Some of my favorite tidbits of wisdom
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I am
enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination.
Imagination is
more important than knowledge. Knowledge is
limited.
Imagination encircles the world.
--Albert
Einstein
"Art is
individualism, and individualism is a
disturbing and disintegrating force.
There lies its immense value.
For
what it seeks is to disturb monotony
of type, slavery of custom,
tyranny of habit,
and the reduction of man to the level of a machine."
-- Oscar Wilde
"The function of the artist, is to provide what life does not."
- Tom Robbins."At a certain moment the canvas began to appear to one
American painter after another as an arena in which to act.
What was to go on the canvas was not a picture but an event."
“The truly creative mind in any field is no more
than
this:
A human creature born abnormally,
Inhumanely sensitive.
To him...
A touch is a blow,
A sound is a noise,
A misfortune is a tragedy,
A joy is an ecstasy,
A friend is a lover,
A lover is a god,
And failure
Is death.
Add to this cruelly delicate organism
The overpowering necessity to create, create, create
So that without the creating of music or poetry or books
Or buildings or something of meaning,
His very breath is cut off from him.
He must create
Must pour out creation.
By some strange, unknown, inward urgency
He is not really alive unless he is creating.”
- Pearl Buck
“A boy's will is the wind's will, and the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”
- Robert Frost, who daydreamed so much in school he was expelled.
"We find greatest joy, not in getting,
but in expressing what we are...
Men do not really live for honors or for pay;
Their gladness is not the taking and holding,
But in doing, the striving, the building, the living.
It is a higher joy to teach than to be taught.
It is good to get justice, but better to do justice;
Fun to have things but more fun to make things.
The happy man is he who lives the life of love,
Not for the honors it may bring,
But for the life itself."
Happiness
cannot come from without. It must come from
within. It is not what we see and touch or that
which
others do for us which makes us happy; it is that
which
we think and feel and do, first for the other fellow
and
then for ourselves.
-Helen
Keller
As nightfall does
not come at once, neither does
oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight
when everything remains
unchanged. And it is in such
twilight that we all must
be most aware of change in
the air - however slight -
lest we become unwitting
victims of the darkness.
-Supreme Court
Justice William O. Douglas
Rats and roaches live
by competition
under the laws of
supply and demand; it is the privilege of human
beings to
live under the laws of justice and mercy.
-William Berry
Imagination is more important than knowledge
- Albert Einstein
"You cannot teach a man anything;
you can only help him to find it within himself."
- Galileo
If you were all alone in the universe with no one to
talk
to, no one with which to share the beauty of the stars,
to
laugh with, to touch, what would be your purpose in
life?
It is other life, it is love, which gives your life
meaning.
This is harmony. We must discover the joy of each other,
the joy of challenge, the joy of growth.
-Mitsugi Saotome
Good timber does not grow strong with ease;
the stronger the wind, the stronger the trees.
-J. Willard Marriott
Mental toughness is many things. It is humility
because
it
behooves all of us to remember that simplicity is the
sign
of greatness and meekness is the sign of true strength.
Mental toughness is spartanism with qualities of
sacrifice,
self-denial, dedication. It is fearlessness, and it is
love.
-Vince Lombardi
Some people say they haven't yet found themselves.
But
the self is not
something one finds; it is something one creates.
- Thomas Szasz
It always strikes me, and it is very peculiar, that
whenever
we see the image of indescribable and unutterable desolation - of
lonliness,
poverty, and misery, the end and extreme of things - the thought of God
comes into one's mind
- Vincent Van Gogh
"Through joy and through sorrow, I wrote. Through hunger and through thirst, I wrote. Through good report and through ill report, I wrote. Through sunshine and through moonshine, I wrote. What I wrote it is unnecessary to say."
– Edgar Allan Poe
"The true measure of a man is how he treats someone
who
can
do him absolutely no good."
--Samuel Johnson
"If you can imagine it, it's
imaginable
-
if it's imaginable, it must be
real."
- Bruce DePalma
- Greg Levoy
"As far as we can discern, the sole purpose
of human existence is to kindle a light of
meaning in the darkness of mere being."
- William Ashley Sunday
"The function of the artist, is to provide what life does not."
- Tom Robbins.
"We find greatest joy, not in getting,
but in expressing what we are...
Men do not really live for honors or for pay;
Their gladness is not the taking and holding,
But in doing, the striving, the building, the living.
It is a higher joy to teach than to be taught.
It is good to get justice, but better to do justice;
Fun to have things but more fun to make things.
The happy man is he who lives the life of love,
Not for the honors it may bring,
But for the life itself."
- R.J. Baughan
"When one door closes, another opens.
But we often look
so long and so regretfully
upon the closed
door, that we do not see
the one which has
opened for us"
- Alexander Graham Bell
"Dream as if you will live forever...
Live as if you will die today...."
- James Dean
"The ultimate measure of a man is not
where he stands in moments of comfort
and convenience, but where he stands
at times of challenge and controversy."
- Martin Luther King Jr.
"By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by
reflection,
which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is
easiest;
and third by experience, which is the bitterest."
- Confucius
"Never does the human soul appear so strong and noble
as when it forgoes revenge and dares to forgive injury."
- Edwin Hubbel Chapin
"Notice that the stiffest tree is most easily
cracked,
while
the bamboo or willow survives by bending with the wind."
- Bruce Lee
"If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten
that we belong to each other."
- Mother Teresa
"Dare to be what you ought to be;
dare to be what you dream to be;
dare to be the finest you can be.
The more you dare, the surer you
will be of gaining just what you
dare!"
- Norman Vincent Peale
"I have yet to find the man, however exalted
his station, who did not do better work and
put forth greater effort under a spirit of
approval than under a spirit of criticism."
