Gail Sheehy
If we don't change, we don't grow. If we don't grow, we aren't really living.
Changes in life are not only possible and predictable, but to deny them is to be an accomplice to one's own unnecessary vegetation.
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People who exercise their embryonic freedom day after day, little by little, expand that freedom. People who do not will find that it withers until they are literally 'being lived'. They are acting out scripts written by parents, associates and society.
There is nothing as remarkable as learning how to think better.
Not many people are willing to give failure a second opportunity. They fail once and it is all over. The bitter pill of failure is often more than most people can handle. If you are willing to accept failure and learn from it, if you are willing to consider failure as a blessing in disguise and bounce back, you have got the essential of harnessing one of the most powerful success forces.
There are times when a man should be content with what he has but never with what he is.
The greatest humiliation in life is to work hard on something from which you expect appreciation, and then fail to get it.
Nothing is impossible to a willing heart.
Love is the child of illusion and the parent of disillusion.
Inch by inch, it's a cinch.
If a window of opportunity appears, don't pull down the shade.
Living a life of integrity is one of the greatest missions we can undertake.
In learning you will teach, and in teaching you will learn.
Men spend their lives in anticipations, in determining to be vastly happy at some period when they have time. But the present time has one advantage over every otherit is our own. Past opportunities are gone, future have not come. We may lay in a stock of pleasures, as we would lay in a stock of wine , but if we defer the tasting of them too long, we shall find that both are soured by age.
No legacy is so rich as honesty.
Those who wish to sing, always find a song.
We are the only beings on the planet who lead such rich internal lives that it's not the events that matter most to us, but rather, it's how we interpret those events that will determine how we think about ourselves and how we will act in the future.
There are two kinds of failures. The man who will do nothing he is told, and the man who will do nothing else.
Only when all contribute their firewood can they build up a strong fire.
The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible.
You create your reality.
Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort.
We are continually faced by great opportunities brilliantly disguised as insolvuble problems.
There is more hunger for love and appreciation in this world than for bread.
What is a friend ? A single soul dwelling in two bodies.
Where there is life, there is hope. Where there are hopes, there are dreams. Where there are vivid dreams repeated, they become goals. Goals become the action plans and game plans that winners dwell on in intricate detail, knowing that achievement is almost automatic when the goal becomes an inner commitment. The response to the challenges of life -- purpose -- is the healing balm that enables each of us to face up to adversity and strife.
Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the children of God.
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead, his eyes are closed.
When you become detached mentally from yourself and concentrate on helping other people with their difficulties, you will be able to cope with your own more effectively. Somehow, the act of self-giving is a personal power-releasing factor.
You can often measure a person by the size of his dream.
If so many men, so many minds, certainly so many hearts, so many kinds of love.
People who look down on other people don't end up being looked up to.
To become a leader, then, you must become yourself, become the maker of your own life.
If we are going to teach 'creation science' as an alternative to evolution, then we should also teach the stork theory as an alternative to biological reproduction.
I'm here to fight for truth, justice, and the american way.
Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.
We are stripped of every attribute of freedom and eligibility for legal self defence. Our property may be plundered before our eyes, violence may be committed on our persons, even our lives may be taken away, and there is none to regard our complaints. We are denationalized; we are disfranchised.
Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
Opportunity may knock only once, but temptation leans on the doorbell.
A life lived with integrity -- even if it lacks the trappings of fame and fortune is a shinning star in whose light others may follow in the years to come.
Hardening of the heart ages people faster than hardening of the arteries.
I have seen so many of these, and lived with them, and travelled with them, and oftentimes felt as if I should starve to death on an equal allowance, that I am fully convinced I am correct in saying that the North American Indians, taking them in the aggregate, even where they have an abundance to subsist on, eat less than any civilized population of equal numbers, that I have ever travelled amongst.
Nothing could be worse than the fear that one had given up too soon, and left one unexpended effort that might have saved the world.
Love, by its very nature, is unworldly, and it is for this reason rather than its rarity that it is not only apolitical but anti-political, perhaps the most powerful of all anti-political human forces.
I have spread my dreams under your feet , Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
Seek first to understand, then to be understood.
After your jump, the net appears.
Happiness is a butterfly, which, when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.
You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it true. You may have to work for it, however.
No one became poor by giving alms.
As knowledge increases, wonder deepens.
We all have big changes in our lives that are more or less a second chance.
Never say die.
To laugh often and much; To win the respect of intelligent people And the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure The betrayal of false friends; To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded
Hatred stirreth up strifes, but love covereth all sins.
Goals are the fuel in the furnace of achievement.
Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never -- in nothing, great or small, large or petty -- never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense.
Never live in the past but always learn from it.
Tell 'em to go out there with all they got and win just one for the Gipper.
Live life to the fullest.
It's not enough that we do our best, sometimes we have to do what's required.
Can you dig it ?
The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary.
The best and most beautiful things in this world can not be seen or even heard, but must be felt with the heart.
All mankind love a lover.
In order to grasp the reality, we must see the possibilities. In the present, a formulation of the possibilities is the area in which I gain uncertainty concerning what I decide, without a vision of the possibilities, I act blindly, only a knowledge of the possibilities enables me to know what I am actually doing.
If you raise your children to feel that they can accomplish any goal or task they decide upon, you will have succeeded as a parent and you will have given your children the greatest of all blessings.
What's meant to be will always find a way
Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending.
There is no limit to what a man can do or where he can go if he doesn't mind who gets the credit.
The best way to predict the future is to create it.
You pile up enough tomorrows, and you'll find you've collected a lot of empty yesterdays.
In matters of style, swim with the current, in matters of principle, stand like a rock.
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.
Problems are not stop signs, they are guidelines.
I do not think much of a man who does not know more today than he did yesterday.
He was some kind of a man. What does it matter what you say about people ?
Love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking together in the same direction.
As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
In love beggar and king are equal.
Someday, man will harness the rise and fall of the tides, imprison the power of the sun, and release atomic power.
How can a society that exists on instant mashed potatoes, packaged cake mixes, frozen dinners, and instant cameras teach patience to its young ?
Common looking people are the best in the world : that is the reason the Lord makes so many of them.
Strike while the iron is hot.
When you are afraid, do the thing you are afraid of and soon you will lose your fear of it.
One, two, Freddy's coming for you.
But there's nothing half so sweet in life, as love's young dream.
A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity , an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
If your success is not on your own terms, if it looks good to the world but does not feel good in your heart, it is not success at all.
Leave the gun. Take the cannolis.
Start by doing what is necessary, then what is possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible.
Ideas attract money, time, talents, skills, energy and other complementary ideas that will bring them into reality.
It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.
Love is a bird, she needs to fly.
Success is the child of audacity.
The leader wonders about everything, wants to learn as much as he can, is willing to take risks, experiment, try new things. He does not worry about failure, but embraces errors, knowing he will learn from them.
Learning is definitely not mere imitation or the ability to accumulate and conform to fixed knowledge. Learning is a constant process of discovery and never a concluding one. In JKD we begin not by accumulation but by discovering the cause of our ignorance, and oftentimes this involves a shedding process. Truth will not come until we have come to understand personally the whole process of the working of our being. After all, ultimately, knowledge in martial art simply means self-knowledge, and JKD can become intelligible only in the vigorous and constant process of self-inquiry and self-discovery.
The measure of a man is the way he bears up under misfortune.
You will come to know that what appears today to be a sacrifice will prove instead to be the greatest investment that you will ever make.
Great men are not always wise.
Only passions, great passions, can elevate the soul to great things.
Optimists are right. So are pessimists. It's up to you to choose which you will be.