#1071 Melting into music

When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.

The sun shines not on us but in us.

The snow is melting into music.

The grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never dried all at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls.

Quotes by John Muir

- Where have you seen nature diminished?
- What can you do to preserve nature?
- How do you cultivate a love for nature to experience healing?

#1070 In the steps they trod

Wise people, even though all laws were abolished, would still lead the same life.

 Let each man exercise the art he knows.

 Open your mind before your mouth.

 By words the mind is winged.

 Why, I'd like nothing better than to achieve some bold adventure, worthy of our trip.

 Your lost friends are not dead, but gone before,
  Advanced a stage or two upon that road
  Which you must travel in the steps they trod.

Quotes by Aristophanes

- What are the vital principles for living?
- What skills motivate you?
- What bold adventures have you enjoyed?
- What deceased friends/family have inspired you?

#1069 Stand there shining

I do not understand the mystery of grace -- only that it meets us where we are and does not leave us where it found us.

Gratitude, not understanding, is the secret to joy and equanimity.

I don't want something special.  I want something beautifully plain.

Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor.

Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining.

 Quotes by Anne Lamott

- When have you experienced the mystery and power of grace?
- What have you valued as beautifully plain?
- To what extent have you tried to be a shining lighthouse?
- What gives you the power within?

#1068 Tell that voice

The power is in the balance: we are our injuries, as much as we are our successes.

To live is to change, to acquire words of a story, and that is the only celebration we mortals really know.

Small change, small wonders-  these are the currency of my endurance and ultimately of my life.

The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.

Stop a minute, right where you are  Relax your shoulders, shake your head and spine like a dog shaking off cold water. Tell that imperious voice in your head to be still...

Quotes by Barbara Kingsolver 

- How can you try to balance your injuries and successes?
- What small change and wonders are currently accompanying your life?
-What hope can you try to live within your life?

#1067 The secret of success

To be conscious that you are ignorant of the facts is a great step in knowledge.

How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct.

Novelty is an essential attribute of the beautiful.

The secret of success is constancy of purpose.

We are all born for love. It is the principle of existence, and its only end.

But what minutes! Count them by sensation, and not by calendars, and each moment is a day.

Most people die with their music still locked up inside them.

Quotes by Benjamin Disraeli 

- What topics are you quite ignorant about?
- How reluctant are you to be critical?
- What is your underlying, driving purpose in life?

#1066 Wiser today than yesterday

May you live every day of your life.

Books, the children of the brain.

Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.

Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.

You should never be ashamed to admit you have been wrong. It only proves you are wiser today than yesterday.

Quotes by Jonathan Swift

-How rich is your life on most days?
-How would you define an enriching life?
-Why are meager expectations a good thing?

#1065 The same necessity

A house that does not have one worn, comfy chair in it is soulless.

We have to dare to be ourselves, however frightening or strange that self may prove to be.

Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is richness of self.

Routine is not a prison, but the way to freedom from time.

The garden is growth and change and that means loss as well as constant new treasures to make up for a few disasters.

It always comes back to the same necessity: go deep enough and there is a bedrock of truth, however hard.

Quotes by May Sarton

- To what extent can you be yourself?
- How much do you enjoy solitude?
- How effective is Sarton's image of life as a garden?

#1064 Struggles to the light

Life is not a spectacle or a feast; it is a predicament.

Those who do not learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.

To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring.

Prejudice is a great time saver. It enables you to form opinions without bothering to get the facts.

Wisdom comes by disillusionment.

The world is not respectable; it is mortal, tormented, confused, deluded forever; but it is shot through with beauty, with love, with glints of courage and laughter; and in these, the spirit blooms timidly, and struggles to the light amid the thorns.

Quotes by George Santayana 

- In what sense is life a predicament?
- How diversified are your interests?
- What wisdom have you gained through disillusionment?

#1063 You are like fireworks

Smile, breathe and go slowly.

Breath is the bridge which connects life to consciousness, which unites your body to your thoughts.

Every path, every street in the world is your walking meditation path.

Be yourself. Life is precious as it is. All the elements for your happiness are already here. There is no need to run, strive, search or struggle. Just Be.

You are like fireworks. You go out into your children, your friends, your society, and the whole world.

Quotes by Thich Nhat Hanh

- How conscious are you of your breath and its power to relax and center you?
- To what extent can you meditate along the varied paths of your life?
- To what extent can you be yourself?
- What fireworks could accompany your life?

