Wise words about life

Adversity

"Difficulties are opportunities to better things; they are stepping stones to greater experience. Perhaps someday you will be thankful for some temporary failure in a particular direction. When one door closes, another always opens." ~ Brian Adams

"There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hands. We seek out problems because we need their gifts." ~ Richard Bach

“It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure." ~ Joseph Campbell

"We'd never know how high we are 'till we are called to rise; and then, if we are true to plan, our statures touch the sky." ~ Emily Dickinson

"Difficult times have helped me to understand better than before, how infinitely rich and beautiful life is in every way, and that so many things that one goes worrying about are of no importance whatsoever." ~ Isak Dinesen

"What is to give light must endure burning." ~ Viktor Frankl

"Comfort and prosperity have never enriched the world as much as adversity has." ~ Billy Graham

"Adversity is like a strong wind. It tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that we see ourselves as we really are." ~ Arthur Golden

"Looking back we see with great clarity, and what once appeared as difficulties now reveal themselves as blessings." ~

"Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit." ~ Napoleon Hill

"When we long for life without difficulties, remind us that oaks grow strong in contrary winds and diamonds are made under pressure. ~ Peter Marshall

"Life's challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they're supposed to help you discover who you are." ~ Bernice Johnson Reagon

"One cannot get through life without pain. What we can do is choose how to use the pain life presents to us." ~ Bernie. S. Siegel, M.D.

"Many a man curses the rain that falls upon his head, and knows not that it brings abundance to drive away hunger." ~ St. Basil

"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." ~ Rabindranath Tagore

"Obstacles come to instruct, not obstruct." ~ Brian Tracy

"The difficulties of life are intended to make us better, not bitter." ~ Unknown

"Do not fear the winds of adversity. Remember: a kite rises against the wind rather than with it." ~ Unknown

"We grow through adversity. We need not seek it out; we can all look back at moments when our lives were in utter chaos, desolation and despair. Growth comes when we respond to adversity by stretching just an edge beyond our talent and experience."~ Dr. Robert D. Wald

Choice

"To live is to choose. But to choose well, you must know who you are and what you stand for, where you want to go and why you want to get there.” ~ Kofi Annan

“Every person, all the events of your life, are there because you have drawn them there. What you choose to do with them is up to you. ~ Richard Bach

We can become bitter or better as a result of our experiences." ~ Eric Butterworth

“Every human has four endowments- self awareness, conscience, independent will and creative imagination. These give us the ultimate human freedom... The power to choose, to respond, to change.” ~ Stephen R. Covey

“It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” ~ Joanne
Kathleen Rowling

Faith

"Come to the edge.
No, we will fall.
Come to the edge.
No, we will fall.
They came to the edge.
He pushed them, and they flew." ~ Apollinaire

“Faith is to believe what we do not see, and the reward of faith is to see what we believe.” ~ St. Augustine

"Surrender control to the supreme wisdom and authority of God and to the Divine in your soul. Step into the void with courage. Learn to say, "I don't know." That's not blind faith. It's pure faith that will allow God and your spirit to lead you wherever your soul wants and needs to go." ~ Melody Beattie

"Faith is not something to grasp. It is a state to grow into." ~ Gandhi

"Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

"When you walk to the edge of all the light you have
and take that first step into the darkness of the unknown,
you must believe that one of two things will happen:
There will be something solid for you to stand upon,
or, you will be taught how to fly" ~ Patrick Overton

"Faith is like love: it cannot be forced." ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

"Faith is the bird that sings when the dawn is still dark." ~ Rabindranath
Tagore

"Faith is not belief without proof, but trust without reservations."
~ Elton Trueblood

"Vision looks upward and becomes faith." ~Stephen S. Wise

Gratitude

“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.”
~ Melody Beattie

"There is a calmness to a life lived in Gratitude, a quiet joy." ~ Ralph H. Blum

"To speak gratitude is courteous and pleasant, to enact gratitude is generous and noble, but to live gratitude is to touch Heaven." ~ Johannes A. Gaertner

"Gratitude is when memory is stored in the heart and not in the mind." ~ Lionel Hampton

"As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them." ~ J.F. Kennedy

"If you concentrate on finding whatever is good in every situation, you will discover that your life will suddenly be filled with gratitude, a feeling that nurtures the soul."
~ Rabbi Harold Kushner

