves to be forgiven. Forgiveness is a gift you give yourself. You have things to do and you want to move on. Real Live Preacher

No one forgives with more grace and love than a child. - Real Live Preacher

It is easier to get forgiveness than permission. - Stuart's Law of Retroaction

Pray you now, forget and forgive. - William Shakespeare

The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.-- Mahatma Gandhi

Know all and you will pardon all. --Thomas A’Kempis

We are all full of weakness and errors; let us mutually pardon each other our follies
--Voltaire

A mature Christian has capacity to absorb the offenses and weaknesses of others, not just demand they perform up to the code of ideals. --Stephen Crosby

To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover the prisoner was you.—Unknown

Anger makes you smaller, while forgiveness forces you to grow beyond what you were. --Cherie Carter-Scott

The offender never pardons. --George Herbert

He who cannot forgive breaks the bridge over which he himself must pass.--George Herbert

Resentment is like a glass of poison that a man drinks; then he sits down and waits for his enemy to die.—Unknown

Many people are afraid to forgive because they feel they must remember the wrong or they will not learn from it. The opposite is true. Through forgiveness, the wrong is released from its emotional stranglehold on us so that we can learn from it. Through the power and intelligence of the heart, the release of forgiveness brings expanded intelligence to work with the situation more effectively. -- David McArthur & Bruce McArthur

A Christian will find it cheaper to pardon than to resent. Forgiveness saves the expense of anger, the cost of hatred, and the waste of spirit. --Hannah More

Forgiveness means that you've decided not to let it keep festering inside even if it only comes up once in awhile. --Doc Childre and Howard Martin

Sincere forgiveness isn't colored with expectations that the other person apologize or change. Don't worry whether or not they finally understand you. Love them and release them. Life feeds back truth to people in its own way and time—just like it does for you and me. --Sara Paddison

Forgiveness is giving up the possibility of a better past. --Unknown

Not the power to remember, but its very opposite, the power to forget, is a necessary condition for our existence. -Sholem Asch

Forgiveness is a funny thing. It warms the heart and cools the sting. --William A. Ward

You will know that forgiveness has begun when you recall those who hurt you and feel the power to wish them well. --Lewis B. Smedes

We frequently forgive those who bore us, but cannot forgive those whom we bore. –Francois, Duc de La Rochefoucauld

It is very easy to forgive others their mistakes; it takes more grit and gumption to forgive them for having witnessed your own. --Jessamyn West

Wrongs are often forgiven, but contempt never is. Our pride remembers it forever.
--Lord Chesterfield

Don't tell friends their social faults; they will cure the fault and never forgive you. --Logan Pearsall Smith

Forgiveness is . . . accepting God's sovereign use of people and situations to strip you of self importance, and humiliate your self love. --Martha Kilpatrick

Without deep humility, true forgiveness is impossible…and will never happen. --Martha Kilpatrick

Forgiveness is me giving up my right to hurt you for hurting me. --Anonymous

Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heal that has crushed it.
--Mark Twain

Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?-- Abraham Lincoln

Humanity is never so beautiful as when praying for forgiveness, or else forgiving another. --Jean Paul Richter

The glory of Christianity is to conquer by forgiveness. --William Blake

Yes, this is what good is: to forgive evil. There is no other good. --Antonio Porchia

Forgiveness is the answer to the child's dream of a miracle by which what is broken is made whole again, what is soiled is made clean again. --Dag Hammarskjold

Forgiveness is choosing to love. It is the first skill of self-giving love. --Mahatma Gandhi

We are told that people stay in love because of chemistry, or because they remain intrigued with each other, because of many kindnesses, because of luck . . . But part of it has got to be forgiveness and gratefulness. --Ellen Goodman

A happy marriage is the union of two good forgivers. --Robert Quillen

Forgiveness is the final form of love. --Reinhold Niebuhr

One forgives to the degree that one loves. --Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Never forget the three powerful resources you always have available to you: love, prayer, and forgiveness. --H. Jackson Brown

We are all on a life long journey and the core of its meaning, the terrible demand of its centrality is forgiving and being forgiven. --Martha Kilpatrick

Forgiveness is the giving, and so the receiving, of life. --George MacDonald

Not to forgive is to be imprisoned by the past, by old grievances that do not permit life to proceed with new business. Not to forgive is to yield oneself to another's control... to be locked into a sequence of act and response, of outrage and revenge, tit for tat, escalating always. The present is endlessly overwhelmed and devoured by the past. Forgiveness frees the forgiver. It extracts the forgiver from someone else's nightmare. - Lance Morrow

Best Sympathy Quotes Web Pages

2008-10-06T08:56:00.000-04:00

Listed below are a series of web pages with the most inspiring and kind sympathy quotes.