#1062 Your thinks be thanks

Life is a picnic on a precipice.

The older lives like not to be stood in rows or at right angles.

You owe it to us all to get on with what you're good at.

All that we are not stares back at what we are.

You shall love your crooked neighbour, with your crooked heart.

Let all your thinks be thanks.

Quotes by W. H. Auden

- What is so precarious about life?
- Why do seniors not like straight lines?
- Are you sharing what you're good at?
- How grateful are you?

# 1061 The secret of the ages

-so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.

- To refine, to clarify, to intensify that eternal moment in which we alone live there is but a single force the imagination.

- Mothlike in mists, scintillant in the minute brilliance of cloudless days, with broad bellying sails they glide to the wind tossing green water from their sharp prows while over them the crew crawls.

 -It is at the edge of a petal that love waits.

 -It is not what you say that matters but the manner in which you say it; there lies the secret of the ages.

Quotes by William Carlos Williams

- How do you interpret the poem of the red wheel barrow?
- What do you find beautiful about Williams' writing?
- Where do you find beauty around you?

#1060 The body electric

-Oh Me! Oh Life!  of the questions recurring,...

                                  Answer
That you are here - that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

 -Praised be the fathomless universe, for life and joy, and for objects and knowledge curious.

 -Behold I do not give lectures or a little charity, When I give I give myself.

 -I sing the body that is electric!  I celebrate the Self yet to be unveiled!

Quotes by Walt Whitman

- What questions about life recur for you?
- What verse may you contribute to life?
- When have you given of yourself?
- What has yet to be unveiled of yourself?

#1059 No sadder sight

I can teach anybody how to get what they want to get out of life.  The problem is that I can't find anybody who can tell me what they want. 

Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.

Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.

There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist.

Quotes by Mark Twain

- What do you want out of life?
- What do you think Twain's advice would be?
- What widely accepted issues may need some reconsideration?
- Do you pervade pessimism or optimism?

#1058 Put there a Spark

I cling to my imperfection, as the very essence of my being.

To accomplish great things one must not only act but also dream, not only dream but also believe.

Do not try to satisfy your vanity by teaching a great many things.  Awaken people's curiosity.  It is enough to open minds; do not overload them.  Put there just a spark.  If there is some good inflammable stuff, it will catch fire.

The Truth is that life is delicious, horrible, charming, frightful, sweet, bitter and that is everything.

I prefer the errors of enthusiasm to the indifference of wisdom.

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.

Quotes by Anatole France

- What are your imperfections?
- When have you been sparked by some skilful writing or speech?
- Could you add several more adjectives about what life is?

#1057 Remember your humanity

The hardest thing to learn in life is which bridge to cross and which to burn.

The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.

The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution.

It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly.

Remember your humanity and forget the rest.

Quotes by Bertrand Russell

- What is an important bridge for you to cross?
- What important problem needs a solution?
- How can you enrich your humanity?

#1056 Steps on the path

 In most of our human relationships, we spend much of our time reassuring one another that our costumes of identity are on straight.

We're all just walking each other home.

I would like my life to be a statement of love and compassion--and where it isn't, that's where my work lies.

Suffering is part of our training program for becoming wise.

The next message you need is always right where you are.

It is important to expect nothing, to take every experience, including the negative ones, as merely steps on the path, and to proceed.

Quotes by Ram Dass

- How can you be an encouragement for others?
-What message about life might you find today?
-How accepting are you of what life brings?

#1055 Dwell upon excellencies

Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.

What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to the soul.

A true critic ought to dwell rather upon excellencies than imperfections.

Cheerfulness keeps up a kind of daylight in the mind.

What sunshine is to flowers, smiles are to humanity. These are but trifles, to be sure; but, scattered along life's pathway, the good they do is inconceivable.

Our delight in any particular study, art, or science rises and improves in proportion to the application which we bestow upon it. Thus, what was at first an exercise becomes at length an entertainment.

Soon as the evening shades prevail,
The moon takes up the wondrous tale,
And nightly to the listening earth
Repeats the story of her birth.

Quotes by Joseph Addison

- To what extent have you defined a worthy purpose for your life?
- How has education enriched your life?
- What good can you spread in small ways?

#1054 An act of courage

As long as you live, keep learning how to live.

Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life.

Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power.

