Say What?
I have always been fascinated with quotes - the things some people say!
To me, they are like reminders of important lessons that I would have no chance of remembering were it not for the linguistic talent of these famous and not-so-famous people.
Here is a collection of some of my all time favourites. Enjoy!
In this life we cannot do great things. We can only do small things with great love
- Mother Teresa
When a scientist is ahead of his times, it is often through misunderstanding of current, rather than intuition of future truth. In science there is never any error so gross that it won't one day, from some perspective, appear prophetic.
- Jean Rostand
Happiness is a matter of one's most ordinary everyday mode of consciousness being busy and lively and unconcerned with self. To be damned is for one's ordinary everyday mode of consciousness to be unremitting agonizing preoccupation with self.
- Iris Murdoch
I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere to go. My own wisdom, and that of all about me, seemed insufficient for the day.
- Abraham Lincoln
You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you.
- Walt Disney
No man is more unhappy than the one who is never in adversity; the greatest affliction of life is never to be afflicted.
- Source Unknown
There are people who are always anticipating trouble, and in this way they manage to enjoy many sorrows that never really happen to them.
- Henry Wheeler Shaw
Once in a while it really hits people that they don't have to experience the world in the way they have been told to.
- Alan Keightley
A stop sign is a gift for you to learn that moving in the same direction won't take you
any place new.
- Rex Steven Sikes
The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
- Alan Kay
(I first heard this quote in an episode of 'The X Files'. Of course in that context it had a spooky, conspiratorial feel, but now I see it as an affirmation of the power we hold over our own lives.)
A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.
- John A. Shedd
Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
- Bertrand Russell
(Look at Albert Einstein - at the time he was alive he was considered a crackpot, now he is known as a pioneer of modern science!)
Don't ever slam a door, you might want to go back.
- Don Herold
(One of the biggest lessons I think I've ever learned is 'don't burn your bridges', so this quote really hits it home.)
Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.
- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
(This really helped me recently, and still does, whenever I'm feeling scared or
uncertain of something. Plunging into the unknown is terrifying, but I just kept saying to myself 'Just the first step, just the first step'. It helped me realise I don't have to have my entire life planned out to the last detail and helped me stay in the present moment.)
The world breaks everyone and afterward many are stronger at the broken places.
- Ernest Hemingway
What does not kill me makes me stronger.
- Friedrich Nietzsche
And the day came when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
- Anais Nin
(I remember the time I first read this quote, it was a time in my life when I was feeling exactly what it says - I could no longer remain wrapped in my blanket of denial, I had to do something, to change, even though I knew that change would be painful in itself. I couldn't keep going the way I was… Such a beautiful quote from a wonderful author.)
Do not assume that she who seeks to comfort you now, lives untroubled among the simple and quiet words that sometimes do you good. Her life may also have much sadness and difficulty, that remains far beyond yours. Were it otherwise, she would never have been able to find these words.
- Rainer Maria Rilke
Some people walk in the rain, others just get wet.
- Roger Miller
Losing an illusion makes you wiser than finding a truth.
- Ludwig Börne
(Boy can I relate to that one!)
I tell you everything that is really nothing, and nothing of what is everything, do not be fooled by what I am saying. Please listen carefully and try to hear what I am not saying.
- Charles C. Finn
(But it's also my responsibility to speak clearly so that you don't have to read
between the lines - just a thought...)
A wise man can see more from the bottom of a well than a fool can from a mountain top.
- Author Unknown
(The darkness and hard times have a purpose. Learn through them, grow through them, take something from it - don't just survive them. Even though sometimes that's hard enough!)
The universal law is impartial. It will give you anything you believe. It will throw you garbage or roses depending on the energy you put in. you are the one in charge, and you must accept that and stand alone. If you think God is coming down to fix things for you, forget it. God is out playing golf.
- Stuart Wilde
("Four!!!")
Whether you think you can or whether you think you can't - you are right.
- Henry Ford
Why not go out on a limb? That's where the fruit is.
- Will Rogers
(Mmm...strawberries.....)
There is no cure for birth or death save to enjoy the interval.
- George Santayana
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
- William Ernest Henley
Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.
- Denis Diderot
(Yes, a little violent, but it expresses how I feel about politics and organized
religion quite nicely!)
There is a great deal of pain in life and perhaps the only pain that can be avoided is the pain that comes from trying to avoid pain.
- R.D. Laing
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, and not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking, so that other people won't feel insecure around us. We were born to make manifest the glory of God within us. It's not just in some of us - it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fears, our presence automatically liberates others.
- Nelson Mandela
Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.
- Albert Einstein
As I was going up the stair
I met a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again to-day.
I wish, I wish he'd stay away.
- Hughes Mearns
(Too deep for words, this verse reminds me of depression.)
I can't understand why people are frightened by new ideas. I'm frightened of old ones.
- John Cage
Should you yield the canyons from the windstorms, you would not see the beauty of their carvings.
- Elizabeth Kubler-Ross
(This makes me think about the scars on my arms and wrists...they serve as a constant reminder of the pain I have endured and survived, and they have their own beauty because of this.)
What other people think of me is not my business.
