happy new year

In the time we have it is surely our duty to do all the good we can to all the people we can in all the ways we can.
~William Barclay

fear

Fear is only a feeling and cannot hurt you. Be aware of this and then rise above yours.

aspirations

We are not simply defined by our individual histories - we are the collection of our individual aspirations. Wishes coming into the world through us.

friendship

One is taught by experience to put a premium on those few people who can appreciate you for what you are.
~Gail Godwin

smile more

Because of your smile, you make life more beautiful.
~Thich Nhat Hanh

friends

Life is partly what we make it, and partly what is made by the friends we choose.
~Tennessee Williams

joy

There are those that give with joy, and that joy is their reward.
~Kahlil Gibran

sincerity

Never regret anything you have done with a sincere affection; nothing is lost that is born of the heart.
~Basil Rathbone

what family is

Family... a group experience of love and support.
~Marianne Williamson

hope

Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.
~Shawshank Redemption (movie)

challenge

Opportunities to find deeper powers within ourselves come when life seems most challenging.
~Joseph Campbell

authenticity

The authentic self is the soul made visible.
~Sarah Ban Breathnach

change

The key to change... is to let go of fear.
~Rosanne Cash

learning

Always walk through life as if you have something new to learn and you will.
~Vernon Howard

attitude

The remarkable thing is we have a choice everyday regarding the attitude we will embrace for the day. I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it.
~Charles R. Swindoll

communication

When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but creatures of emotion.
~Dale Carnegie

art of living

All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on.
~Havelock Ellis

choice

Choosing to be positive and having a grateful attitude is going to determine how you're going to live your life.
~Joel Osteen

enjoy the day

Some people are making such thorough preparations for rainy days that they aren't enjoying today's sunshine.
~William Feather

share

There is no delight in owning anything unshared.
~Seneca

BIRTHDAY

Greet each day with your eyes open to beauty, your mind open to change, and your heart open to love.
~Paula Finn

day

There is no such thing in anyone's life as an unimportant day.
~Alexander Woollcott

live

Our concern must be to live while we're alive... to release our inner selves from spiritual death that comes with living behind a facade designed to conform to external definitions of who and what we are.
~Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

change

Recognize that change is necessary. Embrace it and be willing to surrender who you think you are for all that you could become.

love more

If you have love in your life it can make up for a great many things you lack. If you don't have it, no matter what else there is, it's not enough.
~Ann Landers

grateful

Courtesies of a small and trivial character are the ones which strike deepest in the grateful and appreciating heart.
~Henry Clay

death/life

Every man dies. Not every man really lives.
~William Ross Wallace

laugh

What soap is to the body, laughter is to the soul.
~Yiddish proverb

comfort

It may serve as a comfort to us, in all our calamities and afflictions, that he that loses anything and gets wisdom by it, is a gainer by the loss.
~L. Estrange

opinions

A person can't keep others from having a bad opinion about them, but can certainly keep them from being right about it.

trust

Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do.
~Benjamin Spock

together

It's often just enough to be with someone. I don't need to touch them. Not even talk. A feeling passes between you both. You're not alone.
~Marilyn Monroe

life

View life as a continuous learning experience.
~Denis Waitley

hug

Hug someone your appreciation.
~Violet Gartenlicht

people

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

love

Love one another and help others to rise to the higher levels, simply by pouring out love. Love is infectious and the greatest healing energy.
~Sai Baba

life

Weather is a great metaphor for life. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad - and there's nothing much you can do about it but carry an umbrella.
~Pepper Giardino

smile more

Every time you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing.
~Mother Teresa

blessings

Love and kindness are never wasted. They always make a difference. They bless the one that receives them, and they bless you, the giver.
~Barbara De Angelis

empathy

People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
~Bonnie Jean Wasmund

time

You can never plan the future by the past.
~Edmund Burke

suffering

I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches. If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers. To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness, and the willingness to remain vulnerable.
~Joseph Addison

attitude

What the caterpillar calls the end, the rest of the world calls a butterfly.
~Lao-tzu

darker sides

Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people.
~Carl Jung

adversity

Each difficult moment has the potential to open my eyes and open my heart.
~Myla Kabat-Zinn

beauty

Blessed are they who see beautiful things in humble places where other people see nothing.
~Camille Piassarro

approach

In a gentle way, you can shake the world.
~Mohandas Gandhi

trust

You must trust and believe in people or life becomes impossible.
~Anton Chekhov

love

Love is an act of faith, and whoever is of little faith is also of little love.
~Erich Fromm

life

Life is change. Growth is optional.

