#969 The hard part

One determined person can make a significant difference; a small group of determined people can change the course of history.  ~ Sonia Johnson

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.  ~ Margaret Mead

No one can whistle a symphony.  It takes a whole orchestra to play it.  ~ H. E. Luccock

Gettin' good players is easy.  Gettin' em to play together is the hard part.  ~ Casey Stengel

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

Quotes about team work, life

- When did you act decisively?
- When did you work productively with a group of like minded  people?
- What future commitment might provide enrichment for yourself and others?

#969 We can only be alive when...

Appreciation is the vessel for future blessings.   ~Michael Berg

The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.  ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Life is not made up of minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, or years, but of moments. You must experience each one before you can appreciate it.  ~ Sarah Breathnach

All that we behold is full of blessings.  ~ William Wordsworth

We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.  ~ Thornton Wilder

Quotes about gratitude, appreciation

- What do you appreciate in your life?
- What special moments have you experienced recently?
-  Where can you show more outward gratitude/appreciation?

#968 The Final Test of Maturity

Courage is grace under pressure.  ~ Ernest Hemingway

Courage is a kind of salvation.  ~ Plato

Optimism is the foundation of courage.  ~ Nicholas Murray Butler

Courage is a peculiar kind of fear.  ~ Charles Kennedy

To live with fear and not be afraid is the final test of maturity.  ~ Edward Weeks

Quotes about courage, life

- When have you balanced courage with grace?
- How is showing courage a salvation?
- What is the antidote to fear?

#967 Bring your own sunshine

Dare to reach out your hand into the darkness to pull another hand into the light.  ~ Norman B. Rice

Wherever you go, no matter what the weather, always bring your own sunshine.  ~ Anthony J. D'Angelo

We cannot hold a torch to light another's path without brightening our own.  ~ Ben Sweetland

Quotes about light, life

- Where have you seen darkness?
- When have you brought light?
- Where can you bring light tomorrow?

#966 A form of exploration

Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced - even a proverb is not a proverb till your life has illustrated it.    ~John Keats

Experience is one thing you can't get for nothing.  ~ Oscar Wilde

How many things have to happen to you before something occurs to you?  ~ Robert Frost

The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.  ~ Henry Ford

In wisdom gathered over time I have found that every experience is a form of exploration.  ~ Ansel Adams

Quotes about experience, life

- What experiences do you remember from the school of 'hard knocks?'
- What positive experiences do you cherish?
- How have several of your experiences allowed you to grow as a person?

#965 Breaking the bridge

Forgiveness is not an occasional act, it is a constant attitude.   ~ Martin Luther King Jr.

People, even more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone.   ~Audrey Hepburn

The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.   ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Forgiveness is the fragrance the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.   ~Mark Twain

He who cannot forgive breaks the bridge over which he himself must pass.  ~George Herbert

Quotes about forgiveness, life

- To what extent do you practice forgiveness?
- Who has forgiven you?
- What bridges do you hope to cross?

#964 The things that make me

Every individual matters. Every individual has a role to play. Every individual makes a difference.   ~ Jane Goodall

I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions.   ~ Augusten Burroughs

You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.   ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

It's hard to be a diamond in a rhinestone world.   ~ Dolly Parton

The things that make me different are the things that make me.  ~ A. A. Milne

Quotes about individuality, life

- What role do you play?
- How do you make a difference?
-What good intentions do you have?
-What makes you different?

#963 Everything else is secondary

Winning is important to me, but what brings me real joy is the experience of being fully engaged in whatever I'm doing.  ~Phil Jackson

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.   ~ Steve Jobs

Paul and I, we never thought that we would make much money out of the thing. We just loved writing software.  ~Bill Gates

The secret of joy in work is contained in one word – excellence. To know how to do something well is to enjoy it.  ~Pearl S. Buck

Love what you do and do what you love. Don't listen to anyone else who tells you not to do it. You do what you want, what you love. Imagination should be the center of your life.   ~ Ray Bradbury

Quotes about doing what you love, life

- When were you fully engaged in something you love to do?
- To what extent are you following your heart?
- When have you accomplished something with excellence and imagination?

