"The gift you carry for others is not an attempt to save the world but to fully belong to it. It’s not possible to save the world by trying to save it. You need to find what is genuinely yours to offer the world before you can make it a better place. Discovering your unique gift to bring to your community is your greatest opportunity and challenge. The offering of that gift - your true self - is the most you can do to love and serve the world. And it is all the world needs."
– from Soulcraft by Bill Plotkin

"Beautiful young people are accidents of nature
but beautiful old people are works of art."
– Eleanor Roosevelt

"You see things; and you say ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say ‘Why not?'"
– G.B. Shaw, 1921

“There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all Time, this expression is unique.

And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. The world will not have it.

It is not your business to determine: how good it is; nor how valuable it is; nor how it compares with other expressions.

It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work.

You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open … no artist is pleased…there is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction; a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.”

– Letter from Martha Graham to Cecil de Mille

"Begin doing what you want to do now, we are not living in eternity.
We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand -
and melting like a snowflake."
– Marie Beyon Ray

"Each morning we are born again. What we do today is what matters most."
– Buddha

"As we love ourselves, we move toward our own bliss." – Joseph Campbell

"People travel to wonder at the height of the mountains, at the huge waves of the seas, at the long course of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars, and yet they pass by themselves without wondering."
– Saint Augustine

Bless this child with gentle kindness.
Guide this child with tender love.
Show this child the way of brightness.
Fill this little heart with love. 

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"
– Mary Oliver

“To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.”
– Winston Churchill

"What is opportunity, and when does it knock? It never knocks. You can wait a whole lifetime, listening, hoping, and you will hear no knocking. None at all. You are opportunity, and you must knock on the door leading to your destiny. You prepare yourself to recognize opportunity, to pursue and seize opportunity as you develop the strength of your personality, and build a self-image with which you are able to live – with your self-respect alive and growing."
– Maxwell Maltz

"Leadership is an active, living process.

It is rooted in character, forged by experience, and communicated by example."

–John Baldoni

"There is enough health.
There is enough money.
There is enough time.
There is enough of all you need
to get all you want.
Do you believe?"

"Growth is an erratic forward movement: two steps forward, one step back.

Remember that and be very gentle with yourself."

– Julia Cameron,
The Artist's Way

"Often people attempt to live their lives backwards: they try to have more things, or more money, in order to do more of what they want so they will be happier. The way it actually works is the reverse. You must first be who you really are, then do what you love to do, in order to have what you want."
– Margaret Young

"Wherever you go in the midst of movement and activity, carry your stillness within you. Then the chaotic movement around you will never overshadow your access to the reservoir of creativity, the field of pure potentiality."
– Deepak Chopra

"Only when one is connected to one's own core is one connected to others... And, for me, the core, the inner spring, can best be refound through solitude."
– Anne Morrow Lindbergh

"He who cannot forgive others breaks the bridge over which he must pass himself."
– George Herbert

Lao Tzu said "THE WAY TO DO IS TO BE"

"Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future"
– Paul Boese

"Begin to listen to what you say.  Say only what you want to become true for you."
– Louise Hay

"Today I will accept that where I am as the ideal place for me to be. If I am in-between, I will strive for the faith that this place is not without purpose, that it is moving toward something good."
– from Melody Beattie, The Language of Letting Go 

"There is hardly anything bad in the world that doesn’t have something good connected to it."
– Pete Seeger

Vision without action is a daydream.
Action without vision is a nightmare.
– Japanese proverb

"Go for it now. The future is promised to no one."
– Wayne Dyer

"Roots creep underground everywhere and make a firm foundation. Shoots seem very weak, but to reach the light they can break open brick walls. Imagine that the brick walls are all the problems we have inflicted on our planet. Hundreds and thousands of roots and shoots, hundreds and thousands of people around the world, can break through these walls. YOU can change the world."
– Dr. Jane Goodall

"I have merged, like the bird, with the bright air, And my thought flies to the place by the bo-tree.
Being, not doing, is my first joy."
– Theodore Roethke

"I beg you…to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without ever noticing it, live your way into the answer…."
– Rainer Maria Rilke

"Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined."
– Thoreau

"Follow your bliss."
– Campbell

"Wherever you are, it is your friends who make your world."
– William James

"Wherever you are is always the right place. There is never a need to fix anything, to hitch up the bootstraps of the soul and start at some higher place. Start right where you are."
– Julia Cameron

"The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances; if there is any reaction, both are transformed."
– Jung

"A moment in time. A place in time. A breath. A quiet corner can be found anywhere, can be created anytime. it is an outlook. It can be found in your particular approach to your particular day. A quiet corner simply needs a slight shift in perspective to emerge."
– Nancy O'Hara

"Often people attempt to live their lives backwards: they try to have more things, or more money, in order to do more of what they want so they will be happier. The way it actually works is the reverse. You must first be who you really are, then do what you love to do, in order to have what you want."
– Margaret Young

"Only when one is connected to one's own core is one connected to others... And, for me, the core, the inner spring, can best be refound through solitude."
– Anne Morrow Lindbergh  

"Wherever you go in the midst of movement and activity, carry your stillness within you. Then the chaotic movement around you will never overshadow your access to the reservoir of creativity, the field of pure potentiality."
– Deepak Chopra