Favorite Quotes

Share your favorite quotes and I will add them to this page. I will add new ones to the top of each category. Sources: brainyquote.com; quotegarden.com; thinkexist.com

“Mastery of life is not a question of control, but of finding a balance between human and Being.” – Eckhart Tolle

“Time is too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve, too short for those who rejoice, but for those who love, time is eternity.” – Henry Van Dyke

“The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt

“You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.” – Mark Twain

“Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life.” – Omar Khayyam

“It’s the little details that are vital. Little things make big things happen.” – John Wooden

“It belongs to the imperfection of everything human that man can only attain his desire by passing through its opposite.” – Soren Kierkegaard

“In the midst of movement and chaos, keep stillness inside of you.” – Deepak Chopra

“When everything is moving and shifting, the only way to counteract chaos is stillness. When things feel extraordinary, strive for ordinary. When the surface is wavy, dive deeper for quieter waters.” – Kristin Armstrong

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

“It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.” – William Shakespeare

“As we let our light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence actually liberates others.” – Marianne Williamson

“A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupery

“Love is the foundation from which your decisions about your life should be made.” – Darren L. Johnson

“Someday perhaps the inner light will shine forth from us, and then we’ll need no other light.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“Humor is perhaps a sense of intellectual perspective: an awareness that some things are really important, others not; and that the two kinds are most oddly jumbled in everyday affairs.” –  Christopher Morley

“A garden requires patient labor and attention. Plants do not grow merely to satisfy ambitions or to fulfill good intentions. They thrive because someone expended effort on them.” – Liberty Hyde Bailey

“You can become blind by seeing each day as a similar one. Each day is a different one, each day brings a miracle of its own. It’s just a matter of paying attention to this miracle.” – Paulo Coelho

“Love is a fruit in season at all times, and within reach of every hand.” – Mother Teresa

“Each moment of our life, we either invoke or destroy our dreams.” – Stuart Wilde

“My business is not to remake myself. But make the absolute best of what God made.” – Robert Browning

“When we write about our lives we respond to them. As we respond to them we are rendered more fluid, more centered, more agile on our own behalf. We are tendered conscious.” – Julia Cameron, The Writers Life: Insights from The Right to Write

“Deciding what to pay attention to for this hour, day, week or year, much less a lifetime, is a peculiarly human predicament, and your quality of life largely depends on how you handle it.” – Winifred Gallagher, Rapt

“Emily – Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it? Every, every minute?

Stage manager – No. (pause) The saints and poets maybe – they do some.” – from the play Our Town, Thornton Wilder

“We have other motivations and gifts, and most of us have to go through a more complicated process to find the right things to focus on. We must resist the temptation to drift along, reacting to whatever happens to us next, and deliberately select targets, from activities to relationships, that are worthy of our finite supply of time and attention.”
– Winifred Gallagher, Rapt

“Whatever your age or gender, the great obstacle to enjoying the moment’s delights is not paying attention to them. The world’s most beautiful garden might as well be an asphalt parking lot if you pound through it while barking into your cell phone. Urgency about time is another major obstacle to savoring.”– Winifred Gallagher, Rapt

“The capacity to see the big picture is perhaps the most important as an antidote to the variety of psychic woes brought forth by the remarkable prosperity and plentitude of our times. Many of us are crunched for time, deluged by information, and paralyzed by the weight of too many choices. The best prescription for these modern maladies may be to approach one’s own life in a contextual, big picture fashion – to distinguish between what really matters and what merely annoys.”– Daniel H. Pink, A Whole New Mind

Change

“You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” – Mahatma Gandhi

“All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.” – Anatole France

“If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.” – Lao Tzu

“If we don’t change, we don’t grow. If we don’t grow, we aren’t really living.” – Gail Sheehy

“The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers.” – Erich Fromm

“Few things in the world are more powerful than a positive push. A smile. A world of optimism and hope. A ‘you can do it’ when things are tough.” – Richard M. DeVos

“All life demands struggle. Those who have everything given to them become lazy, selfish, and insensitive to the real values of life. The very striving and hard work that we so constantly try to avoid is the major building block in the person we are today.” – Pope Paul VI

“The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.” – Rabindranath Tagore

“What the caterpillar calls the end of the world the master calls a butterfly.” – Richard Bach

“Change always comes bearing gifts.” Price Pritchett

“They must often change, who would be constant in happiness or wisdom.” – Confucius

“No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.” – Buddha

Faith

“Faith never knows where it is being led, but it loves and knows the one who is leading.” – Oswald Chambers

“Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.” –  Helen Keller

“Confidence… thrives on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection and on unselfish performance. Without them it cannot live.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt

Happiness

“Each Warrior wants to leave the mark of his will, his signature, on important acts he touches. This is not the voice of ego but of the human spirit, rising up and declaring that it has something to contribute to the solution of the hardest problems, no matter how vexing!” – Pat Riley

“Exploration is really the essence of the human spirit.” – Frank Borman

“No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit.” – Helen Keller

“Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace, and gratitude.” – Denis Waitley

