Life

Our business in life is not to get ahead of others, but to get ahead of ourselves – to break our own records, to outstrip our yesterday by our today. - Stewart B. Johnson

Live not as though there were a thousand years ahead of you. Fate is at your elbow; make yourself good while life and power are still yours. - Marcus Aurelius

When life is too easy for us, we must beware or we may not be ready to meet the blows which sooner or later come to everyone, rich or poor. - Eleanor Roosevelt

The life of a man is like a game with dice; if you don’t get the throw you want, you must show your skill in making the best of the throw you do get. - Terence

The Summer of life should be a little sunny and a little sad, like the season, and infinite in wealth and depth of tone, but never hustled. - Henry Adams

The more sand has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it. - Niccolo Machiavelli

The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness, and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival. - Aristotle

Each man must look to himself to teach him the meaning of life. It is not something discovered: it is something molded. - Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Most of life is routine – dull and grubby, but routine is the momentum that keeps a man going. - Ben Nicholas

The afternoon of life must also have a significance of its own and cannot be merely a pitiful appendage to life’s morning. - Carl Jung

Friends

Old friends pass away, new friends appear. It is just like the days. An old day passes, a new day arrives. The important thing is to make it meaningful: a meaningful friend – or a meaningful day. - Dalai Lama 

If two friends ask you to judge a dispute, don’t accept, because you will lose one friend; on the other hand, if two strangers come with the same request, accept because you will gain one friend. - Saint Augustine

It is important to our friends to believe that we are unreservedly frank with them, and important to the friendship that we are not. - Mignon McLaughlin

A true friend unbosoms freely, advises justly, assists readily, adventures boldly, takes all patiently, defends courageously, and continues a friend unchangeably. - William Penn

The only service a friend can really render is to keep up your courage by holding up to you a mirror in which you can see a noble image of yourself. - George Bernard Shaw

Of all happiness the most charming is that of a firm and gentle friendship. It sweetens all our cares, dispels our sorrows, and counsels us in all extremities. - Seneca

Sometimes being a friend means mastering the art of timing. There is a time for silence. A time to let go... And a time to prepare to pick up the pieces when it’s all over. - Gloria Naylor

Choose your friends wisely. They will provide the foundation of spiritual strength that will enable you to make difficult, extremely important decisions correctly when they come in your life. - Malcolm S. Jeppsen

Consult your friend on all things, especially on those which respect yourself. His counsel may then be useful where your own self-love might impair your judgment. - Seneca

Bores / Boredom - Quotes

A bore is a man who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company. - Gian Vincenzo Gravina

Among the idle rich, boredom is one of the most common causes of unhappiness. People who have difficulty in earning their living may suffer greatly, but they are not bored. Wealthy men and women become bored when they depend upon the theatre for their enjoyment instead of making their own lives interesting. - Andre Maurois

Boredom can be a lethal thing on a small island. - Christopher Moore

Boredom is nothing but the experience of a paralysis of our productive powers. - Erich Fromm

Boredom is a sign of satisfied ignorance, blunted apprehension, crass sympathies, dull understanding, feeble powers of attention, and irreclaimable weakness of character. - James Bridie

Boredom is just the reverse side of fascination: both depend on being outside rather than inside a situation, and one leads to the other. - Susan Sontag

Boredom is the deadliest poison. - William F Buckley

Boredom is the feeling that everything is a waste of time. - Thomas Szasz

Bores bore each other too; but it never seems to teach them anything. - Don Marquis

Boredom is the self being stuffed with itself. - Walker Percy

Boredom is what you fight. Constant, ever-present boredom. So you learn to look forward to small things. Sunlight glimpsed through a cloud, an extra piece of pie or candy, good thread to sew your blouse, a ribbon to wear in your hair. - Valerie W. Wesley

Everyone is a bore to someone. That is unimportant. The things to avoid is being a bore to oneself. - Gerald Brenan

It is only a step from boredom to disillusionment, which leads naturally to self-pity, which in turn ends in chaos. - Manly Hall

