Greatest Inspirational Quotes

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Keep Going Your hardest times often lead to the greatest moments of your life. Keep going. Tough situations build strong people in the end.
Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
Why didn't I learn to treat everything like it was the last time. My greatest regret was how much I believed in the future.
Jonathan Safran Foer (Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close)
Simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are your greatest treasures. Simple in actions and thoughts, you return to the source of being. Patient with both friends and enemies, you accord with the way things are. Compassionate toward yourself, you reconcile all beings in the world.
Lao Tzu (Tao Te Ching)
My concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God's side, for God is always right.
Abraham Lincoln
Always go to other people's funerals, otherwise they won't come to yours.
Yogi Berra (When You Come to a Fork in the Road, Take It!: Inspiration and Wisdom from One of Baseball's Greatest Heroes)
there is a place in the heart that will never be filled a space and even during the best moments and the greatest times times we will know it we will know it more than ever there is a place in the heart that will never be filled and we will wait and wait in that space.
Charles Bukowski
The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.
Michel de Montaigne (The Complete Essays)
Listen with curiosity. Speak with honesty. Act with integrity. The greatest problem with communication is we don’t listen to understand. We listen to reply. When we listen with curiosity, we don’t listen with the intent to reply. We listen for what’s behind the words.
Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
Risks must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.
Leo F. Buscaglia
Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside while still alive. Never surrender.
Tupac Shakur
Why do they always teach us that it's easy and evil to do what we want and that we need discipline to restrain ourselves? It's the hardest thing in the world--to do what we want. And it takes the greatest kind of courage. I mean, what we really want.
Ayn Rand
The biggest wall you have to climb is the one you build in your mind: Never let your mind talk you out of your dreams, trick you into giving up. Never let your mind become the greatest obstacle to success. To get your mind on the right track, the rest will follow.
Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
What's the world's greatest lie?... It's this: that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what's happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate.
Paulo Coelho
True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so wants nothing. The greatest blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach. A wise man is content with his lot, whatever it may be, without wishing for what he has not.
Seneca
Make a pact with yourself today to not be defined by your past. Sometimes the greatest thing to come out of all your hard work isn't what you get for it, but what you become for it. Shake things up today! Be You...Be Free...Share.
Steve Maraboli (Life, the Truth, and Being Free)
The greatest ideas are the simplest.
William Golding (Lord of the Flies)
Learning to distance yourself from all the negativity is one of the greatest lessons to achieve inner peace.
Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
The greatest disease in the West today is not TB or leprosy; it is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for. We can cure physical diseases with medicine, but the only cure for loneliness, despair, and hopelessness is love. There are many in the world who are dying for a piece of bread but there are many more dying for a little love. The poverty in the West is a different kind of poverty -- it is not only a poverty of loneliness but also of spirituality. There's a hunger for love, as there is a hunger for God.
Mother Teresa (A Simple Path: Mother Teresa)
You were put on this earth to achieve your greatest self, to live out your purpose, and to do it courageously.
Steve Maraboli (Life, the Truth, and Being Free)
The greatest discovery of any generation is that a human can alter his life by altering his attitude.
William James
A day wasted on others is not wasted on one's self.
Charles Dickens (A Tale of Two Cities)
You come of the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve," said Aslan. "And that is both honour enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor on earth. Be content.
C.S. Lewis (Prince Caspian (The Chronicles of Narnia, #4) (Publication Order, #2))
The greatest step towards a life of simplicity is to learn to let go.
Steve Maraboli (Life, the Truth, and Being Free)
The greatest day in your life and mine is when we take total responsibility for our attitudes. That's the day we truly grow up.
John C. Maxwell
Do you know that one of the great problems of our age is that we are governed by people who care more about feelings than they do about thoughts and ideas.
Margaret Thatcher (Margaret Thatcher : The Greatest Speeches)
Your own Self-Realization is the greatest service you can render the world.
Ramana Maharshi
The best way to measure how much you've grown isn't by inches or the number of laps you can now run around the track, or even your grade point average-- though those things are important, to be sure. It's what you've done with your time, how you've chosen to spend your days, and whom you've touched this year. That, to me, is the greatest measure of success.