"Gratitude is the memory of the heart." ~ Massieu

"Gratitude is the intention to count-your-blessings every day, every minute, while avoiding, whenever possible, the belief that you need or deserve different circumstances." ~ Timothy Miller

"Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it." ~ William Arthur Ward

Grief & Loss

"Mourning is not forgetting... It is an undoing. Every minute tie has to be untied and something permanent and valuable recovered and assimilated from the dust."
~ Margery Allingham

"Loss is nothing else but change, and change is Nature's delight!" ~ Marcus Aurelius

"Everyone at some point will suffer a loss - the loss of loved ones, good health, a job. It's your desert experience - a time of feeling barren of options, even hope. The important thing is not to allow yourself to be stranded in the desert." ~ Patrick Del Zoppo

"Grief is a journey, often perilous and without clear direction, that must be taken. The experience of grieving cannot be ordered or categorized, hurried or controlled, pushed aside or ignored indefinitely. It is inevitable as breathing, as change, as love. It may be postponed, but it will not be denied. ~ Molly Fumia

"When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and in truth you shall see that you are weeping for that which has been your delight. ~ Kahlil Gibran

"Sorrow comes to all... Perfect relief is not possible, except with time. You cannot now realize that you will ever feel better... and yet... you are sure to be happy again." ~ Abraham Lincoln

"To find a safe journey through grief to growth does not mean one should forget the past. It means that on the journey we will need safe pathways so that remembrance, which may be painful, is possible. ~ Donna O'Toole

"Three things are fundamental to an understanding of mourning. First, each loss launches us on an inescapable course through grief. Second, each loss revives all past losses. Third, each loss, if fully mourned, can be a vehicle for growth and regeneration. ~ Vamik D. Volkan, MD

Happiness

"To live happily is an inward power of the soul." ~ Aristotle

"The art of being happy lies in the power of extracting happiness from common things." ~ Henry Ward Beecher

"What is happiness and unhappiness? It depends so little on the circumstances; it depends really only on what happens inside a person. I am grateful for every day... and that makes me happy." ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"Earth laughs in flowers." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Happiness is a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but which, if you sit down quietly, may alight on you." ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

"Happiness is not the acquisition of anything; it’s the understanding of something.” ~ Vernon Howard

"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

"You don't become happy by pursuing happiness. You become happy by living a life that means something." ~ Harold S. Kushner

"Realize that true happiness lies within you. Waste no time and effort searching for peace and contentment and joy in the world outside. Remember that there is no happiness in getting, but only in giving. Reach out. Share. Smile. Hug. Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others without getting a few drops on yourself." ~ Og Mandino

"Real happiness is so simple that most people do not recognize it. They think it comes from doing something on a big scale, from a big fortune, or from some great achievement, when, in fact, it is derived from the simplest, the quietest, the most unpretentious things in the world.” ~ Orison S. Marden

"Realize that if you want joy in your soul, you will have to choose to bring it there." ~ Joseph J. Mazzella

"Happiness is not a matter of events; it depends upon the tides of the mind."
~ Alice Meynell

"One of the secrets of a happy life is continuous small treats." ~ Iris Murdoc

"To be happy is easy enough if we forgive ourselves, forgive others, and live with thanksgiving. No self-centered person, no ungrateful soul can ever be happy, much less make anyone else happy. Life is giving, not getting." ~ Joseph Fort Newton

"The ingredients of happiness are so simple that they can be counted on one hand. First of all, happiness must be shared. Selfishness is its enemy; to make another happy is to be happy one’s self. It is quiet, seldom found for long in crowds, most easily won in moments of solitude and reflection. It comes from within, and rests most securely on simple goodness and clear conscience." ~ William Ogden

"The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance; the wise grows it under his feet."
~ James Oppenheim

"It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is not possible to find it elsewhere." ~ Agnes Repplier

"Happiness is not in our circumstance but in ourselves. It is not something we see, like a rainbow, or feel, like the heat of a fire. Happiness is something we are."
~ John B. Sheerin

"Happiness is a warm puppy." ~ Charles Schulz

"It is not the level of prosperity that makes for happiness but the kinship of heart to heart and the way we look at the world. Both attitudes are within our power so that a man is happy so long as he chooses to be happy, and no one can stop him."
~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

"Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls." ~ Mother Teresa

"A truly happy person is one who can enjoy the scenery on a detour." ~ Unknown

"Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace, and gratitude." ~ Denis Waitley

