#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?