Life is never boring but some people choose to be bored. The concept of boredom entails an inability to use up present moments in a personally fulfilling way. Boredom is a choice; something you visit upon yourself, and it is another of those self-defeating items that you can eliminate from your life. - Wayne W. Dyer

Nobody is bored when he is trying to make something that is beautiful or to discover something that is true. - William R. Inge

The biggest bore is the person who is bored by everyone and everything. - Frank Tyger

The concept of boredom entails an inability to use up present moments in a personally fulfilling way. - Wayne Dyer

The life of the most creative man is led, directed and controlled by boredom. Avoiding boredom is one of our most important purposes. - Saul Steinberg

The tendency is to blame boredom on the environment. "This town is really dull" or "What a boring speaker." The particular town or speaker is never dull, it is you experiencing the boredom, and you can eliminate it by doing something else with your mind or energy at that moment. - Wayne W. Dyer

The world is eaten up by boredom … You can’t see it all at once. It is like dust. You go about and never notice, you breathe it in, you eat and drink it. It is sifted so fine, it doesn’t even grit on your teeth. But stand still for an instant and there it is, coating your face and hands. To shake off this drizzle of ashes you must be for ever on the go. And so people are always “on the go.” - Georges Bernanos

There’s no excuse to be bored. Sad, yes. Angry, yes. Depressed, yes. Crazy, yes. But there’s no excuse for boredom, ever. - Viggo Mortensen

We have to take responsibility for our own boredom and delve into the limitless opportunities that our imaginations afford us. Whether in fashioning a masterpiece of art, or seeing a problem from a new perspective, the creative instinct is uniquely human and waiting within you to be tapped. So when your life seems emptier than it should, when it needs a healthy transfusion of vitality, use your imagination. - Leo Buscaglia

When people are bored it is primarily with themselves. - Eric Hoffer

You’ll find boredom where there is an absence of a good idea. - Earl Nightingale

Quote Worthy

As the tempest and the thunder affect not the sun or the stars, but spend their fury on stones and trees below; so injuries ascend not to the Soul of the great, but waste themselves on such as are those who offer them. - Akhnaton

For the want of a nail, the shoe was lose; for the want of a shoe the horse was lose; and for the want of a horse the rider was lost, being overtaken and slain by the enemy, all for the want of care about a horseshoe nail. - Benjamin Franklin

Two qualities are indispensable: first, an intellect that, even in the darkest hour, retains some glimmerings of the inner light which leads to truth; and second, the courage to follow this faint light wherever it may lead. - Von Clausewitz

Ideals are like stars; you will not succeed in touching them with your hands. But like the seafaring man on the desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them you will reach your destiny. - Carl Schurz

Most people are bothered by those passages in Scripture which they cannot understand; but as for me, I always noticed that the passages in Scripture which trouble me most are those that I do understand. - Mark Twain

The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss can occur so quietly; any other loss – an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc – is sure to be noticed. - Kierkegaard

Difficult times have helped me to understand better than before, how infinitely rich and beautiful life is in every way, and that so many things that one goes worrying about are of no importance whatsoever. - Isak Dinesen

Photography records the gamut of feelings written on the human face, the beauty of the earth and skies that man has inherited, and the wealth and confusion man has created. It is a major force in explaining man to man. - Edward Steichen

Thich Nhat Hanh Quotes

Often referred to as the most beloved Buddhist teacher in the West, Thich Nhat Hanh’s teachings and practices appeal to people from various religious, spiritual, and political backgrounds. 

Thich Nhat Hanh Quotes

We often think of peace as the absence of war, that if powerful countries would reduce their weapon arsenals, we could have peace. But if we look deeply into the weapons, we see our own minds- our own prejudices, fears and ignorance. Even if we transport all the bombs to the moon, the roots of war and the roots of bombs are still there, in our hearts and minds, and sooner or later we will make new bombs. To work for peace is to uproot war from ourselves and from the hearts of men and women. To prepare for war, to give millions of men and women the opportunity to practice killing day and night in their hearts, is to plant millions of seeds of violence, anger, frustration, and fear that will be passed on for generations to come. 