#962 While you're climbing

Whenever I draw a circle, I immediately want to step out of it.   ~Buckminster Fuller

One can choose to go back toward safety or forward toward growth. Growth must be chosen again and again; fear must be overcome again and again.  ~Abraham Maslow

If we're growing, we're always going to be out of out comfort zone.  ~ John Maxwell

A person grows most tired while standing still.  ~ Chinese proverb

Everyone wants to live on top of the mountain, but all the happiness and growth occurs while you're climbing it.  ~ Andy Rooney

Quotes about growth, learning, life

- What circles have you stepped out of?
- When have you experienced growth?
- What mountain are you climbing?

#961 Hold On

When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.  ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on.  ~ Henry Ellis

Hold on to what is good, even if it is a handful of earth. Hold on to what you believe, even if it is a tree which stands by itself. Hold on to what you must do, even if it is a long way from here. Hold on to life, even when it is easier letting go. Hold on to my hand, even when I have gone away from you.   ~Pueblo Blessing

Fall seven times, stand up eight.  ~ Japanese proverb

If the wind will not serve, take to the oars.  ~ Latin proverb

Quotes about holding on, hanging in there, life

 -When have you been at the end of your rope?
- What goodness in your life is vital to you?
- When have you shown resolve?
- Where do you need to use it now?

#960 In everything where power moves

You have noticed that everything an Indian does
is in a circle, and that is because the Power of the World always works in circles, and everything tries to be round..... The Sky is round, and I have heard
that the earth is round like a ball, and so are
all the stars. The wind, in its greatest power, whirls. Birds make their nest in circles, for
theirs is the same religion as ours....
Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing, and always come back again to where they were. The life of a man is a circle from
childhood to childhood, and so it is in
everything where power moves.  ~ Black Elk

To lovers of the wild, these mountains are not a hundred miles away.  Their spiritual power and the goodness of the sky make them near, as a circle of friends. ... You cannot feel yourself out of doors; plain, sky, and mountains ray beauty which you feel.  You bathe in these spirit-beams, turning round and round, as if warming at a camp-fire.  Presently you lose consciousness of your own separate existence: you blend with the landscape, and become part and parcel of nature. ~ John Muir

He drew a circle that shut me out -
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flaunt.
But love and I had the wit to win;
We drew a circle and took him in.  ~ Edward Markham

Quotes about circles, life

-When have you noticed the pervasiveness of circles?
-What do circles/cycles communicate to you?
-When have you expanded your circle?

#959 One link at a time

Destiny is not a matter of chance, but of choice. Not something to wish for, but to attain.    ~ William Jennings Bryan

No trumpets sound when the important decisions of our life are made. Destiny is made known silently.   ~ Agnes De Mille

It is a mistake to try to look too far ahead. The chain of destiny can only be grasped one link at a time. 
~ Sir Winston Churchill

It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves. 
~ Shakespeare

I don't know what your destiny will be, but one thing I do know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve. ~ Albert Schweitzer

Quotes about destiny, life

- What important decisions have you made recently?
- When have you found the opportunity to serve?

#958 From this inner desire

Always do right--this will gratify some and astonish the rest.  ~ Mark Twain

Initiative is doing the right thing without being told.  ~ Victor Hugo

Real integrity is doing the right thing, knowing that nobody's going to know whether you did it or not.  ~ Oprah Winfrey

Kindness is an inner desire that makes us want to do good things even if we do not get anything in return. It is the joy of our life to do them. When we do good things from this inner desire, there is kindness in everything we think, say, want and do.  ~ Emanuel Swedenborg

Quotes about doing right, life

- What motivates you to do the right thing?
- How can you enrich your inner potential for kindness?

#957 The most courageous decision

I have seen the sea when it is stormy and wild; when it is quiet and serene; when it is dark and moody. And in all its moods, I see myself.  ~ Martin Buxbaum

On a bad day, I have mood swings - but on a good day, I have the whole mood playground.  ~ Charles Rosenblum

The heart loves, but moods have no loyalty. Moods should be heard but never danced to.  ~ Hugh Prather

Life is a train of moods like a string of beads; and as we pass through them they prove to be many colored lenses, which paint the world their own hue, and each shows us only what lies in its own focus.  ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The most courageous decision you make each day is the decision to be in a good mood.  ~ Voltaire

Quotes about moods, life

- How positively do you consider the range of moods?
- How do you try to manage your moods?

