Quotes


quote 1. to repeat (a passage, phrase, etc.) from a book, speech, or the like, as by way of authority, illustration, etc. 2. to repeat words from (a book, author, etc.). 3. to use a brief excerpt from. 4. to cite, offer, or bring forward as evidence or support (Webster's, p 1588).

quotation, citation, reference; exemplification, instance, example, case, case in point, particular, item, illustration, demonstration; cross reference; repetition, reproduction, duplication; recurrence, reincarnation, rebirth, renewal, echo; imitate, imitation, repeat word for word or verbatim, parrot, repeat like a broken record; copy; plagiarism (Chapman, p 381, 57).

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Quotes that show what we believe. This is not a short list so feel free to take your time and savor every tasty morsel. Although I can't say that every quote is accurate, I can say that the spirit of every quote holds true.

I hate quotations. Tell me what you know. - Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

But, for those who are unwilling to accept our words, quotes authenticate what we do or think we know. - Doug

How are we to live? | The Journey Inward: Quotations for the Soul - Rosalie Magio | Change/Growth | Integrity | Inspiration | Carpe diem | History | Democracy | Leadership | Justice, Legality, Morality | Education | "Tuesdays, with Morrie" | Relationships | Gratitude and Thankfulness | Art & Fear | Creativity and problem solving | Writing | Design | The New Drawing of the Right Side of the Brain | The meaning of art | Work ethics | Words of wisdom


To augment the quotes we've listed, check out the sites below.

Artists on Art - Exactly what it says, artists quotes on art.

Positive Atheism's Big List of Quotations - "Discussing the history, ethics and philosophy of atheism promotes liberty, responsibility and peace of mind." Well, looking from the outside at that which many hold as truth helps add depth to one's own understanding and belief system. That said, this site clearly shows a pointed view from the outside. If you dare, check out the Positive Atheism's Big List of Scary Quotes.

Quotes for Teachers - A collection of quotes intended to speak to teachers...dah, but these are universal to learning for both the teacher and student.

TPCN - Great Quotations (Quotes) To Inspire And Motivate You - Great quotes to inspire, empower and motivate you to live the life of your dreams and become the person you've always wanted to be!

The Quotations Page - This page was originally developed as a catalog of Quotation resources on the Internet; it has since evolved into a large-scale Quotation site with many original resources.

Who Said That? Artist's and Artistic Quotes - Art History - Just as it says, quotes from artists, but it also has links to brief bios and lots of other art history "stuff."

Wisdom Quotes - Favorite quotes updated with new quotations often. Selected quotes, including only those quotes that the webmaster found challenging or inspiring or interesting -- in other words, reflecting my [Jone Johnson Lewis] own tastes and philosophy.


How are we to live? | Top | Quote Subsections

Epictetus (c.55-c.135 CE), The Enchiridion (135 CE)

We found the following references after being inspired by Admiral James Stockdale's speech: "Courage Under Fire: Testing Epictetus's Doctrines in a Laboratory of Human Behavior", delivered at the Great Hall, King's College, London, November 15, 1993. We selected Admiral Stockdale's speech to begin a series of seminars for our humanities program that addresses the ongoing theme, "How are we to live?"

Web reference:

The Internet Classics Archive - MIT - The Enchiridion - By Epictetus - Written 135 A.C.E. - Translated by Elizabeth Carter - http://classics.mit.edu/Epictetus/epicench.html


Top | Quote Subsections | How are we to live?

World Civilizations - Washington State University - Roman Philosophy - Epictetus - The Enchiridion - http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~dee/ROME/EPICT.HTM

1. Some things are within our power and some things are beyond our power. Those things within our power include opinions, goals, desires, and aversions, in other words, whatever affairs belong to us. Those things beyond our power include our bodies, property, reputation, and public office, that is, whatever does not properly belong to us. Those things within our power are naturally free, unlimited, and unhindered; however, those things beyond our power are naturally dependent, weak, and foreign to us. Therefore, remember that if you ascribe freedom to things that are naturally dependent and take for yourself what belongs to others (such as your reputation), you will face obstacles, you will be full of regrets and unfulfilled wishes, and you will continually blame both the gods and men. But if you take for your own only that which properly is your own and regard what belongs to others as belonging to others, then you will never be coerced or restricted, you will not find fault with others, you will not blame others, and you will do nothing unwillingly; you cannot be hurt, you will have no enemies, you will suffer no harm. . . .

2. Keep in mind that desire always demands the attainment of that which you desire, and aversion demands the avoidance of that which you shun; everyone who fails to attain the object they desire are disappointed; everyone who acquires the object they shun are miserable. If you shun only those things which you can control, you will never acquire what you are averse to; but if you try to avoid sickness, or death, or poverty, you will eventually be miserable. Cease trying to avoid those things you have no power over, and apply your effort to those undesirable things which are in your power. For the present, restrain your desire. If you desire anything not within your power, you are sure to be disappointed . .

5. Humans are disturbed not by things, but by the views which they take of things. Thus death is not a terrible thing, or it would have appeared so to Socrates; rather, our notions of death are terrifying. Therefore, when we are blocked or troubled or grieved, let us never blame it on others but rather blame it on ourselves, that is, our own views. Ignorant people blame others for their own misfortunes; those people partially wise learn to blame themselves; the truly wise need not blame either themselves or others.

Top | Quote Subsections | How are we to live?

8. Ask not that events should happen as you wish them to happen, but simply wish events to happen as they do happen, and you will be well.

17. Keep in mind that you are merely an actor in a play which the Author has chosen. If the play is short, then it's short; if the play is long, then it's long. If the Author chooses that you play a beggar, or a cripple, or a king, or a subject, your job is to act the part well. This is your only business-act your part well-for choosing what part you play belongs to another.

43. Everything can be said to have two handles; one by which you can bear the thing, and one by which you cannot. If, say, your brother commits some unjust act against you, do not grasp the affair by the handle of his injustice, for you can't bear it that way; rather grasp it by the opposite handle, that is, that he is your brother and has been raised up with you; thus you will grasp the affair in such a way that you can bear it.

44. These arguments are logically absurd: "I'm richer than you, therefore I'm better." "I'm more eloquent than you, therefore I'm better." The only logical arguments that can be made in these cases are: "I'm richer than you, therefore I have more property." "I'm more eloquent than you, therefore my speaking style is better than yours." Remember, you are neither property nor a speaking style.

50. Whatever principles you have decided on, abide by those principles as if they were laws, as if you would commit a sin against the gods by transgressing them. Forget all about the things people might say about you, for these things don't concern you. Why hold off demanding of yourself the most noble improvements? . . . You are no longer a child, but an adult. If you're negligent and lazy, adding delay to delay, excuse to excuse, and always waiting for tomorrow to get around to bettering yourself, you will accomplish nothing, as if asleep your entire life. Now is the time to decide to live as a full and grown person. Whatever appears to be the best to you, make that an inviolable law. . . . Though you are not yet a Socrates, always seek to be a Socrates. - Translated from the Greek by Richard Hooker - ©1993, Richard Hooker

Top | Quote Subsections | How are we to live?

With regard to whatever objects give you delight, are useful, or are deeply loved, remember to tell yourself of what general nature they are, beginning from the most insignificant things. If, for example, you are fond of a specific ceramic cup, remind yourself that it is only ceramic cups in general of which you are fond. Then, if it breaks, you will not be disturbed. If you kiss your child, or your wife, say that you only kiss things which are human, and thus you will not be disturbed if either of them dies. - http://philosophyquotes.com/archives/20000621.shtml


...Everything can be taken from a man but one thing; the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way. - Viktor Frankl

Nothing is so strong as gentleness. Nothing is so gentle as real strength. - Frances de Sales

...my strength lies solely in my tenacity. - Louis Pasteur

Think big thoughts but relish small pleasures. H. Jackson Brown


Don't think less of me because I can't do what you love.
Love me because I can do what I love. - Doug - The context of this quote.

I had been talking with a dear friend about watching someone give less than a whole-heartedly effort in a sport and wondering how they could be so disengaged. I loved sports, especially baseball. How could they not love to play baseball?

Within several days, I sat with the subject of my confusion playing a game of say the line from a movie or play and stump your opponents. I sat there wondering why I felt so disengaged. The person who had shown little interest in baseball, played the word game as if it were their greatest delight. Not only did they know the lines, they said or sang them with enthusiasm and glee.

The next day I found myself pondering the irony of the two situations, hence the quote above and the next question, why do we look at people based on our interests and abilities and not on their interests and abilities?

As a teacher I find myself looking at a student who appears disengaged and thinking that they have an issue. They may, but the real issue lies with me.

I do my best to look at each student as an individual with likes and dislikes, knowledge, abilities, skills, potential, and areas where they simply can't perform.

My renewed goal, beyond teaching the content, find my students doing something well and then nurture their interests. In a line from Mr. Holland's Opus, Principal Jacobs tells Glenn Holland, "A teacher has two jobs; fill young minds with knowledge, yes, but more important, give those minds a compass so that that knowledge doesn't go to waste."

As my 91 year old mother said last night, "I learn something new every day." I hope to walk in her footsteps all the days of my life.

Top | Quote Subsections | How are we to live?

It is well to give when asked, but it is better to give unasked, through understanding. - Khalil Gibran - The Prophet

To develop understanding, you have to practice looking at all living things with the eyes of compassion. - Thich Nhat Hanh, thank you Therese An

War is the lowest form of communication...it is an argument over property and power. - unknown, courtesy of JJ

The term "mensch" literally means a "person" or "man," but it represents a moral ideal for all people, men and women alike. . . . It means being sensitive to other people's needs and seeking out ways to help them. It is acquired by living close to family and extending one's sense of obligation beyond the family to the broader community. In the Jewish culture of Eastern Europe where the term arose, to call someone a mensch was the highest compliment that could be given. - Rabbi Neil Kurshan

We could learn a lot from crayons: some are sharp, some are pretty, some are dull, some have weird names, and all are different colors....but they all exist very nicely in the same box. - unknown

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction....The chain reaction of evil--hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars--must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation. - Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength To Love, 1963.

You must be the change you wish to see in the world. - Mahatma Gandhi

There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest. - Elie Wiesel, writer, Nobel laureate (1928- )

The reward of a thing well done is to have done it. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Do not attempt to do a thing unless you are sure of yourself; but do not relinquish it simply because someone else is not sure of you. - Stewart E. White

It is reasonable to have perfection in our eye that we may always advance toward it, though we know it can never be reached. - Samuel Johnson

A person who sees quality and feels about it as he works is a person who cares. A person who cares about what he sees and does is a person who's bound to have some characteristic of quality. - Pirsig, R.M, 1990

It is no use saying we are doing our best - you have got to succeed in doing what is necessary. - Winston Churchill

Top | Quote Subsections | How are we to live?

A man's errors are his portals of discovery. - James Joyce

It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare. - Mark Twain, author and humorist (1835-1910)

You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty. - Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869-1948)

Anger and intolerance are the enemies of correct understanding. - Gandhi

Anger, if not restrained, is frequently more hurtful to us than the injury that provokes it. - Seneca (B.C. 3-65 A.D.)

