"I am finally beginning to learn how to paint."

(Attributed to Titian -- Tiziano Vecelli, 1485?-1576 -- at age 90, as quoted by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, January 30, 2009, at Davos)

"All this pain can't stop my believing,
And all this joy can't stop my grieving..."

~ Graham Shaw ("Drunk Again", 'Raw Shaw')

"The great man is he who does not lose his child's heart."

-- Mencius (371-291 B.C.)

"Further in, grandmother; grandfather, hold my hand,
as I go on through this life and try to understand.
The beauty of your faces I will never see again,
but I know you're with me now, leading me further in."

~ Greg Brown

"Many people believe that support is something that you give to someone you feel sorry for or that it means propping up someone who would fail unless you were there to give him a boost. But that's not the way I see it. Support is the boost you can give someone who can help himself but who needs a partner to open a window or push aside a roadblock."

-- Dave Thomas, founder of Wendy's

"If you're going through Hell...keep going."

~ Winston Churchill

"The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but progress."

-- Joseph Joubert (1754-1824) French Philosopher

"Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance."

~ Confucius

"I believe that one can never leave home. I believe that one carries the shadows, the dreams, the fears and dragons of home under one’s skin, at the extreme corners of ones eyes and possibly in the gristle of the earlobe."

Maya Angelou

"I am a prisoner of hope."

~ Archbishop Desmond Tutu

"Children need models rather than critics."

-- Joseph Joubert (1754-1824) French Philosopher

"He taught me that one's worth as an individual lies only in your action."
~ Fali Balsara, about Mahatma Gandhi

"Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier."

- Mother Teresa

"Let the good in me
connect with the good
in others,
until all the world
is transformed through
the compelling power
of love."

-Rebbe Nachman of Breslov

"The first virtue of all really great men is that they are sincere.
They eradicate hypocrisy from their hearts."

-- Anatole France

"I don't like work... but I like what is in work -- the chance to find yourself. Your own reality -- for yourself, not for others -- which no other man can ever know."

-- Joseph Conrad

"Taken on the whole, I would believe that Gandhi's views were the most enlightened of all the political men in our time."
~ Albert Einstein

"The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man perfected without trials."

-- Chinese proverb

"The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time."

-- Jack London

"Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that, behind all the discernible concatenations, there remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable."
~ Albert Einstein

"Every man has an obscure respect for courage in others, especially if it is moral courage, the rarest and most difficult sort of bravery...It makes the very brute understand that this man is more than a man."

-- Passage from Life of Christ

"The virtues which keep this world sweet and the faithfulness which keeps it steadfast are chiefly those of the average man."

-- W. Russell Bowie

"Whoever makes love grow boundless, and sets his mind for seeing the end of birth, his fetters are worn thin. If he loves even a single being, Good will follow. But the Noble One with compassionate heart for all mankind, generates abounding good".
- Buddha

"I believe with all my heart that civilization has produced nothing finer than a man or woman who thinks and practices true tolerance."

-- Frank Knox

"Failure is the opportunity to begin again more intelligently."

-- Henry Ford (1863-1947)

"Every man stamps his value on himself... man is made great or small by his own will."

-- J.C.F. von Schiller

"Enjoyment is not a goal, it is a feeling that accompanies important ongoing activity."

-- Paul Goodman

"Poverty is the worst form of violence."
~ Ghandi

"The important thing is this: to be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become."

-- Charles Du Bos

"Nature shows us only the tail of the lion. But I do not doubt that the lion belongs to it even though he cannot at once reveal himself because of his enormous size."

~Albert Einstein

"Enthusiasm is the best protection in any situation. Wholeheartedness is contagious. Give yourself, if you wish to get others."

-- David Seabury

"Everything in life has meaning. The bigger the fall, the greater the lesson."
~ Oprah Winfrey

“Have nothing in your home that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful."
-William Morris (1834-96)

"All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree..."
~ Albert Einstein

"Pa, he always said a man had to look spry for himself, because nobody else would do it for him; your opportunities didn't come knocking around, you had to hunt them up and hog-tie them."

-- Louis L'Amour, author

"Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are."
~ John Wooden ~

"There are no short cuts to any place worth going."

-- Beverly Sills

"In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing… the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is to do nothing."
by Eleanor Roosevelt

"Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair." - Kahlil Gibran -

"Don’t be cool.Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort."

~ from Bruce Mau Design's "Incomplete Manifesto"

"If I have ever made any valuable discoveries, it has been owing more
to patient attention than to any other talent."

-- Isaac Newton (1642-1727)

"Men are respectable only as they respect."

~Ralph Waldo Emerson
1803-1882

"If you have some respect for people as they are, you can be more effective in helping them to become better than they are."

John W. Gardner
1912-, American Educator, Social Activist

"I respect orders but I respect myself too and I do not obey to foolish rules made especially to humiliate me."

Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980)

"I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity."

~Albert Einstein

"The only tyrant I accept in this world is the still small voice within me."

Mahatma Gandhi

"Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution."

~Albert Einstein

"Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence.

Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent.

Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education alone will not; the word is full of educated derelicts.

Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent."

~ Calvin Coolidge

"The theory says a lot, but does not really bring us any closer to the secret of the Old One. I, at any rate, am convinced that He does not throw dice."

~ Albert Einstein

"...the hill has not yet lifted its face to heaven that perseverance will not gain the summit of at last."

-- Charles Dickens (1812-1870)

"Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death."

-- Thomas Paine (1737-1809)

"Failure is only postponed success as long as courage "coaches" ambition. The habit of persistence is the habit of victory."