#956 The ablest navigators

The bad news is time flies.
The good news is you're the pilot.  ~Michael Althsuler

Skillful pilots gain their reputation from storms and tempest.  ~ Epicurus

I fly because it releases my mind from the tyranny of things.  ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Flying dreams mean that you are doing the right thing with your life.  ~ Doug Coupland

The winds and sails are always on the side of the ablest navigators.  ~ Edward Gibbons

Quotes about pilots, navigating, life

-How skilful are you as a navigator?
-Where are you headed?
-What steps can you take to get there?

#955 A great language

But the eyes are blind. One must look with the heart.  ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery

The soul, fortunately, has an interpreter - often an unconscious but still a faithful interpreter - in the eye.  ~ Charlotte Bronte

The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God's eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love.  ~ Meister Eckhart

When pain brings you down, don't be silly, don't close your eyes and cry, you just might be in the best position to see the sun shine.  ~ Alanis Morissette

An animal's eyes have the power to speak a great language.  ~ Martin Buber

Quotes about eyes, life

- How much do you see with your eyes, with your heart?
- Amidst your pain, how much can you see the light?
- When have you experienced the power of an animal's eyes?

#954 The underline to almost every success

What is to give light must endure the burning.  ~Eleanor Roosevelt

This is no time for ease and comfort.
It is time to dare and endure.  ~Winston Churchill

A hero is an ordinary individual
who finds the strength to persevere
and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles.  ~Christopher Reeve

Nothing endures but change.  ~Heraclitus

The boldness of endurance is
the underline to almost every success.  ~Mary Anne Radmacher

Quotes about endurance, life

- What burning must you endure amidst the light you emanate?
- In what do you dare and persevere amidst the obstacles?

#953 Stood alone in the silence

Who has seen the wind?

Neither I nor you:

But when the leaves hang trembling,

The wind is passing through.

Who has seen the wind?

Neither you nor I:

But when the trees bow down their heads,

The wind is passing by.  ~ Christina Rossetti

And all about him was the wind now, a pervasive sighing trough great emptiness, as though the prairie itself was breathing in long gusting breaths, unhampered by the buildings of town, warm and living against his face and in his hair....

 

People were forever born; people forever died, and never were again. Fathers died and sons were born; the prairie was forever, with its wind whispering through the long, dead grasses, through the long and endless silence. Winter came and spring and fall, then summer and winter again; the sun rose and set again, and everything that was once -- was again -- forever and forever. But for man, the prairie whispered -- never -- never. For Brian's father -- never.... There were no catches of breath, simply tears as he stood alone in the silence that stretched from everlasting to everlasting  ~ W. O. Mitchell,  Who Has Seen the Wind

Quotes about wind, life

- What has the wind whispered to you?
- How did you feel with the death of a loved one?
-What permeated your thoughts?

#952 The dew of little things

What youth deemed crystal, Age finds out was dew.   ~ Robert Browning

Let your life lightly dance on the edges of Time like dew on the tip of a leaf.   ~Rabindranath Tagore

Dew-drops are the gems of morning, But the tears of mournful eve!  ~Samuel Taylor Coleridge

In the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures. For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.   ~Kahlil Gibran

Come, come, my conservative friend, wipe the dew off your spectacles, and see that the world is moving.  ~Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Quotes about dew, life 

- What beauty have you discovered with Age?
- What gems have you collected? What tears?
- What change and movement within the world might you ponder more closely?

#951 If we don't grow

All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.  ~ Anatole France

Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal.  ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

Change before you have to.  ~ Jack Welch

If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude.  ~ Maya Angelou

If we don't change, we don't grow. If we don't grow, we aren't really living.  ~ Gail Sheehy

Quotes about change, life

- What melancholic changes have you experienced?
- How willing are you to experience change?
- What change has allowed you to grow?