You can't hold a man down without staying down with him. - Booker T. Washington

History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives. - Abba Eban

Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say? - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (1922-) [Bluebeard, 1987]

Man is man because he is free to operate within the framework of his destiny. He is free to deliberate, to make decisions, and to choose between alternatives. He is distinguished from animals by his freedom to do evil or to do good and to walk the high road of beauty or tread the low road of ugly degeneracy. - Martin Luther King, Jr., The Measures of Man, 1959.

We must combine the toughness of the serpent and the softness of the dove, a tough mind and a tender heart. - Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love, 1963.

Top | Quote Subsections | How are we to live?

Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice. Justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love. - Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967.

Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam [or substitute Vietnam with the crusade of the month]. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor in America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam [or substitute Vietnam with the crusade of the month]. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours. - Martin Luther King, Jr., The Trumpet of Conscience, 1967.

Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time: the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love. - Martin Luther King, Jr., Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Stockholm, Sweden, December 11, 1964.

Man was born into barbarism when killing his fellow man was a normal condition of existence. He became endowed with a conscience. And he has now reached the day when violence toward another human being must become as abhorrent as eating another's flesh. - Martin Luther King, Jr., Why We Can't Wait, 1963.

The curse of poverty has no justification in our age. It is socially as cruel and blind as the practice of cannibalism at the dawn of civilization, when men ate each other because they had not yet learned to take food from the soil or to consume the abundant animal life around them. The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty. - Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967.

It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important. - Martin Luther King, Jr., Wall Street Journal, November 13, 1962


The Journey Inward: Quotations for the Soul - Rosalie Magio | Top | Quote Subsections - Thank you Jessica, Rachel, Tali, and Paul

The longest journey is the journey inward. - Dag Hammarskjold

There is only one journey. Going inside yourself. - Rainer Maria Rilke

If we go down into ourselves we find that we possess exactly what we desire. - Simone Weil

If you do not go within, you go without. - Neale Donald Walsch

The externals are simply so many props; everything we need is within us. - Etty Hillesum

All you need is deep within you waiting to unfold an reveal itself. All you have to do is be still and take time to seek for what is within, and you will surely find it. - Eileen Caddy

There is a spiritual realm that is available to all who find its many entrances. - James Melvin Washington

No great spiritual event befalls those who do not summon it. - Elbert Hubbard

Spirituality is an inner fire, a mystical sustenance that feeds our souls. The mystical journey drives us into ourselves, to a sacred flame at our center. The purpose of life's experiences is to develop the eyes by which we see this inner flame, and our capacity to live its mystery. In its presence, we are warmed and ignited. When too far from the blaze, we are cold and spiritually lifeless. We are less than human without that heat. Our connection to our center is life itself. - Marianne Williamson

He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how. - Friedrich Nietzsche

To be ordinary is not a choice: It is the usual freedom of men without visions. - Thomas Merton

Every time you don't follow your inner guidance, you feel a loss of energy, loss of power, a sense of spiritual deadness. - Shakti Gawain

Follow your bliss. - Joseph Campbell

Be sensitive to reality. Your total being -- body, mind, and heart -- is sensitive to...everything about you. - Krishnamurti

Spirituality, our relationship with reality. - Chandra Patel

Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves...Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps, then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer. - Rainer Maria Rilke

The first key to wisdom is assiduous and frequent questioning...For by doubting we come to inquiry, and by inquiry we arrive at truth. - Peter Abelard

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties. - Francis Bacon


Change/Growth | Top | Quote Subsections

You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life. - Attributed to Steven Jobs

“Old friend,” Ixnay said, “grief is like the wake…..behind a boat. It starts out as a huge wave….that follows close behind you and is big enough to swamp and drown you if you suddenly stop moving forward. But if you do keep moving, the big wake will eventually dissipate. And after a long enough time, the waters of your life get calm again, and that is when the memories of those who have left…begin to shine as bright and as enduring as the stars above…” - “ A Salty Piece of Land” - Jimmy Buffet - In honor of Thomas Edmund Wright, 1951-2005

We cannot direct the wind but we can adjust the sails. - unknown

The impossible can always be broken down into possibilities. - unknown

...the belief in a thing makes it happen. - Frank Lloyd Wright

If you think you can, you can...- Henry Ford

To fly, we have to have resistance. - Maya Lin

Things do not change, we change. - Henry David Thoreau

Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish. John Quincy Adams

The art of progress: preserve order amid change, preserve change amid order. - Alfred Whitehead

Our life is what our thoughts make it. - Marcus Aurelius

There is no security. Only opportunity. - Douglas MacAurthur

Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties. - Erich Fromm

Don't be afraid to go out on a limb. That's where you find the fruit. H Jackson Browne

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

Dreams are necessary to life. Anais Nin

There is nothing like a dream to create the future. - Victor Hugo

There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful then the risk it took to blossom. - Anais Nin

I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso

Growth itself contains the germ of happiness. - Pearl S. Buck

Life is a progress, and not a station. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

We know what we are, but know not what we may be. - William Shakespeare

They say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself. - Andy Warhol

How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world. - Anne Frank

... while we flatter ourselves that things remain the same, they are changing under our very eyes from year to year, from day to day. - Charlotte Perkins Gilman

It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows. - Epictetus

Some men see things as they are and say, "Why?" I dream of things that never were and say, "Why not?" frequently attributed to Robert F. (Bobby) Kennedy, who used it in a speech which his brother, Edward F. (Teddy) Kennedy quoted at RFK's funeral. - George Bernard Shaw

To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly. - Henri Bergson

Things do not change, we change. - Henry David Thoreau

You cannot step twice into the same river, for other waters are continually flowing in. ca. 500 BCE - Heraclitus

Just because everything is different doesn't mean that everything has changed. - Irene Peter

The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be the beginning. - Ivy Baker Priest

Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future. - John F. Kennedy

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself. - Leo Tolstoy

The universe is transformation; our life is what our thoughts make it. - Marcus Aurelius

If you don't like the way the world is, you change it. You have an obligation to change it. You just do it one step at a time. - Marian Wright Edelman


Integrity | Top | Quote Subsections

To be nobody-but-yourself in a world which is doing its

best,

night and day, to make you everybody else,
means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can

fight;

and never stop fighting. - E.E. Cummings


Humanity - Interacting with people in ways that show acceptance and understanding of multiple perspectives, not merely your own.

Thoughtfulness - Interacting with people in ways that show care in the use of constructive and helpful language, both verbal and nonverbal, as well as knowing when to or not to continue the interaction.

Strength - Interacting with people in ways that show clarity and conviction through humane and thoughtful deeds even during times of stress.


We can either walk the highroad of brotherhood or the low road of man's inhumanity to man. - Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak out.- Bishop Martin Niemaller, German Protestant Theologian, Thank you - Mike Acheatel

Top | Quote Subsections | Integrity

Here is one to chew on....

Do the right thing because it is right. - Immanuel Kant

Now the tricky part is what is "Right "....Our actions are morally worthy when we do the right thing because it is right and not for the benefit we derive from it. The internal commands that Kant envisioned us obeying are called categorical imperatives.

How do we know what these commands are? Easy, said Kant: When faced with a moral problem, simply visualize what it would be like if everyone in the same situation acted exactly as you intend to act. In other words if you could, you would arrange for everyone to do as you are doing, then what you are doing is morally correct.

A very interesting (and also controversial) aspect of Kant's belief is the notion that to be truly moral the right action must be motivated by the right intent. T.S. Eliot incorporated Kant in his poetic warning: "The last temptation is the greatest treason:/To do the right deed for the wrong reason."

....in keeping with the wisdom of the Talmud, which teaches that "He who gives alms in secret is greater than Moses." - These quotes are from "Aristole would have liked Oprah" by Ethel Diamond 1999. - Researched by Scott McKinstry


The time is always right to do what is right. - Martin Luther King, Jr.

Lead your life so you won't be ashamed to sell the family parrot to the town gossip. - Unknown

I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit the fashion of the time. - Lillian Hellman

I think our culture doesn't recognize passion, because real passion has the power to disrupt boundaries. - Bell Hooks

Truth is not determined by majority vote. - Doug Gwyn

If a million people believe a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing. - Anatole France.

Courage is acting because it is the right thing to do; without consideration of the consequences. - Mecayah, An Unknown Wizard

Real charity doesn't care if it's tax-deductible or not. - Dan Bennett

The dignity we seek in dying is not to be found in our final weeks, days or moments but in the way we live and how we are seen by those people whose lives we affect. - Dr. Sherwin Nuland

Your decisions say a lot about what's important to you and what kind of person you are. - Nicole Shuemr...for some reason I can't verify the source of this quote, so if you have any information that would help...please let me know.


Inspiration | Top | Quote Subsections

To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream….not only plan, but also believe. - Anatole France

I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work. - Thomas Edison

Everything starts as somebody's daydream. - Larry Niven

This life is yours. Take the power to choose what you want to do and do it well. Take the power to love what you want in life and love it honestly. Take the power to walk in the forest and be a part of nature. Take the power to control your own life. No one else can do it for you. Take the power to make your life happy. - Susan Polis Schutz

The doctors told me I would never walk, but my mother told me I would, so I believed my mother. - Wilma Rudolph, childhood polio victim and Olympic track star

There is no end to the opening up that is possible for a human being. - Charlotte Joko Beck

Where there is great love there are always miracles. - Willa Cather

But the only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible. - Arthur C. Clarke

Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. - Edgar Allan Poe

Hitch your wagon to a star. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit. My three [great teachers] did not tell - they catalyzed a burning desire to know. Under their influence, the horizons sprung wide and fear went away and the unknown became knowable. But most important of all, the truth, that dangerous stuff, became beautiful and very precious. - John Steinbeck

Know you what it is to be a child? It is to be something very different from the man of today. It is to have a spirit yet streaming from the waters of baptism; it is to believe in love, to believe in loveliness, to believe in belief; it is to be so little that the elves can reach to whisper in your ear, it is to turn pumpkins into coaches, and mice into horses, lowness into loftiness, and nothing into everything, for each child has its fairy godmother in its soul.- Percy Bysshe Shelley

Reading is a gymnasium for the imagination where people can work out, get ready for the shocks of existence. For me, the intimate teachers have not only taught me how to make things, they have represented some qualities of mind and mindfulness that I would like to have. - Robert Hass


Carpe Diem | Top | Quote Subsections

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. - Mark Twain

The face of all the world is changed, I think Since first I heard the footsteps of thy soul. - Elizabeth Barrett Browning

The measure of a person's life is the well spending of it, not the length. - Plutarch

A wave of your hand can change the universe - Tali Nadav (SDJA - 2004)

To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts... - Henry David Thoreau, Walden, ch. 2, "Where I lived, and what I lived for"

I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear... - Henry David Thoreau, Walden, ch. 2, "Where I lived, and what I lived for"

I would rather be ashes than dust!
I would rather my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze
than it should be stilled by dry rot.
I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me
in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.
The proper function of man is to live,
not to exist.

I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them.
I shall use my time. - Jack London

Top | Quote Subsections | Carpe Diem

Attitude

The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company..a church..a home.

