T. S. Eliot

What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from.

from "Four Quartets"

Henry David Thoreau

The true harvest of my life is intangible-- little star dust caught, a portion of the rainbow I have clutched.

Anne Frank

How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.

Helen Hunt Jackson

By all these lovely tokens

September days are here,

With summer's best of weather

And autumn's best of cheer.

William James

I am done with great things and big things, great institutions and big success, and I am for those tiny, invisible molecular moral forces that work from individual to individual, creeping through the crannies of the world like so many rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, yet which if you give them time, will rend the hardest monuments of man's pride.

William James

Human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.

Abraham Linclon

All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could some blunders and absurdities have crept in forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.

John Muir

We all flow from one fountain Soul. All are expressions of one Love. God does not appear, and flow out, only from narrow chinks and round bored wells here and there in favored races and places, but He flows in grand undivided currents, shoreless and boundless over creeds and forms and all kinds of civilizations and peoples and beasts, saturating all and fountainizing all.

Rachel Carson

If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in.

Aldo Leopold

A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.

William Blake

If the Doors of Perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it truly is - infinite.

Jean Paul Sartre

Generosity is nothing else than a craze to possess. All which I abandon, all which I give, I enjoy in a higher manner through the fact that I give it away. To give is to enjoy possessively the object which one gives.

Albert Camus

Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time.

William Carlos Williams

In summer, the song sings itself.

W. H. Auden

Choice of attention - to pay attention to this and ignore that - is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer. In both cases, a man is responsible for his choice and must accept the consequences, whatever they may be.

Susan B. Anthony

Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about a reform. Those who are really in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothing in the world's estimation, and publicly and privately, in season and out, avow their sympathy with despised and persecuted ideas and their advocates, and bear the consequences.

Abigail Adams

We have too many high-sounding words, and too few actions that correspond with them.

Frank Lloyd Wright

An idea is salvation by imagination.

Theodore Parker

Be ours a religion which, like sunshine, goes everywhere;

its temple, all space;

its shrine, the good heart;

its creed, all truth;

its ritual, works of love;

its profession of faith, divine living.

Edward Everett Hale

I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do. What I can do, I should do.

Ray Bradbury

I know you've heard it a thousand times before. But it's true - hard work pays off. If you want to be good, you have to practice, practice, practice. If you don't love something, then don't do it.

Margaret Fuller

Male and female represent the two sides of the great radical dualism. But in fact they are perpetually passing into one another. Fluid hardens to solid, solid rushes to fluid. There is no wholly masculine man, no purely feminine woman.

Mary Pipher

I think history is inextricably linked to identity. If you don't know your history, if you don't know your family, who are you?

Julia Ward Howe

I am confirmed in my division of human energies. Ambitious people climb, but faithful people build.

W. H. Auden

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started,

And know the place for the first time.

from "Four Quartets"

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

A single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us. To live is to be slowly born.

William Henry Channing

To live content with small means;
To seek elegance rather than luxury,
and refinement rather than fashion;
To be worthy , not respectable, and wealthy, not rich;
To study hard, think quietly,
Talk gently,
Act frankly;
To listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open heart;
To bear all cheerfully,
Do all bravely,
Await occasions,
Hurry never.
In a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common.

THIS IS TO BE MY SYMPHONY

Jane Addams

The essence of immorality is the tendency to make an exception of myself.

Benjamin Franklin

All who think cannot but see there is a sanction like that of religion which binds us in partnership in the serious work of the world.

Betty Friedan

The only way for a woman, as for a man, to find herself, to know herself as a person, is by creative work of her own. There is no other way.

Gloria Steinem

Happy or unhappy, families are all mysterious. We have only to imagine how differently we would be described - and will be, after our deaths - by each of the family members who believe they know us.

Ferris Bueller

Life moves pretty fast, if you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.

from the movie "Ferris Bueller's Day Off"

Walt Whitman

Here is the test of wisdom,
Wisdom is not finally tested in schools,
Wisdom cannot be pass'd from one having it

to another not having it,
Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof,

is its own proof,
Applies to all stages and objects and qualities and is content,
Is the certainty of the reality and immortality of things,

and the excellence of things;
Something there is in the float of the sight of things

that provokes it out of the soul.

from "Leaves of Grass"

Wendell Berry

Rats and roaches live by competition under the laws of supply and demand; it is the privilege of human beings to live under the laws of justice and mercy.

