“Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement.” — Golda Mier 

 

“Every day is a new beginning, take a deep breath and start again.”

 

While I though that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die. — Leonardo da Vinci 

 

There is no perfect gift without great suffering. Our glories and our triumphs pass away. — Leonardo da Vinci  

 

Writing is good, thinking is better. Cleverness is good, patience is better. — Herman Hess 

 

“You have power over your mind — not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.” — Marcus Aurelius

 

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” — Albert Einstein  

 

“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself – and you are the easiest person to fool.” — Richard Feynman 

 

“Old George Orwell got it backward. Big Brother isn't watching. He's singing and dancing. He's pulling rabbits out of a hat. Big Brother’s busy holding your attention every moment you're awake. He's making sure you're always distracted. He's making sure you're fully absorbed. He's making sure your imagination withers. Until it's as useful as your appendix. He's making sure your attention is always filled. And this being fed, it's worse than being watched. With the world always filling you, no one has to worry about what's in your mind. With everyone's imagination atrophied, no one will ever be a threat to the world.” — Chuck Palahniuk

 

“Being happy doesn't mean that everything is perfect. It means

that you decided to cherish the imperfections.”

 

The last of the great human freedoms is the opportunity and ability to choose ones own mindset in any given circumstance -- Victor Frankl

 

It wasn't until I accepted myself just as I was that I was free to change -- Car Rogers

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Between the stimulus and the response there is space and in that space is your power and your freedom -- Victor Frankl

 

You don't know the first sentence of your writing until you have your last — Neil Gaiman

 

We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same. -- Carlos Castaneda

 

“To cook or fix some food, is not preparation; it is practice....Whatever we do, it should be an expression of the same deep activity. We should appreciate what we are doing. There is no preparation for something else.”

- Dogen (1200-1252)

 

The hero and the coward feel the same thing, it's what the hero does that makes the difference 

 

If your suffering you are forgetting who you are. 

 

There is no sure path to success but the straight path to failure is to try to please everyone -- Herbert Bayard Swope

 

Thinking is asking and answering questions in your own head. By asking questions to others, you become better at asking questions to yourself — Tim Ferris 

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“Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things.” — Robert Brault

 

Anxiety is being trapped in the future and depression is being trapped in the past

 

The best way to make your dreams come true is wake up -- Muhammed Ali

 

The sun is always shining someplace -- Muhammed Ali

 

What you are thinking about you are becoming -- Muhammed Ali

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When you are right no one remembers, when you are wrong no one forgets 

 

Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much -- Oscar Wilde

 

I . . . a universe of atoms . . . an atom in the universe. —Richard Feynman

 

A person's success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have.

 

The goal of personal growth should be to gain that deathbed clarity while your life is still happening so you can actually do something about it. The way you do that is by developing as much wisdom as possible, as early as possible. 

 

In college, people told me, “take the classes with the best professors, not the best topic.” This is good advice in itself, but when taken metaphorically, it’s also good advice for life in general. Going on a trip with 3 friends you love to a gas station in New Jersey is 100 times more fun than going on the adventure of a lifetime with people you don’t like. -- Tim Urban

 

It's okay to be nervous. Instead of fighting that anxiety, dance with it. Welcome it. Relish it. It's a sign you're on to something. "Oh good, here comes that itch!" This is important after all. -- Sam Godin

 

“Everyone you will ever meet knows something you don't.” -- Bill Nye

 

“If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you'll never get it done.” -- Bruce Lee

 

“It's so hard to forget pain, but it's even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace.”  -- Chuck Palahniuk

 

“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” -- Leo Tolstoy

 

Life is effort and I'll stop when I die — Jerry from Rick and Morty (lol)

 

Beware the barrenness of a busy life — Socrates

 

“If you set your goals ridiculously high and it's a failure, you will fail above everyone else's success.” — James Cameron

 

"The best way to complain is to make things." - James Murphy

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“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.” -- Bernard Baruch

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To make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe — Carl Sagan 

 

Be liberated and challenged 

 

Kuei-shan asked Yun-yen,

“What is the seat of enlightenment?”

Yun-yen said,

“Freedom from artificiality.”

 

“Courage isn't the absence of fear, but an urgent impulse to do something despite fear.”

 

Do not be concerned with the fruit of your actions, just give attention to the fruit itself  -- Echkart Tolle

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Between belief and doubt, it is better to believe 

Between action and dissolution, it is better to act 

 

Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.—Albert Einstein

 

“The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.” -- GK Chesterton

 

“Trade your expectation for appreciation; you’ll have a whole new life.”

 

"If you aren't in over your head, how do you know how tall you are" - T.S. Eliot

 

“If the human brain were so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn’t.” — Lyall Watso

 

“The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything.”