The remarkable thing is, we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past...we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude...I'm convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it! - Anonymous


Live all you can; it's a mistake not to. It doesn't so much matter what you do in particular, so long as you have your life. If you haven't had that what have you had? - Henry James - Thank you - Scott McKinstry

And everywhere the frocks of summer torn, the long look back to see where choice is born, as summer grass sways to the scythe's design. - Derek Walcott, "A Lesson for This Sunday" - Thank you - Rachel Felber

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams. - Eleanor Roosevelt - Thank you - Sarah Feld

Each night, when I go to sleep, I die. And the next morning, when I wake up, I am reborn. - Mahatma Gandhi

Dream as if you'll live forever. Live as if you'll die today. - James Dean

Enthusiasm is the All in All.- William Blake

Right now a moment of time is passing by!... We must become that moment. - Paul Cézanne

Existence begins in every instant. - Nietzsche

Know the true value of time; snatch, seize, and enjoy every moment of it. No idleness; no laziness; no procrastination: never put off till tomorrow what you can do today. - Lord Chesterfield

Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time; for that's the stuff life is made of. - Benjamin Franklin

And now let us welcome the New Year Full of things that have never been. - Rainier Maria Rilke

If your everyday life seems poor, don't blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is no poverty and no poor indifferent place. - Rainier Maria Rilke

Experience is not what happens to us, rather it is what we do with what happens to us. - Anthony J. D'Angelo, The College Blue Book

To laugh is to risk appearing the fool.
To weep is to risk appearing sentimental.
To reach out for another is to risk involvement.
To expose feelings is to risk exposing your true self.
To place your ideas, your dreams before the crowd is to risk their loss.
To love is to risk not being loved in return.
To live is to risk dying.
To hope is to risk despair.
To try is to risk failure.
But risks must be taken, because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.
The person who risks nothing, does nothing. Has nothing. Is nothing. He may avoid suffering and sorrow, but he simply cannot learn, feel, change, grow, love, and live.
Chained by his certitudes, he is a slave; he has forfeited freedom. Only a person who risks is free. - unknown

Whatever you are, be a good one. - Abraham Lincoln


History | Top | Quote Subsections

Life must be lived forward, but understood backward. - Kierkegaard

What is past is prologue. - William Shakespeare

History is the "know thyself" of humanity -- the self-consciousness of mankind. - Droysen

The function of the historian is neither to love the past nor to emancipate himself from the past, but to master and understand it as the key to the understanding of the present. - E. H. Carr

No single man makes history. History cannot be seen just as one cannot see grass growing. - Boris Pasternak

In historic events, the so-called great men are labels giving names to events, and like labels they have but the smallest connection with the event itself. Every act of theirs, which appears to them an act of their own will, is in an historical sense involuntary and is related to the whole course of history and predestined from eternity. - Leo Tolstoi

The first glance at History convinces us that the actions of men proceed from their needs, their passions, their characters and talents; and impresses us with the belief that such needs, passions and interests are the sole spring of actions. - Georg Hegel

History with its flickering lamp stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes, and kindle with the pale gleams the passion of the former days. What is the worth of all this? The only guide to a man is his conscience; the only shield to his memory is the rectitude and sincerity of his actions. It is very imprudent to walk through life without this shield, because we are so often mocked by the failure of our hopes and the upsetting of our calculations; but with this shield, however the fates may play, we march always in the ranks of honor. - Sir Winston Churchill

Study the past, if you would divine the future. - Confucius, Analects

Comment: Here we have another frequently invoked argument for the usefulness of history. In fact, history never repeats itself, but as Confucius realized, the only possible foundation for any intelligent prediction of the future is a sound understanding of the processes that have shaped the world throughout history.

History is an argument without end. - Peter Geyl

It is not the literal past, the "facts" of history, that shape us, but images of the past embodied in language.- Brian Friel

Top | Quote Subsections | History

Genuine historical knowledge requires nobility of character, a profound understanding of human existence -- not detachment and objectivity. - Friedrich Nietzsche

History is a people's memory, and without memory man is demoted to the lower animals. - Malcolm X

A nation which does not know what it was yesterday, does not know what it is today, nor what it is trying to do. - Woodrow Wilson

History does not repeat itself except in the minds of those who do not know history. - Khalil Gibran

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. - Santayana

Not to know what has been transacted in former times is to continue always a child. - Cicero

History is Philosophy teaching by examples. - Thucydides

Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past. - George Orwell

source of the above quotes: http://www.unf.edu/~clifford/craft/what.htm

History is like life, life is history. - Ewa Domanska

There is nothing so powerful as truth and often nothing as strange. - Daniel Webster

History repeats itself. - Thucydides

Whether or not history repeats itself, historians repeat each other. - Max Beerbohm and Herbert Asquith

Our past has gone into history. - President William McKinley

History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon. - Napoleon Bonaparte


Democracy | Top | Quote Subsections

I know but one freedom and that is the freedom of the mind - Antoine de Saint Exupery (There should be an acute accent over the second 'e' in Exupery) - Thank you - Dominic Brown

The world is an evil place to live in. Not for those who do evil, but for those who sit back and allow evil to occur. - Albert Einstein - Thank you - Sarah Feld

A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular. - Adlai Ewing Stevenson

The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy; the best weapon of a democracy is openness. - Edvard Teller, American physicist, b. Hungary (1908-)

Freedom is when the people can speak, democracy is when the government listens. - Alastair Farrugia

Intellectual freedom is the only guarantee of a scientific - democratic approach to politics, economic development, and culture. - Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov, Soviet nuclear physicist and human-rights advocate (1921-1989)

It is a paradox that every dictator has climbed to power on the ladder of free speech. Immediately on attaining power each dictator has suppressed all free speech except his own. - Herbert Clark Hoover, 31st President of the United States (1874-1964)

A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves. - Henry de Jouvenel, French statesman and journalist (1876-1935)

'Democracy,' in the United States rhetoric refers to a system of governance in which elite elements based in the business community control the state by virtue of their dominance of the private society, while the population observes quietly. So understood, democracy is a system of elite decision and public ratification, as in the United States itself. Correspondingly, popular involvement in the formation of public policy is considered a serious threat. It is not a step towards democracy; rather it constitutes a 'crisis of democracy' that must be overcome. - Noam Chomsky, noted American dissident and professor at MIT in On Power and Ideology (1987)

Thus corporations finally claimed the full rights enjoyed by individual citizens while being exempted from many of the responsibilities and liabilities of citizenship. Furthermore, in being guaranteed the same right to free speech as individual citizens, they achieved, in the words of Paul Hawken, 'precisely what the Bill of Rights was intended to prevent: domination of public thought and discourse.' The subsequent claim by corporations that they have the same right as any individual to influence the government in their own interest pits the individual citizen against the vast financial and communications resources of the corporation and mocks the constitutional intent that all citizens have an equal voice in the political debates surrounding important issues. - David C. Korten, in When Corporations Rule the World

Where the law of the majority ceases to be acknowledged, there government ends; the law of the strongest takes its place, and life and property are his who can take them. - Thomas Jefferson to Annapolis Citizens, 1809

Is uniformity of opinion desirable? No more than of face and stature. - Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Va., 1782

Difference of opinion leads to enquiry, and enquiry to truth; and I am sure… we both value too much the freedom of opinion sanctioned by our Constitution, not to cherish its exercise even where in opposition to ourselves. - Thomas Jefferson to Mr. Wendover, 1815

Bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will, to be rightful, must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal laws must protect, and to violate would be oppression. - Thomas Jefferson: 1st Inaugural, 1801

Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions -- it only guarantees equality of opportunity - Irving Kristol

The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment - Robert Hutchins

Despotism does not cease to be despotism because it is elective. Nor does despotism become agreeable because the Despots belong to our own kindred. To make it subject to election is no guarantee against despotism. The real guarantee against despotism is to confront it with the possibility of its dethronement, of its being laid low, of its being superseded by a rival party. - Bhimrao Ramji AMBEDKAR Indian statesman and social reformer (1891-1956)


Leadership | Top | Quote Subsections

Leadership is often not a matter of deciding to lead, but rather, of being so moved by an issue or a cause in which we cannot imagine not being involved. - Dr. Daniel Gordis

Leadership happens at every level of the organization and no one can shirk from this responsibility. - Jerry Junkins

Empowerment: recognizing that people already have power through their knowledge, experience, and motivation, and then creating an environment that encourages letting that power out. - Katzenbach & Smith

The group will not prosper if the leader grabs the lion's share of the credit for the good work that has been done. - Lao Tzu

Truly great leaders spend as much time collecting and acting upon feedback as they do providing it. - Alexander Lucia

Portia:
The quality of mercy is not strain'd,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes [190]
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway; [195]
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God's
When mercy seasons justice.
From the Merchant of Venice Act IV scene 1 - William Shakespeare
Thank you - Dominic Brown

A leader is someone who holds a vision and courageously implements that vision in such a way that it resonates with the souls of people. - Richard Barrett - Author of Liberating the Corporate Soul

A true measure of a leader's greatness is how big they make others feel. - Jeff Korbman

Leadership is influencing others to do the right thing. - Tim Clark

Leaders create a space where others trust that they can make mistakes, take risks, and take their own leadership to contribute in line with the organization's vision, thus the organization becomes a community of caring leaders. - DeborahVW@aol.com

The courage to challenge others to their maximum potential while extending feelings of confidence, loyalty, respect concurrently as you convey your philosophy. - Dario M. Muzina

A leader is someone who has the courage to give power away and the ability to reinvent their role in pursuit of implementing a vision. - Simon Buckingham

Leadership means living life through a path others choose to follow. Leadership carries with it civic duty for responsible behaviors. - Wendy Wooflet@aol.com

A leader is one who is best when people barely know he exists. - Witter Bynner

Your job gives you authority. Your behavior give you respect. - Irwin Federman, CEO Monolithic Memories


Justice, Legality, Morality | Top | Quote Subsections

Fear of humanity breeds inhumanity. Doug

You haven't made them equal. You made them the same. - Kurt Vonnegut - Harrison Bergeron

For an act to be moral the intention must be based on compassion, not duty. We do something because we want to do it, because we feel we have to do it, not because we ought to do it. And even if our efforts fail - or we never even get to implement them - we are still moral because our motivation was based on compassion. - Schopenhauer

Nothing shocks our moral feelings so deeply as cruelty does. We can forgive every other crime, but not cruelty. The reason for this is that it is the very opposite of compassion. - Schopenhauer

By emphasizing the intention behind a deed rather than the result, Schopenhauer taught that a moral life is inextricably tied to our character. To live a moral life, we must do more than execute good deeds. He believed we must cultivate the trait that distinguishes us from other animals - compassion.

If a man intends to perform a good deed but is prevented from doing so, he is to be treated as though he has done it. - Talmud

The whole value of a benevolent deed lies in the love that inspires it. - Talmud

Source of the above: Aristotle would have liked Oprah....by Ethel Diamond....1999. Courtesy of Julia and Scott McKinstry


Education | Top | Quote Subsections

Against School -- How public education cripples our kids, and why -- by John Taylor Gatto

...Once you understand the logic behind modern schooling, its tricks and traps are fairly easy to avoid. School trains children to be employees and consumers; teach your own to be leaders and adventurers. School trains children to obey reflexively; teach your own to think critically and independently. Well-schooled kids have a low threshold for boredom; help your own to develop an inner life so that they'll never be bored. Urge them to take on the serious material, the grown-up material, in history, literature, philosophy, music, art, economics, theology--all the stuff schoolteachers know well enough to avoid. Challenge your kids with plenty of solitude so that they can learn to enjoy their own company, to conduct inner dialogues. Well-schooled people are conditioned to dread being alone, and they seek constant companionship through the TV, the computer, the cell phone, and through shallow friendships quickly acquired and quickly abandoned. Your children should have a more meaningful life, and they can.

