Favorite Quotes

I have been compiling this list offline for a little while and thought I would post them here as well.  Quotes of things that resonate with me at one time or another. I hope you find them useful and/or enjoyable.

Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement.

~ Golda Meir

With everything that has happened to you, you can either feel sorry for yourself or treat what has happened as a gift. Everything is either an opportunity to grow or an obstacle to keep you from growing. You get to choose.

~ Dr. Wayne Dyer

You are never too old to set another goal or dream a new dream.

~ C.S. Lewis

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

~ Eleanor Roosevelt.

Don’t worry about failures, worry about the chances you miss when you don’t even try.

~ Jack Canfield

I am always doing things I can’t do; that’s how I get to do them.

~ Pablo Picasso

Persistence is probably the single most common quality of high achievers. They simply refuse to give up. The longer you hang in there, the greater the chance that something will happen in your favor. No matter how hard it seems, the longer you persist the more likely your success.

~ Jack Canfield

Speak well of yourself. Thank yourself for not being perfect. And remind yourself daily that you are completely and utterly worthy of all the wonderful and fulfilling things that life offers. Receive them and enjoy.

~ Derek O’Neill

When you step into your greatness, you finally feel the lightness of flight, rather than the burden of the weight of diminishing your brilliance.

~ Dr. Lissa Rankin

Take chances, make mistakes. That’s how you grow. Pain nourishes your courage. You have to fail in order to practice being brave.

~ Mary Tyler Moore

In a controversy the instant we feel anger we have already ceased striving  for the truth, and have begun striving for ourselves.

~ Buddha

Difficulty need not foreshadow despair or defeat.

~ William Hastie

Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.

~ Buddha

I don’t live in either my past or my future. I’m interested only in the present. If you can concentrate always on the present, you’ll be a happy man. Life will be a party for you, a grand festival; because life is the moment we’re living now.

~ Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

Hysteria is impossible without an audience. Panicking by yourself is the same as laughing alone in an empty room. You feel really silly.

~ Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters

Do not chase people. Be you and do your own thing and work hard. The right people who belong in your life will come to you, and stay.

~ Wu Tang

You’re braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.

~ A.A. Milne

You must do the thing you think you cannot do.

~ Eleanor Roosevelt

Holding on to anger, resentment and hurt only gives you tense muscles, a headache and a sore jaw from clenching your teeth. Forgiveness gives you back the laughter and the lightness in your life.

~ Joan Lunden

Once you accept the fact that you’re not perfect, then you develop some confidence. 

~Rosalynn Carter

Become a possibilitarian. No matter how dark things seem to be or actually are, raise your sights and see possibilities — always see them, for they’re always there. 

~ Norman Vincent Peale

Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

If you only walk on sunny days you’ll never reach your destination.

~ Paulo Coelho

All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think we become.

~Buddha

If you hear a voice within you say “you cannot paint,” then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.

~ Vincent Van Gogh

Al pasar por un periodo difícil recuerda: Aunque hayas perdido grandes batallas, has sobrevivido y estás aquí. Eso es una victoria. Demuestra tu alegría y celebra tu capacidad para seguir adelante.

~ Paulo Coelho

Do not judge me by my successes, judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again.
~ Nelson Mandela

I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re doing something.

~ Neil Gaiman

Every day, think as you wake up, today I am fortunate to have woken up. I am alive. I have a precious human life, I am not going to waste it, I am going to use all my energies to develop myself, to expand my heart out to others, to achieve enlightenment for all beings, I am going to have kind thoughts towards others. I am not going to get angry, or think badly about others. I am going to benefit others as much as I can.

~ Dalai Lama

The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

When you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced. Live your life so that when you die, the world cries and you rejoice.

~ Cherokee wisdom

Always go with the choice that scares you the most, because that’s the one that is going to require the most from you.

~ Caroline Myss

If you want to change the results you get in the future, you must change how you respond to events in your life…starting today.

~ Jack Canfield

If someone tells you that you cannot do something and you believe it, they are right. 

~ Carol Burnett

What lies before us and what lies behind us are small matters compared to what lies within us.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

All of us are caged birds, have been and will be again.  When we have enough courage to come out….it’s amazing.

~ Maya Angelou

We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.

~ Ernest Hemingway

And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.

~ Sylvia Plath

Cuando deseas una cosa, todo el universo conspira para que puedas realizarla.

~ Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

Go into the arts. I’m not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.

~ Kurt Vonnegut

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people are so full of doubts.

~ Bertrand Russell