12/28/10

We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done. -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

12/22/10

It is literally true, as the thankless say, that they have nothing to be thankful for. He who sits by the fire, thankless for the fire, is just as if he had no fire. Nothing is possessed save in appreciation, of which thankfulness is the indispensable ingredient. But a thankful heart hath a continual feast. -W.J. Cameron

12/21/10

Life is more manageable when thought of as a scavenger hunt as opposed to a surprise party. -Jimmy Buffett

12/17/10

If we would only give, just once, the same amount of reflection to what we want to get out of life that we give to the question of what to do with a two weeks' vacation, we would be startled at our false standards and the aimless procession of our busy days. -Dorothy Canfield Fisher

12/16/10

Heroes know that things must happen when it is time for them to happen. A quest may not simply be abandoned; unicorns may go unrescued for a long time, but not forever; a happy ending cannot come in the middle of the story. -Peter S. Beagle

12/15/10

There is something wrong in a government where they who do the most have the least. There is something wrong when honesty wears a rag, and rascality a robe; when the loving, the tender, eat a crust, while the famous sit at banquets. -Robert G. Ingersoll

12/14/10

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. -Annie Dillard

12/13/10

The great and invigorating influences in American life have been the unorthodox: the people who challenge an existing institution or way of life, or say and do things that make people think. -William O. Douglas

12/10/10

In the practice of tolerance, one's enemy is the best teacher. -Dalai Lama

12/09/10

One of the commonest mistakes and one of the costliest is thinking that success is due to some genius, some magic - something or other which we do not possess. Success is generally due to holding on, and failure to letting go. You decide to learn a language, study music, take a course of reading, train yourself physically. Will it be success or failure? It depends upon how much pluck and perseverance that word "decide" contains. The decision that nothing can overrule, the grip that nothing can detach will bring success. Remember the Chinese proverb, "With time and patience, the mulberry leaf becomes satin." -Maltbie Davenport Babcock

12/08/10

Every moment and every event of every man's life on earth plants something in his soul. -Thomas Merton

12/07/10

Do not stand on a high pedestal, take five cents in your hand and say, "Here, my poor man," but be grateful that the poor man is there, so by making a gift to him you are able to help yourself. It is not the receiver that is blessed, but it is the giver. Be thankful that you are allowed to exercise your power of benevolence and mercy in the world, and thus become pure and perfect. -Swami Vivekananda

12/06/10

We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at one another--until we speak quietly enough so that our words can be heard as well as our voices. -Richard M. Nixon

10/06/10

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. -Plato

10/05/10

If I have a thousand ideas and only one turns out good, I am satisfied. -Alfred Nobel

10/04/10

A bookstore is one of the only pieces of evidence we have that people are still thinking. -Jerry Seinfeld

09/07/10

The most wasted of days is one without laughter. -e.e. cummings

09/02/10

Everyone is a genius at least once a year. The real geniuses simply have their bright ideas closer together. -Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

09/01/10

Gold in its native state is but dull, unornamental stuff, and only lowborn metals excite the admiration of the ignorant with an ostentatious glitter. However, like the rest of the world, I still go on underrating men of gold and glorifying men of mica. -Mark Twain

08/31/10

It has always seemed strange to me that in our endless discussions about education so little stress is laid on the pleasure of becoming an educated person, the enormous interest it adds to life. To be able to be caught up into the world of thought -- that is to be educated. -Edith Hamilton

08/30/10

The uncreative mind can spot the wrong answer, but it takes a creative mind to spot the wrong question. -Anthony Jay

08/27/10

Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right or better. -John Updike

08/25/10

An idea is salvation by imagination. -Frank Lloyd Wright

08/24/10

A leader without a sense of humor is apt to be like the grass mower at the cemetery--he has lots of people under him, but nobody is paying him any attention. -Bob Ross

08/23/10

Each success only buys an admission ticket to a more difficult problem. -Henry Kissinger

06/29/10

Education is not the answer to the question. Education is the means to answer all the questions. -William Allin

06/28/10

And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt. -Sylvia Plath

06/25/10

The greatest personalities that ever existed have been those who united human beings and put them on the road toward cooperation and effectiveness and peace. Those whom the world has held highest have helped to unite and not sever interconnectedness. They have not been the destroyers of differences but the harmonizer of differences. -John Lovejoy Elliott