...Don't let your own [children] have their childhoods extended, not even for a day. If David Farragut could take command of a captured British warship as a preteen, if Thomas Edison could publish a broadsheet at the age of twelve, if Ben Franklin could apprentice himself to a printer at the same age (then put himself through a course of study that would choke a Yale senior today), there's no telling what your own kids could do. After a long life, and thirty years in the public school trenches, I've concluded that genius is as common as dirt. We suppress our genius only because we haven't yet figured out how to manage a population of educated men and women. The solution, I think, is simple and glorious. Let them manage themselves. (Harper's Magazine, Sept 2003, p. 38)

Gatto tends to make even me look idealistic, that said I think his suggestions to help our children grow into contributing whole individuals holds great merit. I feel fortunate to have worked under the leadership of a principal, Dr. Jeffrey Davis, who embraces the positive aspects of this piece. Under his vision, I have worked with teachers who encourage leadership and independence, challenging intellectual stimulation and exploration, and a nurturing perspective that looks at the student as a human being. I have no doubt that Gatto's experiences have validity, but a shift has taken place in education and, at least in my world, students have the opportunity to receive the tools and insight to seek their own paths.


It is at once the most overwhelmingly frustrating and exasperating task and the most joyous and rewarding experience to make human beings out of children. - Rabbi Neil Kurshan

Intelligence is not the ability to store information, but to know where to find it. - Albert Einstein

Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts. - Albert Einstein

Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world. - Albert Einstein

It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer. - Albert Einstein

It is only the ignorant who despise education. - Publius Syrus

Take heed...lest you forget the things which your eyes have seen, and...teach them to your children and to your children's children. - Deuteronomy, 4:9 - seen at the Simon Wiesenthal Center Museum of Tolerance

It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge. - Albert Einstein - Courtesy of Julia and Scott McKinstry

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire. - William Butler Yeats

Intelligence without ambition is like a bird without wings. - C. Archie Danielson

Words are a lens to focus one's mind. - Ayn Rand

If you are planning for a year, sow rice; if you are planning for a decade, plant trees; if you are planning for a lifetime, educate people. - Chinese Proverb

I hear and I forget.
I see and I believe.
I do and I understand.
- Confucius

A mind that is stretched to a new idea never returns to its original dimension. - Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

Teaching is the art of assisting discovery. - Mark van Doren

Try to learn something about everything and everything about something. - T.H. Huxley - Thank you - Ilan Levin

Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten. - B.F. Skinner - Thank you - Ilan Levin

It is possible to store the mind with a million facts and still be entirely uneducated. - Alec Bourne - Thank you - Ilan Levin

The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers. - Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) - Thank you - Ilan Levin


The following quotes are taken from "Tuesdays, with Morrie" | Top | Quote Subsections - Thank you - Jessica Colona

Why are we embarrassed by silence? What comfort do we find in all the noise?

Sometimes you cannot believe what you see, you have to believe what you fell. And if you are ever going to have other people trust you, you must feel that you can trust them, too - even when you're in the dark.

Do you take care of others or take care of your "inner child"? Return to traditional values or reject tradition as useless? Seek success or seek simplicity? Just say no or just do it?

Once you learn how to die, you learn how to live.

Without love, we are birds with broken wings.

Love is how you stay alive.

Devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.

Every new beginning comes from some other beginnings end.
I try to say good-by and I choke
try to walk away and stumble
though I try to hide it,
its clear my world crumbles when you are not near.


Relationships | Top | Quote Subsections

I say I love you and time will show I love you.

The first duty of love -- listen. Paul Tillich

Who, being loved, is poor? - Oscar Wilde

The more I know you, the more I love you.

Love is a canvas furnished by nature and embroidered by imagination. - Voltaire

Love, friendship set on fire - David Viscott

To love and be loved is to feel the sun from both sides. - David Viscott

The greatest happiness in life is the conviction that we are loved, loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves. - Victor Hugo

Love conquers all. - Virgil

If I know what love is, it is because of you. - Herman Hesse

The only rock I know that stays steady, the only institution I know that works, is the family. - Lee Iacocca

Forgiveness is letting go of all hope of a better past. - Annie Lamont

How do I know you if I don't see you. - IDA, my grandmother

When you put your hand out to others -- the possibilities are endless. - Mike Acheatel (SDJA - 2004)

A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out. - Thank you - Rachel Felber

Friendship is one mind in two bodies. - Mencius - Thank you - Rachel Felber

I'll lean on you and you lean on me and we'll be okay. - dave mathews band - Thank you - Rachel Felber

Everyone hears what you say. Friends listen to what you say. Best friends listen to what you don't say. - Thank you - Rachel Felber

A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words. - unknown - Thank you - Rachel Felber

A relationship is like two trees. Each must be planted apart. Each must have air to breath. Each must have room to allow the roots and branches to grow; receiving nutrition and sunlight. Each must also, share those common elements. Protecting each from the harshness of life. Reveling in the growth of the other. - Unknown author, but passed on to me by my mother.

A heart is not judged by how much you love, but by how much you are loved by others. - The Wizard of Oz - Thank you - Sarah Feld

Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts. - Charles Dickens - Thank you - Sarah Feld

You will find as you look back upon your life that the moments when you have truly lived are the moments when you have done things in the spirit of love. - Henry Drummond - Thank you - Sarah Feld

Top | Quote Subsections | Relationships

The heart has its reasons which reason does not know. - Blasé Pascal - Thank you - Julia and Scott

The root letters of the tzedakkah translate as "justice" or "righteousness." By giving to those in need, we help to right a wrong and thus share responsibility for creation. - Rabbi Jon Adland

Proven Ways to Get Along Better With EVERYONE

  • Before you say anything to anyone, ask yourself 3 things:
1. Is it true?
2. Is it kind?
3. Is it necessary?
  • Make promises sparingly and keep them faithfully.
  • Never miss the opportunity to compliment or say something encouraging to someone.
  • Refuse to talk negatively about others; don't gossip and don't listen to gossip.
  • Have a forgiving view of people. Believe that most people are doing the best they can.
  • Keep an open mind; discuss, but don't argue. (It is possible to disagree without being disagreeable.)
  • Forget about counting to 10. Count to 1,000 before doing or saying anything that could make matters worse.
  • Let your virtues speak for themselves.
  • If someone criticizes you, see if there is any TRUTH to what he is saying; if so, make changes. If there is no truth to the criticism, ignore it and live so that no one will believe the negative remark.
  • Cultivate your sense of humor; laughter is the shortest distance between two people.
  • Do not seek so much to be consoled, as to console; do not seek so much to be understood, as to understand; do not seek so much to be loved as to love.

Check, rather than hurt,
Hurt, rather than maim,
Maim, rather than kill...
For all life is precious,
Nor can it ever be replaced.
- Charles Matera

Grandparents and Grandchildren,
Together they create a chain of love
Linking the past,
With the future.
The chain may lengthen,
But it will never part.
- Author Unknown.
(from http://freespace.virgin.net/derek.berger2/grandparents.html)

Top | Quote Subsections | Relationships

There's no art/to find the mind's construction in the face. - Shakespeare (Macbeth - i.4.l.13-14)

Look like th' innocent flower, But be the serpent under't. - Shakespeare (Macbeth - i.6.l.76-78)
(used in the context of the presidential debates...hummm)

All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. - Robert Fulghum

  • Share everything.
  • Play fair.
  • Don't hit people.
  • Put things back where you found them.
  • Clean up your own mess.
  • Don't take things that aren't yours.
  • Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody.
  • Wash your hands before you eat.
  • Flush.
  • Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
  • Live a balanced life--learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
  • Take a nap every afternoon.
  • When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands, and stick together.
  • Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.
  • Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup--they all die. So do we.
  • And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned--the biggest word of all--LOOK.

Love each other or perish - Auden

Love is the only rational act. - Levine

Feelings are everywhere--be gentle. - J. Masai

I don't have to attend every argument I'm invited to. - Author Unknown

And Saint Francis said to the almond tree: Sister, speak to me of love. And the almond tree blossomed. - Kazantzakis

You must look into people as well as at them. - Lord Chesterfield

If indeed you must be candid, be candid beautifully. - Khalil Gibran

When someone does something good, Applaud! You will make two people happy. - Samuel Goldwyn

When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen. - Ernest Hemingway

When a friend is in trouble, don't annoy him by asking if there is anything you can do. Think up something appropriate and do it. - E. W. Howe

When a woman is talking to you, listen to what she says with her eyes. - Victor Hugo

Top | Quote Subsections | Relationships

Do not mind anything that anyone tells you about anyone else. Judge everyone and everything for yourself. - Henry James

Don't tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results. - George Patton

Each friend represents a world in us, a world not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born. - Anais Nin

Some there are that torment themselves
afresh with the memory of what is past;
others, again, afflict themselves with the
apprehension of evils to come: and very
ridiculously both -- for the one does not now
concern us, and the other not yet...One
should count each day a separate life. - Seneca

There are two types of people--those who come into a room and say, "Well, here I am!" and those who come in and say, "Ah, there you are." - Frederick L Collins

If you would persuade, you must appeal to the interest rather than intellect. - Benjamin Franklin

Think where man's glory most begins and ends. And say my glory was I had such friends. - William Butler Yeats

Minds are like parachutes. They won't work unless they are open. - Anon

Help thy brother's boat across, and lo! Thine own has reached the shore. - Hindu Proverb

Reputation continues to be made by many acts and lost by one. - Anon

It is much easier to be critical than to be correct. - Benjamin Disraeli

Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress. - Gandhi

A warm smile is the universal language of kindness. - William Arthur Ward

The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone. - Harriet Beecher Stowe

Gossip is when you hear something you like about someone you don't. - Earl Wilson

Happiness is as a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but which if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you. - Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)

Top | Quote Subsections | Relationships

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye. - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

No one acts or experiences in a vacuum...- R.D. Lang

There is no distance too far between friends, for friendship gives wings to the heart. - Kathy Kay Benudiz

Your worst humiliation is only someone else's momentary entertainment. - Karen Crockett

Unfaithfulness in the keeping of an appointment is an act of clear dishonesty. You may as well borrow a person's money as his time. - Horace Mann

The more talking and thinking, The farther from the truth. - Seng-ts'an

If you want the truth to stand clear before you, never be for or against. - Seng-ts'an

One man practicing sportsmanship is far better than 50 preaching it. - Knute K. Rockne

If you can do something about it, why worry? If you can't do something about it, why worry? - Old Indian Proverb

Everything that is faced will not change, but nothing will change unless it is faced. - James Baldwin

It is never wise to seek or wish for another's misfortune. If malice or envy were tangible and had a shape, it would be the shape of a boomerang. - Charley Reese


Gratitude and Thankfulness | Top | Quote Subsections

Thankfulness is the beginning of gratitude.
Gratitude is the completion of thankfulness.
Thankfulness may consist merely of words.
Gratitude is shown in acts. - David O. McKay

As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them. - John Fitzgerald Kennedy

How wonderful it would be if we could help our children and grandchildren to learn thanksgiving at an early age. Thanksgiving opens the doors. It changes a child's personality. A child is resentful, negative, or thankful. Thankful children want to give, they radiate happiness, they draw people. - Sir John Templeton

To educate yourself for the feeling of gratitude means to take nothing for granted, but to always seek out and value the kind that will stand behind the action. Nothing that is done for you is a matter of course. Everything originates in a will for the good, which is directed at you. Train yourself never to put off the word or action for the expression of gratitude. - Albert Schweitzer

Let us remember that, as much has been given us, much will be expected from us, and that true homage comes from the heart as well as from the lips, and shows itself in deeds. - Theodore Roosevelt

Gratitude is the sign of noble souls. - Aesop, "Androcles," Fables

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow. - Melody Beattie

To speak gratitude is courteous and pleasant, to enact gratitude is generous and noble, but to live gratitude is to touch Heaven. - Johannes A. Gaertner

Gratitude is the heart's memory. - French Proverb

Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others. - Cicero -

Lord, for the erring thought
Not into evil wrought:
Lord, for the wicked will
Betrayed and baffled still:
For the heart from itself kept,
Our thanksgiving accept.
Thanksgiving. - William Dean Howells. 1837

From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no man lives forever,
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.
The Garden of Proserpine.- Algernon Charles Swinburne. 1837ˆ1909

All the above courtesy of Julia and Scott McKinstry - yup, Melissa's parents.