Barbara Kingsolver

People's dreams are made out of what they do all day. The same way a dog that runs after rabbits will dream of rabbits. It's what you do that makes your soul, not the other way around.

Barack Obama

We know too that whatever our differences, there is one law that binds all great religions together. Jesus told us to ‘love thy neighbor as thyself.’ The Torah commands, ‘That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow.’ In Islam, there is a hadith that reads ‘None of you truly believes until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself’.’ And the same is true for Buddhists and Hindus; for followers of Confucius and for humanists. It is, of course, the Golden Rule – the call to love one another; to understand one another; to treat with dignity and respect those with whom we share a brief moment on this Earth.

February 3, 2010

May Sarton

…to be always hopeful gardeners of the spirit
knowing that without darkness nothing comes to birth,
As without light nothing flowers.

from "Gardeners of the Spirit"

William Blake

He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy.
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity's sun rise.

from "Eternity"

Egyptian, c. 1500 BCE

So, seize the day! Hold holiday!

Be unwearied, unceasing, alive,

you and your own true love;

Let not your heart be troubled

during your sojourn on earth,

but seize the day as it passes!

from "The Song of he Harper"

Martin Luther King, Jr.

An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.

Mohandas Gandhi

Be the change you want to see in the world.

Albert Einstein

I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.

Gail Sheehy

All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter into another!

Robert Frost

My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.

from "Two Tramps in Mudtime"

Ecclesiastes

Enjoy life with the one whom you love all the days of your life. Whatever your hands find to do, do with all your might. And eat your bread with gladness and drink your wine with a merry heart, because your God has already approved what you do.

9:7-10 adapted

Arthur Graham

Each of us is an artist

whose task it is to shape life

Into some semblance of the pattern

of our dreams.

The making is not of the self alone

but of shared tomorrows

And times we shall never see.

So let us be about our task.

The materials are very precious

and perishable.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh

The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach - waiting for a gift from the sea.

from Gift from the Sea

Robert Ingersoll

No day can be so sacred but that the laugh of a little child will make it holier still.

Jacob Trapp

May we find the world to be so beautiful, we will want it to be more so, more often, for more persons.

(adapted)

Abraham Lincoln

You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.

(attributed)

Abraham Lincoln

I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, and stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong.

Max Coots

It’s the little deaths before the final time we fear.
The blasé shrug
That quietly replaces excited curiosity,
The cynic-sneer
That takes the place of innocence,
The soft-sweet odor of success
That overcomes the sense of sympathy,
The self-betrayals
That rob us of our will to trust,
The ridicule of vision, the barren blindness
To what was once our sense of beauty –
These are the deaths that come so quietly
We do not know when it was we died.

from Seasons of the Self

Henry David Thoreau

To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust.

from Walden

Joseph Addison

Sunday clears away the rust of the whole week.

Bob Herbert

Everyone has a song inside of him or her, and ... you lose sight of that song at your peril. If you get out of touch with your song, forget how to sing it, you’re bound to end up frustrated and dissatisfied.

paraphrasing August Wilson in "Tweet Less, Kiss More" op ed, July 17, 2010

Eleanor Roosevlet

Friendship with oneself is all-important because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world.

ee cummings

i thank You God for most this amazing

day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees

and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything

which is natural which is infinite which is yes

from "i thank You God for most this amazing"

Woody Guthrie (on his birthday)

Nobody living can ever stop me
As I go walking
That freedom highway
Nobody living can make me turn back
This land was made for you and me

from "This Land is My Land, " 1940

Joseph Wood Krutch

If we do not permit the earth to produce beauty and joy, it will in the end not produce food, either.

Margaret Fuller

Male and female represent the two sides of the great radical dualism. But in fact they are perpetually passing into one another. Fluid hardens to solid, solid rushes to fluid. There is no wholly masculine man, no purely feminine woman.

Alan W. Watts

To arrive at reality--"suchness"--is to go beyond karma, beyond consequential action and to enter a life which is completely aimless. Yet to Zen and Taoism alike this is the very life of the universe, which is complete at every moment and does not need to justify itself by aiming at something beyond. In the words of a Zenrin poem:

If you don't believe, jut look at September, look at October!

The yellow leaves falling, falling, fill both the mountain and river.

from The Way of Zen

Mark Twain

None but the dead are permitted to tell the truth.

1905 letter to Dan Beard regarding the rejection of "The War Prayer."

Theodore Parker

I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eyes reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.

