Wise Words On My Mind

Each week I update this blog with a some words (which show on the home page) that I have been thinking about.  They are included here for you to think about, should you wish…

Image via Soulful Nature

“Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest   Blogged compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.”
- Leo Buscaglia

“No one has the right to judge anyone  We may have different religions, different  languages, different colored skin,  but we all belong to one human race.”
-  Kofi Annan

“Don’t be so quick to judge, you never know when you might find yourself WALKING in that person’s shoes one day.”
-Unknown

“Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell.”
- Edna St. Vincent Millay

“Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious  triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the grey twilight that knows neither victory or defeat.”
- Theodore Roosevelt

“In the sky, there is no distinction of east and west; people create distinctions out of their own minds and then believe them to be true.”
-Buddha

“I am not what happened to me.  I am what I choose to become.”
- Carl Gustav Jung

“The greatness of a man is not in how much wealth he acquires, but in his integrity and his ability to affect those around him positively”
― Bob Marley

“The future is in our hands. We are not hapless bystanders. We can influence whether we have a planet of peace, social justice, equity, and growth or a planet of unbridgeable differences between peoples, wasted resources, corruption, and terror.”  
- James D. Wolfensohn

“Be like the single blade of grass. For she too, has been trampled on, mowed down, and hit with such bitterly cold stretches that she had to shut down to survive. Yet still she stands upright with dignity, knowing that she endures, and still she dances with the wind.” 
~ Sandra Kring

Image via Trying God’s Patience

“You will know that forgiveness has begun when you recall those who hurt you and feel the power to wish them well.”
 - Lewis Smedes

“Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it’s better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.”
- Marilyn Monroe

“How would your life be different if you stopped making negative judgmental assumptions about people you encounter? Let today be the day, look for the good in everyone you meet and respect their journey.”
~Steve Maraboli

“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”
- Edmund Burke

“That is part of the beauty of literature.  You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you’re not lonely and isolated from anyone.  You belong.”
 - F. Scott Fitzgerald

“Whatever you choose, however many roads you travel, I hope that you choose not to be a lady. I hope you will find some way to break the rules and make a little trouble out there. And I also hope that you will choose to make some of that trouble on behalf of women.”
― Nora Ephron

“Come to the edge”, he said.  We are afraid.  “Come to the edge”, he said.  They came.  He pushed them, And they flew…”  
-Guillaume Apollinaire

“Isn’t it funny how day by day nothing changes but when you look back everything is different…”  
- C.S. Lewis

“You find peace not by rearranging the circumstances of your life, but by realizing who you are at the deepest level.”
~ Eckhart Tolle

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our Light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.”
~Marianne Williamson

“The idea that some lives matter less, is the root of all that’s wrong with the world.”
~ Paul Farmer

Don’t die with the music still inside you.  Listen to your intuitive inner voice and find what passion stirs your soul.”
- Wayne Dyer

“People spend a lifetime searching for happiness; looking for peace.  They chase idle dreams, addictions, religions, even other people, hoping to fill the emptiness that plagues them.  The irony is the only place they ever needed to search was within.”
- Ramona L. Anderson

“Make it a rule of life never to regret and never to look back.  Regret is an appalling waste of energy;  you can’t build on it; it’s only good for wallowing in.”
- Katherine Mansfield

“Sometimes people come into your life and you know right away that they were meant to be there. To serve some sort of purpose, teach you a lesson, or to help you figure out who you are or who you want to become. You never know who these people may be; a roommate, a neighbor, a professor, a friend, a lover, or even a complete stranger. But when you lock eyes with them, you know that at that very moment they will affect your life in some way.”
- Author Unknown

“Those who love you are not fooled by mistakes you have made or dark images you hold about yourself. They remember your beauty when you feel ugly…your wholeness when you are broken…your innocence when you feel guilty…and your purpose when you are confused.”
- African saying