Art & Fear -Observations On The Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking, David Bayles & Ted Orland | Top | Quote Subsections

Learn how to make your work by making your work, and a great many of the pieces you make along the way will never stand out as finished art. The best you can do is make art you care about -- and lots of it! (p. 6)

Quitting is fundamentally different from stopping. The latter happens all of the time. Quitting happens once. Quitting means not starting again -- and art is all about starting again. (p. 10)

Artists don't get down to work until the pain of working is exceeded by the pain of not working. - Stephen DeStaebler, (p. 9)

Vision is always ahead of execution, knowledge of materials is your contact with reality, and uncertainty is a virtue. (p. 15)

He [Designer Charles Eames] complained that he devoted one percent of his energy to conceiving a design -- and the remaining ninety-nine percent to holding onto it as a project runs its course. (p. 16)

...the piece of art which seems so profoundly right in its finished state may earlier have been only inches or seconds away from total collapse. (p. 19)

Uncertainty is the essential, inevitable and all-pervasive companion to you desire to make art. And tolerance for uncertainty is the prerequisite to succeeding. (p. 21)

When you act out of fear, your fears come true. (p. 23)

You make good work by (among other things) making lots of work that isn't very good, and gradually weeding out the parts that aren't good, the parts that aren't yours. It's called feedback, and it's the most direct route to learning about your own vision. It's also called doing your work. After all, someone has to do your work, and you're the closest person around. (p. 26)

For every artist who has developed a mature vision with grace and speed, countless others have laboriously nurtured their art through fertile periods and dry spells, through false starts and breakaway bursts, through successive and significant changes or direction, medium, and subject matter. Talent may get someone off the starting blocks faster, but without a sense of direction or a goal to strive for, it won't count for much. Their world is filled with people who are given great natural gifts, sometimes conspicuously flashy gifts, yet never produce anything. And when that happens the world soon ceases to care whether they are talented. (p. 27)

The seed for your next art work lies embedded in the imperfections of your current piece. (p. 31)

 ...expectations provide a means to merge imagination with calculation. But it's a delicate balance -- lean too far one way and your head fills with unworkable fantasies, too far the other and you spend you life generating "To Do' lists. (p. 35)

Your work tells you about your working methods, your discipline, your strengths and weaknesses, your habitual gestures, your willingness to embrace....The lessons you are meant to learn are in your work. To see them, you need only look at the work clearly -- without judgment, without need or fear, without wishes or hopes. Without emotional expectations. Ask your work what it needs, not what you need. Then set aside your fears and listen, the way a good parent listens to a child. (p. 36)

Ben Shahn rather wryly commented, "It may be a point of great pride to have a Van Gogh on the living room wall, but the prospect of having Van Gogh himself in the living room would put a great many devoted art lovers to rout." (p. 40)

...far greater danger is not that the artist will fail to learn anything from the past, but will fail to teach anything new to the future. (p. 44)

When your horse dies, get off. (p. 45)

Naive passion, which promotes work done in ignorance of obstacles, becomes -- with courage -- informed passion, which promotes work done in full acceptance of those obstacles. (p. 50)

...artmaking...that wonderful condition in which the work seems to make itself and the artist serves only as guide or mediator, allowing all things to be possible. (p. 51)

...the art you can make is irrevocably bound to the times and places of your life. (p. 52)

Decisive works of art participate directly in the fabric of history surrounding their maker. Simply put, you have to be there. (p. 52)

One of the best kept secrets of artmaking is that new ideas come into play far less frequently than practical ideas -- ideas that can be re-used for a thousand variations, supplying the framework for a whole body of work rather than a single piece. (p. 56)

...when you watch your work unfold day by day, piece by piece, there's not escaping cause and effect. Simply put, what you did got you here, and if you apply the same methods again you will likely get the same result again. [Refers to being stuck as well as highly productive states.] (p. 57)

Your tools do more than just influence the appearance of the resulting art -- they basically set limits upon what you can say with an art piece. (p. 58)

...the younger artist tends to experiment with a large and varied range of tools and materials, while the veteran artist tends to employ a small and specific set... In time, exploration gives way to expression. (p. 59)

For most artists, making good art depends upon making lots of art, and any device that carries the first brushstroke to the next blank canvas has tangible, practical value. (p. 61)

A piece of art is the surface expression of a life lived within productive patterns. (p. 61)


Creativity and problem solving | Top | Quote Subsections

Spontaneity is an infinite number of rehearsed possibilities. - Peter Drucker

What signs fail to express, their application shows. What signs slur over, their application says clearly. - Ludwig Wittgenstein (prop. 3.262) - Thank you - David Felber

The important thing is not to stop questioning. - Albert Einstein

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. - Rainer Maria Rilke

You must do the thing you think you cannot do. - Eleanor Roosevelt

You must be the change you wish to see in the world. - Mahatma Gandhi

And the trouble is, if you don't risk anything you risk even more. - Erica Jong

Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen. - John Steinbeck

The essence of genius is knowing what to overlook. - William James (1842 - 1920), Psychologist and philosopher

Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand. - Thomas Carlyle

Let the nothingness into yer shots. - Golf in the Kingdom

The man who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything. - E. J. Phelps

You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus. - Mark Twain

Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes. - Mahatma Gandhi

He who hesitates is not only lost, but miles from the next exit. - Unknown

If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is possible he is almost certainly right, but if he says that it is impossible he is very probably wrong. - Arthur C. Clarke

Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought. - Albert von Szent-Gyorgyi

Keep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the ground. - Theodore Roosevelt

Top | Quote Subsections | Creativity and problem solving

To see a World in a grain of sand,
And a Heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour. - William Blake

Flexibility is the essence of intelligence. Chaos makes learning possible. - Gabrielle Rico

Everything the same; everything distinct. - Zen proverb

All truths wait in all things. - Walt Whitman

I shut my eyes in order to see. - Paul Gauguin

Man's main task in life is to give birth to himself. - Erich Fromm

Little minds are interested in the extraordinary; great minds in the commonplace. - Elbert Hubbard

Men know how to read printed books; they do not know how to read the unprinted ones. They can play on a stringed harp, but not on a stringless one. Applying themselves to the superficial instead of the profound, how should they understand music or poetry? - Kojisei

Every exit is an entry somewhere else. - Tom Stoppard

A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees. - William Blake

Either I will find a way or I will make one. - Sir Po Sidney

People value the memories things trigger, keep objects to spread the signifying beyond the orders of the moment. - Greg Keith

What you see is not half as important as showing you what I want you to see - Bayushi Kachiko

There are myriads of forms and hundreds of grasses throughout the entire earth, yet each grass and each form itself is the entire earth. - Dogen

If you try to aim for it, you are turning away from it. - Zen Master

The perfect man employs his mind as a mirror. - Chuang-tzu

A sheltered life can be a daring life as well. For all serious daring starts from within. - Eudora Welty

Nobody sees a flower--really--it is so small it takes time--we haven't time--and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time. - Georgia O'Keeffe

Top | Quote Subsections | Creativity and problem solving

Do not follow the ideas of others, but learn to listen to the voice within yourself. Your body and mind will become clear and you will realize the unity of all things. - Dogen

The whole world is a door of liberation, but people are unwilling to enter it. - Hui-wu

Man can learn nothing except by going from the known to the unknown. - Claude Bernard

The secret of seeing things as they are is to take off our colored spectacles. That being-as-it-is, with nothing extraordinary about it, nothing wonderful, is the great wonder. The ability to see things normally is no small thing; to be really normal is unusual. In that normality begins to bubble up inspiration. - Master Sessan

Use what talents you possess: The woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best. - Henry Van Dyke

Only plain things have real taste. - Zen saying

Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out your horn - Charlie Parker

The most important thing in music is what is not the notes. - Pablo Casals

If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. - old calendar with a saying a day.

The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order. - Alfred North Whitehead

It is harder to see than it is to express. The whole value of art rests in the artist's ability to see well into what is before him. ... The model will serve equally for a Rembrandt drawing or for anybody's magazine cover. A genius is one who can see. The others can often 'draw' remarkably well. ... Those who get their technique first, expecting sight to come to them later, get a technique of a very ready-made order. - Robert Henri in The Art Spirit, 1923

May I repeat what I told you here: treat nature by means of the cylinder, the sphere, the cone, everything brought into proper perspective so that each side of an object or a plane is directed towards a central point. Lines parallel to the horizon give breadth ... lines perpendicular to this horizon give depth. But nature for us men is more depth than surface, whence the need to introduce into our light vibrations, represented by the reds and yellows, a sufficient amount of blueness to give the feel of air. - Paul Cézanne to Emile Bernard, 15 April 1904

Top | Quote Subsections | Creativity and problem solving

My choice of colors does not rest on any scientific theory; it is based on observation, on feeling, on the experience of my sensibility. Inspired by certain pages of Delacroix, an artist like Signac is preoccupied with complementary colors, and the theoretical knowledge of them will lead him to use a certain tone in a certain place. But I simply try to put down colors which render my sensation. - Henri Matisse in Notes of a Painter, published in La Grande Revue, 1908

A distinction is made between painters who work directly from nature and those who work purely from imagination. Personally, I think neither of these methods must be preferred to the exclusion of the other. Both may be used in turn by the same individual, either because he needs contact with objects in order to receive sensations that will excite his creative facility, or because his sensations are already organized. Henri Matisse in Notes of a Painter, published in La Grande Revue, 1908

Those who work in a preconceived style, deliberately turning their backs on nature, miss the truth. An artist must recognize, when he is reasoning, that his picture is an artifice; but when he is painting, he should feel that he has copied nature. And even when he departs from nature, he must do it with the conviction that it is only to interpret her more fully. - Henri Matisse in Notes of a Painter, published in La Grande Revue, 1908

What moves men of genius, or rather, what inspires their work, is not new ideas, but their obsession with the idea that what has already been said is still not enough. - Eugene Delacroix in his Journal, 15 May 1824

We are not here to do what has already been done. - unknown

I have little interest in teaching you what I know. I wish to stimulate you to tell me what you know. - beats me, but I like it

Know what the old masters did. Know how they composed their pictures, but do not fall into the conventions they established. These conventions were right for them, and they are wonderful. They made their language. You make yours. All the past can help you. - Robert Henri in The Art Spirit, 1923

The best way to escape from a problem is to solve it. - Alan Saporta

The other meaning of crisis is opportunity. - annon

Top | Quote Subsections | Creativity and problem solving

One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star. - Nietzche

Big Ideas are so hard to recognize, so fragile, so easy to kill. Don't forget that, all of you who don't have them. - John Elliot, Jr.