To dwell in the here and now does not mean you never think about the past or responsibly plan for the future. The idea is simply not to allow yourself to get lost in regrets about the past or worries about the future. If you are firmly grounded in the present moment, the past can be an object of inquiry, the object of your mindfulness and concentration. you can attain many insights by looking into the past. But you are still grounded in the present moment.

When you plant lettuce, if it does not grow well, you don't blame the lettuce. You look for reasons it is not doing well. It may need fertilizer, or more water, or less sun. You never blame the lettuce. Yet if we have problems with our friends or family, we blame the other person. But if we know how to take care of them, they will grow well, like the lettuce. Blaming has no positive effect at all, nor does trying to persuade using reason and argument. That is my experience. No blame, no reasoning, no argument, just understanding. If you understand, and you show that you understand, you can love, and the situation will change.

Through my love for you, I want to express my love for the whole cosmos, the whole of humanity, and all beings. By living with you, I want to learn to love everyone and all species. If I succeed in loving you, I will be able to love everyone and all species on Earth... This is the real message of love.

When you say something really unkind, when you do something in retaliation your anger increases. You make the other person suffer, and he will try hard to say or to do something back to get relief from his suffering. That is how conflict escalates.

Peace is present right here and now, in ourselves and in everything we do and see. Every breath we take, every step we take, can be filled with peace, joy, and serenity. The question is whether or not we are in touch with it. We need only to be awake, alive in the present moment.

Food For Thought

For the man in the paddock, whose duty it is to sweep up manure, the supreme terror is the possibility of a world without horses. To tell him that it is disgusting to spend one’s life shovelling up hot turds is a piece of imbecility. A man can get to love shit if his livelihood depends on it, if his happiness is involved. - Henry Miller

Be brave enough to live life creatively. The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. You can’t get there by bus, only by hard work and risk and by not quite knowing what you’re doing. What you’ll discover will be wonderful. What you’ll discover will be yourself. - Alan Alda

To put away aimlessness and weakness, and to begin to think with purpose, is to enter the ranks of those strong ones who only recognize failure as one of the pathways to attainment; who make all conditions serve them, and who think strongly, attempt fearlessly, and accomplish masterfully. - James Allen

Is This The Answer to Stonehenge?

Very Interesting!

http://www.dump.com/2011/10/12/is-this-the-answer-to-stonehenge-video/

Happiness

Happiness must be distinguished from pleasure. Happiness is a concept involving something deeper, richer, more satisfying, more spiritual and therefore longer lasting than pleasure.

The key to happiness is not that you never get upset, irritated or frustrated. It is how quickly you snap out of it; It is not the absence of conflict, but your ability to cope with it.

We are responsible for our well-being, our happiness. The choices and decisions we make regarding our life directly influences the quality of our days.

All men have happiness as their object: there is no exception. However different the means they employ, they all aim at the same end. - Blaise Pascal

We learn the inner secret of happiness when we learn to direct our inner drives, our interest and our attention to something besides ourselves. - Ethel Percy Andrus

If we agree that the bottom line of life is happiness, not success, then it makes perfect sense to say that it is the journey that counts, not reaching the destination. - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Just as a cautious businessman avoids investing all his capital in one concern, so wisdom would probably admonish us also not to anticipate all our happiness from one quarter alone. - Sigmund Freud

The happiness and unhappiness of the rational, social animal depends not on what he feels but on what he does; just as his virtue and vice consist not in feeling but in doing. - Marcus Aurelius

Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose. - Joseph Addison

The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts, therefore guard accordingly; and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue, and reasonable nature. - Marcus Aurelius

Happiness doesn’t depend on what we have, but it does depend on how we feel towards what we have. We can be happy with little and miserable with much. - W. D. Hoard