R.J. Palacio (Wonder (Wonder, #1))
The greatest personal limitation is to be found not in the things you want to do and can't, but in the things you've never considered doing.
Richard Bandler
Insomnia is my greatest inspiration.
Jon Stewart
The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us?
Dorothy Day
The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.
Walter Bagehot
Don't forget, a person's greatest emotional need is to feel appreciated.
H. Jackson Brown Jr. (Life's Little Instruction Book: 511 Suggestions, Observations, and Reminders on How to Live a Happy and Rewarding Life)
Your greatest awakening comes, when you are aware about your infinite nature.
Amit Ray (Meditation: Insights and Inspirations)
It’s time to care; it’s time to take responsibility; it’s time to lead; it’s time for a change; it’s time to be true to our greatest self; it’s time to stop blaming others.
Steve Maraboli (Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience)
Somehow I can't believe that there are any heights that can't be scaled by a man who knows the secrets of making dreams come true. This special secret, it seems to me, can be summarized in four Cs. They are curiosity, confidence, courage, and constancy, and the greatest of all is confidence. When you believe in a thing, believe in it all the way, implicitly and unquestionable.
Walt Disney Company
The greatest love stories are not those in which love is only spoken, but those in which it is acted upon.
Steve Maraboli (Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience)
speak quietly to yourself & promise there will be better days. whisper gently to yourself and provide assurance that you really are extending your best effort. console your bruised and tender spirit with reminders of many other successes. offer comfort in practical and tangible ways - as if you were encouraging your dearest friend. recognize that on certain days the greatest grace is that the day is over and you get to close your eyes. tomorrow comes more brightly...
Mary Anne Radmacher
Your greatest self has been waiting your whole life; don't make it wait any longer.
Steve Maraboli (Life, the Truth, and Being Free)
Forgiveness is God's greatest gift
Dan Brown (The Da Vinci Code (Robert Langdon, #2))
Would you like to know your future? If your answer is yes, think again. Not knowing is the greatest life motivator. So enjoy, endure, survive each moment as it comes to you in its proper sequence -- a surprise.
Vera Nazarian (The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration)
But love is complicated, it’s messy. It can inspire selflessness, selfishness, our greatest accomplishments and our hardest mistakes. It brings us together and it can just as easily drive us apart.
Courtney Summers (Sadie)
The greatest blessing granted to mankind come by way of madness, which is a divine gift.
Socrates
Books permit us to voyage through time, to tap the wisdom of our ancestors. The library connects us with the insight and knowledge, painfully extracted from Nature, of the greatest minds that ever were, with the best teachers, drawn from the entire planet and from all our history, to instruct us without tiring, and to inspire us to make our own contribution to the collective knowledge of the human species. I think the health of our civilization, the depth of our awareness about the underpinnings of our culture and our concern for the future can all be tested by how well we support our libraries.
Carl Sagan (Cosmos)
Ô, Wanderess, Wanderess When did you feel your most euphoric kiss? Was I the source of your greatest bliss?
Roman Payne
The best love in the world, is the love of a man. The love of a man who came from your womb, the love of your son! I don't have a daughter, but maybe the love of a daughter is the best, too. I am first and foremost me, but right after that, I am a mother. The best thing that I can ever be, is me. But the best gift that I will ever have, is being a mother.
C. JoyBell C.
The single greatest lesson the garden teaches is that our relationship to the planet need not be zero-sum, and that as long as the sun still shines and people still can plan and plant, think and do, we can, if we bother to try, find ways to provide for ourselves without diminishing the world.
Michael Pollan (The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals)
To see truth as truth, we don't need a lot of study. It's not complicated. What we need is pure observation. An open mind and fresh eyes will serve us well.
Ilchi Lee (Change: Realizing Your Greatest Potential)
Believing in negative thoughts is the single greatest obstruction to success.
Charles F. Glassman (Brain Drain - The Breakthrough That Will Change Your Life)
Give me strength, not to be better than my enemies, but to defeat my greatest enemy, the doubts within myself. Give me strength for a straight back and clear eyes, so when life fades, as the setting sun, my spirit may come to you without shame.