If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor. - Albert Einstein

If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time-a tremendous whack. - Winston Churchill

What is required is sight and insight - then you might add one more: excite. - Robert Frost

Every task involves constraint,
Solve the thing without complaint.
There are magic links and chains
Forged to loose our rigid brains.
Structures, strictures, though they bind
Strangely liberate the mind.
- James Falen


Writing | Top | Quote Subsections

That is the secret of poetry. We consume ourselves in the beloved woman, we consume ourselves in the idea we believe, we burn in the landscape we are moved by. - Milan Kundera, from The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (p 199)

Love can never be laughable. Love has nothing in common with laughter. - Milan Kundera

Yes, I realize you don't know what I'm talking about, because beauty vanished long ago. It vanished under the surface of noise-the noise of words, the noise of cars, the noise of music-we live in constantly. It has been drowned like Atlantis. All that remains is the word, whose meaning becomes less intelligible with every passing year. - Milan Kundera from The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (p 145)

Graphomania: (a mania for writing books) inevitably takes on epidemic proportions when a society develops to the point of creating three basic conditions.
(1) and elevated level of general well being, which allows people to devote themselves to useless activities;
(2) A high degree of social atomization and, as a consequence, a general isolation of individuals;
(3) The absence of dramatic social changes in the nations internal life.
(From this point of view, it seems to me symptomatic that in France, where practically nothing happens, the percentage of writers is twenty-one times higher than in Israel.) - Milan Kundera - Courtesy of Meari after a month in Prague studying photography

Top | Quote Subsections | Writing


...The poet’s, the writer’s, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail. - From NOBLE PRIZE ACCEPTANCE SPEECH by William Faulkner

Literature forms a single body of knowledge, yet its voices are intricately and unenlargeably individual. - Martin Amis

I hope I shall be able to confide in you completely, as I have never been able to do in anyone before, and I hope that you will be a great support and comfort to me. - Diary, First entry - Anne Frank, 12 June, 1942

I want to go on living even after my death! And, therefore, I am grateful...this possibility of developing myself and my writing, of expressing all that is in me. - Diary - Anne Frank, 4 April 1944

My pen is not only my entrance to the world; it is also my escape route. - Rachel Felber (SDJA - 2004)

My pen is both my weapon and my defense; my dreams and my nightmares; my friend and my enemy. - Rachel Felber (SDJA - 2004)

My pen is a bridge from my thoughts and experiences to the open universe. Feel free to cross; there is no toll. - Rachel Felber (SDJA - 2004)

Top | Quote Subsections | Writing

It's okay to be frustrated. This is the first step: confusion, frustration, and some anger. Even with the directions you still feel uncomfortable about tackling this assignment. Now is the time to experiment. Mistakes are okay. Just try..." - Gray Bradshaw

Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen. - Willa Cather

I know a poem is finished when I can't find another word to cut.- Bobbi Katz

I try to leave out the parts that people skip. - Elmore Leonard

One can never be alone enough when one writes -- there can never be enough silence around when one writes -- even night is not night enough. - Franz Kafka

If you have a minimum of talent, but you sit at that typewriter long enough, something will emerge. All I had was this burning desire to be a writer and all these emotions. - Robert Cormier

I will write myself into well-being. - Nancy Mair

Writing stories has given me the power to change things I could not change as a child. I can make boys into doctors. I can make fathers stop drinking. I can make mothers stay. - Cynthia Rylant

My education was the liberty I had to read indiscriminately and all the time, with my eyes hanging out. - Dylan Thomas

Don't say the old lady screamed. Bring her on and let her scream. - Mark Twain

Literature is no one's private ground, literature is common ground; let us trespass freely and fearlessly and find our way for ourselves. - Virginia Woolf


Design | Top | Quote Subsections

Form follows function. - Louis Henri Sullivan, "Lippincott's Magazine", March 1896

Always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context -- a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, an environment in a city plan. - Eliel Saarinen, "Time", July 2, 1956

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. - Antoine de St. Exupery


The New Drawing of the Right Side of the Brain | Top | Quote Subsections

The following are taken from the book named above by Betty Edwards.
See http://www.drawright.com/ for more information about related materials.

One definition of a creative person is someone who can process in new ways information directly at hand--the ordinary sensory data available to all of us. A writer uses words, a musician notes, an artist visual perceptions, and all need some knowledge of the techniques of their crafts. But a creative individual intuitively sees possibilities for transforming ordinary data into a new creation, transcendent over the mere raw materials. Betty Edwards

Learning to draw is really a matter of learning to see--to see correctly--and that means a good deal more than merely looking with the eye. - Kimon Nicolaides - The Natural Way to Draw, 1941

The painter draws with his eyes, not with his hands. Whatever he sees, if he sees it clear, he can put down. The putting of it down requires, perhaps, much care and labor, but no more muscular agility than it takes for him to write his name. Seeing clear is the important thing. - Maurice Grosser - The Painter's Eye, 1951

I have learned that what I have not drawn, I have never really seen, and that when I start drawing an ordinary thing, I realize how extraordinary it is, sheer miracle. - Frederick Franck - The Zen of Seeing, 1973

To be shaken out of the ruts of ordinary perception, to be shown for a few timeless hours the outer and inner world, not as they appear to an animal obsessed with words and notions, but as they are apprehended, directly and unconditionally, by Mind at Large--this is an experience of inestimable value to everyone. - Aludous Huxley - The Doors of Perception, 1954

When the artist is alive in any person, whatever his kind of work may be, he becomes an inventive, searching, daring, self-expressive creature. He becomes interesting to other people. He disturbs, upsets, enlightens, and opens ways for a better understanding. Where those who are not artists are trying to close the book, he opens it and shows there are still more pages possible. - Robert Henri, The Art Spirit, 1923


Parallel ways of knowing

intellect

intuition

convergent

divergent

digital

analogic

secondary

primary

abstract

concrete

directed

free

propositional

imaginative

analytic

relational

lineal

nonlineal

rational

intuitive

sequential

multiple

analytic

holistic

objective

subjective

successive

simultaneous

J.E. Bogen, Some Educational Aspects of Hemisphere Specialization" in UCLA Educator, 1972
Top | Quote Subsections |The New Drawing of the Right Side of the Brain

Every creative act involves...a new innocence of perception, liberated from the cataract of accepted belief. - Arthur Koestler - The Sleepwalkers, 1959

Approaching forty, I had a singular dream in which I almost grasped the meaning and understood the nature of what it is that wastes in wasted time. - Cyril Connolly - The Unquiet Grave: A Word Cycle of Palinuris, 1945

The object of painting a picture is not to make a picture--however unreasonable that may sound...The object, which is back of every true work of art, is the attainment of a state of being, a state of high functioning, a more than ordinary moment of existence. [The picture] is but a by-product of the state, a trace, the footprint of the state. - Robert Henri - The Art Spirit, 1923

By the time the child can draw more than a scribble, by age three or four years, an already well-formed body of conceptual knowledge formulated in language dominates his memory and controls his graphic work....Drawings are graphic accounts of essentially verbal processes. As an essentially verbal education gains control, the child abandons his graphic efforts and relies almost entirely on words. Language has first spoilt drawing and then swallowed it up completely. - Karl Buhler, 1930

Merely to see, therefore, is not enough. It is necessary to have a fresh, vivid, physical contact with the object you draw through as many of the senses as possible--and especially through the sense of touch. - Kimon Nicolaides - The Natural Way to Draw, 1941

Expression to my way of thinking does not consist of the passion mirrored upon a human face or betrayed by a violent gesture. The whole arrangement of my picture is expressive. The place occupied by the figures of objects, the empty spaces around them, the proportions, everything plays a part. - Henri Matisse - "Notes d'un peintre," 1908

You can never have the use of the inside of a cup without the outside. The inside and the outside go together. They're one. - Alan Watts


The meaning of art | Top | Quote Subsections

By the combination of lines and colors, under the pretext of some motif taken from nature, I create symphonies and harmonies that represent nothing absolutely real in the ordinary sense of the word but are intended to give rise to thoughts as music does. - Paul Gauguin - Thank you - Ariel Diamond

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up. - Pablo Picasso (1881 - 1973)

It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child. - Pablo Picasso

What one does is what counts and not what one had the intention of doing. - Pablo Picasso

I do not seek. I find. - Pablo Picasso

Good taste is the enemy of creativity. - Pablo Picasso

The world today doesn't make sense, so why should I paint pictures that do. - Pablo Picasso

Art washes from the soul the dust of everyday life. - Pablo Picasso

Everything you can imagine is real. - Pablo Picasso

There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality. - Pablo Picasso

Everyone wants to understand painting. Why is there no attempt to understand the song of the birds? - Pablo Picasso

There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into sun. - Pablo Picasso

Axioms in philosophy are not axioms until they are proved upon our pulses; we read fine things but never feel them to the full until we have gone the same steps as the author. - John Keats


CAN I ?
can i look into your sketchbook
can i gaze into your soul
can i rip out all the pages
can i glue in what fell out
can i build for you a memory
can i create for you a dream
can i dance a dance for only you
can i share what can't be seen

and can i have a page of my own
to look back on and laugh about? - Meari Keating


Top | Quote Subsections | The meaning of art

The first virtue of a painting is to be a feast for the eyes. - Delacroix

A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art. - Paul Cézanne

A painting is good not because it looks like something, but because it feels like something. - Phil Dike

There are two men inside the artist, the poet and the craftsman. One is born a poet. One becomes a craftsman... - Emile Zola to Cézanne, 16 April, 1860

What is drawing? How does one come to it? It is working through an invisible iron wall that seems to stand between what one feels and what one can do. How is one to get through that wall -- since pounding at it is of no use? In my opinion one has to undermine that wall, filing through it steadily and patiently. - Vincent Van Gogh to his brother Theo, 22 October 1882

Every good picture leaves the painter eager to start again, unsatisfied, inspired by the rich mine in which he is working, hoping for more energy, more vitality, more time -- condemned to painting for life. - John Sloan in Gist of Art, 1939

A little bit of confidence in yourself and work. Don't ever forget your art, sic itur ad astra. [trans: thus one reaches the stars] - Paul Cézanne to Louis Aurenche, 10 March 1902

Don't worry about the rejections. Everybody that's good has gone through it. Don't let it matter if your works are not 'accepted' at once. The better or more personal you are the less likely they are of acceptance. Just remember that the object of painting pictures in not simply to get them in exhibitions. It is all very fine to have your pictures hung, but you are painting for yourself, not for the jury. I had many years of rejections. - Robert Henri in The Art Spirit, 1923