Bravery - Quotes

A true knight is fuller of bravery in the midst, than in the beginning of danger. - Philip Sidney

Any fool can be brave on a battlefield when it’s be brave or else be killed. - Margaret Mitchell

Be brave. Even if you’re not, pretend to be. No one can tell the difference. - Jackson Brown

Be brave. Take risks. Nothing can substitute experience. - Paulo Coelho

Be brave today. The darkest night will pass. And golden rays will usher in the dawn. - Sarah Knowles Bolton

Bravery comes along as a gradual accumulation of discipline. - Buzz Aldrin

Bravery is a complicated thing to describe. You can’t say it’s three feet long and two feet wide and that it weighs four hundred pounds or that it’s coloured bright blue or that it sounds like a piano or that it smells like roses. It’s a quality, not a thing. - Mickey Mantle

Bravery is being the only one who knows your are afraid. - Franklin P. Jones

Bravery is the capacity to perform properly even when scared half to death. - Omar Nelson Bradley

For those who will fight bravely and not yield, there is triumphant victory over all the dark things of life. - James Allen

He who is brave is free. - Seneca

I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is over self. - Aristotle

If we take the generally accepted definition of bravery as a quality which knows no fear, I have never seen a brave man. All men are frightened. The more intelligent they are, the more they are frightened. - George S. Patton

It is easier to die bravely than to live so. - Christian Nestell Bovee

It is easy to be brave from a safe distance. - Aesop

Let bravery be thy choice, but not bravado. - Menander 

Only a brave person is willing to honestly admit, and fearlessly to face, what a sincere and logical mind discovers. - Rodan Of Alexandria

The brave man is an inspiration to the weak, and compels them, as it were, to follow him. - Samuel Smiles

The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear. - Nelson Mandela

The brave man, if he be compared with the coward, seems foolhardy; and, if with the foolhardy man, seems a coward. - Aristotle

The brave may not live forever, but the cautious don’t live at all. - Ashley L.

The brave person regards dying as going home. - Chinese Proverb

The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding, go out to meet it. - Thucydides

The coward calls the brave man rash, the rash man calls him a coward. - Aristotle

The more keenly we are awake to the perils of life, the higher and grander is the possibility of being truly brave. - Henry van Dyke

The world is in a constant conspiracy against the brave. - Douglas MacArthur

The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding, go out and meet it. - Pericles

There is a certain enthusiasm in liberty, that makes human nature rise above itself, in acts of bravery and heroism. - Alexander Hamilton

You can’t be brave if you’ve only had wonderful things happen to you. 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

You shout because it makes you brave or you want to announce your recklessness. - Don Delillo

Quote Worthy

Culture, the acquainting ourselves with the best that has been known and said in the world, and thus with the history of the human spirit. - Matthew Arnold 

To suppose as we all suppose, that we could be rich and not behave as the rich behave, is like supposing that we could drink all day and stay sober. - Logan Pearsall Smith

Teach us to delight in simple things; And mirth that has no bitter springs; Forgiveness free of evil done, And love to all men ’neath the sun. - Rudyard Kipling

I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence. - Frederick Douglass 

You cannot have a proud and chivalrous spirit if your conduct is mean and paltry; for whatever a man’s actions are, such must be his spirit. - Demosthenes

Our minds are like our stomachs; they are whetted by the change of their food, and variety supplies both with fresh appetite. - Marcus Fabius Quintilian

Money and time are the heaviest burdens of life, and the unhappiest of all mortals are those who have more of either than they know how to use. - Samuel Johnson

Providence certainly does not favour just certain individuals, but the deep wisdom of its counsel, instruction and ennoblement extends to all. - Wilhelm Von Humboldt

The rung of a ladder was never meant to rest upon, but only to hold a man’s foot long enough to enable him to put the other somewhat higher. - Thomas Henry Huxley

Simplicity, clarity, singleness: These are the attributes that give our lives power and vividness and joy as they are also the marks of great art. - Richard Hollowa