Healing

"Seek healing, a refilling of energy and spirit, as soon as you see that you need it. You don't have to push yourself to give, do, or perform when what your body, mind, soul and emotions need is to heal. ~ Melody Beattie

“To embrace one's brokenness, whatever it looks like, whatever has caused it, carries within it the possibility that one might come to embrace one's healing."
~ Robert Benson

"When an emotional injury takes place, the body begins a process as natural as the healing of a physical wound. Let the process happen. Trust that nature will do the healing. Know that the pain will pass, and, when it passes, you will be stronger, happier, more sensitive and aware. ~ Mel Colgrove

"The greatest healing therapy is friendship and love." ~ Hubert Humphrey

"Eventually in the process of your self-healing, you will find your own strength. Through the careful hand-holding of your own spirit, through recognizing, honoring, and expressing your feelings, by nurturing your body as the vessel that holds your spirit in the web of life, you will discover that you have, without your consciously knowing it, developed the inner sturdiness from which you can function on your own behalf. This interior growth is a miracle of intimate compassion, a seedling of loving yourself that will bloom, in time, into the capacity for truly loving others." ~ Daphne Rose Kingma

“Healing… is an active and internal process that includes investigating one’s attitudes, memories and beliefs with the desire to release all negative patterns that prevent one’s full emotional and spiritual recovery. This internal review inevitably leads one to review one’s external circumstances in an effort to recreate one’s life in a way that serves activation of will – the will to see and accept truths about one’s life and how one has used one’s energies; and the will to begin to use energy for the creation of love, self-esteem, and health. ~ Caroline Myss

“When you move toward that which is most fulfilling and life-enhancing, healing follows regardless of what your health is like in that moment.” ~ Christiane Northrup

"When we honestly ask ourselves which persons in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares." ~ Henri Nouwen

"Healing may not be so much about getting better as about letting go of everything that isn't you - all of the expectations, all of the beliefs - and becoming who you are." ~ Rachel Naomi Remen

"Never fear shadows. They simply mean there's a light shining somewhere nearby." ~ Ruth E. Renkel

"The question you need to ask yourself is not if you will heal, but how you will heal." ~ O. Carl Simonton

"After a stormy period of mixed feelings of prolonged sadness there comes a calm. After we become convinced that we are at the very brink of eternal despair, or fear, or guilt, or sadness, we are given a reprieve. We have a breathing space that eventually leads to whole days that have personal value and offer us the opportunity for affection. Then we recognize that no period of misery is endless and unrelenting; it is instead, changeable. ~ Carol Staudacher

“Recognizing and honouring our feelings is the way we recognize and honour ourselves and the spirit of life within us. But what does it mean to honour our feelings? To honour our feelings is to give such regard to them that we are able to act consciously and creatively in accordance with them to care for and protect ourselves and the spirit of life at our centre.” ~ Unknown

"Mountains cannot be surmounted except by winding paths." ~ Von Goethe

Individuality

“Who we are never changes. Who we think we are does.” ~ Mary Almanac

“Feet on ground
heart in hand
facing forward
be yourself.” ~ Jan Arden

"Going home means getting comfortable being who you are and who your soul really wants to be. There is no strain with that. The strain and tension come when we're not being who our soul wants to be and we're someplace where our soul doesn't feel at home." ~ Melody Beattie

"To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly. ~ Henri Bergson

"The easiest thing in the world to be is you. The most difficult thing to be is what other people want you to be. Don't let them put you in that position." ~ Leo Buscaglia

"The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.” ~ Joseph Campbell

"Every human being is intended to have a character of his own; to be what no other is, and to do what no other can do." ~ William Channing

"Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power." ~ Tao Te Ching

"Acceptance is the universal currency of real friendship... It does not warp or shape or wrench a person to be anything other than what they are." ~ Joan Chittister

"to be nobody-but-yourself - in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else - means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting." ~ e.e. cummings

"Who you really are, your True Nature, is no more tied to the kind of person you've been than the wind is tied to the skies through which it moves. Your past is just that, the past, a place within your psyche with no more reality to it than a picture of a castle on a postcard is made from stone. You have a destination far beyond where you find yourself standing today." ~ Guy Finley

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you'll be lonely often, and sometimes frigthened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." ~ Arthur Gordon

"We will discover the nature of our particular genius when we stop trying to conform to our own or to other peoples' models, learn to be ourselves, and allow our natural channel to open. ~ Shakti Gawain

"There is a vitality, a life-force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action. And because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium, and be lost. The world will not have it. ~ Martha Graham