1853

Thich Nhat Hahn

Mindfulness is the miracle by which we master and restore ourselves....Mindfulness is like that--it is the miracle which can call back in a flash our dispersed mind and restore it to wholeness so that we can live each minute of life.

from The Miracle of Mindfulness

Ikkyu Doka

Whatever runs counter

To the mind and will of ordinary people

Hinders the Law of Men

and the law of Buddha.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction. There is no comradeship except through union in the same high effort.

from Wind, Sand, and Stars

Henry David Thoreau

A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. What I began by reading, I must finish by acting.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Do not be timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

from Journal, November 11, 1842

Yogi Berra

If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.

Kenneth Patton

Brief our days,

But long for singing,

When to sing

Is made our call.

from "Brief Our Days"

W. S. Merwin

Your absence has gone through me

Like thread through a needle.

Everything I do is stitched with its color.

Donald Culross Peattie

I say that it touches a man that his blood is sea water and his tears are salt, that the seed of his loins is scarcely different from the same cells in a seaweed, and that of stuff like his bones are coral made. I say that physical and biologic law lies down with him, and wakes when a child stirs in the womb, and the sap in a tree, up rushing in the spring, and the smell of the loam, where the bacteria bestir themselves ind darkness, and the path of the sun in the heaven, these are facts of first important to his mental conclusions, and that a man who goes in no consciousness of them is a drifter and a dreamer, without a home or any contact with reality.

from "April 1," Almanac for Moderns

Loren Eisley

Ironically, I who profess no religion find the whole of my life a religious pilgrimage.

The religious forms of the present leave me unmoved. My eye is round, open, and undomesticated as an owl's in a primeval forest....

from All the Strange Hours

Theodore Roethke

Constricted by my tortured thought

I am too centered on this spot.
So caged, so cadged, so close within

A coat of unessential skin.
I would put off myself and flee

My inaccessibility.
A fool can play being solemn

Revolving on his spinal column.
Deliver me, O Lord, from all

Activity centripetal.

"Prayer before Study"

T.S. Eliot

We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started, And know the place for the first time. from "Four Quartets"

John Hall Wheelock

Leave starry heaven behind,
Enter the atom, shrink
Into the vast, and find
You stand upon the brink
Of starry heaven again-
There where you were you are,
Full circle come again,
On a journey circular,
Through the atom back to the stars.

"Circular Secret"

Pablo Neruda

I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.

from "Every Day You Play"

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

In each of us, through matter, the whole history of the world is in part reflected.

from The Divine Milieu

Frank Lloyd Wright

Only as a feature or a new part becomes a harmonious element in the harmonious whole does it arrive at the state of simplicity.

The Natural House

Alan Devoe

The life of earth is all of a piece. For all of us, whether men or toads or meadow-mice or towering trees, there is birth and a life adventure and ultimately a death; we are all a part of the same tremendous rhythms and rituals, all fragments of similar destiny, all travelers through the same inscrutable experience toward an inexplicable bourne.
Lives Around Us

Robert Penn Warren

All things lean at you, and some are
Trying to tell you something, though of some

The heart is too full for speech.

"Trying to Tell You Something"

Hassidic Rabbi

Every man must have two pockets, so that he can reach into one or the other, according to his needs. In his right pocket are to be the words: "For my sake was the world created." And in his left: "I am earth and ashes."

Buddhist

May all sentient beings be happy. May all sentient beings be peaceful. May all sentient beings be free from suffering.

Anne Morrow Lindberg

People talk about love as though it were something you could give, like an armful of flowers. And a lot of people give love like that-just dump it down on top of you, a useless strong-scented burden. I don’t think it is anything you can give.Love is a force in you that enables you to give other things. It is the motivating power. It enables you to give strength and freedom and peace to another person. It is not a result; it is a cause. It is not a product; it produces. It is a power, like steam or electricity. It is valueless unless you can give something else by means of it.

Walt Whitman

Why, who makes much of a miracle?

As to me I know of nothing else but miracles.

...

To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,

Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,

Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with

the same,

Every foot of the interior swarms with the same.

from Leaves of Grass

Rupert Brooke

Love is a flame;—we have beaconed the world's night.

A city:—and we have built it, these and I.

An emperor:—we have taught the world to die.

from "The Great Lover"

Joseph Wood Krutch

Sorrow is the child of Memory and of Anticipation... Sometimes it is said that Eternity must be more like Now than anything else we can imagine.

from Epilogue, The Great Chain of Life