β
Only once in your life, I truly believe, you find someone who can completely turn your world around. You tell them things that youβve never shared with another soul and they absorb everything you say and actually want to hear more. You share hopes for the future, dreams that will never come true, goals that were never achieved and the many disappointments life has thrown at you. When something wonderful happens, you canβt wait to tell them about it, knowing they will share in your excitement. They are not embarrassed to cry with you when you are hurting or laugh with you when you make a fool of yourself. Never do they hurt your feelings or make you feel like you are not good enough, but rather they build you up and show you the things about yourself that make you special and even beautiful. There is never any pressure, jealousy or competition but only a quiet calmness when they are around. You can be yourself and not worry about what they will think of you because they love you for who you are. The things that seem insignificant to most people such as a note, song or walk become invaluable treasures kept safe in your heart to cherish forever. Memories of your childhood come back and are so clear and vivid itβs like being young again. Colours seem brighter and more brilliant. Laughter seems part of daily life where before it was infrequent or didnβt exist at all. A phone call or two during the day helps to get you through a long dayβs work and always brings a smile to your face. In their presence, thereβs no need for continuous conversation, but you find youβre quite content in just having them nearby. Things that never interested you before become fascinating because you know they are important to this person who is so special to you. You think of this person on every occasion and in everything you do. Simple things bring them to mind like a pale blue sky, gentle wind or even a storm cloud on the horizon. You open your heart knowing that thereβs a chance it may be broken one day and in opening your heart, you experience a love and joy that you never dreamed possible. You find that being vulnerable is the only way to allow your heart to feel true pleasure thatβs so real it scares you. You find strength in knowing you have a true friend and possibly a soul mate who will remain loyal to the end. Life seems completely different, exciting and worthwhile. Your only hope and security is in knowing that they are a part of your life.
β
β
Bob Marley
β
If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.
β
β
Henry David Thoreau (Walden)
β
The moment you put a deadline on your dream, it becomes a goal.
β
β
Harsha Bhogle (The Winning Way: Learnings from sport for managers)
β
Far away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead.
β
β
Louisa May Alcott
β
You never know what's around the corner. It could be everything. Or it could be nothing. You keep putting one foot in front of the other, and then one day you look back and you've climbed a mountain.
β
β
Tom Hiddleston
β
It was impossible, of course. But when did that ever stop any dreamer from dreaming.
β
β
Laini Taylor (Strange the Dreamer (Strange the Dreamer, #1))
β
Dreaming about being an actress, is more exciting then being one.
β
β
Marilyn Monroe
β
Everybody said, "Follow your heart". I did, it got broken
β
β
Agatha Christie
β
Reach high, for stars lie hidden in your soul.
Dream deep, for every dream precedes the goal.
β
β
Pamela Vaull Starr
β
Reach high, for stars lie hidden in you. Dream deep, for every dream precedes the goal.
β
β
Rabindranath Tagore
β
The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.
β
β
Michelangelo Buonarroti
β
Dream your own dreams, achieve your own goals. Your journey is your own and unique.
β
β
Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
β
Donβt let mental blocks control you. Set yourself free. Confront your fear and turn the mental blocks into building blocks.
β
β
Roopleen (Words to inspire the winner in YOU)
β
...because a life without meaning, without drive or focus, without dreams or goals, isn't a life worth living.
β
β
Chris Colfer (Struck By Lightning: The Carson Phillips Journal (The Land of Stories))
β
You are never too old to set another goal, or to dream a new dream.
β
β
Les Brown (Live Your Dreams)
β
To dream of success is to set a goal of where you want to be; to wake up, take action, and achieve it is what true success is all about.
β
β
Idowu Koyenikan (Wealth for all Africans: How Every African Can Live the Life of Their Dreams)
β
There is strange comfort in knowing that no matter what happens today, the Sun will rise again tomorrow.
