#1298 With new life

The principal mark of genius is not perfection but originality, the opening of new frontiers.  ~ Arthur Koestler

Originality is unexplored territory.  You get there by carrying a canoe- you can't take a taxi.  ~ Alan Alda

The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new and landscapes but in having new eyes.  ~ Marcel Proust

The merit of originality is not novelty; it is sincerity.  ~ Thomas Carlyle

Originality is doing what has been done countless times with new life, new breath.  ~ Marie Chapian

Quotes about originality

- Where have you enjoyed originality?
- What spark of sincerity and newness might you share?

#1297 The igniter

I would not waste my life in friction when it could be turned into momentum.  ~ Francis Willard

One way to keep momentum going is to have constantly greater goals.  ~ Michael Korda

Ride the energy of your own unique spirit.  ~ Gabrielle Roth

If you're coasting, you're either losing momentum or else you're headed downhill.  ~ Joan Welsh

If your position is everywhere, your momentum is zero.  ~ William Lipscomb

Commitment is the igniter of momentum.  ~ Peg Wood

Quotes about momentum 

- Where lies the potential for positive momentum in your life?
- How can you nurture it? 

#1296 Sundial in the shade

Everyone must row with the oars he has.  ~ English proverb

Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy.  ~ Norman Vincent Peale

Success is that old ABC - ability, breaks and courage.  ~ Charles Luckman

Natural abilities are like natural plants; they need pruning by study.  ~ Francis Bacon

Hide not your talents, they for use were made,
What's a sundial in the shade?  ~ Benjamin Franklin

Quotes about ability, talents

- What are several of your skills and interests?
- How might some extra training or study help to develop them?
- Where could you direct a skill to good use?

#1295 An ever-shifting kaleidoscope

Meditation is the ultimate mobile device; you can use it anywhere, anytime, unobtrusively.

The difference between misery and happiness depends on what we do with our attention.

We often get caught up in our own reactions and forget the vulnerability of the person in front of us.

Mindfulness isn't difficult, we just need to remember to do it.

Life is like an ever-shifting kaleidoscope-  a slight change, and all patterns alter.

Quotes by Sharon Salzberg

- How much do you know about meditation skills?
- How might some daily meditation enhance your life?

#1294 Not anything special

Without heroes, we are all plain people and don't know how far we can go.  ~ Bernard Malamud

How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes.  ~ Maya Angelou

We can't all be heroes because somebody has to sit on the curb and applaud when they go by.  ~ Will Rogers

My heroes are the ones who survived doing it wrong, who made mistakes, but recovered from them.  ~ Bono

My heroes don't have anything special.  They have something to tell other people but they don't know how, so they talk to themselves.  ~ Haruki Murakami

Quotes about heroes, recovery, inspiration

- What quiet, modest heroes have inspired you?
- What qualities in a person do you admire? 

#1293 Will come back to you

Laugh your heart out,
Dance in the rain,
Cherish each moment,
Ignore the pain;
Live, laugh, love,
Forgive and forget;
Life’s too short
To live with regrets!

Everyone wants to be happy,
Nobody wants pain;
But you can't have rainbows
Without any rain.

Be kin, be honest,
be loving, be true,
and all of these things
will come back to you.  ~ unknown authors

Lyrical sayings, quotes about life

- Which lines above speak to you at the moment?
- How can you enrich your life today?

#1292 Expanding what is possible

The easiest thing is to react. The second easiest is to respond. But the hardest thing is to initiate.  ~Seth Godin

You raze the old to raise the new.  ~ Justina Chen

The beginning is always today.  ~ Mary Shelley

There are as many worlds as there are kinds of days, and as an opal changes its colors and its fire to match the nature of a day, so do I.  ~ John Steinbeck

I want every day to be a fresh start on expanding what is possible.  ~ Oprah Winfrey

Quotes about fresh start, new beginnings

- Why is it so hard to initiate?
- What could you begin this week for personal growth?
- For growth at work or society?

#1291 The storm will pass

Hope for the best.  Expect the worst.  Life is a play.  We're unrehearsed.  ~ Mel Brooks

Whether it is the best of times or the worst of times, it is the only time we've got.   ~Art Buchwald

Keep a light, hopeful heart. But ­expect the worst.   ~Joyce Carol Oates

Never cut a tree down in the winter time.  Never make a negative decision in the low time.  Never make your most important decisions when you are in your worst moods.  Wait.  Be patient.  The storm will pass.  The spring will come.   ~ Robert H. Schuller

I am prepared for the worst, but hope for the best.  ~ Benjamin Disraeli

Quotes about worst

- What gives you hope?
- What are some of the speed bumps in life?
- How can you best be prepared?

#1290 What needs to be done

We spend most of our lives conjugating three verbs: to want, to have, and to do.  ~ Evelyn Underhill

What one does is what counts. Not what one had the intention of doing.  ~ Pablo Picasso

Success is the doing, not the getting; in the trying, not the triumph.  Success is a personal standard, reaching for the highest that is in us, becoming all that we can be.  If we do our best, we are a success. ~ Zig Ziglar

Success is doing ordinary things extraordinarily well.  ~ Jim Rohn

Not what I have but I do is my kingdom.  ~ Thomas Carlyle 

Things won are done; joy's soul lies in the doing.  ~ William Shakespeare

Doing what needs to be done may not make you happy, but it will make you great.  ~ George Bernard Shaw

Quotes about doing

- What needs doing in your life?
- What can you do very well?
- How can you develop and direct your skills?