06/24/10

Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal. -Albert Camus

06/22/10

Our heads are round so that thoughts can change direction. -Francis Picabia

06/21/10

I sincerely believe that there is a time in life for drifting. There is a time for sitting back and getting in touch with yourself. Some of our most interesting illuminations and ideas will come when we take time to reflect, time to kick back and cruise awhile. -Rudolfo Anaya

05/21/10

It is a paradoxical but profoundly true and important principle of life that the most likely way to reach a goal is to be aiming not at that goal itself but at some more ambitious goal beyond it. -Arnold Toynbee

05/20/10

We sometimes speak of winning reputation as though that were the final goal. The truth is contrary to this. Reputation is a reward to be sure, but it is really the beginning, not the end of endeavor. It should not be the signal for a letdown, but rather, a reminder that the standard which won recognition can never again be lowered. From him who gives much, much is forever after expected. -Alvan Macauley

05/19/10

Not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea that life is serious. -Brendan Gill

05/18/10

The task of modern education is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts. -C.S. Lewis

05/14/10

Make sure you have finished speaking before your audience has finished listening. -Dorothy Sarnoff

05/13/10

It takes a long time to become young. -Pablo Picasso

05/12/10

The more you struggle to live, the less you live. Give up the notion that you must be sure of what you are doing. Instead, surrender to what is real within you, for that alone is sure. As stars high above earth, you are above everything distressing. But you must awaken to it. Wake up! -Baruch Spinoza

05/11/10

Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education. -Franklin D. Roosevelt

05/10/10

At first you will think of practice as a limited part of your life. In time you will realize that everything you do is part of your practice. -Baba Ram Dass

05/07/10

The amount of good we can do with a glad heart and a smile is incalculable, and the good of it goes out to others and stays with us at the same time. -Dixie Carter

05/06/10

The writer studies literature, not the world. He is careful of what he reads, for that is what he will write. -Annie Dillard

05/05/10

Life is something that happens when you can't get to sleep. -Fran Lebowitz

05/03/10

Words, in a world of many wonders, are among the most wonderful adaptations of man. They are a complex music of meaning played upon himself as the orchestra.  He is at once the performer and the instruments. -Isaac Goldberg

04/29/10

To be a poet is a condition, not a profession. -Robert Frost

04/28/10

Always be a poet, even in prose. -Charles Baudelaire

04/27/10

Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood. -T.S. Eliot

04/26/10

Unbeing dead isn't being alive. -e.e. cummings

04/23/10

It's not enough to question authority. You gotta speak with it, too. -Taylor Mali

04/22/10

If equal affection cannot be, let the more loving be me. -W.H. Auden

04/21/10

Listen, real poetry doesn't say anything; it just ticks off the possibilities. Opens all doors. You can walk through any one that suits you. -Jim Morrison

04/20/10

To put meaning in one's life may end in madness, but life without meaning is the torture of restlessness and vague desire-It is a boat longing for the sea and yet afraid. -Edgar Lee Masters

04/19/10

What you dream up is deeper than what you know. -Sekou Sundiata

04/15/10

We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey. -Kenji Miyazawa

04/14/10

Poetry is life distilled. -Gwendolyn Brooks

04/13/10

The prerequisite of writing is having something to say. -Langston Hughes

04/12/10

Poetry is plucking at the heartstrings, and making music with them. -Dennis Gabor

04/08/10

Find your place on the planet. Dig in, and take responsibility from there. -Gary Snyder

04/07/10

Poetry is an orphan of silence. The words never quite equal the experience behind them. -Charles Simic

04/06/10

Poetry is the voice of the soul. -Carolyn Forché

04/05/10

Poetry exists to give the socially awkward a way to finally be applauded by their peers. -Geoff Trenchard

04/02/10

To begin, begin. -William Wordsworth

04/01/10

I culled poetry from odors, sounds, faces, and ordinary events occurring around me. Breezes bulged me as if I were cloth; sounds nicked their marks on my nerves; objects made impressions on my sight as if in clay. There, in the soft language, life centered and ground itself in me and I was flowing with the grain of the universe. Language placed my life experiences in a new context, freeing me for the moment to become with air as air, with clouds as clouds, from which new associations arose to engage me in present life in a more purposeful way. —Jimmy Santiago Baca