-- Herbert Kaufman

"Courage to start and willingness to keep everlasting at it are the requisites for success."

-- Alonzo Newton Benn

"There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside of you."
~ (Maya Angelou)

"I have always been delighted at the prospect of a new day, a fresh try, one more start, with perhaps a bit of magic waiting somewhere behind the morning."

-- J.B. Priestly (1894-1984)

"Listen to your hopes instead of your fears."
~ Michelle Obama

"All high achievers plan their work and work their plan, for they are keenly aware that "luck" is most often being prepared to take advantage of a situation."

-- Unknown

"Perseverance is a great element of success. If you only knock long enough at the gate, you are sure to wake up somebody."

-- Longfellow

"One thing I have learned in a long life: All our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike - and yet it is the most precious thing we have."

~ Albert Einstein

"People prefer to believe what they prefer to be true."
-Sir Francis Bacon

"Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts."
~ Albert Einstein

"No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong."
~ Albert Einstein

"Laws alone can not secure freedom of expression; in order that every man present his views without penalty there must be spirit of tolerance in the entire population."

~ Albert Einstein

"Originality and the feeling of one's own dignity are achieved only through work and struggle."

-- Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881) Russian Novelist

Worth repeating...

"The hero is the one who kindles a great light in the world, who sets up blazing torches in the dark streets of life for men to see by. The saint is the man who walks through the dark paths of the world, himself a light."

~ Felix Adler

"It is harder to crack a prejudice than an atom."

~ Albert Einstein

"He who finds diamonds must grapple in mud and mire because diamonds are not found in polished stones. They are made."

-- Henry B. Wilson

"If I give you a pfennig, you will be one pfennig richer and I'll be one pfennig poorer. But if I give you an idea, you will have a new idea, but I shall still have it, too."

~ Albert Einstein

"If A is a success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut."
~ Albert Einstein

People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them.

-- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"Nature does not bestow virtue; to be good is an art."

-- Seneca

A smooth sea never made a skilled mariner.

-- English proverb

"If you think you're outclassed, you are,
You've got to think high to rise.
You've got to be sure of yourself,
Before you can win the prize."

(Author unknown)

"The nearest way to glory -- a short cut, as it were -- is to strive to be what you wish to be thought to be - quoted in Cicero, 44 BC."
-- Socrates (469-399 BC)

"A man should never be ashamed to own that he has been in the wrong, which is but saying that he is wiser today than he was yesterday."

-- Alexander Pope (1688-1744) English Poet

"Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile."
~ Albert Einstein

"Assume a virtue, if you have it not."

~ William Shakespeare

"We frail humans are at one time capable of the greatest good and, at the same time, capable of the greatest evil. Change will only come about when each of us takes up the daily struggle ourselves to be more forgiving, compassionate, loving, and above all joyful in the knowledge that, by some miracle of grace, we can change as those around us can change too."
~ Mairead Maguire

"One only sees well with the heart."

Antoine de Saint-Exupery, in "the Little Prince"

"Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy."

Albert Einstein

"What ought one to say then as each hardship comes? I was practising for this, I was training for this."

-- Epictetus (55-135 AD) Greek Philosopher

“There are those …who enter the world in

such poverty that they are deprived of both

the means and the motivation to improve

their lot. Unless they can be touched with

the spark which ignites the spirit of

individual enterprise and determination,

they will only sink back into renewed

apathy, degradation and despair. It is for

us, who are more fortunate, to provide that

spark.”

(Aga Khan, India 1983)

"The vision that you glorify in your mind, the ideal that you enthrone in your heart - this you will build your life by, and this you will become."

-- James Lane Allen (1849-1925)

A person starts to live when he can live outside himself.

~ Albert Einstein

"An inconvenience is an unrecognized opportunity."

~ Confucious


"More of me comes out when I improvise."

~ Edward Hopper

"We have thrown away the most valuable asset we had -- the individual's right to oppose both flag and country when he believed them to be in the wrong.

We have thrown it away; and with it, all that was really respectable about that grotesque and laughable word, Patriotism."

~ Howard Zinn

"Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind."

Albert Einstein

“The purpose of human life is to serve and to show compassion and the will to help others.”

~ Albert Schweitzer

"Dominate yourself, or someone else will."

Robert Genn

"My life flows when I'm in my art."

(Jean De Muzio)

"I've seen extreme bravery from the least likely of people. Life is about the moments when it's all gone wrong. That's when we define ourselves."

-- Bear Grylls

"The smallest good deed is better than the grandest good intention."

-- Duguet

"I am convinced that the world is not a mere bog in which men and women trample themselves and die. Something magnificent is taking place here amidst the cruelties and tragedies, and the supreme challenge to intelligence is that of making the noblest and best inour curious heritage prevail."

-- C.A. Beard

"Any fool can know. The point is to understand."

~ Albert Eienstein

"A person starts to live when he can live outside himself."
~ Albert Einstein

“The Further I go, the sorrier I am about how little I know: it is this that bothers me the most.”

(Claude Monet)

Goethe: "Boldness has genius, power and magic. Engage, and the mind grows heated. Begin, and the work will be completed."

"It is good to dream, but it is better to dream and work. Faith is mighty, but action with faith is mightier."

-- Thomas Robert Gaines

"How difficult it is to be simple."
(Vincent van Gogh)

"Brevity is the sister of talent."
(Anton Chekhov)

"Less is more."
(Robert Browning)

thanks Robert Genn!

"Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away."
~ Elvis Presley

" Maturity is achieved when a person postpones immediate pleasures for long-term values."

-- Joshua L. Liebman