“Above all the grace and the gifts that Christ gives to his beloved is that of overcoming self.” – Francis of Assisi

“There is nothing insignificant in the world. It all depends on the point of view.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“Action and reaction, ebb and flow, trial and error, change – this is the rhythm of living. Out of our over-confidence, fear; out of our fear, clearer vision, fresh hope. And out of hope, progress.” – Bruce Barton

“Tomorrow is always fresh, with no mistakes in it.” – Lucy Maud Montgomery

“Fresh activity is the only means of overcoming adversity.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“We can never obtain peace in the outer world until we make peace with ourselves.” -Dalai Lama

“The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.” – Thomas Merton

“I’ve learned from experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions and not on our circumstances.”  – Martha Washington

“Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.” – Helen Keller

“Just trust yourself, then you will know how to live.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder. Help someone’s soul heal. Walk out of your house like a shepherd.” – Rumi

“All who joy would win must share it – Happiness was born a twin.” – Lord Byron

“The quality of mercy is not strained. It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven, upon the place beneath.” – Shakespeare

“Let’s dare to be ourselves, for we do that better than anyone else can.” – Shirley Briggs

“Happiness comes of the capacity to feel deeply, to enjoy simply, to think freely, to risk life, to be needed.” – Storm Jameson

“Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadow.” – Helen Keller

“Achieving a level of inner simplicity makes it possible to choose intelligently the things that are meaningful in our lives and that contribute to our happiness and our peace of mind.” – Elaine St. James

“Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that, but simply growth. We are happy when we are growing.” – William Butler Yeats

“Whatever your temperament, living the focused life is not about trying to feel happy all the time, which would be both futile and grotesque. Rather, it’s about treating your mind as you would a private garden and being as careful as possible about what you introduce and allow to grow there.” – Winifred Gallagher

“Make yourself necessary to someone.”– Emerson

“The art of being wise is knowing what to overlook.”– William James

“Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action.”– William James

Life

“Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life. Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement.” – Golda Meir

“Everything comes to us that belongs to us if we create the capacity to receive it.” – Rabindranath Tagore

“It isn’t the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it’s the pebble in your shoe.” – Muhammad Ali

“There are moments in life, when the heart is so full of emotion That if by chance it be shaken, or into its depths like a pebble Drops some careless word, it overflows, and its secret, Spilt on the ground like water, can never be gathered together.” – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“If you throw the pebble in the pond and the rings start circulating that much wider, you’ve done things and created things for people that they didn’t think they’d ever be able to do. That excites me.” – Mindy Grossman

“Love knows how to form itself. God will do his work if we do ours. Our job is to prepare ourselves for love. When we do, love finds us every time.” – Marianne Williamson

“Thou hast created us for Thyself, and our heart is not quiet until it rests in Thee.” – Saint Augustine

“The salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to reflect, in human meekness and human responsibility.” – Vaclav Havel

“Artists instinctively want to reflect humanity, their own and each other’s, in all its intermittent virtue and vitality, frailty and fallibility.” – Tom Hiddleston

“Animals are reliable, many full of love, true in their affections, predictable in their actions, grateful and loyal. Difficult standards for people to live up to.” – Alfred A. Montapert

“A positive attitude causes a chain reaction of positive thoughts, events and outcomes. It is a catalyst and it sparks extraordinary results.” – Wade Boggs

“If that vital spark that we find in a grain of wheat can pass unchanged through countless deaths and resurrections, will the spirit of man be unable to pass from this body to another?” – William Jennings Bryan

“The February sunshine steeps your boughs and tints the buds and swells the leaves within.” – William C. Bryant

“The gracious, eternal God permits the spirit to green and bloom and to bring forth the most marvelous fruit, surpassing anything a tongue can express and a heart conceive.” – Johannes Tauler

“May my soul bloom in love for all existence.” – Rudolf Steiner

“As your faith is strengthened you will find that there is no longer the need to have a sense of control, that things will flow as they will, and that you will flow with them, to your great delight and benefit.” – Emmanuel Teney

“The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.” – Albert Einstein

“Love is not consolation.  It is light.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

“Be content with what you are, and wish not change; nor dread your last day, nor long for it.” – Marcus Aurelius

“Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing.” – Abraham Lincoln

“The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with objects it loves.” – C.G. Jung

“Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something and that this thing must be attained.”- Marie Curie

“Permanence, perseverance and persistence in spite of all obstacles, discouragements, and impossibilities: It is this, that in all things distinguishes the strong soul from the weak.” – Thomas Carlyle

“What is important in life is life, and not the result of life.” –  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can’t ride you unless your back is bent.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”  – Margaret Mead

“Remember no one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”  – Eleanor Roosevelt

“Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself and know that every thing in this life has a purpose.” – Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

“Nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own; and from morning to night, as from the cradle to the grave, it is but a succession of changes so gentle and easy that we can scarcely mark their progress. “ – Charles Dickens

“Live each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each.” –  Henry David Thoreau

“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable.” – Helen Keller

“Greatness is to take the common things of life and walk truly among them.” – Ralph Iron

