Food For Thought

One hour of life, crowded to the full with glorious action, and filled with noble risks, is worth whole years of those mean observances of paltry decorum, in which men steal through existence, like sluggish waters through a marsh, without either honour or observation. - Sir Walter Scott

The strongest and most effective force in guaranteeing the long-term maintenance of power is not violence in all the forms deployed by the dominant to control the dominated, but consent in all the forms in which the dominated acquiesce in their own domination. - Robert Frost

Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habits. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny. - Frank Outlaw

Despair - Quotes

Consider how the desperate fight; despair strikes wild, but often fatal too – and in the mad encounter wins success. - William Havard

Despair ... is like forward children, who, when you take away one of their playthings, throw the rest into the fire for madness; it grows angry with itself, turns its own executioner, and revenges its misfortunes on its own head. - Pierre Charron

Despair doubles our strength. - English Proverb

Despair gives courage to a coward. - English Proverb

Despair has its own calms. - Bram Stoker

Despair is good. Despair can be the nadir of one life and the starting point of an ascent into another, better one. - Dean Koontz

Despair is only for those who see the end beyond all doubt. We do not. - J. R. R. Tolkien

Despair is the price one pays for self-awareness. Look deeply into life, and you'll always find despair. - Irvin D. Yalom

Despair is typical of those who do not understand the causes of evil, see no way out, and are incapable of struggle. - Vladimir Lenin

Despair is vinegar from the wine of hope. - Austin O’Malley

Despair snuffs the sun from the firmament. - Amos Bronson Alcott

Desperation is energized despair. - Dean Koontz

He who has never hoped can never despair. - George Bernard Shaw

In the belly of Leviathan ... one can either despair and perish, or be cheerful and persevere. - Dean Koontz

There’s only one great evil in the world today. Despair. - Evelyn Waugh

We should never despair, our Situation before has been unpromising and has changed for the better, so I trust, it will again. If new difficulties arise, we must only put forth New Exertions and proportion our Efforts to the exigency of the times. - George Washington

What burning agony of the soul, what direful convulsions of the brain attend despair, when every hope seems gone, and when every throb of the heart is a death-stroke; when the fibre of every nerve is charged with piercing, searching, and writhing tortures, and the intensity of life is upon us; here it is where the unfaltering energy of great minds fails not, but boldly wrestles with it. - Acton

What we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope. - George Eliot

When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. - Moandas Gandhi

10 Bets You'll Never Lose

Have some fun with your friends and family members. 
Copy and paste the link if clicking on it doesn't work.

http://www.wimp.com/neverlose/ 

Life

“Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is symbolic as well as actual beauty in the migration of the birds, the ebb and flow of the tides, the folded bud ready for spring. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature – the assurance that dawn comes after night and spring after winter.”

“It is extremely important not to have one’s life all blocked out, not to have the days and weeks totally organised. It is essential to leave gaps and interludes for spontaneous action, for it is often in spontaneity and surprise that we open ourselves to the unlimited opportunities and new areas brought into our lives by chance. It is often in consequence of these very moments that our life paths take their most interesting turnings.”

Destiny - Quotes

A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it. - Jean de La Bruyere 

Accept whatever comes to you woven in the pattern of your destiny, for what could more aptly fit your needs? - Marcus Aurelius

All that is called Destiny or Fate is none other than the result of our thoughtlessness and our mistrust of ourselves; we should know that all that is created on earth is created by its sole Master and Labourer – Man. - Maxim Gorky

An individual's destiny belongs to him in much the same way as the ground, which fetters him by its gravity, but without which walking would be impossible. We must accept our destiny as we accept the ground on which we stand--a ground which is the springboard for our freedom. - Viktor Emil Frankl

As we blossom or awaken, we begin to notice there is a force in the world that seems to be operating and leading us into a certain destiny. And it's very much a kind of detective effort on our own part to figure out what these things mean. The synchronicity is essentially a meaningful coincidence that brings us information at just the right time. While leading us forward, it also feels very inspiring and destined in a way. It feels like we're on a path of unfolding in our own personal evolution. - James Redfield

Betimes I have heard people bewail the fact that our destinies are shrouded in mystery; I think, though, that it is a blessing of sorts. Surely if we knew what bitterness fate held in store, we would shrink back in fear and let the cup of life pass us untasted. - Jacqueline Carey

Change your perception and you change your destiny.  - Takudzwa Mash

Creativity itself doesn’t care at all about results – the only thing it craves is the process. Learn to love the process and let whatever happens next happen, without fussing too much about it. Work like a monk, or a mule, or some other representative metaphor for diligence. Love the work. Destiny will do what it wants with you, regardless. - Elizabeth Gilbert