β
β
Aaron Lauritsen (100 Days Drive: The Great North American Road Trip)
β
Life always begins with one step outside of your comfort zone.
β
β
Shannon L. Alder
β
The true definition of mental illness is when the majority of your time is spent in the past or future, but rarely living in the realism of NOW.
β
β
Shannon L. Alder
β
What is considered impossible is someone elseβs opinion. What is possible is my decision.
β
β
Idowu Koyenikan (All You Need Is a Ball: What Soccer Teaches Us about Success in Life and Business)
β
Patience is not passive waiting. Patience is active acceptance of the process required to attain your goals and dreams.
β
β
Ray A. Davis
β
Why do I do anything?' she says. 'I'm educated enough to talk myself out of any plan. To deconstruct any fantasy. Explain away any goal. I'm so smart I can negate any dream.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Choke)
β
The struggles we endure today will be the βgood old daysβ we laugh about tomorrow.
β
β
Aaron Lauritsen (100 Days Drive: The Great North American Road Trip)
β
Your complaints, your drama, your victim mentality, your whining, your blaming, and all of your excuses have NEVER gotten you even a single step closer to your goals or dreams. Let go of your nonsense. Let go of the delusion that you DESERVE better and go EARN it! Today is a new day!
β
β
Steve Maraboli (Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience)
β
Success will be within your reach only when you start reaching out for it.
β
β
Stephen Richards (Think Your way to Success: Let Your Dreams Run Free)
β
The strong-minded rise to the challenge of their goals and dreams. The weak-minded become haters.
β
β
Steve Maraboli (Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience)
β
But man is a fickle and disreputable creature and perhaps, like a chess-player, is interested in the process of attaining his goal rather than the goal itself.
β
β
Fyodor Dostoevsky (Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and Selections from The House of the Dead)
β
in time of daffodils(who know
the goal of living is to grow)
forgetting why,remember how
in time of lilacs who proclaim
the aim of waking is to dream,
remember so(forgetting seem)
in time of roses(who amaze
our now and here with paradise)
forgetting if,remember yes
in time of all sweet things beyond
whatever mind may comprehend,
remember seek(forgetting find)
and in a mystery to be
(when time from time shall set us free)
forgetting me,remember me
β
β
E.E. Cummings
β
A goal is a dream with a deadline
β
β
Napoleon Hill
β
As long as you are alive, you will either live to accomplish your own goals and dreams or be used as a resource to accomplish someone else's.
β
β
Grant Cardone (The 10X Rule: The Only Difference Between Success and Failure)
β
I want you to have big dreams, big goals. I want you to strive to achieve them. But I don't want to see you beating yourself up every time you make a mistake.
β
β
Kelley Armstrong (The Gathering (Darkness Rising, #1))
β
For glory lit, and life alive, for goals unreached and aims to strive. All men must try, the wind did see. It is the test, it is the dream.
β
β
Brandon Sanderson (Words of Radiance (The Stormlight Archive, #2))
β
The only way I knew how to live the best day ever was on an expedition.
β
β
Hendri Coetzee
β
Know what you want to do, hold the thought firmly, and do every day what should be done, and every sunset will see you that much nearer the goal.
β
β
Elbert Hubbard
β
I want my life to be the greatest story.
My very existence will be the greatest poem.
Watch me burn.
Love always, Charlotte
β
β
Charlotte Eriksson (Empty Roads & Broken Bottles: in search for The Great Perhaps)
β
Leaders live by choice, not by accident.
β
β
Mark Gorman
β
What do you mean I have to wait for someone's approval? Β I'm someone. Β I approve. Β So I give myself permission to move forward with my full support!
β
β
Richelle E. Goodrich (Smile Anyway: Quotes, Verse, and Grumblings for Every Day of the Year)
β
All great beginnings start in the dark, when the moon greets you to a new day at midnight.
β
β
Shannon L. Alder
β
The imagination is the goal of history. I see culture as an effort to literally realize our collective dreams.
