Friends

One who is comfortable with his own company has found a friend for life. - Vincent Thnay 

Along life’s road I found a friend who brought me joys untold – a happiness to fill my heart more valuable than gold.

Do not forget a friend who truly loves you, as it could be that friend who is true to your needs. 

Forsake not an old friend; for the new is not comparable to him: a new friend is as new wine; when it is old, thou shalt drink it with pleasure. 

When it hurts to look back, and you are scared to look ahead, you can look beside you and your best friend will be there.

Most people walk in and out of your life, but friends leave footprints in your heart.

The friend who holds your hand and says the wrong thing is made of dearer stuff than the one who stays away. 

If all my friends were to jump off a bridge, I would not jump with them, I would be at the bottom to catch them.

Among the great and glorious gift that we are blessed with, it is the gift of understanding that we find in loving and true friends. 

The friends who are really worth having are those who will listen to your deepest hurts, and feel they are theirs too. 

There is only one thing better than making a new friend, and that is keeping an old one. 

Real friends inspire and push each other to be the best that they can be, rather than drag each other down. 

Friends gently teach you, how to give and how to care, and true friends warmly reach out to you anytime, anywhere. 

The walls may crumble, the pictures may fade, but we’ll never forget the friends we’ve made. 

Proverbs

Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy; wealthy and wise. - Benjamin Franklin

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

A dwarf standing on the shoulders of a giant may see farther than a giant himself. - Robert Burton

None so blind as those that will not see; None so deaf as those that will not hear. - Matthew Henry

The distance is nothing; it is only the first step that is difficult. - Madame Du Deffand

The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese. - Jon Hammond

A spoonful of honey will catch more flies than a gallon of vinegar. - Benjamin Franklin

None are so empty as those who are full of themselves. - Benjamin Whichcote

The greatest masterpieces were once only pigments on a palette. - Henry S. Hoskins

You’ll never miss the water ’til the well runs dry. - Alabamian W. C. Handy

It’s better to be a lion for a day than a sheep all your life. - Elizabeth Kenny 

He that has a great nose, thinks everybody is speaking of it. - Thomas Fuller

It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees! - Emiliano Zapata 

A crust eaten in peace is better than a banquet partaken in anxiety. - Aesop

Meditation

              In meditation, one returns to one’s breath.

              So you see your thinking arising and you just let it go. You don’t push it away, you don’t prevent it; you don’t hold it, you return to your breath. Return to your breathing. Then over time, you get to see that your thinking has no substance. Good thinking, bad thinking, has no substance. Then it can’t control you. - Venerable Hyon Gak

Above all, it is not necessary that we should have any unexpected, extraordinary experiences in meditation. This can happen, but if it does not, it is not a sign that the meditation period has been useless. Not only at the beginning, but repeatedly, there will be times when we feel a great spiritual dryness and apathy, an aversion, even an inability to meditate. We dare not be balked by such experiences. Above all, we must not allow them to keep us from adhering to our meditation period with great patience and fidelity. It is, therefore, not good for us to take too seriously the many untoward experiences we have with ourselves in meditation. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Meditation is not a way of making your mind quiet. It's a way of entering into the quiet that's already there – buried under the 50,000 thoughts the average person thinks every day. - Deepak Chopra

The real glory of meditation lies not in any method but in its continual living experience of presence, in its bliss, clarity, peace, and most important of all, complete absence of grasping. The diminishing of grasping in yourself is a sign that you are becoming freer of yourself. And the more you experience this freedom, the clearer the sign that the ego and the hopes and fears that keep it alive are dissolving, and the closer you will come to the infinitely generous "wisdom of egolessness." When you live in the wisdom home, you'll no longer find a barrier between "I" and "you," "this" and "that," "inside" and "outside;" you'll have come, finally, to your true home, the state of non-duality. - Sogyal Rinpoche

All too often people come to meditation in the hope of extraordinary results, like visions, lights, or some supernatural miracle. When no such thing occurs, they feel extremely disappointed. But the real miracle of meditation is more ordinary and much more useful. - Sogyal Rinpoche

{While meditating} I sit quietly and rest in the nature of mind; I don't question or doubt whether I am in the "correct" state or not. There is no effort, only rich understanding, wakefulness, and unshakable certainty. When I am in the nature of mind, the ordinary mind is no longer there. There is no need to sustain or confirm a sense of being: I simply am. - Sogyal Rinpoche 