Destiny ... a word which means more than we can find any definitions for. It is a word which can have no meaning in a mechanical universe: if that which is wound up must run down, what destiny is there in that? Destiny is not necessitarianism, and it is not caprice: it is something essentially meaningful. Each man has his destiny, though some men are undoubtedly "men of destiny" in a sense in which most men are not. - T. S. Eliot

Destiny guides us towards a specific goal, but without our wilful participation we will not achieve our destiny. - Lee Bladon

Destiny is a journey. Therefore, it is essential for anyone who wants to reach his or her planned destination to stay on course. Detouring can cause a trip that is only meant to take a day turn into a trip that takes weeks... The only way you can travel into your destiny is to release yourself of other routes that cause lengthy detours, taking you back to the beginning and sometimes to dead end streets. - Kristi Luv Wilson

Destiny is a wonderful little outline on how everything will work out, but free will can rewrite the outline as things come to pass. It's like the highway system, the road is already laid out for you, but there are numerous interchanges, off-ramps, and forks you can take; the road is set, the final destination isn't. - Cris Allan Pace

Destiny is not a strange power which determines what shall happen to me. It is myself as given, formed by nature, history, and myself. My destiny is the basis of my freedom; my freedom participates in shaping my destiny. - Paul Tillich

Destiny is not preordained. Destiny is ordained totally by you. Every single moment of your NOW existence is the result of your previous thought. The idea that everything is already laid out for you in advance is a hallucination. You can and do manifest your own destiny. - Wayne W. Dyer

Destiny is not the path given to us, but the path we choose for ourselves. - Megamind

Destiny is not the same as fate. The word refers not to anything terrible or even to anything inevitable, in the usual sense of the word, but to the temporal and free unfolding of a person's essential being. A destiny is a spiritual drama. - Gregory Wolfe

Destiny is real. And she’s not mild-mannered. She will come around and hit you in the face and knock you over and before you know what hit you, you’re naked- stripped of everything you thought you knew and everything you thought you didn’t know – and there you are! A bloody nose, bruises all over you, and naked. And it’s the most beautiful thing. - C. JoyBell C.

Destiny is something we make for ourselves. - Kouga Gennosuke

Destiny is the course of events which is followed by those who are content to go with the tide. - Arthur Edward Waite

Destiny isn't a matter of chance, but of choice, and what you choose to accept will eventually become yours. - Katia Winter

Destiny leads the willing, but drags the unwilling. - American Proverb

Destiny is not a matter of chance; it is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for; it is a thing to be achieved. Choice, not chance, determines destiny. - William Jennings Bryan

Destiny is the invention of the cowardly, and the resigned. It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in us. - Unknown

Destiny waits alike for the free man as well as for him enslaved by another’s might. - Aeschylus

Destiny will show when it's time. - Eric Harvey

Destiny, while marching ever in our direction, can be re-routed by the choices we make, by the love we hold onto, and the promises we keep. - Mohinder Suresh

Destiny's powerful hand has made the bed of my future, and it's up to me to lie in it. - Unknown

Each of us suffers his own destiny. - Vergil

Every day brings forth a new destiny. - Edward Counsel

Every destiny is honourable. But it is a pity if you don't know your placement in life. The hardest work so far in life is to be able to locate your place where you belong here on earth. The fingers are placed in the hands; the toes are placed on the legs; the nose is placed in the head. Locate your placement in life. - Harrison Enudi

Every man has his own destiny; the only imperative is to follow it, to accept it, no matter where it leads him. - Henry Miller

For Destiny never swerves, nor yields to men the helm. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

I am master of my own destiny, and I can make my life anything that I wish it to be. - Roger McDonald

I believe it’s our decisions, not the conditions of our lives, that determine our destiny. - Tony Robbins

I want to do the right thing, but often I don't know just what the right thing is. Every day I know I have come short of what I would like to have done. Yet as the years pass and I see the very world itself, with its oceans and mountains and plains, as something unfinished, a peculiar little satisfaction hunts out the corners of my heart. Sunsets and evening shadows find me regretful at task's undone, but sleep and the dawn and the air of the morning touch me with freshening hopes. Strange things blow in through my window on the wings of the night wind and I don't worry about my destiny. - Carl Sandburg

I'm a man who believes in destiny. But it's a destiny of your own choosing. Just because a trail leads one way doesn't mean you can't cut your own path. - Fraser

If there is one thing I've learned, it's when destiny calls, you answer the phone! - Hiro Nakamura

If we would see the colour of our future, we must look for it in our present; if we would gaze on the star of our destiny, we must look for it in our hearts. - Canon Farrar

If you employed study, thinking, and planning time daily, you could develop and use the power that can change the course of your destiny. - W. Clement Stone

In the end, we are all the sum total of our actions. Thus also, day by day, we write our own destiny; for inexorable ... we become what we do. - Unknown