love

Love as much as you can. It may hurt but it is an avenue to growth.

generous

We must give more in order to get more. It is the generous giving of ourselves that produces the generous harvest.
~Orison Swett Marden

warmth

All the math and statistics in the world can't measure the warmth in a smile or a hug.

life

We are here to add what we can to life, not to get what we can from life.
~William Osler

what matters

Turns out not where but who you're with that really matters.
~Dave Matthews Band

life

It takes both rain and sunshine to make a rainbow.

laugh

The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.
~e.e. cummings

be happy

I believe that the very purpose of life is to be happy. From the very core of our being, we desire contentment. In my own limited experience I have found that the more we care for the happiness of others, the greater is our own sense of well-being.
~Dalai Lama

happiness

Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn, or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace and gratitude.
~Dennis Waitley

caring

Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.
~Leo Buscaglia

connecting

Any fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius-and a lot of courage- to move in the opposite direction.
~Albert Einstein

compassion

A good heart is better than all the heads in the world.
~Edward Bulwer-Lytton

friends

One of the blessings of true friends - that you can be stupid with them.

smile

A smile is understood in any language.

light in the world

We cannot hold a torch to another's path without brightening our own.
~Ben Sweetland

try

What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?
~Vincent van Gogh

self

We are not our history. We are our aspirations.
~James Hollis, PhD

paths

The doors we open and close each day decide the lives we live.
~Flora Whittemore

change

The great thing in the world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving.
~Oliver Wendell Holmes

life

There is more to life than increasing its speed.
~Gandhi

be where you are

Don't try so hard to jump ahead of yourself. Accept what is and be where you are.

growing up

Growing up means owning your vulnerability and learning to function in the face of it.
~James Hollis, PhD

consciousness

Consciousness is the last and latest developed of the organism, and consequently also the most unfinished and weakest part of it.
~Friedrich Nietzche

human heart

All of us. Until you hear the whole story, until you dig deeper, and listen... you know only a tiny part of the goodness of the human heart.
~Precious Ramotswe (#1 Ladies Detective Agency #10)

being human

A person is a person through other persons. It is a delicate network of interdependence. When you tear down another, you wind up tearing yourself down in the process.
~Desmond Tutu

friends

We all take different paths in life, but no matter where we go, we take a little of each other everywhere.
~Tim McGraw

change

If the climate changes on a global level, why can't people?
~Loesje

have fun

Live and work but do not forget to play, to have fun in life and really enjoy it.
~Eileen Caddy

life trials

Happiness is to be found along the way, not at the end of the road, for then the journey is over and it is too late. Today, this hour, this minute is the day, the hour, the minute for each of us to sense the fact that life is good, with all of its trials and troubles, and perhaps more interesting because of them.
~Robert R. Updegraff

future

As for the future, your task is not to foresee it, but to enable it.
~Antoine de Saint-Exupery

hope

We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope.
~Martin Luther King, Jr.

improvement

Those who improve with age embrace the power of personal growth and personal achievement and begin to replace youth with wisdom, innocence with understanding, and lack of purpose with self-actualization.
~Bo Bennett

give

There is a wonderful mythical law of nature that the three things we crave most in life -- happiness, freedom, and peace of mind -- are always attained by giving them to someone else.
~Peyton Conway March

solutions

The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.
~Albert Einstein

wisdom

In life, all good things come hard, but wisdom is the hardest to come by.
~Lucille Ball

conflict

You must show the world that you abhor fighting.
~Desmond Tutu

lessons

When things don't go 'your way' - remember not to lose the lesson in all of it. There may be something bigger going on that you don't see yet.