Art is a fruit that grows in man, like a fruit on a plant, or a child in its mother's womb. - Jean Arp

The first mistake of Art is to assume that it's serious. - Lester Bangs

Every great work of art has two faces, one toward its own time and one toward the future, toward eternity. - Daniel Barenboim

The essence of all art is to have pleasure in giving pleasure - Mikhail Baryshnikov

What is art but a way of seeing? - Thomas Berger

Fine art, that exists for itself alone, is art in a final state of impotence. If nobody, including the artist, acknowledges art as a means of knowing the world, then art is relegated to a kind of rumpus room of the mind and the irresponsibility of the artist and the irrelevance of art to actual living becomes part and parcel of the practice of art. - Angela Carter

Top | Quote Subsections | The meaning of art

Art is good when it springs from necessity. This kind of origin is the guarantee of its value; there is no other. - Neal Cassady

When I judge art, I take my painting and put it next to a God made object like a tree or flower. If it clashes, it is not art. - Marc Chagall

The dignity of the artist lies in his duty of keeping awake the sense of wonder in the world. In this long vigil he often has to vary his methods of stimulation; but in this long vigil he is also himself striving against a continual tendency to sleep. - Gilbert K. Chesterton

Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse. - Winston Churchill

Progressive art can assist people to learn not only about the objective forces at work in the society in which they live, but also about the intensely social character of their interior lives. Ultimately, it can propel people toward social emancipation. - Angela Y. Davis

Feminist art is not some tiny creek running off the great river of real art. It is not some crack in an otherwise flawless stone. It is, quite spectacularly I think, art which is not based on the subjugation of one half of the species. It is art which will take the great human themes --love, death, heroism, suffering, history itself --and render them fully human. It may also, though perhaps our imaginations are so mutilated now that we are incapable even of the ambition, introduce a new theme, one as great and as rich as those others --should we call it "joy"? - Andrea Dworkin

In a decaying society, art, if it is truthful, must also reflect decay. And unless it wants to break faith with its social function, art must show the world as changeable. And help to change it. - Ernst Fischer

Fortunately art is a community effort --a small but select community living in a spiritualized world endeavoring to interpret the wars and the solitudes of the flesh. - Allen Ginsberg

I see little of more importance to the future of our country and of civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist. If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him. - John F. Kennedy

In art, one idea is as good as another. If one takes the idea of trembling, for instance, all of a sudden most art starts to tremble. Michelangelo starts to tremble. El Greco starts to tremble. All the Impressionists start to tremble. - Willem De Kooning

Top | Quote Subsections | The meaning of art

The more minimal the art, the more maximum the explanation. - Hilton Kramer

Art is the objectification of feeling. - Suzanne K. Langer

Making social comment is an artificial place for an artist to start from. If an artist is touched by some social condition, what the artist creates will reflect that, but you can't force it. - Bella Lewitzky

There is nothing more difficult for a truly creative painter than to paint a rose, because before he can do so he has first to forget all the roses that were ever painted. - Henri Matisse

Art at its most significant is a distant early warning system that can always be relied on to tell the old culture what is beginning to happen. - Marshall McLuhan

A man paints with his brains and not with his hands. - Michelangelo

Art teaches nothing, except the significance of life. - Henry Miller

Art is man's expression of his joy in labor. - William Morris

Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life. - Pablo Picasso

Art is too serious to be taken seriously. - Ad Reinhardt

I choose a block of marble and chop off whatever I don't need. [when asked how he managed to make his remarkable statues.] - Auguste Rodin

What distinguishes a great artist from a weak one is first their sensibility and tenderness; second, their imagination, and third, their industry. - John Ruskin

The artist vocation is to send light into the human heart. - Robert Schumann

Great art is never produced for its own sake. It is too difficult to be worth the effort. - George Bernard Shaw

Art is the signature of civilizations. - Beverly Sills

Contrary to popular belief an artist is never ahead of his time, but most people are far behind theirs. - Edward Varese

The art of creation is older than the art of killing. - Andrei Voznesensky

An artist must be a reactionary. He has to stand out against the tenor of the age and not go flopping along. - Evelyn Waugh

Top | Quote Subsections | The meaning of art

Art is the symbol of the two noblest human efforts: to construct and to refrain from destruction. - Simone Weil

Is there not an art, a music, and a stream of words that shalt be life, the acknowledged voice of life? - William Wordsworth

If life were organized, there would be no need for art. - Andre' Gide

Art is a way of lending the random, messy business of life a sense of order and harmony and form. - The New York Times

To create one's own world in any of the arts takes courage. - Georgia O'Keeffe

Things should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. - Albert Einstein

It is in the contrast of light and dark that design happens. - Helen Van Wyk

Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought. - Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

An artist is paid for his vision, not his reporting. - Tom Lynch


Work ethics | Top | Quotes

Success is not the place at which one arrives but rather...the spirit with which one undertakes and continues the journey. - Alex Noble, courtesy of JJ

I do not try to dance better than anyone else. I only try to dance better than myself. - Mikhail Baryshnikov

You don't have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great. - Joe Sabah, Professional speaker

If there is no struggle there can be no progress. - Frederick Douglass

Winning is not everything, but the effort to win is. - Zig Ziglar

It takes less time to do things right that to explain why you did it wrong. - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed. - Booker T. Washington

You will never find time for anything. If you want time you must make it. - Charles Buxton

Writing only leads to more writing. - Collette

I want to assure you with all earnestness, that no writing is a waste of time, no creative work were the feelings, the imagination, the intelligence must work. With every sentence you write, you have learned something. It has done you good. It has stretched your understanding. - Brenda Ueland

The beginning of learning is silence; then comes hearing; then writing; then success. - Japanese Proverb

Between saying and doing many a pair of shoes is worn out. - Italian Proverb

Education is not received. It is achieved. - Author Unknown

Having once decided to achieve a certain task, achieve it at all costs of tedium and distaste. The gain in self-confidence of having accomplished a tiresome labor is immense." - Dr. Thomas Arnold Bennett

You can't build a reputation on what you intend to do. - Liz Smith

Top | Quote Subsections | Work ethics

The men who try to do something and fail are infinitely better than those who try nothing and succeed. - Lloyd Jones

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work. - Thomas Edison

Nobody trips over mountains. It is the small pebble that causes you to stumble. Pass all the pebbles in your path you will find you have crossed the mountain. - Unknown

It takes a long time to understand nothing. - Edward Dahlberg

We learn something by doing it. There is no other way. - John Holt

Great Faith. Great Doubt. Great Effort. - The Three Qualities Necessary for Training - Anon

There is no beginning to practice or end to enlightenment, and there is no beginning to enlightenment or end to practice. - Dogen

Zen teaching says that it is better to practice a little than to talk a lot. - Muso Kokushi

It is not the same to talk of bulls as to be in the bullring. - Spanish proverb

Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts. - Winston Churchill

Only those who have the patience to do simple things perfectly ever acquire the skill to do difficult things easily. - Unknown

Luck is the residue of design. - Branch Rickey, general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers

Learn something
So that you can do something
By which you can earn something
And honestly possess something.
- Currier & Ives Collection (circa 1860) Heritage Plantation of Sandwich America

The shortest answer is doing. - George Herbert

If there is no wind, row. - Latin Proverb

There are two kinds of people, those who do the work and those who take the credit. Try to be in the first group; there is less competition there. - Indira Gandhi

Top | Quote Subsections | Work ethics

Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit. - Aristotle [384-322 B.C.]

It is hard to fail, but it is worse to never have tried to succeed. In this life we get nothing, save by effort. - Teddy Roosevelt

Performance will continue to outsell Promise. - Anon

Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do. - John Wooden

The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain. - Dolly Parton

A painting of a rice cake does not satisfy hunger. - Ancient saying

If you wait until you can do everything for everybody, instead of something for somebody, you'll end up not doing anything for anybody. - Malcolm Bane

Discipline is remembering what you want. - David Campbell

The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is where you are. - John Burroughs

Obstacles are those terrible things you see when you take your eyes off your goal. - Jan Claire US Gymnastics Federation

No member of a rowing team is ever praised for the rugged individuality of his rowing. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

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. - Henry David Thoreau

Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan "Press On" has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race. - Calvin Coolidge

A vaincre sans peril, on triumphe sans glorie. (When there is no peril in the fight, there is no glory in the triumph.) - Pierre Corneille Le Cid, 1636


Words of wisdom | Top | Quote Subsections

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. - Attributed to Steven Jobs


The arrow belongs not to the archer when it has once left the bow; the word no longer belongs to the speaker when it has once passed his lips. - Heinrich Heine - Thank you, Scott.

If I accept you as you are, I will make you worse; however, if I treat you as though you are what you are capable of becoming, I help you become that. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I will not allow the attitude as a barrier to accept laziness
You may be whatever you resolve to be.
Determine to be something in the world, and you will be something.
"I cannot" never accomplished anything;
"I Will Try" has wrought wonders. - Joel Hawes

The Great Three Things
Three things to be - pure, just and honest
Three things to govern - temper tongue and conduct
Three things to have - courage, affection and gentleness
Three things to love - the wise, the virtuous and the innocent
Three things to commend - thrift, industry and promptness
Three things to despise - cruelty, arrogance and ingratitude
Three things to attain - goodness of heart, integrity of purpose and cheerfulness - Thank you Mom

The arrow belongs not to the archer when it has once left the bow; the word no longer belongs to the speaker when it has once passed his lips. - Heinrich Heine - Thank you Scott

Have you ever noticed there is no running away from a anything? That, sooner or later, the things that you don't want to deal with and try and escape from, or paper over and pretend aren't there, catch up with you -- especially if they have to do with old patterns and fears?

So, if you think your meditation practice is dull, no good, or that the conditions aren't right where you find yourself, and you think that if you were only in a cave in the Himalayas, or an Asian monastery, or on a beach in the tropics, or at a retreat in some natural setting, things would be better, your meditation stronger . . . think again.

So why not let go and admit that you might as well be at home wherever you are? Right in that moment you touch the core of your being and invite mindfulness to enter and heal. If you understand this, then and only then will the cave, the monastery, the beach, the retreat center, offer their true richness to you. But so will all other moments and places. - Jon Kabat-Zinn - Wherever you Go, There You Are - Courtesy of Jeff Kerr, a former student teaching for the Peace Corps in Namibia.


Against School -- How public education cripples our kids, and why -- by John Taylor Gatto

...teach your own [children] to be leaders and adventurers.

...teach your own [children] to think critically and independently.

...help your own [children] to develop an inner life so that they'll never be bored. Urge them to take on the serious material, the grown-up material, in history, literature, philosophy, music, art, economics, theology.

...Challenge your kids with plenty of solitude so that they can learn to enjoy their own company, to conduct inner dialogues. Your children should have a more meaningful life, and they can.

...If David Farragut could take command of a captured British warship as a preteen, if Thomas Edison could publish a broadsheet at the age of twelve, if Ben Franklin could apprentice himself to a printer at the same age (then put himself through a course of study that would choke a Yale senior today), there's no telling what your own kids could do. (Harper's Magazine, Sept 2003, p. 38)

This piece hits the positive points of an otherwise dark essay. For the contextual paragraphs go to Education above.


Facta non verba
, Deeds, not words.