P.C. Cast
I want my life to be the greatest story. My very existence will be the greatest poem. Watch me burn. Love always, Charlotte
Charlotte Eriksson (Empty Roads & Broken Bottles: in search for The Great Perhaps)
There is only one who is all powerful, and his greatest weapon is love.
Stan Lee
The greatest thing about dreams is they don’t expire. They can lay dormant for years and when you pull them out and dust them off, they shine like new.
Casi McLean
Are you going to allow the world around you to change while you remain stagnant? Make this the time you throw away old habits that have hindered your happiness and success and finally allow your greatest self to flourish.
Steve Maraboli (Life, the Truth, and Being Free)
Everyones greatest fantasy is to walk away from the life (they think)you lead
Pete Wentz
I firmly believe that any man's finest hour, the greatest fulfillment of all that he holds dear, is that moment when he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle - victorious."
Vince Lombardi
I am so grateful for my troubles. As I reflect back on my life, I have come to realize that my greatest triumphs have been born of my greatest troubles.
Steve Maraboli (Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience)
The greatest revenge is massive success.
Les Brown
How would your life be different if…You didn’t allow yourself to be defined by your past? Let today be the day…You stop letting your history interfere with your destiny and awaken to the opportunity to release your greatest self.
Steve Maraboli (Life, the Truth, and Being Free)
It’s the things you fight for and struggle with before earning that have the greatest worth.
Sarah Dessen (Along for the Ride)
Prayer is beyond any question the highest activity of the human soul. Man is at his greatest and highest when upon his knees he comes face to face with God.
D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones
You must be humble, as it is one of the greatest [forms of] worship.
Ali ibn Abi Talib
Truth is truth, not the explanations of Truth. Truth is a living, moving process. Truth is constantly undulating and vibrating. You can become one with the Truth, but you cannot adequately explain it.
Ilchi Lee (Change: Realizing Your Greatest Potential)
Crowded classrooms and half-day sessions are a tragic waste of our greatest national resource - the minds of our children.
Walt Disney Company
Two years he walks the earth. No phone, no pool, no pets, no cigarettes. Ultimate freedom. An extremist. An aesthetic voyager whose home is the road. Escaped from Atlanta. Thou shalt not return, 'cause "the West is the best." And now after two rambling years comes the final and greatest adventure. The climactic battle to kill the false being within and victoriously conclude the spiritual pilgrimage. Ten days and nights of freight trains and hitchhiking bring him to the Great White North. No longer to be poisoned by civilization he flees, and walks alone upon the land to become lost in the wild. --Alexander Supertramp, May 1992
Christopher McCandless
The greatest win is walking away and choosing not to engage in drama and toxic energy at all.
Lalah Delia
The greatest risk to man is not that he aims too high and misses, but that he aims too low and hits.
Michaelangelo
You will see that the things you desire most are the very things that bring you the greatest sorrow.
Christopher Pike (Phantom (The Last Vampire, #4))
The power of prayer is still the greatest ever known in this endless eternal universe.-The Watcher in The Avengers #14
Stan Lee (Essential Avengers, Vol. 1)
Even the smallest shift in perspective can bring about the greatest healing.
Joshua Kai (The Quantum Prayer: An Inspiring Guide to Love, Healing, and Creating the Best Life Possible)
some of the greatest battles will be fought within the silent chambers of your own soul.
Ezra Taft Benson
If you don't think you were born to run you're not only denying history. You're denying who you are.
Christopher McDougall (Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen)
The greatest cure for love is still that time honoured medicine - love returned.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Greatness... lies not in being strong, but in the right use of strength... He is the greatest whose strength carries up the most hearts by the attraction of his own.
R.J. Palacio
Owning your own feelings, rather than blaming them on someone else, is the mark of a person who has moved from contracted to expanded awareness.
Deepak Chopra (Spiritual Solutions: Answers to Life's Greatest Challenges)
Our worst fears, like our greatest hopes, are not outside our powers, and we can come in the end to triumph over the former and to achieve the latter.