#1289 If only in your heart

And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
They danced by the light of the moon.    ~Edward Lear

Kids: they dance before they learn there is anything that isn't music.   ~William Edgar Stafford

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

We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once.  ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

You can dance anywhere, even if only in your heart.  ~ author unknown

Quotes about dancing through life

- In what sense is life a dance?
- Where do you see it daily?
- How can you enrich your dance?

#1288 Let me embrace thee

Life should be embraced, not merely endured.  ~ Karen Chaffee

The remarkable thing is, we have a choice everyday regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day.  ~ Charles R. Swindoll

Manifest plainness, embrace simplicity, reduce selfishness, have few desires.  ~ Lao Tzu

Don't fear change; embrace it.  ~ Anthony J. D'Angelo

I wish every woman would love herself and embrace what she was given naturally.  ~ Queen Latifah

Let me embrace thee, sour adversity, for wise men say it is the wisest course.  ~ William Shakespeare

Quotes about embracing life

- To what extent are you embracing the fullness of life?
- Why is it wise to accept hardship?

#1287 The best of this

Life is a song...sing it.
Life is a game...play it.
Life is a challenge...meet it.
Life is a dream...realize it.
Life is a sacrifice...offer it.
Life is love...enjoy it.   ~ Sai Baba

If there is another world, he lives in bliss
If there is none, he made the best of this.  ~ Robert Burns

Quotes about life

- What steps can you take to enrich your life?

#1286 Up hill all the way

The first and best victory is to conquer self.   ~Plato

There are no short cuts to any place worth going.   ~Beverly Sills

The only discipline that lasts is self-discipline.    ~ Bum Phillips

Talent without discipline is like an octopus on roller skates. There's plenty of movement, but you never know if it's going to be forward, backwards, or sideways.    ~H. Jackson Brown Jr.

Except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power.    ~Rene Descartes

Does the road wind up-hill all the way?  Yes, to the very end.    ~Christina Rossetti

Quotes about self discipline

- What is best worth overcoming about yourself?
- What worth while project currently requires self discipline?
- Why is an up hill path a good thing?

#1285 Best worth doing

Our great business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.  ~ Thomas Carlyle

Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non essentials.  ~ Lin Yu Tang

If you continually ask yourself, "What's important now?", you won't waste time on the trivial.  ~ Lou Holtz

The most important work you and I will ever do will be within the walls of our own homes.  ~ Harold B. Lee

True wisdom is to know what is best worth knowing, and to do what is best worth doing.  ~ Edward Humphrey

Quotes about priorities

- What great business lies directly before you?
- What is best worth doing now?

#1284 Constant Kindness

The single biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place.  ~ George Bernard Shaw

We're all islands shouting lies to each other across seas of misunderstanding.  ~ Rudyard Kipling

It's dreadful what little things lead people to misunderstand each other.  ~ L. M. Montgomery

Is it so bad then to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood

Constant kindness can accomplish much.  As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate.  ~ Albert Schweitzer

Quotes about misunderstanding

- To what extent is some communication superficial?
- Where do you see evidence of it?
- How can you enrich the quality of your communication?

#1283 The best six doctors

To insure good health: eat lightly, breathe deeply, live moderately, cultivate cheerfulness, and maintain an interest in life.   ~William Londen

Natural forces within us are the true healers of disease.  ~ Hippocrates

To avoid sickness eat less; to prolong life worry less.  ~ Chu Hui Weng

Fresh air impoverishes the doctor.  ~ Danish proverb

The best six doctors anywhere
And no one can deny it
Are sunshine, water, rest, and air
Exercise and diet.
These six will gladly you attend
If only you are willing
Your mind they'll ease
Your will they'll mend
And charge you not a shilling.   ~ quoted in "The Health Club" in School Life, Vol. IV (January - June 1920)

Quotes about good health, healing

- The best doctors: sunshine, water, rest, air, exercise, and diet...moderation, cheerfulness, and interest in life?  What would you add?
- To what extent are you living up to the remedies?
-

#1282 Talent working with joy

Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.    ~Stephen King

A talent can be cultivated in tranquility; a character only in the rushing stream of life.  ~ Goethe

Discipline is the refining fire by which talent becomes ability.  ~ Roy L. Smith

One of the greatest talents of all is the talent to recognize and to develop talent in others.  ~ Frank Tyger

Your talent is God’s gift to you. What you do with it is your gift back to God.  ~ Leo Buscaglia

Talent for talent's sake is a bauble and a show. Talent working with joy in the cause of universal truth lifts the possessor to new power as a benefactor.  ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Quotes about talents

- What are several of your talents?
- To what talent could you apply some focused effort?
- How can you use one of your talents for social good?

