However many holy words you read, however many you speak, what good will they do you if you do not act on upon them?
Jane, be still; don’t struggle so like a wild, frantic bird, that is rending its own plumage in its desperation.”
“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being, with an independent will; which I now exert to leave you.
It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.
Keep your face always toward the sunshine – and shadows will fall behind you.
I wonder how many people don’t get the one they want, but end up with the one they’re supposed to be with.
In the end
these things matter most:
How well did you love?
How fully did you live?
How deeply did you let go?
Great heroes need great sorrows and burdens, or half their greatness goes unnoticed. It is all part of the fairy tale.
Life is too short to waste any amount of time on wondering what other people think about you. In the first place, if they had better things going on in their lives, they wouldn’t have the time to sit around and talk about you. What’s important to me is not others’ opinions of me, but what’s important to me is my opinion of myself.
When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.
Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one’s definition of your life, but define yourself.
It is not the size of the dog in the fight that counts, but the fight in the dog that wins.
The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They’re there to stop the other people.
When I was about eight, I decided that the most wonderful thing, next to a human being, was a book.
Remember, darkness does not always equate to evil, just as light does not always bring good.
The important thing to you is not how many years in your life, but how much life in your years!
I don’t think of all the misery, but of the beauty that still remains.
Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself.
My concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God’s side, for God is always right.
You should never be surprised when someone treats you with respect, you should expect it.
Lack of direction, not lack of time, is the problem. We all have twenty-four hour days.
No matter what he does, every person on earth plays a central role in the history of the world. And normally he doesn’t know it.
The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.
Live in the present, remember the past, and fear not the future, for it doesn’t exist and never shall. There is only now.
You see things; you say, ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say ‘Why not?
To me, Fearless is not the absense of fear. It’s not being completely unafraid. To me, Fearless is having fears. Fearless is having doubts. Lots of them. To me, Fearless is living in spite of those things that scare you to death.
The thing about growing up with Fred and George,” said Ginny thoughtfully, “is that you sort of start thinking anything’s possible if you’ve got enough nerve.
The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, nor to worry about the future, but to live the present moment wisely and earnestly.
You’re off to Great Places!
Today is your day!
Your mountain is waiting,
So… get on your way!
I was smiling yesterday,I am smiling today and I will smile tomorrow.Simply because life is too short to cry for anything.
All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of a single candle.
The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You trade in your sense for an act. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask. There can’t be any large-scale revolution until there’s a personal revolution, on an individual level. It’s got to happen inside first.
A woman’s heart should be so hidden in God that a man has to seek Him just to find her.
A painter should begin every canvas with a wash of black, because all things in nature are dark except where exposed by the light.
The things you do for yourself are gone when you are gone, but the things you do for others remain as your legacy.
Sometimes our light goes out, but is blown again into instant flame by an encounter with another human being.
Simplicity, patience, compassion.
These three are your greatest treasures.
Simple in actions and thoughts, you return to the source of being.
Patient with both friends and enemies,
you accord with the way things are.
Compassionate toward yourself,
you reconcile all beings in the world.
I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow; but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.
It isn’t what you have or who you are or where you are or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about it.
I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.
When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
Fantasy is hardly an escape from reality. It’s a way of understanding it.
The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.
The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven..
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all.
Isn’t it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?
Attitude is a choice. Happiness is a choice. Optimism is a choice. Kindness is a choice. Giving is a choice. Respect is a choice. Whatever choice you make makes you. Choose wisely.
Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.
I can’t give you a sure-fire formula for success, but I can give you a formula for failure: try to please everybody all the time.
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.