Marcel Proust (In Search of Lost Time)
No matter where you go, there you are,
Yogi Berra (When You Come to a Fork in the Road, Take It!: Inspiration and Wisdom from One of Baseball's Greatest Heroes)
How can a three-pound mass of jelly that you can hold in your palm imagine angels, contemplate the meaning of infinity, and even question its own place in the cosmos? Especially awe inspiring is the fact that any single brain, including yours, is made up of atoms that were forged in the hearts of countless, far-flung stars billions of years ago. These particles drifted for eons and light-years until gravity and change brought them together here, now. These atoms now form a conglomerate- your brain- that can not only ponder the very stars that gave it birth but can also think about its own ability to think and wonder about its own ability to wonder. With the arrival of humans, it has been said, the universe has suddenly become conscious of itself. This, truly, it the greatest mystery of all.
V.S. Ramachandran (The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist's Quest for What Makes Us Human)
Helen Keller became deaf, dumb, and blind shortly after birth. Despite her greatest misfortune, she has written her name indelibly in the pages of the history of the great. Her entire life has served as evidence that no one is ever defeated until defeat has been accepted as reality.
Napoleon Hill (Think and Grow Rich)
It is the most fun I’m ever going to have. I love to write. I love it. I mean, there’s nothing in the world I like better, and that includes sex, probably because I’m so very bad at it. It’s the greatest peace when I’m in a scene, and it’s just me and the character, that’s it, that’s where I want to live my life.
Joss Whedon
It is not knowledge, but the act of learning, not the possession of but the act of getting there, which grants the greatest enjoyment.
Carl Friedrich Gauß
The tallest and oldest trees that seemed to have just have casually always been there, hold the greatest love: as it nurtures love for others: providing shade for two lovers, becoming home for birds to build a nest, and giving food to the squirrels whom scurry upon it.
Forrest Curran (Purple Buddha Project: Purple Book of Self-Love)
To exist in this vast universe for a speck of time is the great gift of life. Our tiny sliver of time is our gift of life. It is our only life. The universe will go on, indifferent to our brief existence, but while we are here we touch not just part of that vastness, but also the lives around us. Life is the gift each of us has been given. Each life is our own and no one else's. It is precious beyond all counting. It is the greatest value we can have. Cherish it for what it truly is..... Your life is yours alone. Rise up and live it.
Terry Goodkind
Perhaps ... To R.A.L. Perhaps some day the sun will shine again, And I shall see that still the skies are blue, And feel one more I do not live in vain, Although bereft of you. Perhaps the golden meadows at my feet, Will make the sunny hours of spring seem gay, And I shall find the white May-blossoms sweet, Though You have passed away. Perhaps the summer woods will shimmer bright, And crimson roses once again be fair, And autumn harvest fields a rich delight, Although You are not there. But though kind Time may many joys renew, There is one greatest joy I shall not know Again, because my heart for loss of You Was broken, long ago.
Vera Brittain (Testament of Youth)
Service is a smile.  It is an acknowledging wave, a reaching handshake, a friendly wink, and a warm hug.   It's these simple acts that matter most, because the greatest service to a human soul has always been the kindness of recognition.
Richelle E. Goodrich (Smile Anyway: Quotes, Verse, and Grumblings for Every Day of the Year)
The greatest thing about tomorrow is, I will be better than I am today. And that's how I look at my life. I will be a better golfer, I will be a better person, I will be a better father, I will be a better husband, I will be a better friend. That's the beauty of tomorrow.
Tiger Woods
The world can no longer be left to mere diplomats, politicians, and business leaders. They have done the best they could, no doubt. But this is an age for spiritual heroes- a time for men and women to be heroic in their faith and in spiritual character and power. The greatest danger to the Christian church today is that of pitching its message too low.
Dallas Willard (The Spirit of the Disciplines: Understanding How God Changes Lives)
Change is the very nature of Nature. if there's one thing that doesn't change, it is the fact that everything changes. In the Korean tradition of Tao, this is called impermanence. The teaching about impermanence can be summarized like this: Anything that has a beginning must have an end. Anything that is created will change. Impermanence is the very nature of things. Realizing that nothing is permanent is the true beginning of enlightenment. Suffering comes from attachment that wants to hold something permanently that is not permanent in its intrinsic nature. Awakening to the truth of impermanence frees you from attachment.