Maria

http://www.quotegarden.com/sympathy.html

http://www.wisdomquotes.com/cat_death.html

http://sadly-missed.com/resources/grief_loss_quotes.php

http://www.srichinmoypoetry.com/poems_quote/poem_for_loss_of_a_loved_one

To get inspiration every day, go to Simply Put Together.

Best Happiness Quotes Web Pages

2008-10-04T19:20:00.000-04:00

Listed below are my favorite Happiness Quotes Webpages.

They are a great source of inspiration, support and laughter.

You can use these quotes to help yourself through a difficult day or share them with a friend in need.

Happiness Quotes are great for redefining your perspective.

A few well said words will go a long way.

Have a wonderful day.

Maria

http://www.wisdomquotes.com/cat_happiness.html

http://www.quotegarden.com/happiness.html

http://thinkexist.com/quotations/happiness/

http://www.inspirational-quotations.com/happiness-quotes.html

http://www.thehappyguy.com/definition-of-happiness.html

http://www.quotationspage.com/subjects/happiness/

http://thehappinessshow.com/HappinessQuotes.htm

Want inspiration and the opportunity to change every day?
Check out my Enrichment Planners! Click here!

http://www.coachingtohappiness.com/happiness-quotes.html

http://www.1000advices.com/guru/happiness_quotations.html

http://www.indianchild.com/quotations_on_happiness.htm

http://www.quotedb.com/categories/happiness/1

http://www.geocities.com/Buddychai/Bio/Happiness.html

http://quotationsbook.com/subject/happiness/

Want inspiration and the opportunity to change every day?
Check out my Enrichment Planners! Click here!

Have a wonderful week and remember to make the moment happen!

Maria

Best Adversity Quotes Web Pages

2008-10-04T19:18:00.000-04:00

Listed below are my favorite Adversity Quotes Webpages.

They are a great source of inspiration and support when going through a difficult time.

You can use these quotes to help yourself through a difficult day or time.

You can use them to help you redefine your perspective.

You can use them to give a friend or family member in need a bit of support.

A few well said words will go a long way.

Have a wonderful day.

Maria

Best Adversity Quote Pages

http://www.quotegarden.com/adversity.html

http://thinkexist.com/quotations/adversity/

http://thinkexist.com/quotes/with/keyword/adversity/

http://www.motivational-inspirational-corner.com/getquote.html?categoryid=27

http://en.proverbia.net/citastema.asp?tematica=24

To get inspiration in your daily planner, click here.

http://www.worldofquotes.com/topic/Adversity/1/index.html

more adversity quote pages below.

http://quotations.about.com/cs/inspirationquotes/a/OvercomingAd1.htm

http://www.great-inspirational-quotes.com/adversity-quotes.html

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/adversity.html

http://quotationsbook.com/subject/adversity/

http://www.motivational-inspirational-corner.com/getquote.html?categoryid=27

http://www.finestquotes.com/select_quote-category-Adversity-page-0.htm

Want inspiration every day?
Check out my Enrichment Planners!
http://www.simplyputtogether.com/planner.html

http://www.saidwhat.co.uk/topicquote/adversity

http://coolfunnyquotes.blogspot.com/2007/03/funny-adversity-quotes-sayings-and.html

http://www.famousquotesandauthors.com/topics/adversity_quotes.html

http://www.stresslesscountry.com/adversity-quotes/index.html

http://www.lilesnet.com/inspiration/adversity.htm

http://www.jimpoz.com/quotes/Category:Adversity

Thanks and remember to make the moment happen!

Maria

To learn more about Simply Put Together, click here.

Welcome to Simply Put Together Inspirational Quotes!

2008-10-04T19:09:00.000-04:00

Inspirational quotes have tremendous power to shift our thoughts, our focus, just by reading a few lines. The purpose of this blog is to share some of my favorite inspirational quotes, as well as my favorite inspirational websites!

My other website and blog are Simply Put Together. Check them out for inspirational tools for living! I believe we can have it all. We just have to know what we want, be willing to take the steps toward our goals and keep believing!

But for now,

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.
Eleanor Roosevelt

Today, take a moment and think about one of your dreams. Do one thing today to take you closer to it.

Have a great day and remember to make the moment happen!

Maria

To learn more about Simply Put Together, click here.
simplyputtogether.com