action

The central problem of our age is how to act decisively in the absence of certainty.
~Bertrand Russell

growth

As perpetual as life can be, some choose to remain stagnant.
~Nancy Davis

leading

The task of leadership is not to put greatness into people, but to elicit it, for the greatness is there already.
~John Buchan

inner conflicts

Fortunately analysis is not the only way to resolve inner conflicts. Life itself still remains a very effective therapist.
~Karen Horney

high standards

Let us be about setting high standards for life, love, creativity, and wisdom. Setting high standards makes every day and every decade worth looking forward to.
~Greg Anderson

life

Life must be understood backwards... but it must be lived forward.
~Soren Kierkegaard

help

Those who have suffered understand suffering and therefore extend their hand.
~Patti Smith

helping others

No matter what accomplishments you make, somebody helped you.
~Althea Gibson

love

Who doesn't long for someone to hold
Who knows how to love you without being told
~Natasha Bedingfield

achievement

Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.
~Helen Keller

friends

Friends are the sunshine of life.
~John Hay

friends

Friends are relatives you make for yourself.
~Eustache Deschamps

inward connection

The man who has no inner life is the slave of his surroundings.
~Henri Frederic Amiel

human life

...the only purpose grand enough for human life... is not just to love-but to persist in love.
Sue Monk Kidd (the secret life of bees)

besos

People who throw kisses are hopelessly lazy.
~Bob Hope

pain

Change involves challenging what is familiar to us and daring to question our traditional needs for safety, comfort, and control.
~Michael Singer (the untethered soul)

growth

It's never too late to become the person you might have been.
~George Elliot

trust yourself

Trust your own vision.

reflect

The best mirror is an old friend.
~George Herbert

life

What is to give light must endure burning.
~Viktor Frankl

character

Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live as well as think.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

risk

You drown not by falling into a river, but by staying submerged in it.
~Paulo Coelho

religion

Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair.
~Gilbert K. Chesterton

help

If you want to heal, heal others.
~Muriel Barbery

business

A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.
~Henry Ford

education

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

appreciation

Everyone wants to be appreciated, so if you appreciate someone, don't keep it a secret.
~Mary Kay Ash

see

It's not what you look at that matters, but what you see.
~Henry David Thoreau

mistakes

To avoid situations in which you might make mistakes may be the biggest mistake of all.
~Peter McWilliams

intention

I stand for freedom of expression, doing what you believe in, and going after your dreams.
~Madonna Ciccone

music

Music should be your escape.
~Missy Elliot

wisdom

It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: the music is nothing if the audience is deaf.
~Walter Lippmann

our nature

I am convinced that human nature is basically gentle, not aggressive. And every one of us has a responsibility to act as if all our thoughts, words, and deeds matter. For, really, they do. Our lives have both purpose and meaning.
~Dalai Lama

friends

Friendship is precious, not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life, and thanks to a benevolent arrangement the greater part of life is sunshine.
~Thomas Jefferson

change

When you're through changing, you're through.
~Bruce Barton

get outside!

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

hunger

There is more hunger for love and appreciation in this world than for bread.
~Mother Teresa

believe

Some things have to be believed to be seen.
~Frank Herbert

happy easter!

The great gift of Easter is hope.
~Basil C. Hume

love

A loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge.
~Thomas Carlyle

laugh more

Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less clean up to do afterward.
~Kurt Vonnegut

learn

All human beings should try to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why.
~James Thurber

friend

A friend is someone who helps you up when you're down, and if they can't, they lay down beside you and listen.