Ilchi Lee (Change: Realizing Your Greatest Potential)
Have you ever heard of Blue Streak?" I blink at him. "That's the name of a movie?" "Romeo Must Die? Bad Boys? Rush Hour? Rush Hour 2? Rush Hour 3? Actually, Rush Hour 3 wasn't that great. Tangled? "That last one, I believe, is a cartoon about a girl with very long hair, inspired by the German fairy tale Rapunzel." Kenji looks like he might be choking. "A cartoon?" he says, outraged. "Tangled is not a cartoon. Tangled is one of the greatest movies of all time. It's about fighting for freedom and true love.
Tahereh Mafi (Defy Me (Shatter Me, #5))
Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth; oh nevermind; you will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they have faded. But trust me, in 20 years you’ll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked….You’re not as fat as you imagine. Don’t worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind; the kind that blindside you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday. Do one thing everyday that scares you Sing Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts, don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours. Floss 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. Remember the compliments you receive, forget the insults; if you succeed in doing this, tell me how. Keep your old love letters, throw away your old bank statements. Stretch Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your life…the most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives, some of the most interesting 40 year olds I know still don’t. Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees, you’ll miss them when they’re gone. Maybe you’ll marry, maybe you won’t, maybe you’ll have children,maybe you won’t, maybe you’ll divorce at 40, maybe you’ll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary…what ever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much or berate yourself either – your choices are half chance, so are everybody else’s. Enjoy your body, use it every way you can…don’t be afraid of it, or what other people think of it, it’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever own.. Dance…even if you have nowhere to do it but in your own living room. Read the directions, even if you don’t follow them. Do NOT read beauty magazines, they will only make you feel ugly. Get to know your parents, you never know when they’ll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings; they are the best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future. Understand that friends come and go,but for the precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle because the older you get, the more you need the people you knew when you were young.
Mary Schmich
You know that crazy heart of yours? The one with lightning crackling and moonlight shining through it. The one you’ve been told not to trust because it often led you off the beaten path. The one so many have misunderstood your entire life. Trust it. Feed it. Grow it. It’s your greatest treasure and will point the way to your highest destiny. It is the voice of your soul.
Jacob Nordby
I looked at the campers, all of them grim and determined. I tried not to feel like this was the last time I'd ever see them all together. 'You're the greatest heroes of this millennium,' I told them. 'It doesn't matter how many monsters come at you. Fight bravely, and we will win.' I raised Riptide and shouted, 'FOR OLYMPUS!' They shouted in response, and our forty voices echoed off the buildings of Midtown.
Rick Riordan (The Last Olympian (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #5))
IF - and this is the greatest of them all - I had the courage to see myself as I reallyam, I would find out what is wrong with me, and correct it, then I might have a chance to profit by my mistakes and learn something from the experience of others,for I know that there is something WRONG with me, or I would now be where I WOULD HAVE BEEN IF I had spent more time analyzing my weaknesses, and less time building alibis to cover them.
Napoleon Hill (Think and Grow Rich)
That's for the best. Otherwise they might realize they're in prison. It can't be helped. You women are used to harems and prisons. A person can spend his whole life between four walls. If he doesn't think or feel that he's a prisoner, then he's not a prisoner. But then there are people for whom the whole planet is a prison, who see the infinite expanse of the universe, the millions of stars and galaxies that remain forever inaccessible to them. And that awareness makes them the greatest prisoners of time and space.
