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Whatever our individual troubles and challenges may be, it's important to pause every now and then to appreciate all that we have, on every level.
Shakti Gawain

Free your heart from hatred -- forgive. Free your mind from worries -- most never happen. Live simply and appreciate what you have. Give more. Expect less.
- Stephen Covey -

I would love to live like a river flows, carried by the surprise of its own unfolding.
John O'Donohue
"Fluent" from Conamara Blues

We are not alone. There is always an unseen power working for righteousness.
Olympia Brown

When I count my blessings, I count you twice.
Irish Proverb

There is an endless net of threads throughout the universe. The horizontal threads are in space. The vertical threads are in time. At every crossing of the threads, there is an individual, and every individual is a crystal bead. And every crystal bead reflects not only the light from every other crystal in the net, but also every other reflection throughout the entire universe.
Rig Veda

To attain well-being, we need to take care not only of our bodies but also of our minds. Mindfulness practice is central to seeing the interdependence of mind and body.
- Lilian Cheung, Thich Nhat Hanh -

Seek goodness everywhere, and when it is found, bring it out of its hiding place and let it be free and unashamed.
William Saroyan

Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it, they just saw something."
- Steve Jobs -

Evolutionary, we're always concerned with what's not right. That's what makes gratefulness delightfully subversive.
Dale Biron

There are two ways of meeting difficulties: you alter the difficulties or you alter the way you meet them.
- Phyllis Bottome –

If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.
Meister Eckhart

The world needs dreamers and the world needs doers. But above all, the world needs dreamers who do.
- Sarah Ban Breathnach -

Youth is not a time of life; it is a state of mind; it is not a matter of rosy cheeks, red lips and supple knees; it is a matter of the will, quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions; it is the freshness of the deep springs of life.
Samuel Ullman

The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.
- Dorothea Lange –

The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Ask, and you will receive; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened.
Jesus
Matthew 7:7

Giving frees us from the familiar territory of our own needs by opening our mind to the unexplained worlds occupied by the needs of others.
Barbara Bush

In life, it is never the big battle, the big moment, the big speech, the big election. That does not change things. What changes things is every day, getting up and rendering small acts of service and love beyond that what's expected of you or required of you.
- Cory Booker -

Of any stopping place in life, it is good to ask whether it will be a good place from which to go on as well as a good place to remain.
Mary Catherine Bateson

But today we kneel only to truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love.
Kahlil Gibran

Make a gift of your life and lift all...by being kind, considerate, forgiving, and compassionate at all times, in all places, and under all conditions, with everyone as well as yourself. This is the greatest gift anyone can give.
David R. Hawkins

However much concerned I was at the problem of misery in the world, I never let myself get lost in broodings over it. I always held firmly to the thought that each one of us can do a little to bring some portion of it to an end.
Dr. Albert Schweitzer

When one is able to overcome the romantic and emotional attitude, one discovers truth even in the kitchen sink.
Chögyam Trungpa
Meditation in Action

Refuse to fall down. If you cannot refuse to fall down, refuse to stay down. If you cannot refuse to stay down, lift your heart toward heaven, and like a hungry beggar, ask that it be filled, and it will be filled. You may be pushed down. You may be kept from rising. But no one can keep you from lifting your heart toward heaven.
Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés

Don't be put off by people who know what is not possible. Do what needs to be done, and check to see if it was impossible only after you are done.
- Paul Hawken –

Faith is the courageous confidence that trusts in the Source of all gifts.
David Steindl-Rast

If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.
Blessed Mother Teresa

When one leaves for the stars, that person will be the one to blink at you in the night-sky and show you the way. While s/he will no longer be able to touch your hands s/he will forever be able to touch your heart.
Karla A. Claeys, M.A

The best things in life are nearest: Breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of right just before you. Then do not grasp at the stars, but do life's plain, common work as it comes, certain that daily duties and daily bread are the sweetest things in life.
Robert Louis Stevenson

Our sense of community and compassionate intelligence must be extended to all life forms, plants, animals, rocks, rivers, and human beings. This is the story of our past and it will be the story of our future.
- Terry Tempest Williams –

We are here to awaken from our illusion of separateness.
Thich Nhat Hanh

Happiness is like jam, you can't spread even a little without getting some on yourself.
- Vern McLellan –

The day of my spiritual awakening was the day I saw and knew I saw God in all things and all things in God.
Mechtild of Magdeburg

Growing food was the first activity that gave us enough prosperity to stay in one place, form complex social groups, tell our stories, and build our cities.
- Barbara Kingsolver –

The miracle of gratitude is that it shifts your perception to such an extent that it changes the world you see.
Dr. Robert Holden

Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
- Oscar Wilde –

The world is holy. We are holy. All life is holy. Daily prayers are delivered on the lips of breaking waves, the whisperings of grasses, the shimmering of leaves.
Terry Tempest Williams

from Talking to God: Portrait of a World at Prayer (anthology)

