Week 2017-28

"Realizing that our inability to control life is not the same as having no way to navigate it, leads to freedom and liberation. Just because I can't control the sea doesn't mean I can't learn how to swim in it." (Rami Shapiro)

"With life as short as a half-taken breath, don’t plant anything but love." (Rumi)

"What worries you, masters you." (John Locke)

"Happiness is a butterfly which, when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you." ( Nathaniel Hawthorne )

"A man who fears suffering is already suffering from what he fears." (Michel de Montaigne)

"We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand." (Eric Hoffer)
  
"Love and art do not embrace what is beautiful but what is made beautiful by this embrace." ( Karl Kraus)

"If you don't like something, change it.
If you can't change it, change the way you think about it." (Mary Engelbreit)

"Let go of certainty. The opposite isn’t uncertainty. It’s openness, curiosity and a willingness to embrace paradox, rather than choose up sides. The ultimate challenge is to accept ourselves exactly as we are, but never stop trying to learn and grow." (Tony Schwartz)

"To be truly happy and contented, you must let go of the idea of what it means to be truly happy or content." (Confucius)

Week 2017-12

[#opportunity]
"[...] if we are to have any future, we must create that future ourselves." (Beatrice Bruteau)

[#love, #altruism]
"People who exude love are in every way like rivers - they stream. And when they collect possessions and things that they like, they are apt to give them to other people. Did you ever notice that when you give things away, you keep getting more? That, as you create a vacuum, more flows in?" (Alan Watts)

[#control, #change]
"Nature is not a force over which we must triumph, but the medium of our transformation." (Marilyn Ferguson)

[#suffering, #fear]
"To suffering there is a limit; to fearing, none." (Francis Bacon)

[#perspective]
"Judge people from where they stand, not from where you stand." (H. Jackson Brown, Jr.)

[#reality, #change]
"To change our realities we have to change our myths." (Riane Eisler)

[#human nature, #control]
"The domination of nature leads to the domination of human nature." (Edward Abbey, "Beyond the Wall”, 1984)

[#quest]
"The great blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach; but we shut our eyes, and like people in the dark, we fall foul upon the very thing we search for, without finding it." (Seneca the Younger)

[#acceptance, #certainty]
"Let go of certainty. The opposite isn’t uncertainty. It’s openness, curiosity and a willingness to embrace paradox, rather than choose up sides. The ultimate challenge is to accept ourselves exactly as we are, but never stop trying to learn and grow." (Tony Schwartz)

[#limits, #knowledge]
"It is what we know already that often prevents us from learning." (Claude Bernard)

Week 2017-01

"One does not set out in search of new lands without being willing to be alone on an empty sea." (André Gide)

"Human beings know a lot of things, some of which are true, and apply them. When we like the results, we call it wisdom."(Herbert Simon)

"Suffering is a challenge; when you suffer you are challenged, when there is a problem you are challenged. When you encounter the problem, only then do you grow. More insecurity, more growth; more security, less growth. If everything is secure around you, you are already in your grave, you are no longer alive. Life exists in danger, life always exists in the possibility of going astray. But one who goes astray can come back, one who fails can succeed." (Osho)

"If you optimize everything, you will always be unhappy." (Donald Knuth)

"Always aim at complete harmony of thought and word and deed. Always aim at purifying your thoughts and everything will be well." (Gandhi)

"That which we persist in doing becomes easier, not that the task itself has become easier, but that our ability to perform it has improved." (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

"We need to learn to set our course by the stars, not by the lights of every passing ship." (Omar Bradley)

"Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance is the death of knowledge." (Alfred N Whitehead)

"It is a fine thing to have ability, but the ability to discover ability in others is the true test." (Elbert Hubbard)

"This is the awe-inspiring universe of magic: There are no atoms, only waves and motions all around. Here, you discard all belief in barriers to understanding. You put aside understanding itself. This universe cannot be seen, cannot be heard, cannot be detected in any way by fixed perceptions. It is the ultimate void where no preordained screens occur upon which forms may be projected. You have only one awareness here - the screen of the magi: Imagination! Here, you learn what it is to be human. You are a creator of order, of beautiful shapes and systems, an organizer of chaos." (Frank Herbert, “Heretics of Dune”, 1984)

Week 2016-50

"Many men go fishing all their lives not knowing it is not fish they are after." (Henry David Thoreau)

"The bamboo that bends is stronger than the oak that resists." (Japanese saying)

"Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself." (George Bernard Shaw)  

"Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding." (Khalil Gibran)

"He who spends time regretting the past loses the present and risks the future." (Quevedo)

"We carry within us the wonders we seek without us." (Sir Thomas Browne of Norwich, "Religio Medici")

"The starting point of all achievement is desire. Keep this constantly in mind. Weak desires bring weak results, just as a small amount of fire makes a small amount of heat." (Napoleon Hill)

"Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we have a clear picture of it." (Benedict Spinoza)

"If passion drives you, let reason hold the reins." (Benjamin Franklin)

"Childhood is the world of miracle and wonder; as if creation rose, bathed in the light, out of the darkness, utterly new and fresh and astonishing. The end of childhood is when things cease to astonish us." (Eugène Ionesco)

Week 2016-40

"Without a narrative, life has no meaning. Without meaning, learning has no purpose." (Neil Postman)

"You become responsible forever, for what you have tamed." ( Antoine de Saint-Exupéry)

"If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern." (William Blake)

"If you make friends with yourself you will never be alone." (Maxwell Maltz)

"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye." (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, “The Little Prince”)

"The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen." (Elisabeth Kübler-Ross)

"[...] without conscious effort, the brain always tries to close the distance between
observed phenomena and knowledge or wisdom that can help us survive." (Alberto Cairo)

"An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you do know and what you don't." (Anatole France)

"The beginning of knowledge is the discovery of something we do not understand." (Frank Herbert)