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” – Mary Oliver

“Experience shows that success is due less to ability than to zeal. The winner is he who gives himself to his work, body and soul.” – Charles Buxton

“Few things will liberate you faster and move you more quickly along your inner path than doing the things you fear.” – Elaine St. James

“To climb steep hills requires a slow pace at first.” – William Shakespeare

“There is only one success – to spend your life in your own way.” – Christopher Morley

“The more he cast away the more he had.” – John Bunyan

“Get busy living, or get busy dying.” – Red, movie – Shawshank Redemption

“Life reveals itself to us only in so far as well live it.”
– Thomas Merton

“Our whole life is a meditation of our last decision – the only decision that matters.” – Thomas Merton

“Now as never before, some of our most important decisions concern where to direct our limited supply of attention. Remembering that your life is the sum of what you focus on helps to bring clarity to choices about where to spend that valuable mental money.”
– Winifred Gallagher

“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.” – Heraclitus

“The greatest weapon against stress is our own ability to choose one thought over another.”– William James

“To change one’s life: 1. Start immediately; 2. Do it flamboyantly; 3. No exceptions.”– William James

“The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.”– William James

“At the evening of our life we will be judged on love.” – St. John of the Cross

“Gentle words cause life and health; griping brings discouragement.” – Proverbs 15: 4

“Live in a manner worthy of the call you have received, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another through love, striving to preserve the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace.” – Ephesians 4:1-6

Love

“Sometimes the heart sees what is invisible to the eye.” – H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

“A flower cannot blossom without sunshine, and man cannot live without love.” – Max Muller

“Do all things with love.” – Og Mandino

“Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.” – H. L. Mencken

Mindfulness

“Preach always, if necessary use words.” – St. Francis of Assisi

“Therefore once for all this short command is given to you. ‘Love and do what you will.’ If you keep silent, keep silent by love; if you speak, speak by love; if you correct, correct by love; if you pardon, pardon by love: let love be rooted in you, and from the root nothing but good can grow.” – St. Augustine

“Better to illuminate than merely to shine, to deliver to others contemplated truths than merely to contemplate.” – St. Thomas Aquinas

“Our labor here is brief, but the reward is eternal. Do not be disturbed by the clamor of the world, which passes like a shadow. Do not let false delights of a deceptive world deceive you.” – St. Clare of Assisi

“In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.” – William Blake

“When I am liberated by silence, when I am no longer involved in the measurement of life, but in the living of it, I can discover a form of prayer in which there is effectively, no distraction.” – Thomas Merton

“Light is the first of painters. There is no object so foul that intense light will not make it beautiful.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The supreme accomplishment is to blur the line between work and play.” – Arnold Toynbee

“Our life is what our thoughts make of it”.– Marcus Aurelius

Peace

“Do your work, then step back. The only path to serenity.” – Tao Te Ching

“In order to settle down in the quiet of our own being we must learn to be detached from the results of our own activity. We must be content to live without watching ourselves live, to work with expecting immediate reward, to love without an instant satisfaction, and to exist without any special recognition. It is only when we are detached from ourselves that we can be at peace with ourselves.”
– Thomas Merton

“Don’t worry about everyday life – whether you have enough food, drink, and clothes…Look at the lilies and how they grow.”
– Matthew 6:25-29

“The fruit of silence is prayer.
The fruit of prayer is faith.
The fruit of faith is love.
The fruit of love is service.
The fruit of service is peace.”
– Mother Teresa, The Simple Path

Renewal

“When I admire the wonder of a sunset or the beauty of the moon, my soul expands in worship of the Creator” – Mahatma Gandhi

“All great changes are preceded by chaos.” – Deepak Chopra

“We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor.” – Henry David Thoreau

“Patience is power; with time and patience the mulberry leaf becomes silk.” – Chinese Proverb

“Learn to be patient with yourself. Enjoy the process of inner growth for what it is – an ongoing opportunity to become the best we can become at all levels of our life. Don’t push the river. Just let it flow.” – Elaine St. James

“Those who bring sunshine to the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves.” – James Matthew Barrie

“Do not conform yourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect.” – Romans 12:1-2

“Forgetting what lies behind but straining forward to what lies ahead.” – Philippians 3: 8-14

Seasons

“How does the Meadow flower its bloom unfold? Because the lovely little flower is free down to its root, and in that freedom bold.” – William Wordsworth

“May my soul bloom in love for all existence.” – Rudolf Steiner

“The gracious, eternal God permits the spirit to green and bloom and to bring forth the most marvelous fruit, surpassing anything a tongue can express and a heart conceive.” – Johannes Tauler

“People don’t notice whether it’s winter or summer when they’re happy.” – Anton Chekhov

“O, wind, if winter comes, can spring be far behind?” – Percy Bysshe Shelley

“No winter lasts forever; no spring skips its turn.” – Hal Borland

“We cling to our own point of view, as though everything depended on it. Yet our opinions have no permanence; like autumn and winter, they gradually pass away.” – Zhuangzi

“The pine stays green in winter… wisdom in hardship.” – Norman Douglas