I don't try to fool myself that the stories of individuals are themselves arguments. I just believe that better arguments, maybe even better policies, get formulated when we know more about ordinary lives.
- Katherine Boo –

I am a star which goes with thee and shines out of the depths.
Mithraic saying

May I live this day compassionate of heart, clear in word, gracious in awareness, courageous in thought, generous in love.
- John O'Donohue -

My profession is always to be alert, to find God in nature, to know God's lurking places, to attend to all the oratorios and the operas in nature.
Henry David Thoreau

Unexpected intrusions of beauty. This is what life is.
- Saul Bellow -

The quest of the human heart for meaning is the heartbeat of every religion.
David Steindl-Rast
Gratefulness, the Heart of Prayer

When you find peace within yourself, you become the kind of person who can live at peace with others.
- Peace PIlgrim -

I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
Maya Angelou

A different language is a different vision of life.
- Federico Fellini –

Everything comes to us that belongs to us if we create the capacity to receive it.
Rabindranath Tagore

Good for the body is the work of the body, good for the soul the work of the soul, and good for either the work of the other.
Henry David Thoreau

And suddenly you know: It's time to start something new and trust the magic of beginnings.
Meister Eckhart

Giving of any kind... taking an action... begins the process of change, and moves us to remember that we are part of a much greater universe.
- Mbali Creazzo -

The extravagant gesture is the very stuff of creation.
Annie Dillard
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe to match your nature with Nature.
- Joseph Campbell –

Where you stumble, there your treasure lies.
Joseph Campbell

Set me a task in which I can put something of my very self, and it is a task no longer; it is joy; it is art.
- Bliss Carman –

I don't know Who — or what — put the question, I don't know when it was put. I don't even remember answering. But at some moment I did answer Yes to Someone — or Something — and from that hour I was certain that existence is meaningful and that, therefore, my life, in self-surrender, had a goal.
Dag Hammarskjöld

We become what we repeatedly do.
- Sean Covey –

You should never let your fears prevent you from doing what you know is right.
Aung San Suu Kyi

To live in the hearts we leave behind is not to die.
- Thomas Campbell -

If the sight of the blue skies fills you with joy, if a blade of grass springing up in the fields has power to move you, if the simple things in nature have a message you understand, rejoice, for your soul is alive.
Eleanora Duse

Have enough courage to trust love one more time and always one more time.
Maya Angelou

The grateful heart is a manifestation of one's true self. Nothing sidelines the ego more effectively than a grateful heart.
Albert Nolan

Jesus Today; A Spirituality of Radical Freedom; Maryknoll/NY; Orbis Books; 2011. (p.109)

Only those who risk going too far will ever know how far they can go.
- T.S. Eliot –

Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.
Lao Tzu

The way we talk to our children becomes their inner voice.
- Peggy O' Mara -

If you can always smile at life, life will also always smile at you.
The Mother at Pondicherry

Happiness is not a state to arrive at, but a manner of traveling.
- Margaret Lee Runbeck -

No matter what accomplishments you achieve, somebody helps you.
Althea Gibson

If we live truly, we shall see truly
- Ralph Waldo Emerson -

Our own lives are the instruments with which we experiment with truth.
Thich Nhat Hanh

The Sage is self-effacing and scanty of words. When his task is accomplished and things have been completed, All the people say, 'We ourselves have achieved it!'
- Lao Tzu -

Art makes life bearable. It isn't a luxury. Like our capacity for understanding, and our experience of love, it is a vitally important part of life.
Gillian Pederson Krag

We carry our childhood with us.
- Gary D. Schmidt -

The way you come to fully appreciate the infusion of the Spirit is to more and more come fully into the moment, where this moment is enough.
Ram Dass

Mankind's true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view), consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals.
- Milan Kundera -

Mistakes are the portals of discovery.
James Joyce

Here is the test to find whether your mission on earth is finished. If you're alive, it isn't.
- Richard Bach -

How fit to employ all the heart and the soul and the senses forever in joy!
Robert Browning

It may be that when we no longer know which way to go that we have come to our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings
- Wendell Berry -

Gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.
G.K. Chesterton

I know there is strength in the differences between us. I know there is comfort, where we overlap.
- Ani DiFranco -

Instead of condemning others, strive to reach inner peace. Keep silent, refrain from judgement. This will raise you above the deadly arrows of slander, insult and outrage and will shield your glowing hearts against all evil.
St. Seraphim of Sarov

My profession is always to be alert, to find God in nature, to know God's lurking places, to attend to all the oratorios and the operas in nature.
Henry David Thoreau

The day of my spiritual awakening was the day I saw and knew I saw God in all things and all things in God.
Mechtild of Magdeburg

Be still, and the world is bound to turn herself inside out to entertain you. Everywhere you look, joyful noise is clanging to drown out quietdesperation.
Barbara Kingsolver
High Tide in Tucson