Vladimir Bartol (Alamut)
Be a light unto the world, and hurt it not. Seek to build not destroy. Bring My people home. How? By your shining example. Seek only Godliness. Speak only in truthfulness. Act only in love. Live the Law of Love now and forever more. Give everything require nothing. Avoid the mundane. Do not accept the unacceptable. Teach all who seek to learn of Me. Make every moment of your life an outpouring of love. Use every moment to think the highest thought, say the highest word, do the highest deed. In this, glorify your Holy Self, and thus too, glorify Me. Bring peace to the Earth by bringing peace to all those whose lives you touch. Be peace. Feel and express in every moment your Divine Connection with the All, and with every person, place, and thing. Embrace every circumstance, own every fault, share every joy, contemplate every mystery, walk in every man’s shoes, forgive every offense (including your own), heal every heart, honor every person’s truth, adore every person’s God, protect every person’s rights, preserve every person’s dignity, promote every person’s interests, provide every person’s needs, presume every person’s holiness, present every person’s greatest gifts, produce every person’s blessing, pronounce every person’s future secure in the assured love of God. Be a living, breathing example of the Highest Truth that resides within you. Speak humbly of yourself, lest someone mistake your Highest Truth for boast. Speak softly, lest someone think you are merely calling for attention. Speak gently, that all might know of Love. Speak openly, lest someone think you have something to hide. Speak candidly, so you cannot be mistaken. Speak often, so that your word may truly go forth. Speak respectfully, that no one be dishonored. Speak lovingly, that every syllable may heal. Speak of Me with every utterance. Make of your life a gift. Remember always, you are the gift! Be a gift to everyone who enters your life, and to everyone whose life you enter. Be careful not to enter another’s life if you cannot be a gift. (You can always be a gift, because you always are the gift—yet sometimes you don’t let yourself know that.) When someone enters your life unexpectedly, look for the gift that person has come to receive from you…I HAVE SENT YOU NOTHING BUT ANGELS.
Neale Donald Walsch (Conversations With God: An Uncommon Dialogue, Book 2)
That was the real secret of the Tarahumara: they'd never forgotten what it felt like to love running. They remembered that running was mankind's first fine art, our original act of inspired creation. Way before we were scratching pictures on caves or beating rhythms on hollow trees, we were perfecting the art of combining our breath and mind and muscles into fluid self-propulsion over wild terrain. And when our ancestors finally did make their first cave paintings, what were the first designs? A downward slash, lightning bolts through the bottom and middle--behold, the Running Man. Distance running was revered because it was indispensable; it was the way we survived and thrived and spread across the planet. You ran to eat and to avoid being eaten; you ran to find a mate and impress her, and with her you ran off to start a new life together. You had to love running, or you wouldn't live to love anything else. And like everyhing else we ove--everything we sentimentally call our 'passions' and 'desires' it's really an encoded ancestral necessity. We were born to run; we were born because we run. We're all Running People, as the Tarahumara have always known.
Christopher McDougall (Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen)
Even when we have realized oneness and nothingness, we still have our personal lives to manage, bodies to take care of, and mouths to feed, and you will know which one is yours and which ones are others', so you won't put food into another person's mouth when you are hungry. Also you won't kiss a rattlesnake or hug a cactus no matter how strong an affinity you feel toward them. But at the same time, we know these apparent separations are functional, not fundamental, and should be recognized as such without mistaking one for the other. I would call this apparent separation "functional ego," or you can call it your "character," which is the collection of your beliefs, habits, and other people's expectations.
Ilchi Lee (Change: Realizing Your Greatest Potential)
I Love Loving You You are my favorite song; a rhythm of beauty that captures my spirit. You are my favorite poem; an exquisite grouping of ideas set in motion with an unmatched enchanting elegance. You are my best friend; from our laughter to our deep conversations, our moments together are a timeless pleasure. You are my soul mate; a connection so pure, so powerful, that it can only be considered divine. You are my lover; a passionate entwinement, a chorus of ecstasy, and a feeling of complete unity that words could never adequately describe. You are my angel; you remind me of the goodness in this world and inspire me to be the greatest version of myself. You are my home; it is in your loving gaze that I find the comfort, acceptance, and the sense of belonging. You are my love ~ mi amor; there are not enough days in forever to allow me to fully express my love for you. I love loving you.