#950 Humor is truth

Humor is an affirmation of dignity, a declaration of man's superiority to all that befalls him. ~ Romain Gary

Humor and knowledge are the two great hopes of our culture. ~ Konrad Lorenz

The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself. ~ James Thurber

Humor is just another defence against the universe. ~ Mel Brooks

Humor is something that thrives between man's aspirations and his limitations. There is more logic in humor than in anything else. Because, you see, humor is truth. ~ Victor Borge

Jesters do oft prove prophets. ~ William Shakespeare, King Lear

And we should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Quotes about humor, life

- When have you experienced good humor?
- What truths have you gained from humor?
- When could you provide some humorous light?

#949 Improving yourself

Treat people as if they were what they should be, and you help them become what they are capable of becoming. ~ Goethe

The best advisers, helpers and friends, always are not those who tell us how to act in special cases, but who give us, out of themselves, the ardent spirit and desire to act right, and leave us then, even through many blunders, to find out what our own form of right action is. ~ Phillips Brooks

The healthy, the strong individual, is the one who asks for help when he needs it. Whether he has an abscess on his knee or in his soul. ~ Rona Barrett

The impersonal hand of government can never replace the helping hand of a neighbor. ~ Hubert H. Humphrey

You will find that the mere resolve not to be useless, and the honest desire to help other people, will, in the quickest and delicatest ways, improve yourself. ~ John Ruskin

Never help a child with a task at which he feels he can succeed. ~ Maria Montessori

Quotations on helping, life

- When have you treated someone in a tactful caring way?
- When have you asked for help?
- When have you been a helping hand?

#948 Trust to thy heart

We all need illusions.  That's why we love movies.  ~ Monica Bellucci

Official truths are often powerful illusions.  ~ John Pilger

I'm an idealist without illusions.  ~ John F. Kennedy

It is respectable to have no illusions, and safe, and honorable and dull.  ~ Joseph Conrad

Growing up is losing some illusions, in order to acquire others.  ~ Virginia Woolf

Therefore trust to thy heart, and to what the world calls illusions.  ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Quotes about illusions, life

Definition of illusion: a false idea or belief, a deceptive appearance or impression

- What heart felt illusions do you have?
- What mainstream ideas are illusions?
- How can believing some illusions be a good thing?

#947 The usable surface

There are three ways of dealing with difference: domination, compromise, and integration. By domination only one side gets what it wants; by compromise neither side gets what it wants; by integration we find a way by which both sides may get what they wish.  ~ Mary Parker Follett

If you just set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything at any time, and you would achieve nothing.  ~ Margaret Thatcher b.1925

Better bend than break.  ~ Scottish Proverb

A professional politician is a professionally dishonourable man. In order to get anywhere near high office he has to make so many compromises and submit to so many humiliations that he becomes indistinguishable from a streetwalker.  ~ H. L. Mencken

People talk about the middle of the road as though it were unacceptable. Actually, all human problems, excepting morals, come into the gray areas. Things are not all black and white. There have to be compromises. The middle of the road is all of the usable surface. The extremes, right and left, are in the gutters.  ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

Quotes about compromise, life

- When have you seen domination, compromise, and integration at work?
- How negatively or positively do you consider the concept of compromise?
- Where could you apply some compromise or integration?

#946 Word we have invented

If confusion is the first step to knowledge, I must be a genius.  ~ Larry Leissner

I used to go away for weeks in a state of confusion.  ~ Albert Einstein

Confusion is the welcome mat at the door of creativity.  ~ Michael J. Gelb

Anyone who isn't confused really doesn't understand the situation.  ~ Edward R. Murrow

Confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not understood.  ~ Henry Miller

Quotes about confusion, life

- What concepts/experiences have brought you considerable confusion?
- Why might confusion be an essential component in learning?
- What have you learned which arose out of some personal confusion?

#945 The noblest of fruits

Millions saw the apple fall, but Newton was the one who asked why.  ~Bernard M. Baruch

Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.   ~Martin Luther

Good apple pies are a considerable part of our domestic happiness.  ~Jane Austen

Surely the apple is the noblest of fruits.   ~Henry David Thoreau

 I like to stay hydrated with water throughout the day and snack on apples, but my guilty pleasure would definitely be a caramel macchiato from Starbucks!   ~ Janel Parrish

Quotes about apples, life

- How much do you enjoy apples?
- What is you metaphorical apple tree, something you plant no matter what?
- What do you wonder about?