Suffering occurs when people are enslaved by their thoughts. Meditation teaches one to let them go like one’s breath. - Venerable Hyon Gak

Food For Thought

You should not come to any hasty decision regarding any matter when you are in a bad mood or when provoked by someone; not even when you are in a good mood influenced by emotion, because at such a time the state of your mind is emotional and any decision of conclusion reached during such period would be a matter you could one day much regret. Allow your mind to calm down first and think over it, then your judgment will be an unbiased one. - K. Sri Dhammananda 

To be willing to test a new idea; to be able to live on the edge of difference in all matters intellectually; to examine without heat the burning question of the day; to have imaginative sympathy, openness and flexibility of mind, steadiness and poise of feeling, cool calmness of judgment, is to have culture. - A. H. R. Fairchild

A man’s work is in danger of deteriorating when he thinks he has found the one best formula for doing it. If he thinks that, he is likely to feel that all he needs is merely to go on repeating himself … so long as a person is searching for better ways of doing his work, he is fairly safe. - Eugene O'Neill

Inspirational Talk

How’s this for an inspirational talk? Brilliant kid.

Boy gives an inspirational speech after learning to ride a bike.

http://www.wimp.com/boyspeech/

Happiness

Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action. - Benjamin Disraeli 

It is neither wealth nor splendour, but tranquillity and occupation, which give happiness. - Thomas Jefferson 

Training the mind is the key to achieving lasting peace and happiness. - The Dalai Lama 

Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so. - John Stuart Mill

Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be. - Abraham Lincoln 

A great obstacle to happiness is to expect too much happiness. - Bernard de Fontenelle

Happy is the man who has broken the chains which hurt the mind, and has given up worrying, once and for all. - Ovid 

Happiness, it is said, is seldom found by those who seek it, and never by those who seek it for themselves. - F. Emerson Andrews

Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking. - Marcus Aurelius

If your happiness depends on what somebody else does, I guess you do have a problem. - Richard Bach

The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness. - Eric Hoffer

The habit of being happy enables one to be freed, or largely freed, from the domination of outward conditions. - Robert Luis Stevenson

The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance, the wise grows it under his feet. - James Oppenheim 

Remember happiness doesn’t depend upon who you are or what you have; it depends solely on what you think. - Dale Carnegie

The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things. - Epictetus

Love

It doesn’t matter who you love or how you love but that you love. - Rod McKuen

Loving others is understanding how they think and how they feel about themselves and the world they live in. - Leo Buscaglia

One of the surest expressions of love is the sharing of thoughts and feelings. - Leo Buscaglia

Love does not make the world go ‘round’. Love is what makes the ride worthwhile. - Franklin P. Jones

If you love someone, set them free. If they come back they’re yours; if they don’t, they never were. - Richard Bach

To love is to admire with the heart; to admire is to love with the mind. - Theophile Gautier

In love the paradox occurs that two beings become one and yet remain two. - Erich Fromm 

Age does not protect you from love. But love, to some extent, protects you from age. - Jeanne Moreau

Eventually you will come to understand that love heals everything, and love is all there is. - Gary Zukav 

All love shifts and changes. I don’t know if you can be wholeheartedly in love all the time. - Julie Andrews

Immature love says: ‘I love you because I need you’. Mature love says ‘I need you because I love you’. - Erich Fromm

It is with true love as it is with ghosts; everyone talks about it, but few have seen it. - Duc de La Rochefoucauld

Do you love me because I'm beautiful, or am I beautiful because you love me? - Oscar Hammerstein Ii 

We wasted time looking for a perfect lover, instead of creating the perfect love. - Tom Robbins

Trivia

Some Trivia for you. However, I can't guarantee the accuracy of all the points. :-)

Because of the speed at which Earth moves around the Sun, it is impossible for a solar eclipse to last more than 7 minutes and 58 seconds.

The song Auld Lang Syne is sung at the stroke of midnight in almost every English-speaking country in the world to bring in the new year. 

It takes glass one million years to decompose, which means it never wears out and can be recycled an infinite amount of times! 

To make half a kilo of honey, bees must collect nectar from over 2 million individual flowers.

Gold is the only metal that doesn't rust, even if it's buried in the ground for thousands of years.

