Favorite Quotes

The following quotes have appeared over the years in Molly's The New Leaf ™

"The interpretation that makes you ardent and hopeful and active and reverent is the true one." Rumi

"I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody. " Bill Cosby

"You can never learn less. You can only learn more." Buckminster Fuller

"As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will get simpler." Henry David Thoreau

"You will never find time for anything. If you want time you must make it." Charles Buxton

"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle" Albert Einstein

"To this day God is the name by which I designate all things which cross my willful path violently and recklessly, all things which upset my subjective views, plans and intentions and change the course of my life for better or worse." C.G. Jung

"Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome." Samuel Johnson

"A friend is a loved one who awakens your life in order to free the wild possibilities within you." John O'Donohue, Anam Cara

"[S]tress may be as much a question of a compromise of values as it is a matter of external time pressure and fear of failure." Rachel Naomi Remen

"What always seems miraculous is when aesthetic necessities yield an insight which otherwise I would have missed." Susan Griffin, A Chorus of Stones.

"Since time out of mind, a considered act of heroism has been the cure for stultifying ambivalence." Clarissa Pinkola Estes

"The secret of success is nonattachment to results; doing your best at the moment and letting the results take care of themselves." J. Donald Waters

"As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler." Henry David Thoreau

"The body is a holy mystery." Cherie McCoy

"I haven't failed, I've found 10,000 ways that don't work." Benjamin Franklin

"Life is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be lived." Thomas Merton

"The best way out is always through." Robert Frost

"As conscious beings, attention is our most precious commodity." Richard Brodie, Virus of the Mind

"The work of art which I do not make, none other will ever make." Simone Weil

"Cherish that which is within you, and shut off that which is without; for much knowledge is a curse." Chuang-Tzu

"Without realizing it, the individual composes his life according to the laws of beauty, even in times of greatest distress." Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

"Good counselors lack no clients." Measure for Measure, William Shakespeare

"We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel is an essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are and may become." Ursula LeGuinn

"I cannot count the good people I know who to my mind would be even better if they bent their spirits to the study of their own hungers." M.F.K. Fisher

"Gratitude is present when you see that everything that occurs in your life can be used to show you how to live fully as a human being." Maria Nemeth

"The most fundamental tool of magic is the body." Vikki Noble

"Without making any moral judgements whatsoever, one can say that self-indulgence and excessive self-preoccupation are the antithesis of genuine awareness." Ronald Rolheiser

"A moral code does not suppress choice but educates and forms liberty." Thomas Merton

"How often I have found that we grow to maturity not by doing what we like, but by doing what we should. How true it is that not every *should* is a compulsion, and not every *like* is a high morality and true freedom." Karl Rahner

"Ultimately the measure of every human being is their capacity to awaken the love in themselves and to extend it to their fellow man." From "The Spiritual Tourist," by Mick Brown, paraphrasing Bede Griffiths, who wrote: "Ultimately a religion is tested by its capacity to awaken love in its followers, and, what is perhaps more difficult, to extend that love to all humanity."

"Where you stumble, there your treasure lies." Joseph Campbell

"We do not describe the world we see, but we see the world we describe." Joseph Jaworski

"[C]an a happiness that is absolutely free, costs nothing at all, has never been advertised in "Life," be genuine? It turns out to be the only kind that *is* genuine!" Thomas Merton, "Confessions of a Guilty Bystander"

"Only one kind of person transforms the world spiritually, someone with a grateful heart." Ronald Rolheiser, "The Holy Longing"

"We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give." Sir Winston Churchill

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

"Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one." Malcolm S. Forbes

"It was built against the will of the immortal gods, and so it did not last for long." Homer

"Happiness consists more in small conveniences or pleasures that occur every day than in great pieces of good fortune that happen but seldom." Benjamin Franklin

Keep the Channel
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"There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how valuable it is, nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open." Martha Graham, quoted by biographer Agnes de Mille in "Martha: The Life and Work of Martha Graham"

"The minute you settle for less than you deserve, you get even less than you settled for." Maureen Dowd

"To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else." Emily Dickinson

"Real learning comes about when the competitive spirit has ceased." J. Krishnamurti

"Comparison, a great teacher once told me, is the cardinal sin of modern life. It traps us in a game that we can't win. Once we define ourselves in terms of others, we lose the freedom to shape our own lives." Jim Collins, author, lecturer, and entrepreneur

"Live as if you were to die tomorrow; learn as if you were to live forever." Ghandi

"Let the questions be the curriculum." Socrates (the original coach?)

"Teachers open the door, but you must enter for yourself." Chinese proverb

"Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself." Leo Tolstoy

"Happiness consists more in small conveniences or pleasures that occur every day than in great pieces of good fortune that happen but seldom." Benjamin Franklin

"The significant situations we face can not be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them." Albert Einstein

"From error to error, one discovers the entire truth." Sigmund Freud

"If you ask me what I came to do in this world, I, an artist, I will answer you: "I am here to live out loud." - Emile Zola

"Do not feel trapped by the facts of your history. Your history is not some set of sacred facts. History is an interpretation, and your history is yours to interpret. To know the history and then reinterpret it gives you additional depth." Harriet Rubin

"You don't get to control any outcome, only every choice you make along the way." Stephen C. Paul

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

"Only the person who risks is truly free." Leo Buscaglia

"I do not live to play, but I play in order that I may live, and return with greater zest to the labors of life." Plato

"What is a vision? It is a compelling image of an achievable future." Laura Berman Fortgang

"Motivation is when your dreams put on work clothes." Ben Franklin

"I have missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions, I was entrusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed." Michael Jordan

"You can never learn less. You can only learn more." R. Buckminster Fuller

"As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will get simpler." Henry David Thoreau

The Physics of Happiness

1. Life in the open air.
2. Love for another being.
3. Freedom from ambition.
4. Creation.

Albert Camus, "The Four Conditions of Happiness"

"A healer is someone who can see the movement toward wholeness in you more clearly than you can see it in yourself." Paraphrased from Kitchen Table Wisdom, Rachel Naomi Remen.

The church says: The body is a sin.
Science says: The body is a machine.
Advertising says: The body is a business.
The Body says: I am a fiesta.
Eduardo Galeano