"... our concern must be to live while we're alive -- to release our inner selves from the spiritual death that comes with living behind a facade designed to conform to external definitions of who and what we are." ~ Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

"It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences. ~ Audre Lorde

"At the center of your being you have the answer. You know who you are and you know what you want." ~ Lao-tzu

"Find your true path. It's so easy to become someone we don't want to be, without even realizing it's happening. We are created by the choices we make every day. And if we take action in order to please some authority figure, we'll suddenly wake up down the road and say, 'This isn't me. I never wanted to be this person.'"
~ Bernie Siegel, MD

“Nature never repeats herself, and the possibilities of one human soul will never be found in another.” ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

“Each being is sacred – meaning that each has an inherent value that cannot be ranked in a hierarchy or compared to the value of another being.” ~ Starhawk

"Search your heart and see, the way to do is to be." ~ Lao Tse

"Diversity is the one true thing we all have in common. Celebrate it everyday." ~ Unknown

Opportunity/Possibility

"Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending." ~ Carl Bard

"As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world - that is the myth of the 'atomic age' - as in being able to remake ourselves." ~ Gandhi

"Even in the bleakest times there are gifts to be discovered." ~ Jann Mitchell

"Always have faith in yourself. It is not easy to live life sometimes and face the world with a smile when you're crying inside. It takes a lot of courage to reach down inside yourself. Hold on to that strength that's still there and know that tomorrow is a new day with new possibilities. If you can just hold on long enough to see this through, you'll come out a new person - stronger, with more understanding and with a new pride in yourself from knowing you made it." ~ Kathy Obara

"Your present circumstances don't determine where you can go; they merely determine where you start." ~ Nido Qubein

"Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end." ~ Seneca

"It’s never too late – in fiction or in life – to revise." ~ Nancy Thayer

"Dreams are renewable. No matter what our age or condition, there are still untapped possibilities within us and new beauty waiting to be born." ~ Dale E. Turner

"Dreams come true; without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them." ~ John Hoyer Updike

Responsibility

“I am responsible. Although I may not be able to prevent the worst from happening, I am responsible for my attitude toward the inevitable misfortunes that darken life. Bad things do happen; how I respond to them defines my character and the quality of my life. I can choose to sit in perpetual sadness, immobilized by the gravity of my loss, or I can choose to rise from the pain and treasure the most precious gift I have – life itself.” ~ Walter Anderson

"Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom." ~ Stephen Covey

"The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own. You do not blame them on your mother, the ecology or the president. You realize that you control your own destiny." ~ Albert Ellis

"Everything can be taken away from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way." ~ Viktor Frankl

"Life is not the way it's supposed to be. It's the way it is. The way you deal with it is what makes the difference." ~ Virginia Satir

"If you start to think the problem is 'out there', stop yourself. That thought is the problem." ~ The Daily Guru

Spirituality

"Prayer begins where human capacity ends." ~ Marian Anderson

“Humans may be fragile as reeds, but they are thinking beings; in their consciousness they reflect the immensity of the universe.” ~ Mihaly Czikszentmihaly

“Human beings are like dozens of ponds, each reflecting the light from the same moon.” ~ Vernon Howard

“Every now and then take a good look at something not made with hands – a mountain, a star, the turn of a stream. There will come to you wisdom, and patience, and solace, and above all the assurance that you are not alone in the world.” ~ Sidney Lovett

"Spirituality is seeded, germinates, spouts and blossoms in the mundane. It is to be found and nurtured in the smallest of daily activities." ~ Thomas Moore

"Help us to be ever faithful gardeners of the spirit, who know that without darkness nothing comes to birth, and without light nothing flowers." ~ May Sarton

"The deepest expression of spirituality is love." ~ Robert L. Simpson

"We are not human beings trying to be spiritual. We are spiritual beings trying to be human." ~ Jacquelyn Small

“I am a little pencil in the hand of a writing God who is sending a love letter to the world.” ~ Mother Teresa

“We are like little fountains rising up from the deep, underground river of God.”
~ Unknown

Trust

"We're never so vulnerable as when we trust someone -- but paradoxically, if we cannot trust, neither can we find love or joy." ~ Walter Anderson

"At the root of our need to control we find FEAR. It may be fear of the unknown. Fear of not coping. Fear of loss. Or possibly even fear of looking stupid. And as our efforts to control other people and events invariably fail, our fear increases. Trust, on the other hand, is a quality of the soul. While control is a tool of the mind, trust and faith are aspects of the heart. When we trust in life enough to give up our need for control, we can relax and open to the flow of energy in our lives. This brings peace of mind." ~ The Daily Guru