β
β
Terence McKenna
β
But to believe that getting stuff is the purpose and aim of life is madness.
β
β
Hubert Selby Jr. (Requiem for a Dream)
β
So many people will tell you βnoβ, and you need to find something you believe in so hard that you just smile and tell them βwatch meβ. Learn to take rejection as motivation to prove people wrong. Be unstoppable. Refuse to give up, no matter what. Itβs the best skill you can ever learn.
β
β
Charlotte Eriksson
β
Tell me not in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou are, to dust thou returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.
β
β
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Voices of the Night)
β
Not all dreamers are winners, but all winners are dreamers. Your dream is the key to your future. The Bible says that, "without a vision (dream), a people perish." You need a dream, if you're going to succeed in anything you do.
β
β
Mark Gorman
β
We may place blame, give reasons, and even have excuses; but in the end, it is an act of cowardice to not follow your dreams.
β
β
Steve Maraboli
β
It's in those quiet little towns, at the edge of the world, that you will find the salt of the earth people who make you feel right at home.
β
β
Aaron Lauritsen (100 Days Drive: The Great North American Road Trip)
β
Begin somewhere. You cannot build a reputation on what you intend to do.
β
β
Liz Smith
β
Life's trials will test you, and shape you, but donβt let them change who you are.β
~ Aaron Lauritsen, β100 Days Drive
β
β
Aaron Lauritsen (100 Days Drive: The Great North American Road Trip)
β
This is my belief: that through difficulties and problems God gives us the opportunity to grow. So when your hopes and dreams and goals are dashed, search among the wreckage, you may find a golden opportunity hidden in the ruins''.
β
β
A.P.J. Abdul Kalam
β
You are never too old to set a new goal or to dream a new dream.
β
β
C.S. Lewis
β
Never allow your mind to wander untamed like a wild animal that exists on the basis of survival of the fittest. Tame your mind with consistent focus on your goals and desires.
β
β
Stephen Richards (Think Your way to Success: Let Your Dreams Run Free)
β
Your comfort zone is a place where you keep yourself in a self-illusion and nothing can grow there but your potentiality can grow only when you can think and grow out of that zone.
β
β
Rashedur Ryan Rahman
β
Sometimes we have to soak ourselves in the tears and fears of the past to water our future gardens.
β
β
Suzy Kassem (Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem)
β
You know what the difference is between a dream and a goal?... A plan.
β
β
Jodi Picoult (Lone Wolf)
β
True friends don't come with conditions.
β
β
Aaron Lauritsen (100 Days Drive: The Great North American Road Trip)
β
Paracelsus
At times I almost dream
I too have spent a life the sagesβ way,
And tread once more familiar paths. Perchance
I perished in an arrogant self-reliance
Ages ago; and in that act a prayer
For one more chance went up so earnest, so
Instinct with better light let in by death,
That life was blotted out β not so completely
But scattered wrecks enough of it remain,
Dim memories, as now, when once more seems
The goal in sight again.
β
β
Robert Browning
β
Without struggle, success has no value.
β
β
Aaron Lauritsen (100 Days Drive: The Great North American Road Trip)
β
The comfort zone is a psychological state in which one feels familiar, safe, at ease, and secure.
If you always do what is easy and choose the path of least resistance, you never step outside your comfort zone. Great things donβt come from comfort zones.
β
β
Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
β
A dream is just a dream. A goal is a dream with a plan and a deadline.
β
β
Harvey MacKay
β
Iβm not saying you shouldnβt pursue dreams and goals. Just donβt forsake the present for the unknowns of the future. A lot of happiness is bypassed, overlooked, postponed to a time years from now that may never come. Donβt bide your time and miss out on this moment for a tomorrow with no guarantee.
β
β
Kim Holden (Bright Side (Bright Side, #1))
β
A dream written down with a date becomes a goal. A goal broken down into steps becomes a plan. A plan backed by action makes your dreams come true.