It is in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped. - Tony Robbins

It is man's destiny to ponder on the riddle of existence. - C.F. Kettering

It just has to be. In time. In place. In spirit. It just has to be. - David Levithan

Know that it's your decisions, and not your conditions, that determine your destiny. - Anthony Robbins

Look in the mirror for the agent of your destiny. Whether we fail or succeed shall be no man’s doing but our own. - Unknown

Lots of folks confuse bad management with destiny. - Kin Hubbard

Man's destiny was to conquer and rule the world, and this is what he's done – almost. He hasn't quite made it, and it looks as though this may be his undoing. The problem is that man's conquest of the world has itself devastated the world. And in spite of all the mastery we've attained, we don't have enough mastery to stop devastating the world - or to repair the devastation we've already wrought. We've poured our poisons into the world as though it were a bottomless pit - and we go on gobbling them up. It's hard to imaging how the world could survive another century of this abuse, but nobody's really doing anything about it. It's a problem our children will have to solve, or their children. - Daniel Quinn

Many people believe that destiny is a specific outcome or place of achievement when it is very much about your total processing. In other words, destiny is not just about your "get there" but it is also about your "go through". - Howard L. Bass

Many people don't think much about their destiny, and may even be intimidated by the term, mistakenly believing that something as grand as "destiny" is reserved for historical figures, spiritual leaders, and famous people. I firmly believe that every one of us has a destiny, and to discover what it is, we have to connect with what makes us feel the most vibrant and joyful. - Peggy McColl

Men speak of blind destiny, a thing without scheme or purpose. But what sort of destiny is that? Each act in this world from which there can be no turning back has before it another, and it another yet. In a vast endless net. Men imagine that the choices before them are theirs to make. But we are free to act only upon what is given. Choice is lost in the maze of generations and each act in the maze is itself an enslavement for it voids every alternative and binds one ever more tightly into the constraints that make a life. - Cormac McCarthy

No love, no friendship can cross the path of our destiny without leaving some mark on it forever. - Francois Muriac 

No one's born with their destiny stamped on their forehead ... we make the choices to fulfil our destiny. - Naomi Judd

No trumpets sound when the important decisions of our life are made. Destiny is made known silently. - Agnes de Mille

Often the steps we take to avoid destiny lead us to it. - Jonathan Aibel & Glenn Berger

Only by joy and sorrow does a person know anything about themselves and their destiny. They learn what to do and what to avoid. - Goethe

Our destiny can be examined, but it cannot be justified or totally explained. We are simply here. - Iris Murdoch

Our destiny changes with our thought; we shall become what we wish to become, do what we wish to do, when our habitual thought corresponds with our desire. - Orison S. Marden

Serendipity. Look for something, find something else, and realize that what you’ve found is more suited to your needs than what you thought you were looking for. - Lawrence Block

Sometimes, we can't outrun our destiny. - Clark Kent

Sow a character and you reap a destiny. - James Allen

Stand up, be bold. Take the whole responsibility on your shoulder and know that you are the creator of your destiny. All the strength you want is within yourself. Therefore make your own future. - Vivekananda

The efforts which we make to escape from our destiny only serve to lead us into it. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

The real test of a man is not how well he plays the role he has invented for himself, but how well he plays the role that destiny assigned to him. - Jan Patocka

There is a destiny that makes us brothers: none goes his way alone; all that we send into the lives of others comes back into our own. - Edwin Markham

Thoughts lead on to purposes; purposes go forth in action; actions form habits; habits decide character; and character fixes our destiny. - Tryon Edwards

To accomplish our destiny, it is not enough to merely guard prudently against road accidents. We must also cover before nightfall the distance assigned to each of us. - Dr. Alexis Carrel

To be always on the move, learning, discovering, unfolding, is your eternal destiny. Living is life's only purpose … To live without self-concern. - Nisargadatta Maharaj

We are all, at our cores, the sum of our fears. To embrace destiny, we must, inevitably, face those fears and conquer them. Whether they come from the familiar... or the unknown. - Mohinder Suresh

We are face to face with our destiny and we must meet it with a high and resolute courage. For us it is the life of action, of strenuous performance of duty; let us live in the harness, striving mightily; let us rather run the risk of wearing out than rusting out. - Theodore Roosevelt

We are not permitted to choose the frame of our destiny. But what we put into it is ours. - Dag Hammarskjold

We can’t become anything we want to be. We come into this world with a specific, personal destiny. We have a job to do, a calling to enact, a self to become. We are who are from the cradle, and we’re stuck with it. Our job in this lifetime is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it. If we are born to paint, it’s our job to become a painter. If we are born to raise and nurture children, it’s our job to become a mother. If we were born to overthrow the order of ignorance and injustice in the world, it’s our job to realize it and get down to business. - Steven Pressfield