“Today expect something good to happen to you no matter what occurred yesterday. Realize the past no longer holds you captive. It can only continue to hurt you if you hold on to it. Let the past go. A simply abundant world awaits.”
~ Sarah Ban Breathnach

“I do not define myself by how many roadblocks have appeared in my path.  I define myself by the courage I’ve found to forge new roads.  I do not define myself by how many disappointments I’ve faced.  I define myself by the forgiveness and the faith I have found to begin again…    I do not define myself by how many times I have been knocked down.  I define myself by how many times I have struggled to my feet.  
I am not my pain.  
I am not my past.  
I am that which has emerged from the fire.”  
~Unknown

“The more we try to control the world around us,the more out of control our world becomes. There are some things  that are simply out of our hands.”
-Erwin Raphael McManus

“The most valuable possession you can own is an open heart. The most powerful weapon you can be is an instrument of peace.”
~ Carlos Santana

“As human beings we need to know that we are not alone, that we are not crazy or completely out of our minds, that there are other people there who feel as we do, live as we do, love as we do, who are like us.”
- Billy Joel

“When you find your path, you must not be afraid. You need to have sufficient courage to make mistakes. Disappointment, defeat, and despair are the tools God uses to show us the way.”
― Paulo Coelho

“The experienced mountain climber is not intimidated by a mountain – he is inspired by it.  Mountains are created to be conquered. Adversities are designed to be defeated.  Problems are sent to be solved.  It is better to master one mountain than a thousand foothills.”
- William Arthur Ward

“Be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe ,no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.”
~Max Ehrmann

“You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself: I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along. You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”
—  Eleanor Roosevelt

“So we shall let the reader answer this question for himself: who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived or he who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed?”
― Hunter S. Thompson

“Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out”
~  Vaclav Havel

“Never regret your past because your past was what you needed to get you here today. Never let it hold you back from creating the life you desire, leave the past but take the lessons and move on”   
- Unknown

“The world is indeed full of peril and in it there are many dark places.  But still there is much that is fair.  And though in all lands, love is now mingled with grief, it still grows, perhaps, the greater.” 
―    J.R.R. Tolkien,    The Lord of the Rings

“Resolve to be tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant with the weak and wrong. Sometime in your life, you will have been all of these.”
―    Siddhārtha Gautama

“Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through the experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspiried, and success achieved.”
- Helen Keller.

“I used to think I was the strangest person in the world, but then I thought, there are so many people in the world, there must be someone just like me who feels flawed and bizarre in the same ways I do. I would imagine her, and imagine that she must be out there thinking of me too. Well, I hope that if you are out there and read this, know that, yes, it’s true I’m here, and I’m just as strange as you.”
~ Frida Kahlo

“Other times, I look at my scars and see something else: a girl who was trying to cope with something horrible that she should never have had to live through at all. My scars show pain and suffering, but they also show my will to survive. They’re part of my history that’ll always be there.”
~ Cheryl Rainfield, Scars

“He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.” 
―    Oscar Wilde

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.” 
―    James Baldwin

“To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest.”
~Pema Chodron

“Surround yourself with people who make you happy.  People who make you laugh, who help you when  you’re in need. People who would never take advantage of you. People who prove they care.  They are the ones worth keeping in your life. Everyone else is just passing through battle. The world you desired can be won. It exists,  it is real, it is possible, it is yours.”
-Ayn Rand

“The world was created round so we would never be able to see too far down the road.”
~ Isaak Dinesen

“It’s so hard to forget pain, but it’s even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace.”
~ Chuck Palahniuk

“The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.”
 — Henri Bergson (French philosopher)

“Everybody has a secret world inside of them. I mean everybody. All of the people in the whole world, I mean everybody — no matter how dull and boring they are on the outside. Inside them they’ve all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds… Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands, maybe.”
― Neil Gaiman

“Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are.”
Benjamin Franklin

“It’s really a wonder that I haven’t dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.” 
— Anne Frank (The Diary of a Young Girl)