Steve Maraboli (Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience)
At this time in history, sick, afraid, and despondent are the general conditions that affect the majority of poeple almost everywhere. It's difficult and challenging to follow the call of conscience when we're under the dark veil of these forces. At the same time, it's painful not to follow it. When you become healthy, courageous, and hopeful, following your conscience becomes easier. When people are healthy, courageous, and hopeful, it's difficult to bend their mind and will. You can't force them to do what you'd like them to do against their will. They will speak out what they believe, and stand up and do what is right even when it means a loss to them. I am hopeful because I have witnessed this change throughout my life. From the realization of what I really am, I became hopeful, courageous, and passionate for life, and I felt responsible for the general condition of humanity and the Earth because they are not separate from me.
Ilchi Lee (Change: Realizing Your Greatest Potential)
I thought how lovely and how strange a river is. A river is a river, always there, and yet the water flowing through it is never the same water and is never still. It’s always changing and is always on the move. And over time the river itself changes too. It widens and deepens as it rubs and scours, gnaws and kneads, eats and bores its way through the land. Even the greatest rivers- the Nile and the Ganges, the Yangtze and he Mississippi, the Amazon and the great grey-green greasy Limpopo all set about with fever trees-must have been no more than trickles and flickering streams before they grew into mighty rivers. Are people like that? I wondered. Am I like that? Always me, like the river itself, always flowing but always different, like the water flowing in the river, sometimes walking steadily along andante, sometimes surging over rapids furioso, sometimes meandering wit hardly any visible movement tranquilo, lento, ppp pianissimo, sometimes gurgling giacoso with pleasure, sometimes sparkling brillante in the sun, sometimes lacrimoso, sometimes appassionato, sometimes misterioso, sometimes pesante, sometimes legato, sometimes staccato, sometimes sospirando, sometimes vivace, and always, I hope, amoroso. Do I change like a river, widening and deepening, eddying back on myself sometimes, bursting my banks sometimes when there’s too much water, too much life in me, and sometimes dried up from lack of rain? Will the I that is me grow and widen and deepen? Or will I stagnate and become an arid riverbed? Will I allow people to dam me up and confine me to wall so that I flow only where they want? Will I allow them to turn me into a canal to use for they own purposes? Or will I make sure I flow freely, coursing my way through the land and ploughing a valley of my own?
Aidan Chambers (This Is All: The Pillow Book of Cordelia Kenn)
This century will be called Darwin's century. He was one of the greatest men who ever touched this globe. He has explained more of the phenomena of life than all of the religious teachers. Write the name of Charles Darwin on the one hand and the name of every theologian who ever lived on the other, and from that name has come more light to the world than from all of those. His doctrine of evolution, his doctrine of the survival of the fittest, his doctrine of the origin of species, has removed in every thinking mind the last vestige of orthodox Christianity. He has not only stated, but he has demonstrated, that the inspired writer knew nothing of this world, nothing of the origin of man, nothing of geology, nothing of astronomy, nothing of nature; that the Bible is a book written by ignorance--at the instigation of fear. Think of the men who replied to him. Only a few years ago there was no person too ignorant to successfully answer Charles Darwin, and the more ignorant he was the more cheerfully he undertook the task. He was held up to the ridicule, the scorn and contempt of the Christian world, and yet when he died, England was proud to put his dust with that of her noblest and her grandest. Charles Darwin conquered the intellectual world, and his doctrines are now accepted facts. His light has broken in on some of the clergy, and the greatest man who to-day occupies the pulpit of one of the orthodox churches, Henry Ward Beecher, is a believer in the theories of Charles Darwin--a man of more genius than all the clergy of that entire church put together. ...The church teaches that man was created perfect, and that for six thousand years he has degenerated. Darwin demonstrated the falsity of this dogma. He shows that man has for thousands of ages steadily advanced; that the Garden of Eden is an ignorant myth; that the doctrine of original sin has no foundation in fact; that the atonement is an absurdity; that the serpent did not tempt, and that man did not 'fall.' Charles Darwin destroyed the foundation of orthodox Christianity. There is nothing left but faith in what we know could not and did not happen. Religion and science are enemies. One is a superstition; the other is a fact. One rests upon the false, the other upon the true. One is the result of fear and faith, the other of investigation and reason.
Robert G. Ingersoll (Lectures of Col. R.G. Ingersoll: Including His Letters On the Chinese God--Is Suicide a Sin?--The Right to One's Life--Etc. Etc. Etc, Volume 2)