We cannot always explain our destiny by referring to our moral worth; we may be cursed and blessed without justice behind either. Not everything which happens to us occurs with reference to something about us. - Seneca

We fail to see that we can control our own destiny; make ourselves do whatever is possible; make ourselves become whatever we long to be. - Orison Swett Marden

We're all here to do what we're all here to do. - The Oracle

With his unique destiny each man stands, so to speak, alone in the entire cosmos. His destiny will not recur. No one else has the same potentialities as he, nor will he himself be given them again. The opportunities that come his way for the actualization of creative or experiential values, the tribulations which are destined to come his way – which he cannot alter and must therefore endure and in the enduring of them actualize attitudinal values – all these are unique and singular. - Viktor Emil Frankl

You do not choose your destiny. It chooses you. And those who knew you before Fate took you by the hand cannot understand the depth of the changes inside. - Mohinder Suresh

You must have control of the authorship of your own destiny. The pen that writes your life story must be held in your own hand. - Irene C. Kassorla

Quote Worthy

The most difficult thing in the world is to know how to do a thing and to watch somebody else doing it wrong, without comment. - Theodore H. White

The things that I can’t have I want, And what I have seems second-rate, The things I want to do I can’t, And what I have to do I hate. - Don Marquis

A believer is a bird in a cage, a free-thinker is an eagle parting the clouds with tireless wings. - Robert Ingersoll

Happiness is not a reward – it is a consequence. Suffering is not a punishment – it is a result. - Robert Ingersoll

In everything the middle course is best: all things in excess bring trouble to men. - Titus Maccius Plautus

Whenever we’re afraid, its because we don’t know enough. If we understood enough, we would never be afraid. - Earl Nightingale

Losing a game is heartbreaking. Losing your sense of excellence or worth is a tragedy. - Joe Paterno

Avoid the crowd. Do your own thinking independently. Be the chess player, not the chess piece. - Ralph Charell

Chuang Tzu - Quotes

Thus, those who say they would have right without its correlate, wrong; or good government without its correlate, misrule, do not apprehend the great principles of the universe, nor the nature of all creation. - Chuang Tzu

If water derives lucidity from stillness, how much more the faculties of the mind! The mind of the sage, being in repose, becomes the mirror of the universe, the speculum of all creation. - Chuang Tzu

  

Look at this window: it is nothing but a hole in the wall, but because of it the whole room is full of light. So when the faculties are empty, the heart is full of light. - Chuang Tzu

I dreamed I was a butterfly, flitting around in the sky; then I awoke. Now I wonder: Am I a man who dreamt of being a butterfly, or am I a butterfly dreaming that I am a man? - Chuang Tzu

We cling to our own point of view, as though everything depended on it. Yet our opinions have no permanence; like autumn and winter, they gradually pass away. - Chuang Tzu

Those who seek to satisfy the mind of man by hampering it with ceremonies and music and affecting charity and devotion have lost their original nature.

Flow with whatever may happen and let your mind be free. Stay centered by accepting whatever you are doing. This is the ultimate. - Chuang Tzu

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

Food For Thought

Just as treasures are uncovered from the earth, so virtue appears from good deeds, and wisdom appears from a pure and peaceful mind. To walk safely through the maze of human life, one needs the light of wisdom and the guidance of virtue. - The Buddha

If a civil word or two will render a man happy, he must be a wretch, indeed who will not give them to him. Such a disposition is like lighting another man’s candle by one’s own, which loses none of its brilliancy by what the other gains. - William Penn

Just as we may learn from our successes (how to do it) so also can we learn from our mistakes (how not to do it). It just isn’t in the cards that anybody should get by forever without making mistakes and perhaps sometimes making costly ones. - Norman Vincent Peale

Vote Democratic

              Two opposing county chairman were sharing a rare moment together. The Democratic chairman said, “I never pass up a chance to promote the party. For example, whenever I take a cab, I give the driver a sizeable tip and say, ‘Vote Democratic.’”

              His opponent said, “I have a better scheme, and it doesn’t cost me a nickel. I don’t give any tip at all. And when I leave, I also say, ‘Vote Democratic.’”

Life

"Many of us leave home convinced we are going to conquer the world. We are anxious to shuck off the restraints of family and traditions, to cut our own swath and make our own rules. We know we can do it better, make it faster and see it all. Somewhere along the way we learn we did not know quite as much as we thought. Our ideas were not as new as we took them to be. Suddenly the ‘quaint’ homespun wisdom that once was rejected takes on new life. The first trip home after such an awakening is a return to reality." 

"We get bored with being children, are in a rush to grow up, and then long to be children again. We lose our health to make money and then lose our money to restore our health. By thinking anxiously about the future, we forget the present, such that we live neither for the present nor the future. We live as if we will never die, and we die as if we had never lived."