β
β
Greg Reid
β
Stay wild, moon child."
I will shine my full silver light on your path, Moon child. Trust your intuition and follow your dreams. When I go dark, go within and tend to yourself, set your goals and release what no longer serves. When I come out of the shadow Moon child, go, be brave, and to yourself stay wild and true.
β
β
Riitta Klint
β
Dare to dream! If you did not have the capability to make your wildest wishes come true, your mind would not have the capacity to conjure such ideas in the first place. There is no limitation on what you can potentially achieve, except for the limitation you choose to impose on your own imagination. What you believe to be possible will always come to pass - to the extent that you deem it possible. It really is as simple as that.
β
β
Anthon St. Maarten
β
Jesus was saying that you can't have a larger life with restricted attitudes.
β
β
Joel Osteen (Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential)
β
Remember how far youβve come, and you wonβt have to rely on a destiny for your future. It will come on your own.
β
β
Shannon A. Thompson (Seconds Before Sunrise (Timely Death, #2))
β
Mom. You taught me that I don't have to have dreams. I can have goals.
β
β
Fredrik Backman (Us Against You (Beartown, #2))
β
From this point forward, you donβt even know how to quit in life.β
~ Aaron Lauritsen, β100 Days Drive
β
β
Aaron Lauritsen
β
Goals are dreams with deadlines.
β
β
Diana Scharf-Hunt
β
Somedayβ is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you.
β
β
Timothy Ferriss (The 4-Hour Workweek)
β
Success in life is not for those who run fast, but for those who keep running and always on the move.
β
β
Bangambiki Habyarimana (Pearls Of Eternity)
β
Don't live the same day over and over again and call that a life. Life is about evolving mentally, spiritually, and emotionally.
β
β
Germany Kent
β
Dream big. Wake up. Take the first step into the unknown.
β
β
Roy T. Bennett
β
The decisive question for man is: Is he related to something infinite or not? That is the telling question of his life. Only if we know that the thing which truly matters is the infinite can we avoid fixing our interests upon futilities, and upon all kinds of goals which are not of real importance. Thus we demand that the world grant us recognition for qualities which we regard as personal possessions: our talent or our beauty. The more a man lays stress on false possessions, and the less sensitivity he has for what is essential, the less satisfying is his life. He feels limited because he has limited aims, and the result is envy and jealousy. If we understand and feel that here in this life we already have a link with the infinite, desires and attitudes change.
β
β
C.G. Jung (Memories, Dreams, Reflections)
β
Make New Year's goals. Dig within, and discover what you would like to have happen in your life this year. This helps you do your part. It is an affirmation that you're interested in fully living life in the year to come.
Goals give us direction. They put a powerful force into play on a universal, conscious, and subconscious level. Goals give our life direction.
What would you like to have happen in your life this year? What would you like to do, to accomplish? What good would you like to attract into your life? What particular areas of growth would you like to have happen to you? What blocks, or character defects, would you like to have removed?
What would you like to attain? Little things and big things? Where would you like to go? What would you like to have happen in friendship and love? What would you like to have happen in your family life?
What problems would you like to see solved? What decisions would you like to make? What would you like to happen in your career?
Write it down. Take a piece of paper, a few hours of your time, and write it all down - as an affirmation of you, your life, and your ability to choose. Then let it go.
The new year stands before us, like a chapter in a book, waiting to be written. We can help write that story by setting goals.
β
β
Melody Beattie (The Language of Letting Go: Daily Meditations on Codependency (Hazelden Meditation Series))
β
Do you wait for things to happen, or do you make them happen yourself? I believe in writing your own story.
β
β
Charlotte Eriksson
β
To turn your dreams into reality, all your resources, efforts and concentration should be aligned in the same direction.
β
β
Roopleen
β
Although goals are important, having a plan of action is vital to the success of those goals. Having a goal with no plan of action is like wanting to travel to a new destination without having a map.