03/31/10

True teachers are those who use themselves as bridges over which they invite their students to cross; then, having facilitated their crossing, joyfully collapse, encouraging them to create their own. -Nikos Kazantzakis

03/30/10

The creative act, the defeat of habit by originality, overcomes everything. -George Lois

03/29/10

Storying. . . very quickly becomes the means whereby we enter into a shared world, which is continually broadened and enriched by the exchange of stories with others. In this sense, the reality of each one of us inhabits is to a very great extent a distillation of the stories that we have shared. -Gordon Wells

03/26/10

Win as if you were used to it, lose as if you enjoyed it for a change. -Ralph Waldo Emerson

03/24/10

Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones. -Marcus Aurelius

03/23/10

He who laughs most, learns best. -John Cleese

03/17/10

Pedantry and mastery are opposite attitudes toward rules. To apply a rule to the letter, rigidly, unquestioningly, in cases where it fits and in cases where it does not fit, is pedantry... To apply a rule with natural ease, with judgment, noticing the cases where it fits, and without ever letting the words of the rule obscure the purpose of the action or the opportunities of the situation, is mastery. -George Pólya

03/16/10

The man with a toothache thinks everyone happy whose teeth are sound. The poverty-stricken man makes the same mistake about the rich man. -George Bernard Shaw

03/12/10

The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy... neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water. -John W. Gardner

03/11/10

The best leaders... almost without exception and at every level, are master users of stories and symbols. -Tom Peters

03/09/10

Dreams sometimes come true. But not without something just like work. -Sylvia Ashton-Warner

03/08/10

The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today. -Franklin D. Roosevelt

03/04/10

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. -Viktor E. Frankl

03/03/10

The story--from Rumplestiltskin to War and Peace--is one of the basic tools invented by the human mind for the purpose of understanding. There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories. -Ursula K. LeGuin

03/02/10

We are our stories. -Daniel H. Pink

02/25/10

Cutting people out of your life is easy, keeping them in is hard. -Walter Dean Myers

02/24/10

Things don't fall apart. Things hold. Lines connect in thin ways that last and last and lives become generations made out of pictures and words just kept. -Lucille Clifton

02/22/10

Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek. -Barack Obama

02/19/10

Presumption should never make us neglect that which appears easy to us, nor despair make us lose courage at the sight of difficulties. -Benjamin Banneker

02/17/10

My motto was always to keep swinging. Whether I was in a slump or feeling badly or having trouble off the field, the only thing to do was keep swinging. -Hank Aaron

02/16/10

I live a day at a time. Each day I look for a kernel of excitement. In the morning I say: “What is my exciting thing for today?” Then, I do the day. Don't ask me about tomorrow. -Barbara Jordan

02/09/10

Give your brain as much attention as your hair and you'll be a thousand times better off. -Malcolm X

02/08/10

I've come to appreciate the planet we live on. It's a small ball in a large universe. It's a very fragile ball but also very beautiful. You don't recognize that until you see it from a little farther off. -Guion Bluford

02/03/10

I can accept failure. Everyone fails at something. But I can't accept not trying. -Michael Jordan

02/02/10

We all should know that diversity makes for a rich tapestry, and we must understand that all the threads of the tapestry are equal in value no matter what their color. -Maya Angelou

01/29/10

Art includes everything that stimulates the desire to live; science, everything that sharpens the desire to know. -Remy de Gourmant

01/28/10

If stories come to you, care for them. And learn to give them away where they are needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive. -Barry Lopez

01/27/10

Nothing is ever lost by courtesy. It is the cheapest of pleasures, costs nothing, and conveys much. It pleases him who gives and receives and thus, like mercy, is twice blessed. -Erastus Wiman

01/26/10

The important thing is somehow to begin. -Henry Moore

01/25/10

Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself. -George Bernard Shaw

01/05/10

You write to communicate to the hearts and minds of others what's burning inside you. And we edit to let the fire show through the smoke. -Arthur Plotnik