If you stand out, either because you are exceptionally good or exceptionally bad, you will undergo the scrutiny of your overseers. - Doug

Play to win, observe the rules, and act like a gentleman. - Claire Bee

Where a diamond on your chest and let everyone see it. - Kevin Klink

They that can give up essential liberties to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. - Benjamin Franklin - Thanks Hank

Appeasement: An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last! - Winston Churchill - Thanks Hank

Now, after years of observation and enough courage to admit what I have observed, I try to plant peace if I do not want discord; to plant loyalty and honesty if I want to avoid betrayal and lies. - Maya Angelou - Thanks Scott

It is not the goal but the way there that matters, and the harder the way the more worthwhile the journey. - Wilfred Thesiger

If fate means you to lose, give it a good fight anyhow. - William McFee - Thanks Tali

Please don't be discouraged,
Because the blind can't see your beauty.
The deaf can't hear your wisdom.
The insensitive can't appreciate your contributions.
Have courage, strength, and confidence!
It hurts now, but one day soon...
You will savour the sweetness of your successes.


The following represent ten "commandments" by which we may find life fuller. Heed these, as they come from two people who, after 68 years, continue to share an unselfish, productive, loving partnership, my parents, Cele and Lew. Thank you both for all of the wisdom you so generously provide. - Love, Doug - Perhaps sappy, but true.

  1. Enjoy (Savor the ups and downs of life. It's called living.)
  2. Have fun (Laugh loudly until your body hurts)
  3. Care for yourself (because no one else can or will without your effort.)
  4. Care for each other (Show your love through your daily deeds.)
  5. Don't keep a tally (but don't forget. Learn so as to make life less frustrating.)
  6. Live a day at a time (moment by moment when possible)
  7. Have positive thoughts (They consistently yield positive results.)
  8. Discard guilt (and those who persist in placing blame upon you.)
  9. Have the courage of your convictions
  10. Express your love

You have permission to alter, amend, or otherwise redefine any or all of these. The point, take charge of your life and decide how you are to live. Number nine, number nine...oh...not the Beatles song, the "commandment".


Out of clutter, find simplicity.
From discord, find harmony.
In the middle of difficulty, lies opportunity.
- Albert Einstein, The Three Rules of Work

If you were born without wings, do nothing to prevent their growing. - Chanel

Top | Quote Subsections | Words of wisdom

IF - by Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting;
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating;
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings- nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

Top | Quote Subsections | Words of wisdom

It is a very beautiful river. I love it above everything. I have often listened to it, gazed at it, and I have always learned something from it. One can learn much from a river. - Herman Hesse, Siddhartha - Thank you - Rachel Felber

Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens. - Jimi Hendrix

Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it - Thoreau

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. - Robert Frost - Thank you - Julia and Scott

He who bends to himself a Joy Doth the winged life destroy; But he who kisses the Joy as it flies Lives in Eternity's sunrise. - William Blake - Thank you - Julia and Scott

Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana. - Unknown - Thank you - Big Kahuna

What you see is what you are, and what you are is what people see. - Neuriel Shore

When you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to pause and reflect. - Mark Twain - Thank you - Alyssa Desind

If we take the world's enduring religions at their best, we discover the distilled wisdom of the human race. - Huston Smith

No one remains quite what he was when he recognizes himself. - Thomas Mann

Write injuries in sand, kindnesses in marble. - French proverb

Write the bad things that are done to you in sand, but write the good things that happen to you on a piece of marble. - Arabic Parable - Humm, I guess there is parallel thought in the universe

The hardest battle is to be nobody but yourself in a world that is doing its best, night and day, to make you like everybody else. - e.e. cummings

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

Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% of how you respond to it. - Author Unknown

Top | Quote Subsections | Words of wisdom

We are the ones we've been waiting for. - Audre Lord

Kindness is the only service that will stand the storm of life and not wash out. It will wear well and be remembered long after the prism of politeness or the complexion of courtesy has faded away. When I am gone, I hope it can be said of me that I plucked a thistle and planted a flower wherever I thought a flower would grow. - Anon.

Today is a new day. Hence,

  • I refuse to be shackled by yesterday's failures.
  • What I don't know will no longer be an intimidation; it will be an opportunity.
  • I will not allow people to define my mood, method, image, or mission.
  • I will pursue a mission greater than myself by making at least one person happy he saw me.
  • I will have no time for self-pity, gossip, or negativism...from myself or others.
    - Max Lucado

Nobody really cares if you're miserable, so you might as well be happy. - Cythina Nelms

First, learn the meaning of what you say, and then speak. - Epictetus

The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously. - Hubert Humphrey

Out of sight
Out of mind
Out of work.
- Doug

Top | Quote Subsections | Words of wisdom

" Work - Family - Health - Friends - Spirit" - This was written by the CEO of Coca-Cola Brian G. Dyson. It was used as Georgia Tech's Commencement Address

Imagine life as a game in which you are juggling some five balls in the air. You name them - Work - Family - Health - Friends - Spirit, and you're keeping all of these in the air.

You will soon understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. But the other four balls -- family, health, friends and spirit are made of glass. If you drop one of these, they will be irrevocably scuffed, marked, nicked, damaged or even shattered.

They will never be the same. You must understand that and strive for balance in your life. How?

  1. Don't undermine your worth by comparing yourself with others. It is because we are different that each of us is special.
  2. Don't set your goals by what other people deem important. Only you know what is best for you.
  3. Don't take for granted the things closest to your heart. Cling to them as you would your life, for without them, life is meaningless.
  4. Don't let your life slip through your fingers by living in the past or for the future. By living your life one day at a time, you live ALL the days of your life.
  5. Don't give up when you still have something to give.
  6. Nothing is really over until the moment you stop trying.
  7. Don't be afraid to admit that you are less than perfect. It is this fragile thread that binds us together.
  8. Don't be afraid to encounter risks It is by taking chances that we learn how to be brave.
  9. Don't shut love out of your life by saying it's impossible to find. The quickest way to receive love is to give; the fastest way to lose love is to hold it too tightly; and the best way to keep love is to give it wings.
  10. Don't run through life so fast that you forget not only where you've been, but also where you are going.
  11. Don't forget that a person's greatest emotional need is to feel appreciated.
  12. Don't be afraid to learn. Knowledge is weightless, a treasure you can always carry easily.
  13. Don't use time or words carelessly. Neither can be retrieved.

Top | Quote Subsections | Words of wisdom

Here's what Bill Gates had to say about life to recent high school and college graduates:

  • Rule 1: Life is not fair; get used to it.
  • Rule 2: The world won't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.
  • Rule 3: You will NOT make 60 thousand dollars a year right out of high school. You won't be a vice president with a car phone, until you earn both.
  • Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait until you get a boss. He doesn't have tenure.
  • Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping; they called it opportunity.
  • Rule 6: If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.
  • Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you are. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parents' generation, try "delousing" the closet in your own room.
  • Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life has not. In some schools they have abolished failing grades; they'll give you as many chances as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.
  • Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you find yourself.
  • Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.
  • Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.

Top | Quote Subsections | Words of wisdom

It all comes back to you, you finally get what you deserve - Sublime - Thank you - Matan Darey - quote to accompany Macbeth

Speak clearly, if you speak at all; carve every word before you let it fall. - Oliver Wendel Holmes, Jr.

There are years that ask questions and years that answer. - Zora Neale Hurston

All existing things are really one. We regard those that are beautiful and rare as valuable, and those that are ugly as foul and rotten. The foul and rotten may come to be transformed into what is rare and valuable, and the rare and valuable into what is foul and rotten. Therefore it is said that one vital energy pervades the world. Consequently, the sage values Oneness. - Chuang-tzu

It wasn't until late in life that I discovered how easy it is to say "I don't know". - W. Somerset Maugham

To be upset over what you don't have is to waste what you do have. - Unknown

Where there is great doubt, there will be great awakening; small doubt, small awakening; no doubt, no awakening. - Zen saying

May you live all the days of your life. - Jonathan Swift

A man does not sin by commission only, but often by omission. - Marcus Aurelius (121-180 AD)

The only thing that we can know is that we know nothing and that is the highest flight of human reason. - Leo Tolstoy

What we call human nature in actuality is human habit. - Jewel

If you ask me anything I don't know, I'm not going to answer. - Yogi Berra

A man thinks that by mouthing hard words he understands hard things. - Herman Melville

In dwelling, live close to the ground.
In thinking, keep to the simple.
In conflict, be fair and generous.
In governing, don't try to control.
In work, do what you enjoy.
In family life, be completely present.
- Tao te Ching

If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice. - Rush (the band), "Freewill"

Top | Quote Subsections | Words of wisdom

When you understand one thing through and through, you understand everything. - Shunryu Suzuki

Only so much do I know, as I have lived. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

And I would answer you...that to prepare the future is only to find the present...For the sole true invention is to decipher the present under its incoherent aspects and its contradictory language...You do not have to foresee the future but to allow it... - Antoine Saint-Exupéry

Before you can beat me (this is the easy part), you have to allow yourself to win. - John Brady

Your treasure house is within: contains all you'll ever need. - Hui-hai

The way is near, but men seek it afar. It is in easy things, but men seek for it in difficult things. - Mencius

Some people are born on third base and go through life thinking they hit a triple. - Barry Switzer

The best things in life are not things. - Anon

Do something wonderful, people may imitate it. - Albert Schweitzer

If you dream the proper dreams, and share the myths with people, they will want to grow up to be like you. - Ray Bradbury

Men make history and not the other way around. In periods where there is no leadership, society stands still. Progress occurs when courageous, skillful leaders seize the opportunity to change things for the better. - Harry S. Truman

Philosophical habits of mind do not come quicker through fiber optics. Clear thinking is not aided by better dot resolution. Understanding ourselves and feeling for others does not come with a software upgrade. - Linda Ray Pratt

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. - Eleanor Roosevelt

Top | Quote Subsections | Words of wisdom

If dandelions were hard to grow, they would be most welcome on any lawn. - Andrew V. Mason

The more you know the less you understand. - Tao te Ching

A great man is he who does not lose his childlike heart. - Mencius

Wise men learn more from fools, than fools from the wise. - Real Fortune Cookie

We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light. - Plato

Being is what it is. - Jean-Paul Sartre

Every now and then, a little learning makes us think we know a lot. -Vaughn Manning

Don't try to be different. Just be good. To be good is different enough. - Arthur Freed.

In the confrontation between the stream and the rock, the stream always wins - not through strength but by perseverance. - H. Jackson Brown

Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here? That depends a good deal on where you want to get to, said the Cat. - Lewis Carrol

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. - Henry David Thoreau

Yesterday is a canceled check, tomorrow is a promissory note; today is the only cash we have - spend it wisely. - Kay Lyons

Yesterday's the past and tomorrow's the future. Today is a gift-- which is why they call it the present. - Bill Keane

We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give. - George Eliot, who wasn't really a guy named George Eliot, but a woman named Mary Ann Evans

Perfection is reached, not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away. - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

If a man carries his own lantern, he need not fear darkness. - Hasidic saying

Do what you can, with what you have, where you are. - Theodore Roosevelt


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E-Mail Doug at mrdoug@aznet.net or Melissa at melissa.granadatreehousestudio@gmail.com

Melissa and I would like to
thank
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making a commitment to
education and WriteDesign.