β
β
Steve Maraboli (Life, the Truth, and Being Free)
β
A Plan B life can be just as good or better than a Plan A life. You just have to let go of that first dream and realize that God has already written the first chapter of the new life that awaits you. All you have to do is start reading!
β
β
Shannon L. Alder
β
In my country, we value achievement. People are free to decide what that means to them, and Iβve always considered helping others to be my way of accomplishing something important. I was hoping to serve others with my new job, but thatβs history now, so Iβm going to have to accomplish something big, or Iβll regret it for the rest of my life.
β
β
Steven Decker (Projector for Sale)
β
Donβt say you donβt have enough time or enough money to change the world. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Gandhi, Michelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci and Jesus Christ.
β
β
Shannon L. Alder
β
Never let your fear of the unknown and things being too difficult make your choices for you in life. One of the saddest lessons in life is finding out that your fear made the situation worse than what it was and a braver person stole the dream you gave up on.
β
β
Shannon L. Alder
β
When it comes to believing in yourself, put your eye on the mark and donβt blink. If you have a goal, a dream, or an aspirationβ¦believe in yourself while you are on the way to your destination, and you will have already arrived.
β
β
Sherry Argov (Why Men Love Bitches: From Doormat to DreamgirlβA Woman's Guide to Holding Her Own in a Relationship)
β
Sadie," he said forlornly, "when you become a parent, you may understand this. One of my hardest jobs as a father, one of my greatest duties, was to realize that my own dreams, my own goals and wishes, are secondary to my children's.
β
β
Rick Riordan (The Red Pyramid (The Kane Chronicles, #1))
β
I've wanted to win at everything, every day, since I was a kid. And time doesn't change a person, it just helps you get a handle on who you are. Even at age 41, I still hate losing--I'm just more gracious about it. I'm also aware that setbacks have an upside; they fuel new dreams.
β
β
Dara Torres (Age Is Just a Number: Achieve Your Dreams at Any Stage in Your Life)
β
Siddhartha has one single goal-to become empty, to become empty of thirst, desire, dreams, pleasure and sorrow-to let the Self die. No longer to be Self, to experience the peace of an emptied heart, to experience pure thought-that was his goal.
β
β
Hermann Hesse (Siddhartha)
β
Crickey, love, what happened here? Are you hurt?β he asked, lifting her to her feet, the surfboard leash still wrapped around her foot.
Her eyes worked their way up his torso, along the plush green towel hugging his midsection. Catherine couldnβt help staring at his well-formed abs and chest before making her way up to his concerned eyes.
βObviously I fell,β Catherine said. βI think I got a splinter.β
βLet me see,β Jake insisted, taking her hand into his. βItβs small. I can take care of that in a snap.β
Staring up into his deep blue eyes, Catherine could feel herself drowning in the depths of them, unconsciously resting her other hand upon his dampened chest to steady herself.
β
β
Diane Merrill Wigginton (A Compromising Position)
β
Whatβs important is that you make the leap. Jump high and hard with intention and heart. Pay no mind to the vision that the commission made up. Itβs up to you to make your life. Take what you have and stack it up like a tower of teetering blocks. Build your dream around that.
β
β
Cheryl Strayed (Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar)
β
The search for the purpose of life has puzzled people for thousands of years. Thatβs because we typically begin at the wrong starting pointβourselves. We ask self-centered questions like What do I want to be? What should I do with my life? What are my goals, my ambitions, my dreams for my future? But focusing on ourselves will never reveal our lifeβs purpose.
β
β
Rick Warren (The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth am I Here for?)
β
A Psalm of Life
Tell me not in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou are, to dust thou returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.
Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each tomorrow
Find us farther than today.
Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.
In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!
Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act, - act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o'erhead!
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints
on the sand of time;
Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solenm main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.
Let us then be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.