The point is, not how long you live, but how nobly you live.

He that does good to another does good also to himself.

To be everywhere is to be nowhere.

Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.

Quotes by Seneca

- What lessons have you learned about living?
- How will you live your life today?

#1053 Between receiving and giving

A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart.

What is uttered from the heart alone, Will win the hearts of others to your own.

The best that mankind ever knew:
Freedom and life are earned by those alone
Who conquer them each day anew.

The greatest evil that can befall man is that he should come to think ill of himself.

Few people have the imagination for reality.

Love does not dominate; it cultivates.

Human life runs its course in the metamorphosis between receiving and giving.

Quotes by Goethe

- What is your perception of the world?
- How readily do you share what is on your heart?
-Why does one need imagination to understand reality?
-How balanced is your receiving and giving?

#1052 The same question

In Paradise there are no stories, because there are no journeys. It's loss and regret and misery and yearning that drive the story forward, along its twisted road.

This above all, to refuse to be a victim.

If I waited for perfection, I would never write a word.

Potential has a shelf life.

What am I living for and what am I dying for are the same question.

Quotes by Margaret Atwood

- For what do you yearn?
- Where lies your potential?
- What question dominates your life?

#1051 Made of sunshine

Inject a few raisins of conversation into the tasteless dough of existence.

The true adventurer goes forth aimless and uncalculating to meet and greet unknown fate.

When one loves one's Art no service seems too hard.

He seemed to be made of sunshine and blood-red tissue and clear weather.

It ain't the roads we take; it's what's inside of us that makes us turn out the way we do.

Quotes by O. Henry

- What 'raisins' could you contribute today?
- What did you experience on a recent adventure?
- What 'Art' do you like to share?
- What is inside of you which helps to shape your path?

#1050 When will you begin?

Be a lamp, a lifeboat, a ladder. Help someone's soul heal. Walk out of your house like a shepherd.

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.

Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.
Live in silence.

Flow down and down in always
widening rings of being.

What in your life is calling you,
When all the noise is silenced,
The meetings adjourned...
The lists laid aside,
And the Wild Iris blooms
By itself
In the dark forest...
What still pulls on your soul?

Spirit, find your way, in seeking lowness like a stream.

And You? When will you begin that long journey into Yourself?

Quotes by Rumi

- To whom have you brought some healing?
- What hinders you from embracing love?
- How can you cultivate wider rings of being?

#1049 A why to live

When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves. 

Modern man has the means to live but often no meaning to live for.

What is to give light must endure burning.

Happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue.

Those who have a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how'.

Quotes by Viktor Frankl

-When did you feel discouraged in a situation?
-Where lies meaning in life?
- What intensity within has helped to create your light?
- What is your reason for life which has given you strength?

#1048 The longer I live

Get the habit of analysis - analysis will in time enable synthesis to become your habit of mind.

An idea is salvation by imagination.

I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.

I know the price of success: dedication, hard work, and an unremitting devotion to the things you want to see happen.

Regard it as just as desirable to build a chicken house as to build a cathedral.

The longer I live, the more beautiful life becomes.

Quotes by Frank Lloyd Wright

 - What syntheses have you reached as you observe and inquire about life?
-  To what extent is Nature part of your spiritual equation?
- In what have you been successful?

#1047 Always miracles

I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do.

The end is nothing; the road is all.

Men travel faster now, but I do not know if they go to better things.

That is happiness, to be dissolved into something complete and great.

There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in storm.

Where there is great love, there are always miracles.

Quotes by Willa Cather

- Which of the above quotes speak most to you?
- What is your perspective about happiness?
- When have you seen/experienced miracles?

#1046 The eternel condition of success

My advice to you is not to inquire why or whither, but just enjoy your ice cream while it's on your plate - that's my philosophy.

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

Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you.

If you write to impress it will always be bad, but if you write to express it will be good.

Providence has nothing good or high in store for one who does not resolutely aim at something high or good. A purpose is the eternal condition of success.

Quotes by Thornton Wilder

-What 'ice cream' are you enjoying?
-What treasures do you cherish in your heart?
-What is one of your central purposes for life?

#1045 A serviceable substitute

-Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.

-Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.

-The truth is rarely pure and never simple.

-Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.

-Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes.

-Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit.

Quotes by Oscar Wilde

- How much do you strive to be yourself?
- Where lies truth?
- What painful but valuable experience have you gained?