- Charles M. Schwab
"If you don't go after what you want, you'll
never have it. If you don't ask, the answer's
always no. If you don't step forward, you're
always in the same place."
- Nora Roberts
"Until you make peace with who you
are, you will never be content with
what you have."
- Doris Mortman
"He who can not forgive breaks the bridge over which he himself must pass."
- George Herbert
"The capacity to believe is the most significant and
fundamental
human faculty,
and the most important thing about any man is what he
believes in the depth of his being.
This is the thing that makes him what he is; the thing
that organizes him and feeds him;
the thing that keeps him going in the face of untold
circumstances;
the thing that gives him resistance and drive.
Let neutrality, confusion, indifference, or skepticism
enter this inner place,
and the very springs of life will cease to flow."
- Hugh Stevenson Tigner
"He who fears he will suffer, already suffers because of fear."
- Michel De Montaigne
"The snow goose need not bathe to make itself
white. Neither need you do anything to be
yourself."
- Lao-Tzu
"Do not go where the path may
lead, go instead where there
is no path and leave a trail."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Logic will get you from A to B.
Imagination will take you everywhere."
- Albert Einstein
"Faith is not trying to believe something
regardless of the evidence. Faith is daring
to do something regardless of the consequences."
- Sherwood Eddy
"We either make ourselves miserable, or we
make ourselves strong. The amount of work
is the same"
- Carlos Castaneda
"Good character is the quality which makes one
dependable whether being watched or not, which
makes one truthful when it is to one's advantage
to be a little less than truthful, which makes
one courageous when faced with great obstacles,
which endows one with the firmness of wise
self-discipline"
- Arthur S. Adams
"Be master of your petty annoyances and
conserve your energies for the big,
worthwhile things. It isn't the mountain
ahead that wears you out - it's the grain
of sand in your shoe"
- Robert Service
"And the day came when the risk it took to
remain tight in the bud was more painful than
the risk it took to blossom"
- Anais Nin
"Your living is determined not so much by
what life brings to you as by the attitude
you bring to life; not so much by what
happens to you as by the way your mind
looks at what happens. Circumstances
and situations do color life but you have
been given the mind to choose what the
color will be."
- John Homer Miller
"Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die,
life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly."
- Langston Hughes
"What we have done for ourselves alone dies
with us. What we have done for others and
the world remains and is immortal."
- Albert Pike
"The choice today is not between violence and
non-violence. It is either non-violence or
non-existence."
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Life is a series of experiences, each one of which
makes us bigger, even though sometimes it is hard
to realize this. For the world was built to
develop
character, and we must learn that the setbacks and
grieves which we endure help us in our marching onward."
- Henry Ford
"The thought manifests as the word;
The word manifests as the deed;
The deed develops into habit;
And habit hardens into character.
So watch the thought and its ways with care,
And let it spring from love;
Born out of concern for all beings."
- Buddha
"Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is
the
goal
of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other
living beings,
we are still savages."
- Thomas Alva Edison
"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."
- Leo Buscaglia
"Your profession is not what brings home your
paycheck.
Your profession is what you were put on earth to do.
With such passion and such intensity that it becomes
spiritual in calling."
- Vincent Van Gogh
"Destiny is not a matter of chance,
it is a matter of choice;
it is not a thing to be waited for,
it is a thing to be achieved."
- William Jennings Bryan
“I don't know the key to success,
but the key to failure is trying to please
everybody.”
- Bill Cosby
"Flatter me, and I may not believe you.
Criticize me, and I may not like you.
Ignore me, and I may not forgive you.
Encourage me, and I may not forget you."
- William Arthur
"Leadership is not magnetic personality,
That can just as well be a glib tongue.
It is not 'making friends and influencing people’
That is flattery.
Leadership is lifting a person's vision to higher
sights,
The raising of a person's performance to a higher
standard
The building of a personality beyond its normal
limitations."
- Peter Drucker
"He then learns that in going down into the secrets
of
his own
mind he has descended into the secrets of all minds."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Great souls have wills; feeble ones have only wishes."
- Chinese Proverb
"A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought.
There is a visible labor and there is an invisible
labor."
- Victor Hugo
"Man is distinguished from all other creatures by
the faculty of laughter."
- Joseph Addison
“How strange is the lot of us mortals!
Each of us is here for a brief sojourn,
for what purpose he knows not,
though sometimes he thinks he senses it.
But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life
that one exists for other people;
first of all for those upon whose smiles and well-being
our own happiness is wholly dependent,
and then for the many, unknown to us,
to whose destinies we are bound by the ties of
sympathy.”
- Albert Einstein
“It is not from space that I must seek my dignity
But from the government of my thought.
I shall have no more if I possess worlds.
By space the universe encompasses
And swallows me up like an atom
By thought I comprehend the world.”
- Blaise Pascal
“If you have men who will exclude any of
God's creatures from the shelter of
Compassion and pity, you will have
Men who will deal likewise
With their fellow men”
- Saint Francis of Assisi
“What lies behind us
And what lies before us
Are tiny matters,
Compared to what lies within us”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
“There are nine requisites for contented living:
Health enough to make work a pleasure;
Wealth enough to support your needs;
Strength enough to battle with difficulties and forsake
them;
Grace enough to confess your sins and overcome them;
Patience enough to toil until some good is accomplished;
Charity enough to see some good in your neighbor;
Love enough to make you useful and helpful to others;
Faith enough to make real the things of God;
Hope enough to remove all anxious fears concerning the
future.”
- Goethe
“The man who follows the crowd
Will usually get no further than the crowd.
The man who walks alone
Is likely to find himself
In places no one has ever been.”
- Alan Ashley Pitt