"You have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself"
Miles Davis, American jazz musician

"You're alive. Do something. The directive in life, the moral imperative was so uncomplicated. It could be expressed in single words, not complete sentences. It sounded like this: Look. Listen. Choose. Act."
Barbara Hall, A Summons to New Orleans, 2000

"Health is not simply the absence of sickness."
Hannah Green

"Those who seek consolation in existing churches often pay for their peace of mind with a tacit agreement to ignore a great deal of what is known about the way the world works."
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, 1990

"A joyful life is an individual creation that cannot be copied from a recipe."
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, 1990

"The greatest remedy for anger is delay."
Seneca (5 BC - 65 AD)

"Heaven's not beyond the clouds, it's just beyond the fear."
Garth Brooks

"It is no profit to have learned well, if you neglect to do well."
Publilius Syrus (~100 BC)

"Too many of us wait to do the perfect thing, with the result we do nothing. The way to get ahead is to start now. While many of us are waiting until conditions are "just right" before we go ahead, others are stumbling along, fortunately ignorant of the dangers that beset them. By the time we are, in our superior wisdom, decided to make a start, we discover that those who have gone fearlessly on before, have, in their blundering way, traveled a considerable distance. If you start now, you will know a lot next year that you don't know now, and that you will not know next year, if you wait."
The William Feather Magazine

“I wonder how much it would take to buy a soap bubble, if there were only one in the world.”
Mark Twain quotes (American Humorist, Writer and Lecturer. 1835-1910)

"Parents are often so busy with the physical rearing of children that they miss the glory of parenthood, just as the grandeur of the trees is lost when raking leaves."
Marcelene Cox

"Reading is no substitute for action."
Colleen Wainwright, Communicatrix, 07-26-08

"There's only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self."
Aldous Huxley, English critic & novelist (1894 - 1963)

"Paradoxically though it may seem, it is none the less true that life imitates art far more than art imitates life."
Oscar Wilde , Irish dramatist, novelist, & poet (1854 - 1900)

"If you follow all the rules, you miss all the fun."
Katherine Hepburn

"Part of being sane, is being a little bit crazy."
Janet Long

"The only people with whom you should try to get even are those who have helped you."
John E. Southard

"If you want to be truly successful invest in yourself to get the knowledge you need to find your unique factor. When you find it and focus on it and persevere your success will blossom."
Sidney Madwed

"The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone."
George Eliot, English novelist (1819 - 1880)

"To do two things at once is to do neither."
Publilius Syrus, (~100 BC)

"I've failed more times than I can remember. But I never chalked any of them up as failures in my head, because I learned so much in the process each time. So now, when I’ve finally reached a point where things seem to fall into place with far less effort, I can’t help but think about all those times where I didn’t succeed over the course of the last eight years. And I look back in fondness, because those lessons learned are the reason I’m here.

I actually shouldn’t even call them failures, because they were really just attempts. There’s a huge difference there. Everyone has failures, but most people never attempt things just for the sake of trying out something that looks fun, interesting, or challenging. For some reason, a lot of us reach a point where we stop doing things for the hell of it.

And therein lies the best career advice I could possibly dispense: just DO things. Chase after the things that interest you and make you happy. Stop acting like you have a set path, because you don't. No one does. You shouldn't be trying to check off the boxes of life; they aren't real and they were created by other people, not you."
Charlie Hoehn

"I start with the premise that the function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers."
Ralph Nader

"Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning."
Albert Einstein

"I am glad that I am not a man, for if I were I should have to marry a woman."
Madame de Stael, French author (1766 - 1817)

"If you are not afraid of the voices inside you, you will not fear the critics outside you."
Natalie Goldberg

"I can accept failure, but I can't accept not trying."
Michael Jordan, US basketball player (1963 - )

"While we are postponing, life speeds by."
Seneca, Roman dramatist, philosopher, & politician (5 BC - 65 AD)

"The happiness of a man in this life does not consist in the absence but in the mastery of his passions."
Alfred Lord Tennyson, English poet (1809 - 1892)

"Man's main task is to give birth to himself."
Erich Fromm, US (German-born) psychologist (1900 - 1980)

"There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find how you yourself have altered."
Nelson Mandela (1918 - )