“When you focus on the goodness in your life, you create more of it.”
–Oprah Winfrey
“A year from now, you’ll wish you had started today.”
–Anonymous
“Fear is a pair of handcuffs on your soul.”
–Faye Dunaway, actress
“Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.”
–Anne Lamott, writer
“May what I do flow from me like a river, no forcing and no holding back, the way it is with children.”
–Rainer Maria Rilke
“Death is not the biggest fear we have; our biggest fear is taking the risk to be alive– the risk to be alive and express what we really are.”
–Don Miguel Ruiz
“Listen to yourself and in that quietude you might hear the voice of God.”
–Dr. Maya Angelou
“Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.”
–The Dalai Lama
“If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door”
–Milton Berle
“It’s funny: I always imagined when I was a kid that adults had some kind of inner toolbox full of shiny tools: the saw of discernment, the hammer of wisdom, the sandpaper of patience. But then when I grew up I found that life handed you these rusty bent old tools – friendships, prayer, conscience, honesty – and said ‘do the best you can with these, they will have to do’. And mostly, against all odds, they do.”
–Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
“In reality, nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future.”
–Christopher McCandless, quoted in Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild
“What a comforting thought it is that the best day of your life may not have happened yet.”
–Unknown
“If not us, who? If not now, when?”
–Hillel the Elder
“Your problem is how you are going to spend this one and precious life you have been issued. Whether you’re going to spend it trying to look good and creating the illusion that you have power over circumstances, or whether you are going to taste it, enjoy it and find out the truth about who you are.”
–Anne Lamott
“I’m bored is a useless thing to say. I mean, you live in a great big, vast world that you’ve seen none percent of. Even the inside of your own mind is endless; it goes on forever, inwardly, do you understand? The fact that you’re alive is amazing, so you don’t get to say ‘I’m bored.’”
–Louis C.K.
“What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say”
–Ralph Waldo Emerson
“I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dryrot. 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 trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.”
–“Credo” by Jack London
“You can either practice being right or practice being kind.”
–Anne Lamott
“I don’t know what your destiny will be, but one thing I know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who will have sought and found how to serve.”
–Dr. Albert Schweitzer
“It is never too late to be what you might have been”
–George Eliot
“Have you noticed how the negative voices will always play the loudest?”
–Joel Osteen
“The free soul is rare, but you know it when you see it–basically because you feel good, very good, when you are near or with them.”
–Charles Bukowski
“Our life is frittered away by detail…Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let our affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand…Simplify, simplify!”
–Henry David Thoreau, Walden
“Faith is taking the first step, even when you don’t see the whole staircase.”
–Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
“I do not understand the mystery of grace—only that it meets us where we are and does not leave us where it found us.”
–Anne Lamott
“One thing I learned is that the mind, rather than being the master, should be the servant of the heart.”
–Willie Nelson, The Tao of Willie
“Stop telling God how big your problems are and start telling your problems how big your God is.”
–Rev Run
“The best way out is always through.”
–Robert Frost
“I think joy and sweetness and affection are a spiritual path. We’re here to know God, to love and serve God, and to be blown away by the beauty and miracle of nature. You just have to get rid of so much baggage to be light enough to dance, to sing, to play. You don’t have time to carry grudges; you don’t have time to cling to the need to be right.”
–Anne Lamott
“You’ve got a song you’re singing from your gut, you want that audience to feel it in their gut. And you’ve got to make them think that you’re one of them sitting out there with them too. They’ve got to be able to relate to what you’re doing.”
–Johnny Cash
“There are risks and costs to a program of action. But they are far less than the long range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.”
–John F. Kennedy
“Because one believes in oneself, one doesn’t try to convince others. Because one is content with oneself, one doesn’t need others’ approval. Because one accepts oneself, the whole world accepts him or her.”
–Lao Tzu
“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
–Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Take chances, take a lot of them. Because honestly, no matter where you end up and with whom, it always ends up just the way it should be. Your mistakes make you who you are. You learn and grow with each choice you make. Everything is worth it. Say how you feel, always. Be you, and be okay with it.”
–Unknown
“When God is going to do something wonderful, He or She always starts with a hardship; when God is going to do something amazing, He or She starts with an impossibility.”
–Anne Lamott, Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith
Keith Maginn, author 