β
β
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Voices of the Night)
β
When I was young, I forgot how to laugh in the cave of Trophonius; when I was older, I opened my eyes and beheld reality, at which I began to laugh, and since then, I have not stopped laughing. I saw that the meaning of life was to secure a livelihood, and that its goal was to attain a high position; that loveβs rich dream was marriage with an heiress; that friendshipβs blessing was help in financial difficulties; that wisdom was what the majority assumed it to be; that enthusiasm consisted in making a speech; that it was courage to risk the loss of ten dollars; that kindness consisted in saying, βYou are welcome,β at the dinner table; that piety consisted in going to communion once a year. This I saw, and I laughed.
β
β
SΓΈren Kierkegaard
β
Riches I hold in light esteem,
And love I laugh to scorn,
And lust of fame was but a dream
That vanished with the morn.
And if I pray, the only prayer
That moves my lips for me
Is, 'Leave the heart that now I bear,
And give me liberty!'
Yes, as my swift days near their goal,
'Tis all that I implore -
In life and death, a chainless soul,
With courage to endure.
β
β
Emily BrontΓ« (The Complete Poems)
β
It must be borne in mind that the tragedy of life doesnβt lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach. It isnβt a calamity to die with dreams unfulfilled, but it is a calamity not to dream. It is not a disaster to be unable to capture your ideal, but it is a disaster to have no ideal to capture. It is not a disgrace not to reach the stars, but it is a disgrace to have no stars to reach for. Not failure, but low aim is sin.
β
β
Benjamin Elijah Mays
β
What if you were wrong? What if everything you ever believed was a lie? What if you missed your opportunity because you didn't know your worth? What if you settled on familiar, but God was trying to give you something better? What if you decided not to go backwards, but forward? What if doing what you have never done before was the answer to everything that didn't make sense? What if the answer wasn't to be found in words, but in action? What if you found the courage to do what you really wanted to do and doing it changed your whole life?
β
β
Shannon L. Alder
β
I have come to see clearly that life is more than self. It is more than doing what I want, striving for what will benefit me, dreaming of all I can be. Life is all about my relationship with God. There is no higher calling, no loftier dream, and no greater goal than to live, breathe, and be poured out for Jesus Christ."
--Jamie in Brother Andrew's "The Calling
β
β
Brother Andrew (The Narrow Road: Stories of Those Who Walk This Road Together)
β
. . . But experience has taught me that you cannot value dreams according to the odds of their coming true. Their real value is in stirring within us the will to aspire. That will, wherever it finally leads, does at least move you forward. And after a time you may recognize that the proper measure of success is not how much you've closed the distance to some far-off goal but the quality of what you've done today.
β
β
Sonia Sotomayor (My Beloved World)
β
Every time I read a management or self-help book, I find myself saying, βThatβs fine, but that wasnβt really the hard thing about the situation.β The hard thing isnβt setting a big, hairy, audacious goal. The hard thing is laying people off when you miss the big goal. The hard thing isnβt hiring great people. The hard thing is when those βgreat peopleβ develop a sense of entitlement and start demanding unreasonable things. The hard thing isnβt setting up an organizational chart. The hard thing is getting people to communicate within the organization that you just designed. The hard thing isnβt dreaming big. The hard thing is waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat when the dream turns into a nightmare.
β
β
Ben Horowitz (The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers)
β
Patriarchyβs influence often lives in the minds of women who were raised in a certain way and who aspire to a certain type of greatness β as one half of a powerful, leading couple. They act from behind the scenes, from behind a husband, because their goals and dreams, their stature in the world, is achieved most effectively through the influence of men β or so they believe. Without their husbands, they seem to doubt that they can fully express themselves. The motives of women in power political couples may be foreign to women in private life, but we should consider that the women who hold or aspire to great power have unique pressures and uncompromising standards. Does that compromise make sense when the couple can do so much good in the world, accomplish their political and policy goals, and build a platform and legacy for their children and grandchildren? Political women struggle with these questions.
