reflection
inspirational | humorous | relationships | reflection | words
"Life is like an onion. You peel off one layer at a time, and sometimes you weep."
"If only there were evil people somewhere, insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"
"At the beginning of our lives and again when we become old we appreciate others' help and affection. Unfortunately, between these two periods of our lives, when we are strong and able and can look after ourselves, we neglect the value of affection and compassion.
"If you could only sense how important you are to the lives you meet; how important you can be to the people you may never dream of. There is something of yourself that you leave at every meeting with another person."
"Some day, in years to come, you will be wrestling with the great temptation, or trembling under the great sorrow of your life. But the real struggle is here, now, in these quiet weeks. Now it is being decided whether, in the day of your supreme sorrow or temptation, you shall miserably fail or gloriously conquer. Character cannot be made except by a steady, long continued process."
People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid.
There are hundreds of paths up the mountain,
all leading in the same direction,
so it doesn't matter which path you take.
The only one wasting time is the one
who runs around and around the mountain,
telling everyone that his or her path is wrong.
"I believe in Christ like I believe in the sun, not just because I see it but because by it I can see everything else."
"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle."
"Shared joy is double joy. Shared sorrow is half sorrow."
"So much has been given to me I have no time to ponder over that which has been denied."
"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason and intellect has intended us to forgo their use."
"People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered;
Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives;
Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies;
Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you;
Be honest and frank anyway.
What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight;
Build anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous;
Be happy anyway.
The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;
Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough;
Give the world the best you've got anyway.
You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God;
It was never between you and them anyway."
"Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.
"Nobody sees a flower – really – it is so small – we haven’t time – and to see takes time like to have a friend takes time…So I said to myself – I’ll paint what I see – What the flower is to me, but I’ll paint it big and they will be surprised into taking time to look at it – I will make even busy New Yorkers take the time to see what I see of flowers."
"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh."
"How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and the strong. Because someday in life you will have been all of these."
"You must be very careful each time you step out your front door, because your front walk is really a road, and the road leads ever onward. If you aren't careful, you're apt to find yourself simply swept away, a stranger in a strange land with no clue as to how you got there and no way to get home."
"An age is called Dark, not because the light fails to shine, but because people refuse to see it."
"Society never advances. For everything that is taken, something is given."
"There are only two ways to live your life.
One is as though nothing is a miracle.
The other is as though everything is a miracle."
"Some things are true whether you believe in them or not."
"One cannot choose sides on a round planet."
Thou shalt not be a victim.
Thou shalt not be a perpetrator.
Above all, thou shalt not be a bystander.
"To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart, is true for all men – that is genius."
"Is it so bad then to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood."
"I like the stars. It's the illusion of permanence, I think. I mean, they're always flaring up and caving in and going out. But from here I can pretend... I can pretend that things last. I can pretend that lives last longer than moments. Gods come and gods go. Mortals flicker and flash and fade. Worlds don't last; and stars and galaxies are transient, fleeting things that twinkle like fireflies and vanish into cold and dust. But I can pretend."
"You are told a lot about your education, but some beautiful, sacred memory, preserved since childhood, is perhaps the best education of all. If a man carries many such memories into life with him, he is saved for the rest of his days. And even if only one good memory is left in our hearts, it may also be the instrument of our salvation one day."
"Don't join the book burners. Do not think you are going to conceal thoughts by concealing evidence that they ever existed."
"Sometimes it is easier to see clearly into the liar then into the man who tells the truth. Truth, like light, blinds. Falsehood, on the contrary is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object."
"To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to have played and laughed with enthusiasm and sung with exultation; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have truly succeeded."
"We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep." Walden
"The greatest single cause of atheism in the world is Christians. . . who acknowledge Jesus with their lips and walk out the door, and deny him by their lifestyle. THAT is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable."
"We are not human beings having a spiritual experience, we are spiritual beings having a human experience."
"We are the music makers and the dreamers of dreams."
"I would rather have thirty minutes of wonderful, than a lifetime of nothin' special."
I Believe
I believe in the sun
even when it is not shining.
I
believe in love
even when I feel it not.
I believe in God
even when he
is silent.
"All the world is a stage And all the men and women merely players They have their exits and entrances, And one man in his time will play many parts."
Who is more foolish? The child afraid of the dark... or the man afraid of the light?
"And those who were seen dancing were though to be insane by those who could not hear the music."
"The difference between a smart person and a wise person is that a smart person knows what to say, and a wise person knows whether or not to say it."
"To obtain a man's opinion of you, make him mad."
If you want to feel rich, just count all of the things you have that money can't buy.
"Don't walk in front of me, I may not follow. Don't walk behind me, I may not lead. Just walk beside me and be my friend."
"You gotta sing sometimes like you don't need the money. Love sometimes like you won't get hurt. You've gotta dance, dance, dance like nobody's watching. It's gotta come from the heart if you want it to work."
For a long time it seemed to me that life was about to begin – real life.
But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be gotten
through first,
some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to
be paid.
At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life.
This
perspective has helped me to see there is no way to happiness.
Happiness is
the way.
So treasure every moment you have and remember that time waits for
no one.
Happiness is a journey, not a destination.
"Think about it. Once you're born, you begin to die."
"In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."
"I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them."
"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist fears this is true."
"The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good."
"A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both."
"If you were going to die soon and had only one phone call you could make,
who would you call
and what would you say?
And why are you
waiting?"
"There are as many nights as days, and the one is just as long as the other in the year's course. Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word "happy" would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness."
"You must be the change you wish to see in the world."
"An eye for eye only ends up making the whole world blind."
"God gave people a mouth that closes and ears that don't, which should tell us something."
"For of all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these: 'It might have been!'"
"God grant me the serenity to accept the people I cannot change, the courage to change the ones I can, and the wisdom to know it's me."
"There is so much good in the worst of us
and so much bad in the best of us
that it ill behooves any of us
to talk about the rest of us."
"And in the end it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years."
"Do all the good you can,
By all the means you can,
In all the ways you can,
In all the places you can,
At all the times you can,
To all the people you can,
As long as ever you can."
"Life is either a daring adventure or it is nothing."
"Live as you will have wished you lived when you are dying."
"Ninety-eight percent of what I worried about never happened."
"A pessimist, they say, sees a glass of water as being half-empty; an optimist sees the glass as half-full. But a giving person sees a glass of water and starts looking for someone who might be thirsty."
"On the street I saw a small girl shivering in a thin dress, with little hope of a decent meal. I became angry and said to God, "Why do You permit this? Why don't You do something about it?" And God replied, "I certainly did do something about it. I made you."
"We do not remember days. We remember moments."
"Some days there won't be a song in your heart. Sing anyway."
"Just think how happy you'd be if you lost everything and everyone you have right now, and then, somehow got everything back again."
"If I could wish for my life to be perfect, it would be tempting but I would have to delicine, for life would no longer teach me anything."
"Do not care overly much for wealth or power or fame, or one day you will meet someone who cares for none of these things, and you will realize how poor you have become."
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