communication

Communication-- the human connection-- is the key to personal and career success.
~Paul J. Meyer

enjoy

I finally figured out the only reason to be alive is to enjoy it.
~Rita Mae Brown

hugs

Everyone needs a hug. It changes your metabolism.
~Leo Buscaglia

april fools

Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain but it takes character and self control to be understanding and forgiving.
~Dale Carnegie

education

Formal education will make you a living; self education will make you a fortune.
~Jim Rohn

age

Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.
~Mark Twain

offensive

Few people can see genius in someone who has offended them.
~Robertson Davies

faith

You block your dream when you allow your fear to grow bigger than your faith.
~Mary Manin Morrissey

spring

Spring unlocks the flowers to paint the laughing soil.
~Bishop Reginald Heber

greed

The everyday kindness of the back roads more than makes up for the acts of greed in the headlines.
~Charles Kuralt

insanity

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
~Albert Einstein

honesty

What is uttered from the heart alone,
will win the hearts of others to your own.
~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

laughter

Laughter is the closest distance between two people.
~Victor Borge

worries

As day turns into night,
keep your worries out of sight.
No matter how hard the world may seem,
you still deserve the sweetest dream.

dancing

There are short-cuts to happiness, and dancing is one of them.
Vicki Baum

friend

Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.
~Anais Nin

purpose

Each of us comes here for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to a divine purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: That we are here for the sake of others... for the countless unknown souls with whose fate we are connected to by a bond of sympathy.
~Albert Einstein

balance

Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.
~Albert Einstein

thoughts

What concerns me is not the way things are, but rather the way people think things are.
~Epictetus

music

I think music in itself is healing. It's an explosive expression of humanity. It is something we are all touched by. No matter what culture we're from, everyone loves music.
~Billy Joel

outside influence

Never allow anyone to rain on your parade and thus cast a pall of gloom and defeat on the entire day. Nothing external can have any power over you unless you permit it.
~Og Mandino

thoughts

From now on, I'll connect the dots my own way.
~Bill Watterson

peace within

We can never obtain peace in the outer world until we make peace with ourselves.
~Dalai Lama

happiness

The grand essentials of happiness are: something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.
~Allan K. Chalmers

risk

If we listened to our intellect, we'd never have a love affair. We'd never have a friendship. We'd never go into business, because we'd be too cynical. Well, that's nonsense. You've got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.
~Annie Dillard

fear

fear = false expectations appearing real
~Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor

flowers

Earth laughs in flowers.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

money

Money never made a man happy yet, nor will it. The more a man has, the more he wants. Instead of filling a vacuum, it makes one.
~Benjamin Franklin

who you are

To find yourself, think for yourself.
~Socrates

love

We are not held back by the love we didn't receive in the past, but by the love we're not extending in the present.
~Marianne Williamson

happy valentine's day!

cherish the magic that stirs in your heart

alive

Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.
~Howard Thurman

strong

I read somewhere ... how important it is in life not necessarily to be strong ... but to feel strong.
~Into the Wild (2007)

help

Never worry about numbers. Help one person at a time, and always start with the person nearest you.
~Mother Teresa

life

It's time to start living the life you've imagined.
~Henry James

struggle

And I hope someday you see - nobody has it easy...
~John Legend

fantasy

Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living. It's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of the telescope. Which is what I do, and that enables you to laugh at life's realities.
~Dr. Seuss

adversity

Adversity is another way to measure the greatness of individuals. I never had a crisis that didn't make me stronger.
~Lou Holtz

INAUGURATION 2009

There's not a liberal America and a conservative America - there's the United States of America.
~Barack Obama

life

The indispensable first step to getting the things you want out of life is this: decide what you want.
~Ben Stein

state of mind

The greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions and not our circumstances.
~Martha Washington

be who you are

Be who you are and say what you feel. Because those that matter... don't mind. And those that mind... don't matter.

courage

Courage is the power to let go of the familiar.
~Raymond Lindquist

blame

All blame is a waste of time. No matter how much fault you find with another, and regardless of how much you blame him, it will not change you.
~Wayne Dyer

mistakes

The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.
~Elbert Hubbard

capacity

If we did all the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.
~Thomas Edison

success

Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.
~Albert Schweitzer

cynical

A cynic is not merely one who reads bitter lessons from the past, he is one who is prematurely disappointed in the future.
~Sidney J. Harris

a new year

May this new year be filled with all things that lead to growth; warmth and compassion in relationships; strength to help those who ask for it and the openness to accept it in return.
~HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!