#1281 Make the heart bigger

We owe it to each other to tell stories. ~ Neil Gaiman

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you. ~ Maya Angelou

If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten. ~ Rudyard Kipling

Stories are the only enchantment possible, for when we begin to see our suffering as a story, we are saved.  ~ Anais Nin

Stories can conquer fear; they can make the heart bigger.  ~ Ben Okri

Quotes about stories

- What story have you told recently?
- Why are stories important?
- How can you encourage and foster them?

#1280 Sometimes you weep

To survive the day is triumph enough for the walking wounded among the great many of us.  ~ Studs Terkel

Here bring your wounded hearts, here tell your anguish; Earth has no sorrow that Heaven cannot heal.  ~ Thomas More

In every community there is work to be done.  In every nation there are wounds to heal.  In every heart there is the power to do it.  ~ Marianne Williamson

The wound is the place where the light enters you.  ~ Rumi

Life is like an onion.  You peel it off one layer at a time, and sometimes you weep.  ~ Carl Sandburg

Quotes about wounds, healing, recovery

- When have you wept?
- What helps you to recover?
- Where can you show heart?

#1279 The beauty that remains

Look on every exit as being an entrance somewhere else.  ~ Tom Stoppard

Each moment is a place you've never been.  ~ Mark Strand

What is true by lamplight is not always true by sunlight.  ~ Joseph Joubert

If you look the right way, you can see that the whole world is a garden.  ~Frances Hodgson Burnett

I don’t think of all the misery but of the beauty that still remains.  ~Anne Frank

Quotes about perspective

- What current exit and entrance may await for you?
- What opportunity may result?
- How can you cultivate and enrich your garden of life?

#1278 Confident tomorrows

Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.  ~ Winston Churchill

Adopting the right attitude can convert a negative stress into a positive one.   ~ Hans Selye

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.  ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is your attitude, not your aptitude, that determines your altitude.  ~ Zig Ziglar

A man he seems of cheerful yesterdays
And confident tomorrows.  ~ William Wordsworth

Quotes about attitude 

- What several people often seem to have a positive attitude?
- Where could you improve your attitude?
- How can you cultivate this perspective?

#1277 The walls be build

Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.

Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment.

You cannot change your destination overnight. You can change your direction.

Either you run the day, or the day runs you.

Take care of your body; it's the only place you have to live.

The walls we build around us to keep sadness out also keep out the joy.

Quotes by Jim Rohn

- What motivates you?
- How disciplined are you?
- Where could you find more joy?

#1276 The most beautiful

The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy. (who rolled a rock up a mountain only to see it roll back down)  ~ Albert Camus

Don't feel entitled to anything you didn't sweat and struggle for. ~ Marian Wright Edelman

The fight is won or lost far away from witnesses - behind the lines, in the gym and out there on the road, long before I dance under those lights.  ~ Muhammad Ali

The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just.  ~ Abraham Lincoln

Life ought to be a struggle of desire toward adventures whose nobility will fertilize the soul.  ~ Rebecca West

We struggle with the complexities and avoid the simplicities.  ~ Norman Vincent Peale

One day the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.  ~ Sigmund Freud 

Quotes about struggle

- With what have you struggled?

- How do you feel about struggles? 

- What worthy cause is worth the struggle?

#1275 Make our souls blossom

Friendship with oneself is all important because without it one cannot be friends with anybody else in the world.  ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

Men kick friendship  around like a football, but it doesn't seem to crack.  Women treat it like glass and it goes to pieces.  ~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh

The best way to destroy an enemy is to  make a friend.  ~ Abraham Lincoln

A true friend stabs you in the front.  ~ Oscar Wilde

Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners  who make our souls blossom.  ~ Marcel Proust

But if the while I think of thee dear friend,
All losses are restored and sorrows end.  ~ William Shakespeare

Quotes about friendship

- How much do you love yourself first (without being narcissistic)?
- What friendship(s) could you cultivate a little more?
- How has a friend enriched your life?

#1274 True spiritual growth

Look at how a single candle can both defy and define the darkness.   ~ Anne Frank

Freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men’s minds which follows from the advance of science.   ~ Charles Darwin

History is not a burden on the memory but an illumination of the soul. ~ Lord Acton

When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness.  ~Alexis de Tocqueville

Nirvana or lasting enlightenment or true spiritual growth can be achieved only through persistent exercise of real love.  ~ M. Scott Peck

Quotes about illumination, enlightenment

- What light emanates from you?
- How does science and history help to illuminate our understanding?
- How have you grown spiritually?

#1273 See the light

We are each gifted in a unique and important way. It is our privilege and our adventure to discover our own special light.   ~Mary Dunbar




One is wise to cultivate the tree that bears fruit in our soul.  ~Henry David Thoreau




 As we work to create light for others, we naturally light our own way.    ~Mary Anne Radmacher

Love is not consolation; it is light.    ~Simone Weil

Light
Light
The invisible reminder of invisible light.    ~ T. S. Eliot

It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light.   ~Aristotle Onassis

To love beauty is to see the light.    ~Victor Hugo

Quotes about light

- What is one of your special gifts?
- How can you give expression to it?
- Upon what light should you focus?