Collecting famous and not-so-famous quotes is probably my favourite hobby. Sometimes I can spend hours trawling the internet and books for snippets of wisdom from various sources: people alive or dead, literature, even movies and theatre.
I feel like there is a library of mankind's wisdom out there, scattered around and free-floating, just waiting to be accessed.
I usually collect and save quotes that call to me in some way. Perhaps a phrase that echoes a lesson I have learned or wish to learn; maybe an observation that rings true, or something I found amusing or hadn't considered before.
What I love about this process is that often I come across something that really makes me think. An idea I can apply to my own situation in a way I hadn't thought of - occasionally it will hit me in the gut and I'll have an "aha!" moment, wondering why I never thought of it that way before.
My desk is surrounded by quotes pasted to the wall, my lamp, bin and bookcase, and often, at certain times in my life, one that particularly rings true will become a kind of mantra for me. I really take on it's meaning if I feel it will be helpful, and try to integrate it into my thinking.
All this sounds terribly serious, but I also simply enjoy hearing what people have to say - their opinions, the lessons they've learned or the wisdom they've gained.
Here is a selection of my favourites and the ones that feel especially true for me on my journey this lifetime. For some I've also added a brief comment of my own. Enjoy!
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
In this life we cannot do great things. We can only do small things with great love
- Mother Teresa
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
Oh, my friend, it's not what they take away from you that counts -- it's what you do
with what you have left.
- Hubert H. Humphrey
Success is often the result of taking a misstep in the right direction.
- Al Bernstein
I don't think anything is unrealistic if you believe you can do it.
- Mike Ditka
Reflect upon your present blessings, of which every man has plenty; not on your past
misfortunes, of which all men have some.
- Charles Dickens
Perseverance is a great element of success. If you only knock long enough and loud enough
at the gate, you are sure to wake somebody.
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman, before which difficulties disappear and
obstacles vanish into air.
- John Quincy Adams
Happiness is a sort of action.
- Aristotle
Confidence doesn't come out of nowhere. It's a result of something... hours and days and
weeks and years of constant work and dedication.
- Roger Staubach
Enlightenment must come little by little-otherwise it would overwhelm.
- Idries Shah
It is neither wealth nor splendor; but tranquility and occupation which give happiness.
- Thomas Jefferson
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
Vitality shows not only in the ability to persist, but in the ability to start over.
- Source Unknown
I can think of nothing less pleasurable than a life devoted to pleasure.
- John D. Rockefeller
Blessed are those who give without remembering. And blessed are those who take without
forgetting.
- Bernard Meltzer
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.)
"People travel to wonder at the height of the mountains, at the huge waves of the seas, at
the long course of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of
the stars, and yet they pass by themselves without wondering."
- St. Augustine
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.)
Loving people live in a loving world. Hostile people live in a hostile world. Same world.
- Wayne Dyer
(This is such a simple concept, but so true! Especially if you believe in karma…. Did
I mention my karma ran over your dogma?)
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
(I have this tattooed on my inner left wrist to remind me that no matter what happens,
I refuse to give in, I refuse to give up, and no matter how painful something is, I will
ultimately learn something from it. In fact, I think that most of the time the amount of
pain felt is in direct proportion to the importance/enormity of the lesson. Just a thought
to ponder...)
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
(This makes me think of my psychologist/therapist, Myra. I know only a fraction of her
life events, but know that she has experienced so much pain, and lived through it - she
is a true survivor and for that I am grateful because it's what makes her who she is and
so much of a help and support for me on my journey as well. She is amazing.)
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!!!")
80% of success is just showing up.
- Woody Allen
Whether you think you can or whether you think you can't - you are right.
- Henry Ford
Live as you will have wished to have lived when you are dying.
- Gellert
(I often think this, but in a slightly different way. If I make a fool of myself or say
the wrong thing, or I'm worrying about what someone else thinks of me, I just say: "So?
Will it change their life? Will they be lying on their death bed thinking about the time
that girl fell over in the street way back in 2006?" Um, I don't think so. In a similar
way, it helps me become more accepting of things that really aren't that big a deal.)
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
We carry within us the wonders we seek without us.
- Sir Thomas Browne
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
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.)
Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.
- Albert Einstein
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!)
Analyzing humour is like dissecting a frog: nobody enjoys it, and the
frog usually dies as a result.
(Okay, I wont analyze this one.)
The older you get, the more you learn to see what you've been taught to see. When you're
a kid, you see what's there.
- Steven Wright
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.)
Humour is an affirmation of dignity, a declaration of man's superiority to all that
befalls him.
- Romain Gary
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.
(My therapist, Myra, was the first person to introduce me to this concept. It can be
pretty hard to swallow sometimes, especially when society tells us from birth that we have
to do something to be worthwhile, that we're not enough unless we've climbed the career
ladder or are in a successful relationship or have a certain skin colour. But when you
think about it, from simply being born we have a right to be here, and sometimes I find it
helpful to remind myself that when I find myself judging myself or others a bit too
harshly. It brings me back down to earth.)
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!)
"When the game is over, the king and the pawn go into the same box."
- Italian Proverb
(Is there not a part of life that the game of Chess can't be likened to?!)
"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....)
"Just because you believe something to be a vision you instantly assume that it is
unreal. This is not so! Who can see the wind, after all? Or waves that quake the earth
from below? Or thunder? Or the heat within a dark oven that parches the bread? Cannot
these things topple empires and meld mountains, even though they cannot be seen?"
- Douglas Monroe
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.)
Happiness is like a journey, not a destination. And so it is said, work like you don't
need money, love like you've never been hurt and dance like no one's watching.....
(Hang on, but it's easier to suffer in silence if you're positive someone's watching:)
No deep change takes place without relinquishment
- Gail Worcelo
"Be who you are and say what you feel
because people who mind don't matter
and people who matter don't mind."
- Dr. Seuss
"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..... :)
Either I will find a way, or I will make one.
- Sir Philip Sidney
(I almost envy such determination, such strength of will. It's hard to remember that
each one of us has this inside of ourselves - I try to say this to myself a lot, I figure
it's a start.)
"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