β
β
Anne Michaud (Why They Stay: Sex Scandals, Deals, and Hidden Agendas of Nine Political Wives)
β
Do I, then, belong to the heavens?
Why, if not so, should the heavens
Fix me thus with their ceaseless blue stare,
Luring me on, and my mind, higher
Ever higher, up into the sky,
Drawing me ceaselessly up
To heights far, far above the human?
Why, when balance has been strictly studied
And flight calculated with the best of reason
Till no aberrant element should, by rights, remain-
Why, still, should the lust for ascension
Seem, in itself, so close to madness?
Nothing is that can satify me;
Earthly novelty is too soon dulled;
I am drawn higher and higher, more unstable,
Closer and closer to the sun's effulgence.
Why do these rays of reason destroy me?
Villages below and meandering streams
Grow tolerable as our distance grows.
Why do they plead, approve, lure me
With promise that I may love the human
If only it is seen, thus, from afar-
Although the goal could never have been love,
Nor, had it been, could I ever have
Belonged to the heavens?
I have not envied the bird its freedom
Nor have I longed for the ease of Nature,
Driven by naught save this strange yearning
For the higher, and the closer, to plunge myself
Into the deep sky's blue, so contrary
To all organic joys, so far
From pleasures of superiority
But higher, and higher,
Dazzled, perhaps, by the dizzy incandescence
Of waxen wings.
Or do I then
Belong, after all, to the earth?
Why, if not so, should the earth
Show such swiftness to encompass my fall?
Granting no space to think or feel,
Why did the soft, indolent earth thus
Greet me with the shock of steel plate?
Did the soft earth thus turn to steel
Only to show me my own softness?
That Nature might bring home to me
That to fall, not to fly, is in the order of things,
More natural by far than that improbable passion?
Is the blue of the sky then a dream?
Was it devised by the earth, to which I belonged,
On account of the fleeting, white-hot intoxication
Achieved for a moment by waxen wings?
And did the heavens abet the plan to punish me?
To punish me for not believing in myself
Or for believing too much;
Too earger to know where lay my allegiance
Or vainly assuming that already I knew all;
For wanting to fly off
To the unknown
Or the known:
Both of them a single, blue speck of an idea?
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Yukio Mishima (Sun & Steel)
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One cannot prove anything here, but it is possible to be convinced.'
How? By what?'
By the experience of active love. Try to love your neighbors actively and tirelessly. The more you succeed in loving, the more you'll be convinced of the existence of God and the immortality of your soul. And if you reach complete selflessness in the love of your neighbor, then undoubtedly you will believe, and no doubt will even be able to enter your soul. This has been tested. It is certain...
Active love is a harsh and fearful thing compared with love in dreams. Love in dreams thirsts for immediate action, quickly performed, and with everyone watching. Indeed, it will go as far as the giving even of one's life, provided it does not take long but is soon over, as on stage, and everyone is looking on and praising. Whereas active love is labor and perseverance, and for some people, perhaps, a whole science...in that very moment when you see with horror that despite all your efforts, you not only have not come nearer your goal but seem to have gotten farther from it, at that very moment...you will suddenly reach your goal and will clearly behold over you the wonder-working power of the Lord, who all the while has been loving you, and all the while has been mysteriously guiding you.
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Fyodor Dostoevsky (The Brothers Karamazov)
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In life, the question is not if you will have problems, but how you are going to deal with your problems. If the possibility of failure were erased, what would you attempt to achieve?
The essence of man is imperfection. Know that you're going to make mistakes. The fellow who never makes a mistake takes his orders from one who does. Wake up and realize this: Failure is simply a price we pay to achieve success.
Achievers are given multiple reasons to believe they are failures. But in spite of that, they persevere. The average for entrepreneurs is 3.8 failures before they finally make it in business.
When achievers fail, they see it as a momentary event, not a lifelong epidemic.
