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Things are seldom what they seem.
- William S. Gilbert (Gilbert and Sullivan: HMS Pinafore)
Related topics: Wisdom
God grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change;
the courage to change the things I can;
and the wisdom to know the difference.
- Reinhold Niebuhr (Serenity Prayer)
All things at first appear difficult.
- Chinese proverb
Joy is what happens to us when we allow ourselves
to recognize how good things really are.
- Marianne Williamson
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Our lives begin to end the day we become silent
about things that matter.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
We don't see things as they are,
we see things as we are.
- Anais Nin
Stand often in the company of dreamers.
They believe you can achieve impossible things.
- Mary Anne Radmacher
If things are not as you wish,
wish them as they are.
- Yiddish Proverb
All things share the same breath -
the beast, the tree, the man...
the air shares its spirit with all the life it supports.
- Chief Seattle (attributed)
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed
by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do.
So throw off the bowlines.
Sail away from the safe harbor.
Catch the trade winds in your sails.
Explore. Dream. Discover.
- widely misattributed to Mark Twain
Everything is a miracle,
not just the beautiful and lovely things.
- Anonymous
I am one with the Earth,
with the Water, with the Fire,
with the Air that I breathe,
with all Living Things,
and we are all one with Spirit.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
I Dream This Day of Wondrous Things,
of Peace and Hope and Pride.
I Dance My Dance with Life Today,
I'm Filled with Love Inside.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Dare to dream of your great success.
Become intimate with those things
which deeply motivate you
and regularly work toward
the realization of that mission.
- Mary Anne Radmacher
Do first things first, and second things not at all.
- Peter F. Drucker
A time for work, a time for play -
balance in all things.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Do all things with love.
- Og Mandino
Sometimes the things you really want
sneak in the back door.
Notice.
- Mary Anne Radmacher
Do not allow obligation or immediacy to
bind you to physical things or specific actions.
- Mary Anne Radmacher
You never really understand a person
until you consider things from his point of view.
- Harper Lee
The best and most beautiful things in the world
cannot be seen or even touched.
They must be felt with the heart.
- Helen Keller
I believe that everything happens for a reason.
People change so that you can learn to let go,
things go wrong so that you appreciate them when they're right,
you believe lies so you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself,
and sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.
- Marilyn Monroe
Our "Rainbows and Butterflies" are the small miracles of our life -
the little things that are so easy to overlook,
yet so awe inspiring when we take a moment
to notice and to pay attention.
Give thanks for the rainbows, for the butterflies,
for all God's creatures - large and small,
for the bright blue sky and the soft fog and the gentle rain,
for the tree veiled in the season's first frost,
for the baby's laugh,
for the touch of a hand and the whispered "I love you."
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Don't underestimate the value of Doing Nothing,
of just going along,
listening to all the things you can't hear,
and not bothering.
- A. A. Milne (Winnie-The-Pooh)
I have just three things to teach:
simplicity, patience, compassion.
These three are your greatest treasures.
- Lao Tzu
Difficulties are things that show a person what he is.
- Epictetus
Things turn out best for the people
who make the best of the way things turn out.
- Art Linkletter
I believe that anyone can conquer fear
by doing the things he fears to do,
provided he keeps doing them until he gets
a record of successful experience behind him.
- Eleanor Roosevelt
Obstacles are those frightful things
you see when you take your eyes off your goals.
- Henry Ford
Energy and persistence conquer all things.
- Benjamin Franklin
Two things a man should never be angry at:
what he can help,
and what he cannot help.
- Thomas Fuller
As for accomplishments,
I just did what I had to do as things came along.
- Eleanor Roosevelt
Most of the important things in the world
have been accomplished by people
who have kept on trying
when there seemed to be no hope at all.
- Dale Carnegie
It all depends on how we look at things,
and not how they are in themselves.
- Carl Jung
We can always choose to perceive things differently.
You can focus on what's wrong in your life,
or you can focus on what's right.
- Marianne Williamson
Things do not happen. Things are made to happen.
- John F. Kennedy
We keep moving forward, opening new doors,
and doing new things, because we're curious
and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.
- Walt Disney
Things are only impossible until they're not.
- Jean-Luc Picard, character in STAR TREK: The Next Generation
Sometimes good things fall apart
so better things can fall together.
- Marilyn Monroe
You have to expect things of yourself before you can do them.
- Michael Jordan
From small beginnings come great things.
- Anonymous
In this life we cannot do great things.
We can only do small things with great love.
- Mother Teresa
Personal importance, or taking things personally,
is the maximum expression of selfishness
because we make the assumption that everything is about me.
- don Miguel Ruiz
Good things come in small packages.
- old proverb
If we all did the things we are capable of doing,
we would literally astound ourselves.
- Thomas Edison
Besides the noble art of getting things done,
there is the noble art of leaving things undone.
The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.
- Lin Yutang
We're so engaged in doing things
to achieve purposes of outer value
that we forget the inner value,
the rapture that is associated
with being alive, is what it is all about.
- Joseph Campbell
In all circumstances I acknowledge this,
IN ALL THINGS AND ALL WAYS, I HAVE CHOICE.
My choice resides in my perspective.
While I certainly do not control climate and markets
and roadways and others, I do control myself
and my response to all those circumstances. I do indeed.
- Mary Anne Radmacher
There are some things you learn best in calm,
and some in storm.
- Willa Cather
All the great things are simple,
and many can be expressed in a single word:
freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.
- Winston Churchill
Simply put, you believe that things
or people make you unhappy,
but this is not accurate.
You make yourself unhappy.
- Wayne Dyer
We know nothing at all.
All our knowledge is but the knowledge of schoolchildren.
The real nature of things we shall never know.
- Albert Einstein
All life is change.
Release your attachment to the way things have been,
and wend your way joyfully
through life's unfolding majesty.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
If you understand, things are just as they are;
if you do not understand, things are just as they are.
- Zen Proverb
You see things and you say, Why?
But I dream things that never were and say, Why not
- George Bernard Shaw
There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying
about things which are beyond the power of our will.
- Epictetus
Healing does not mean going back to the way things were before,
but rather allowing what is now to move us closer to God.
- Ram Dass
Some things will never seem adequate
no matter how hard we try.
- from the movie White Man's Burden
The beginning of wisdom is to
call things by their right names.
- Chinese proverb
We can do no great things,
only small things with great love.
- Mother Teresa
All difficult things have
their origin in that which is easy,
and great things in that which is small.
- Lao Tzu
Morality is the basis of things
and truth is the substance of all morality.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi
The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live
that his happiness shall depend
as little as possible on external things.
- Epictetus
We fear things in proportion to our ignorance of them.
- Titus Livius
Only love and death will change all things.
- Khalil Gibran
Feel Unity with Spirit and All Creation
All things share the same breath the
beast, the tree, the man... the air
shares its spirit with all the life it supports.
- Chief Seattle [actually written by screenwriter Ted Perry in 1972]
Mastery is not measured by the number of terrible
things you eliminate from your life, but by
the number of times you eliminate calling them terrible.
- Neale Donald Walsch
If you follow the trail of your own
enthusiastically repeated stories,
you will begin to rediscover the things
that invigorate and enliven you.
- Mary Anne Radmacher
The things of this world exist;
they are; you can't refuse them.
- Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching - Book One #2 - version by Ursula K. Le Guin
Common sense is the knack of seeing things as they are,
and doing things as they ought to be done.
- Josh Billings
Knowledge is happiness, because to have knowledge -
broad, deep knowledge - is to know true ends from false,
and lofty things from low.
- Helen Keller
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May the world be kind to you,
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- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
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