"It belongs to the very substance of nonviolence never to destroy or damage another person's feeling of self worth, even an opponent's. We all need, constantly, an advance of trust and affirmation." ~ Bernard Haring

Unity

"Unity isn't fought for and won. It is realized one person at a time." ~ Alliance for a New Humanity website

"The earth is but one country and mankind its citizens." ~ Baha'ullah

"People are not separated. They are individuated." ~ Barbara Ann Brennan

"A mystic sees beyond the illusion of separateness into the intricate web of life in which all things are expressions of a single Whole. You can call this web God, the Tao, the Great Spirit, the Infinite Mystery, Mother or Father, but it can be known only as love." ~ Joan Borysenko

"Do not follow the ideas of others, but learn to listen to the voice within yourself. Your body and mind will become clear and you will realize the unity of all things." ~ Zen Master Dogen

"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent." ~ John Donne

"We are part of the whole which we call the universe, but it is an optical delusion of our mind that we think we are separate. This separateness is like a prison for us. Our job is to widen the circle of compassion so we feel connected to all people and all situations." ~ Albert Einstein

"The only real hope of people today... is a renewal of our certainty that we are rooted in Earth and, at the same time, in the cosmos. This awareness endows us with the capacity for self- trans-cendence. Transcendence as a hand reached out close to us, to foreigners, to the human community, to all living creatures, to nature, to the universe; transcendence as a deeply and joyously experienced need to be in harmony even with what we ourselves are not, what we do not understand, what seems distant from us in time and space, but with which we are nevertheless mysteriously linked because, together with us, all this constitutes a single world."
~ Vaclav Havel

"Suppose you stand on a high place to enjoy the beauty of the sparkling sea below. You need do nothing to create that beauty; you need only BE IN THE SAME PLACE WHERE IT IS, and let nature do the rest. So it is with the inner life. There is nothing we can DO to gain psychic beauty. It already exists without our effort. We need only be where we belong, that is, in self-union. Then, beauty IS.”
~ Vernon Howard

"To love is to know that you live in union with all other creatures in a world that is itself alive and constantly becoming; in short, to live is to know that you exist in a world whose highest harmony is love." ~ Daphne Rose Kingma

"At the heart of each of us, whatever our imperfections, there exists a silent pulse of perfect rhythm, a complex of wave forms and resonances which is absolutely individual and unique, and yet which connects us to everyrthing in the universe."
~ George Leonard

"You can't tell when this will happen. Usually we act as if we are autonomous, independent beings. But occasionally - at a waterfall, on a walk, hugging someone we love - we glimpse a trace of infinity. Something inside us remembers the oneness. ~ Daniel C. Matt

"The fundamental delusion of humanity is to suppose that I am here and you are there. ~ Yasutani Roshi

"The clear bead at the centre changes everything
There are no edges to my loving now
I've heard it said there's a window that opens from one mind to another
But if there's no wall, there's no need for fitting the window, or the latch. ~ Rumi

"Each small task of everyday is part of the total harmony of the universe."
~ St. Theresa of Lisieux

"Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect." ~ Chief Seattle

Wisdom

"The beginning of wisdom is found in doubting; by doubting we come to the question, and by seeking we may come upon the truth." ~ Pierre Abelard

“He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.” ~ Aeschylus

“Wisdom is nothing but a preparation of the soul, a capacity, a secret art of thinking, feeling and breathing thoughts of unity at every moment of life." ~ Hermann Hesse

"Wisdom is the understanding of enduring values and the living of those values."
~ J. Krishnamurti

"We don't receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us. ~ Marcel Proust

"Kindness is more important than wisdom, and the recognition of this is the beginning of wisdom." ~ Theodore Isaac Rubin

"We should never be ashamed to own we have been in the wrong, which is but saying in other words, that we are wiser today than we were yesterday." ~ Jonathan Swift

"Until we stop ourselves or, more often, have been stopped, we hope to put certain of life's events "behind us" and get on with our living. After we stop we see that certain of life's issues will be with us for as long as we live. We will pass through them again and again, each time with a new story, each time with a greater understanding, until they become indistinguishable from our blessings and our wisdom. It's the way life teaches us to live." ~ Rachel Naomi Remen