- Andrew Kudiacik
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 glint on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you wake in the morning hush,
I am the swift, uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circling flight.
I am the soft starlight at night.
Do not stand at my grave and weep.
I am not there, I do not sleep.
Do not stand at my grave and cry.
I am not there, I did not die!
- Mary Frye
(This is so beautiful, it makes me cry just reading it. I would love this to be read at my funeral - hopefully a long time from now - it would be beautiful read at anyone's funeral. What better way to say "I'm still here!")
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."
- Albert Einstein
(I love Einstein's quotes, he seems to have a knack for mixing the serious with dry humour - my type of guy! For a scientist he was also very open minded, if only more scientists nowadays were like that....)
A human being is part of a whole, called by us the 'universe', a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affectation for a few people near us.
Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."
- Albert Einstein
(Again, you could almost say he leans towards Buddhism!)
The way is unknown, and so requires faith -
The kind of faith that issues from despair
The destination cannot be described:
You will know very little until you get there
You will journey blind. But the way leads towards possession
Of what you have sought for in the wrong place
- T.S. Eliot
(This describes the journey of my life almost completely. I feel as though I've been searching for something my whole life, but I don't know what it is, and I have had to learn to have faith in so many things, most of all myself.)
I want to stay as close to the edge as possible without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the centre.
- Kurt Vonnegut
(Sometimes I feel all the trials and pain I've been through is really a blessing. After all, it makes me the beautiful, varied, wise creature that I am. Without the scars, perhaps you wouldn't see the beauty...just a thought to ponder...)
What makes us discontented with ourselves is the absurdly exaggerated idea we have of the happiness of others.
- Jay Huff
(Can it get any truer than that?!!!)
Nothing we ever imagine is beyond our power, only beyond our present self-knowledge.
- Theodore Rozak
The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them.
- Albert Einstein
I have worth because I have a belly button and I breathe. I don't have to do anything to be worthwhile.
Even when daylight is long in coming, the sun remembers its place in the sky.
The only thing that benefits from a good beating is a rug.
"I am no longer afraid of becoming lost, because the journey back always reveals
something new, and that is ultimately good."
- Billy Joel
(What a wonderfully positive way to look at life's little 'detours'.)
When you reach the end of light in your life and you find yourself standing before a dark abyss, faith is knowing that when you take the next step there will either be something solid to walk on or you will be taught to fly.
What soap is for the body, tears are for the soul.
What the caterpillar calls the end, the butterfly calls the beginning.
(This would have to be one of my favourites, what better way to shift perspective?)
A child's life is like a piece of paper on which every person leaves a mark.
- Chinese Proverb
(What a beautiful thought - and at the same time, terrifying, don't you think?)
Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.
- Albert Einstein
Imagination is more important than knowledge.
- Albert Einstein
"We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it - and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again---and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore. "
- Mark Twain
I have always felt sorry for people afraid of feeling, of sentimentality, who are unable to weep with their whole heart. Because those who do not know how to weep do not know how to laugh either.
- Golda Meir
You miss 100% of the shots you don't take...
- Wayne Gretzky
(It doesn't get any simpler than that! It's pure mathematics my friends!)
"Fear is the beginning of all wisdom."
- Douglas Monroe
(But only if you take the time to learn why you are afraid and face the fear....)
Giving someone all your love is never an assurance that they'll love you back! Don't expect love in return; just wait for it to grow in their heart but if it doesn't, be content it grew in yours.
(My lord, how hard it is when someone doesn't love you the way you love them... This quote helped me to appreciate that I could love someone, instead of focusing on the fact I couldn't have them, at a time in my life when my heart was in a lot of pain.)
No deep change takes place without relinquishment
- Gail Worcelo
"Each one has to find his peace from within. And peace to be real must be unaffected by outside circumstances."
- Mahatma Gandhi
"We gaze up at the same stars, the sky covers us all, the same universe encompasses us. What does it matter what practical system we adopt in our search for the truth? Not by one avenue alone can we arrive at so tremendous a secret."
- Symmachus
(This is how I view religion/spirituality. We are only human and how can we possibly know everything about the universe and how it works? I try to be tolerant of other faiths and religions, after all, I believe we are all viewing the same thing - we just take different paths to reach it. The only one's I have a problem with are when others get hurt or people who try to say that their way is the only one true way - please, will there ever be peace and acceptance?! Mmmm, frustrating subject...)
"Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so."
- Douglas Adams
(Funny that...)
Wise are they who have learned these truths: Trouble is temporary. Time is a tonic. Tribulation is a test tube.
- Source Unknown
Your decision to be, have and do something out of ordinary entails facing difficulties that are out of the ordinary as well. Sometimes your greatest asset is simply your ability to stay with it longer than anyone else.
- Brian Tracy
It is the duty of the human understanding to understand that there are things which it cannot understand, and what those things are. Human understanding has vulgarly occupied itself with nothing but understanding, but if it would only take the trouble to understand itself at the same time it would simply have to posit the paradox.
- Soren Kierkegaard
(I don't understand this quote..... :)
"If you talk to the animals, they will talk to you and you will know each other. If you do not talk to them, you will not know them, and what you do not know you will fear. What one fears one destroys."
- Chief Dan George