Astronauts can't belch - there is no gravity to separate liquid from gas in their stomachs.

The Mona Lisa has no eyebrows. In the Renaissance era, it was fashion to shave them off!

Peanut oil is used for cooking in submarines because it doesn't smoke unless it's heated above 450°F

The banana cannot reproduce itself. It can be propagated only by the hand of man.

Albert Einstein was offered the presidency of Israel in 1952, but he declined.

Drinking water after eating reduces the acid in your mouth by 61 percent. 

Your tongue is the only muscle in your body that is attached at only one end.

Oak trees do not produce acorns until they are fifty (50) years of age or older.

No piece of paper can be folded in half more than seven (7) times.

Google is actually the common name for a number with a million zeros

Zero is the only number that cannot be represented by Roman numerals

A duck’s quack doesn’t echo, and no one knows why.

Thinking - Quotes

A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. - William James

As long as you are going to think anyway, you might as well think big. - Unknown

Don’t think too much. You will create a problem that wasn’t even there in the first place. - Unknown

Everything hangs on one’s thinking. - Seneca

 
He can who thinks he can, and he can’t who thinks he can’t. This is an inexorable, indisputable law. - Orison Swett Marden

I think; therefore I am. - Rene Descartes

If you make people think they’re thinking, they’ll love you; But if you really make them think, they’ll hate you. - Don Marquis

If you think too long, you think wrong. - Unknown

Knowing how to think empowers you far beyond those who know only what to think. - Neil Degrasse Tyson

Let no man imagine that he has no influence. Whoever he may be, and wherever he may be placed, the man who thinks becomes a light and a power. - Henry George

Most people can’t think, most of the remainder won’t think, the small fraction who do think mostly can’t do it very well. - Robert Heinlein

Never be afraid to sit awhile and think. - Lorraine Hansberry

Never discourage thinking, for you are sure to succeed. - Russell Bertrand

No man can think clearly when his fists are clenched. - George Jean Nathan

Nothing pains some people more than having to think. - Martin Luther King Jr.

Positive thinking does not always grant you positive results. Right thinking always does. - Unknown

Positive thinking will let you do everything better than negative thinking will. - Zig Ziglar

Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours. - John Locke

Sometimes you got to quit thinking so much. If it feels right, it probably is. So just go with it. - Unknown

The simple reason for thinking long-term is because you expect to be living here long. - Unknown 

There are very real obstacles and challenges to any course of action. And there’s no need to add to them, by making up obstacles of your own. Unchain yourself from the bondage of your own thinking. - Ralph Marston

Think above trivial things. Focus your attention on big objectives. Before getting involved in a petty matter, ask yourself “Is it really important?” - David. J. Schwartz 

Think as you work, for in the final analysis, your worth to your company comes not only in solving problems, but also in anticipating them. - Tom Lehrer

Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too. - Voltaire

Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people. - William Butler Yeats

Think wrongly, if you please, but in all cases think for yourself.
- Doris Lessing

Thinking big expands your perspective of your ability to succeed in life. - Unknown

Thinking makes the man. A man is literally what he thinks. - Unknown

Thinking: The talking of the soul with itself. - Plato

To think creatively, we must be able to look afresh at what we normally take for granted. - Unknown

To think too long about doing a thing often becomes its undoing. - Eva Young

What you think means more than anything else in your life. More than what you earn, more than where you live, more than your social position, and more than what anyone else may think about you. - George Adams

You are what you think, not what you think you are. - Unknown

You have to think anyway, so why not think big? - Donald Trump

You may chain my hands, you may shackle my feet; you may even throw me into a dark prison; but you shall not enslave my thinking, because it is free. - Kahlil Gibran

Jokes

The Police Are Here

1st thief : Oh ! The police are here. Quick, jump out of the window.

2nd thief : But this is the thirteenth floor!

1st thief : Hurry! this is no time for superstition.

A Few Minutes Work

Patient: How much to have this tooth pulled?

Dentist: Ninety dollars.

Patient: Ninety dollars for just a few minutes work?

Dentist: I can extract it very slowly if you like

Mugged

Two guys are walking down the street when a mugger approaches them and demands their money. They both grudgingly pull out their wallets and begin taking out their cash. Just then, one guy turns to the other and hands him a bill. ‘’Here’s that twenty dollars I owe you,’’ he says.