Procrastination is too high a price to pay for fear of failure. To conquer fear, you have to feel the fear and take action anyway. Forget motivation. Just do it. Act your way into feeling, not wait for positive emotions to carry you forward.
Recognize that you will spend much of your life making mistakes. If you can take action and keep making mistakes, you gain experience.
Life is playing a poor hand well. The greatest battle you wage against failure occurs on the inside, not the outside.
Why worry about things you can't control when you can keep yourself busy controlling the things that depend on you?
Handicaps can only disable us if we let them. If you are continually experiencing trouble or facing obstacles, then you should check to make sure that you are not the problem.
Be more concerned with what you can give rather than what you can get because giving truly is the highest level of living.
Embrace adversity and make failure a regular part of your life. If you're not failing, you're probably not really moving forward.
Everything in life brings risk. It's true that you risk failure if you try something bold because you might miss it. But you also risk failure if you stand still and don't try anything new.
The less you venture out, the greater your risk of failure. Ironically the more you risk failure β and actually fail β the greater your chances of success.
If you are succeeding in everything you do, then you're probably not pushing yourself hard enough. And that means you're not taking enough risks. You risk because you have something of value you want to achieve.
The more you do, the more you fail. The more you fail, the more you learn. The more you learn, the better you get.
Determining what went wrong in a situation has value. But taking that analysis another step and figuring out how to use it to your benefit is the real difference maker when it comes to failing forward. Don't let your learning lead to knowledge; let your learning lead to action.
The last time you failed, did you stop trying because you failed, or did you fail because you stopped trying?
Commitment makes you capable of failing forward until you reach your goals. Cutting corners is really a sign of impatience and poor self-discipline.
Successful people have learned to do what does not come naturally. Nothing worth achieving comes easily. The only way to fail forward and achieve your dreams is to cultivate tenacity and persistence.
Never say die. Never be satisfied. Be stubborn. Be persistent. Integrity is a must. Anything worth having is worth striving for with all your might.
If we look long enough for what we want in life we are almost sure to find it. Success is in the journey, the continual process. And no matter how hard you work, you will not create the perfect plan or execute it without error. You will never get to the point that you no longer make mistakes, that you no longer fail.
The next time you find yourself envying what successful people have achieved, recognize that they have probably gone through many negative experiences that you cannot see on the surface.
Fail early, fail often, but always fail forward.
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John C. Maxwell (Failing Forward)
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A non-religious man today ignores what he considers sacred but, in the structure of his consciousness, could not be without the ideas of being and the meaningful. He may consider these purely human aspects of the structure of consciousness. What we see today is that man considers himself to have nothing sacred, no god; but still his life has a meaning, because without it he could not live; he would be in chaos. He looks for being and does not immediately call it being, but meaning or goals; he behaves in his existence as if he had a kind of center. He is going somewhere, he is doing something. We do not see anything religious here; we just see man behaving as a human being. But as a historian of religion, I am not certain that there is nothing religious hereβ¦
I cannot consider exclusively what that man tells me when he consciously says, βI donβt believe in God; I believe in history,β and so on. For example, I do not think that Jean-Paul Sartre gives all of himself in his philosophy, because I know that Sartre sleeps and dreams and likes music and goes to the theater. And in the theater he gets into a temporal dimension in which he no longer lives his βmoment historique.β There he lives in quite another dimension. We live in another dimension when we listen to Bach. Another experience of time is given in drama. We spend two hours at a play, and yet the time represented in the play occupies years and years. We also dream. This is the complete man. I cannot cut this complete man off and believe someone immediately when he consciously says that he is not a religious man. I think that unconsciously, this man still behaves as the βhomo religiosus,β has some source of value and meaning, some images, is nourished by his unconscious, by the imaginary universe of the poems he reads, of the plays he sees; he still lives in different universes. I cannot limit his universe to that purely self-conscious, rationalistic universe which he pretends to inhabit, since that universe is not human.
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Mircea Eliade