Wise Words

INSPIRATION/DEATH

Life [exists] only because of a myriad of synchronicities that bring us to this particular place at this particular moment. In return for such a gift, the only sane response is to glitter in reply.
Robin Wall Kimmerer

The sun shines not on us, but in us. The rivers flow not past, but through us, thrilling, tingling, vibrating every fiber and cell of the substance of our bodies, making them glide and sing
John Muir

Look, children, hailstones! Let’s rush out!
Basho

There are costs and risks to a program of action, but they are far less than the long range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.
John F Kennedy

Someday, after we have mastered the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love. Then, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.
Teilhard de Chardin

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

Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers, but to be fearless in facing them. Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain, but for the heart to conquer it.
Tagore

There is nothing with which every man is so afraid as getting to know how enormously much he is capable of doing and becoming.
Soren Kierkegaard

A warrior must only take care that his spirit is never broken.
Shissai

The idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.
Elbert Hubbard

Nothing in the cry of cicadas suggests they are about to die.
Basho

Defeat is simply a signal to press onward.
Helen Keller

I am here for a purpose and that purpose is to grow into a mountain, not to shrink to a grain of sand. Henceforth will I apply all my efforts to become the highest mountain of all and I will strain my potential until it cries for mercy.
Og Mandino

Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the grey twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.
Theodore Roosevelt

Fall seven times, stand up eight!
Japanese Proverbs

Never for me the lowered banner, never the last endeavour.
Sir Ernest Shackleton

Whether or not enlightenment is possible at the moment of death, the practices that prepare one for this possibility also bring one closer to the bone of life.
Joan Halifax

Death never takes a wise man by surprise; he is always ready to go.
Jean de la Fontaine

One must live as if it would be forever, and as if one might die each moment. Always both at once.
Mary Renault

The good life gives no warning. It weathers the climates of despair and appears, on foot, unrecognized, offering nothing, and you are there.
Mark Strand

Dying is strange and hard if it is not our death, but a death that takes us by storm, when we’ve ripened none within us.
Rainer Maria Rilke

Let go, live your life, the grave has no sunny corners.
Charles Wright

In each thing there is an insinuation of death. Stillness, silence, serenity are all apprenticeships.
Federico Garcia Lorca

All stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you.
Ernest Hemingway

Death destroys a man: the idea of Death saves him.
E.M. Forster

Death
I take you as I take the moon
rising,
Darkness, black moth the light
burns up in.
Charles Wright

I would rather be a hot mess of bold action, a make it happen learn on the fly kind of person, than a perfectly organized coward.
Brendon Burchard

Man is only truly great when he acts from the passions; never irresistible but when he appeals to the imagination.
Benjamin Disraeli

Sometimes the fall kills you. And sometimes, when you fall, you fly.
Neil Gaiman

Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us.
Steven Pressfield

Everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fear.
George Addai

Stand up, be bold, be strong. Take the whole responsibility on your own shoulders. All the strength and succor you want is within yourself. Therefore make your own future.
Swami Vivekananda

Set your life on fire. Seek those who fan your flames.
Rumi

We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves
strong. The amount of work is the same.
Carlos Castaneda

Death is only the end if you assume the story is about you.
Welcome to Night Vale

Life is not a young mans game. It’s an inspired persons game.
Terry Crews

You may do this, I tell you, it is permitted. Begin again the story of your life.
Jane Hirshfield

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
Henry David Thoreau

Change and growth take place when a person has risked himself and dares to become involved with experimenting with his own life
Herbert Otto

No matter how bad a state of mind you may get into, if you keep strong and hold out, eventually the floating clouds must vanish and the withering wind must cease.
Dōgen

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 he hears, however measured or far away.
Henry David Thoreau

It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.
Theodore Roosevelt – Citizenship in a Republic

Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.
Sir Winston Churchill

In times of change, learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.
Eric Hoffer

You are given the gifts of the Gods;
You create your reality
According to your beliefs
Yours is the creative energy
That makes your world
There are no limitations
To the self
Except those you believe in.
Jane Roberts

Come to the edge, he said.
They said: We are afraid.
Come to the edge, he said.
They came.
He pushed them and they flew.
Guillaume Apollinaire

Hope is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it makes sense, not just because it stands a chance to succeed. It is this hope, above all, which gives us the strength to live and continually to try new things, even in conditions that seem as hopeless as ours do, here and now.
Vaclav Havel

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.
Helen Keller

Nothing in the 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.
Calvin Coolidge

There is no security in life, only opportunity.
Mark Twain

Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead.
Aldous Huxley

The measure of our courage is reflected in the vision of life we choose and in how much it takes for us to be discouraged. Too often we think of ourselves as weak candles that can be blown out by the slightest wind of frustration or disappointment. How much better to say: “I will become a bonfire and dare the world to put me out.”
Laurence Boldt, Zen Soup

This is the true joy in life: the being used for a purpose recognised by yourself as a mighty one; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community, and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no ‘brief candle’ to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.
George Bernard Shaw

A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.
Oscar Wilde

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
Oscar Wilde

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.
Albert Einstein

Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person.
Mother Teresa

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

I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The proper function of a man is to live, not to exist.
Jack London

There will be sleeping enough in the Grave.
Benjamin Franklin

I have learned this at least by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavours to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
Henry David Thoreau

When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break their bounds: Your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction and you find yourself in a new, great and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive, and you discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be.
Patanjali

If you realize that all things change, there is nothing you will try to hold on to. If you are not afraid of dying, there is nothing you cannot achieve.
Lao Tzu