The Inspiration Page (2)

If you have a personal favorite, email it to me at the address below.

"We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it--and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again--and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore."

--Mark Twain, Following the Equator, 1897

"Everyone needs recognition for his accomplishments, but few people make the need known quite as clearly as the little boy who said to his father: "Let's play darts. I'll throw and you say 'Wonderful!'"

--Author Unknown

"In Germany they came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up."

--Martin Niemoeller (1892-1984)

"Life has loveliness to sell,
All beautiful and splendid things,
Blue waves whitened on a cliff,
Soaring fire that sways and sings,
And childrens's faces looking up
Holding wonder in a cup.

Life has loveliness to sell,
Music like a curve of gold,
Scent of pine trees in the rain,
Eyes that love you, arms that hold,
And for your spirit's still delight,
Holy thoughts that star the night.

Spend all you have for loveliness,
Buy it and never count the cost;
For one white singing hour of peace
Count many a year of strife well lost,
And for a breath of ecstacy
Give all you have been, or could be.

--"Barter," written by Sara Teasdale

It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.

It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dreams, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your sorrow, if you have been opened by life's betrayals, or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain! I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine and your own, without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it. I want to know if you can be with JOY, mine or your own: if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, or to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself: if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. I want to know if you can be faithful and therefore trustworthy. I want to know if you can see beauty even when it is not pretty everyday, and if you can source your life from its presence. I want to know if you can live with failure, yours or mine, and still stand on the edge of a lake and shout to the silver of the full moon.

It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done for the children.

It doesn't interest me who you are, or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.

It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away. I want to know if you can be alone with yourself, and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

--Oriah Mountain Dreamer, excerpted from The Invitation

"Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children."

--Kahlil Gibran, 1883-1931

"Past the seeker as he prayed came the crippled and the beggar and the beaten. And seeing them...he cried, Great God, how is it that a loving creator can see such things and yet do nothing about them? ...God said, "I did do something. I made you."

--Sufi Teaching

"We find greatest joy, not in getting, but in expressing what we are... Men do not really live for honors or for pay; their gladness is not the taking and holding, but in doing, the striving, the building, the living. It is a higher joy to teach than to be taught. It is good to get justice, but better to do it; fun to have things but more to make them. The happy man is he who lives the life of love, not for the honors it may bring, but for the life itself."

--R.J. Baughan

"There'll be two dates on your tombstone
And all your friends will read 'em
But all that's gonna matter is that little dash between 'em..."

--Kevin Welch

"People travel to wonder at the height of the mountains, at the hugewaves 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."

--St. Augustine, 354-430

Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The trouble-makers. The round heads in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status-quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify, or vilify them. But the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

--"Think Different" Advertisement, Apple Computers

"At the end of life we will not be judged by how many diplomas we have received, how much money we have made, how many great things we have done.

We will be judged by 'I was hungry and you gave me to eat, I was naked and you clothed me, I was homeless and you took me in.'

Hungry not only for bread -- but hungry for love. Naked not only for clothing -- but naked for human dignity and respect. Homeless not only for want of a room of bricks -- but homeless because of rejection."

--Mother Teresa, 1910-1997

"I believe the nicest and sweetest days are not those on which anything very splendid or wonderful or exciting happens, but just those that bring simple little pleasures, following one another softly, like pearls off a string."

--L.M. Montgomery, 1874-1942

"If you must leave a place that you have lived in and loved and where all your yesterdays are buried deep--leave it any way except a slow way, leave it the fastest way you can. Never turn back and never believe that an hour you remember is a better hour because it is dead. Passed years seem safe ones, vanquished ones, while the future lives in a cloud, formidable from a distance. The cloud clears as you enter it. I have learned this, but like everyone, I learned it late."

--Beryl Markham, West with the Night, 1942

"The test of an adventure is that when you're in the middle of it, you say to yourself, 'Oh, now I've got myself into an awful mess; I wish I were sitting quietly at home.' And the sign that something's wrong with you is when you sit quietly at home wishing you were out having lots of adventure."

--Thornton Wilder, Barnaby, in The Matchmaker, Act. 4, 1955

"The one important thing I have learned over the years is the difference between taking one's work seriously and taking one's self seriously. The first is imperative and the second is disastrous."

--Margot Fonteyn

"You will soon learn, my dear young man, that most human beings spend their lives doing work which they hate and work which the world does not need. It is therefore of prime importance that you early learn what you want to do, how you are fit to do it, and whether or not the world needs this service....
The return from your work musts be the satisfaction which that works brings you and the world's need of that work....
Income is not greenbacks, it is satisfaction; it is creation; it is beauty. It is the supreme sense of a world of men going forward, lurch and stagger though it may, but slowly, inevitably going forward, and you yourself iwht your hand on the wheels. Make this choice, then, my son. Never hesitate, never falter.

--W.E.B DuBois, Apeech on his 90th birthday, 1958

"'What,' men have asked distractedly from the beginning of time, 'what on earth do women want?' I do not know that women, as women, want anything in particular, but as human beings they want, my good men, exactly what you want yourselves: interesting occupation, reasonable freedom for their pleasures, and a sufficient emotional outlet. What form the occupation, the pleasures, and the emotion may take depends entirely upon the individual....
To oppose one class perpetually to another--young against old, manual labour against brain-work, rich against poor, woman against man--is to split the foundations of the State.... If you wish to preserve a free democracy, you must base it...upon the individual Tom, Dick, and Harry, on the individual Jack and Jill--in fact, upon you and me."

--Dorothy Sayers, "Are Women Human?", 1938

"It is not enough that you should understand about applied science in order that your work may increase man's blessings. Concern for man himself and his fate must always form the chief interest of all technical endeavors, concern for the great unsolved problems of the organization of labor and the distribution of goods--in order that the creations of our mind shall be a blessing and not a curse to Mankind. Never forget this in the midst of your diagrams and equations."

--Albert Einstein, Address, CIT, 1931

If there is light in the soul, there will be beauty in the person.
If there is beauty in the person, there will be harmony in the house.
If there is harmony in the house, there will be order in the nation.
If there is order in the nation, there will be peace in the world.

--Chinese Proverb

Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind.
"Pooh!" he whispered.

"Yes, Piglet?"

"Nothing," said Piglet, taking Pooh's paw;
"I just wanted to be sure of you."

--From "The House at Pooh Corner" by A. A. Milne

once a snowflake fell
on my brow and i loved
it so much i kissed
it and it was happy and called its
cousins
and brothers and a web
of snow engulfed me then
i reached to love them all
and i squeezed them and they
became
a spring rain and i stood perfectly
still and was a flower.

--Nikki Giovanni, "Winter Poem,"

"The tools for "accessing" data grow ever more wondrous and ubiquitous and essential if we're to keep in step, we've come to believe. All hail the Web, the Internet, the Inforamtion Highway. We're being sold the idea that information is learning.... Information isn't learning. It isn't common sense necessarily. It isn't kindness. Or trustworthiness. Or good judgment. Or imagination. Or a sense of humor. Or courage. It doesn't tell us right form wrong."

--David McCullough, Commencement Address, University of Connecticut, 1999

"Penetrating so many secrets, we cease to believe in the unknowable. But there it sits nevertheless, calmly licking its chops."

--H.L. Mencken, Minority Report, 1956

"Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure...than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat."

--Theodore Roosevelt

"If the highest aim of a captain were to preserve his ship, he would keep it in port forever."

--Thomas Aquinas

"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as if everything is."

--Albert Einstein

Bumpersticker seen on a green Chevrolet crossing the Golden Gate Bridge: "I believe in life 'before' death."

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