- Milan Kundera

 

When you wake up in the morning, ask yourself if you deserve this day 

 

I never learned anything when I was talking 

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“Speak in such a way that others love to listen to you. Listen in such a way that others love to speak to you.”

 

“Inspiration is for amateurs — the rest of us just show up and get to work. And the belief that things will grow out of the activity itself and that you will, through work, bump into other possibilities and kick open other doors that you would never have dreamt of if you were just sitting around looking for a great ‘art idea’.”

 

The way you tell your story to yourself matters.

 

“Decide whether or not the goal is worth the risks involved. If it is, stop worrying.”

 

We get so lost in the stories of our lives that we sometimes forget what an incredible thing it is to be aware — Roland Griffiths Psychological researcher

 

The true method of knowledge is experiment — William Blake

 

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”

― Jalaluddin Rumi

 

"If the path before you is clear, you're probably on someone else's." -- C.G. Jung

 

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

 

Once you realize how beautiful you are, you will find it hard to keep the company of those who do not. — Bruce Jett

 

“A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” — Churchill

 

"The moment you accept total responsibility for EVERYTHING in your life is the day you claim the power the change ANYTHING in your life." — Hal Elrod

 

Don't waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind. The race is long and, in the end, it's only with yourself.

 

“Your level of success will rarely exceed your level of personal development, because success is something you attract by the person you become.” -Hal Elrod

 

“There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign.” — Robert Stevenson

 

Don’t treat people as a curiosity, treat people as people — Yazier Henri

 

Don’t be a consumer looking for a deeper meaning, you may be searching forever —Yazier Henri

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Knowledge is like a sphere; the greater it’s volume, the larger its contact with the unknown — Blaise Pascal 

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“The penalty for procrastination is the loss of hopes and dreams.” — Tai Lopez

​

Ask yourself if you have the right to have an opinion.

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Affirm life with defiance 

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In this great future you can’t forget the past just learn from  it 

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Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass but about dancing in the rain 

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The past is only the future with the lights on -- seen in a bathroom in Nepal (lol)

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“Happiness is the absence of the striving for happiness.” - Chuang-Tzu

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One of the very nicest things about life is the way we must regularly stop whatever it is we are doing and devote our attention to eating — Luciano Pavarotti

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Growth is pain 

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“You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.” - Franz Kafka

 

“Don't postpone joy until you have learned all of your lessons. Joy is your lesson.”

 

“Don't allow your rituals to become ruts.”

 

“Language can become a screen which stands between the thinker and reality. This is the reason why true creativity often starts where language ends.”  — Arthur Koestler
 

“There are always limits, and there are always opportunities. The ones we rehearse and focus on are the ones that shape our attitude and our actions.” — Seth Godin

 

“Once you replace negative thoughts with positive ones, you'll start having positive results.” — Willie Nelson

 

“There’s power in looking silly and not caring that you do.” — Amy Poeler 

 

“Being aware of a single shortcoming within yourself is far more

useful than being aware of a thousand in someone else.” — Dalai Lama 

 

“Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task.” — William James

 

Fear, uncertainty and discomfort are your compasses toward growth

 

“Every day of our lives, we are on the verge of making those slight changes that would make all the difference.” — Mignon McLaughlin

 

“We deem those happy who from the experience of life have learned

to bear its ills without being overcome by them.” — Juvenal 

 

“Breathe. Take care. Stand still for a minute. What you are looking for might just be looking for you too.” — Cleo Wade

 

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.” — Will Durant

 

Learn how to die and you will learn how to live — Morrie 

 

“Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.” — Dalai Lama 

 

Persistence powers passion — Socrates

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If you have read this long I have also put my favorite passage from any book Kurt Vonnegut's Cats Cradle describing the death ritual of Bokononism. I read this when I am sad and it always makes me feel better. 

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God made mud.

God got lonesome.

So God said to some of the mud, "Sit up!"

"See all I've made," said God, "the hills, the sea, the sky, the stars."

And I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look around.

Lucky me, lucky mud.

I, mud, sat up and saw what a nice job God had done.

Nice going, God.

Nobody but you could have done it, God! I certainly couldn't have.

I feel very unimportant compared to You.

The only way I can feel the least bit important is to think of all the mud that didn't even get to sit up and look around.

I got so much, and most mud got so little.

Thank you for the honor!

Now mud lies down again and goes to sleep.

What memories for mud to have!

What interesting other kinds of sitting-up mud I met!

I loved everything I saw!

Good night.

I will go to heaven now.

I can hardly wait...

To find out for certain what my wampeter was...

And who was in my karass...

And all the good things our karass did for you.

Amen.

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