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Let these Overcame quotes help you to have a positive attitude toward life, and to think positively.
If I am happy in spite of my deprivations,
if my happiness is so deep that it is a faith,
so thoughtful that it becomes a philosophy of life.
If, in short, I am an optimist,
my testimony to the creed of optimism is worth hearing.
- Helen Keller
...
Helen Keller (1880-1968) overcame being both deaf and blind
to become a famous author, lecturer, and activist
for women's suffrage, workers' rights, and ending war.
I have had dreams, and I have had nightmares.
I overcame the nightmares because of my dreams.
- Jonas Salk
I leave no trace of wings in the air,
but I am glad I have had my flight.
- Rabindranath Tagore
If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant.
If we did not sometimes taste of adversity,
prosperity would not be so welcome.
- Anne Bradstreet
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There are only two or three human stories,
and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely
as if they had never happened before.
- Willa Cather
I never accepted the idea
that I had to be guided by
some pattern or blueprint.
- Little Richard
As for accomplishments,
I just did what I had to do as things came along.
- Eleanor Roosevelt
When I look back on all these worries,
I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed
that he had had a lot of trouble in his life,
most of which had never happened.
- Winston Churchill
You can learn how to let go of the past.
Whether you have experienced a break up
with someone you cared for deeply,
whether death has taken a loved one,
whether you have had a feud with a friend or family member,
whether you have lost a job.
Move on and let go.
Life can be joyful and rewarding again.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
I had three chairs in my house;
one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.
- Henry David Thoreau
We thought that we had the answers,
it was the questions we had wrong.
- Bono
I never had a policy;
I have just tried to do my very best each and every day.
- Abraham Lincoln
Men occasionally stumble over the truth,
but most of them pick themselves up
and hurry off as if nothing had happened.
- Winston Churchill
Anger is a killing thing:
it kills the man who angers,
for each rage leaves him less than he had been before -
it takes something from him.
- Louis L'Amour
If i had known... i would have lingered
over my coffee a little longer.
- Mary Anne Radmacher
We occasionally stumble over the truth
but most of us pick ourselves up and
hurry off as if nothing had happened.
- Winston Churchill
I wept because I had no shoes
until I met a man who had no feet.
- old Persian Proverb
I have found that hollow,
which even I had relied on for solid.
- Henry David Thoreau
I had forgotten how much light there is in the world,
'til you gave it back to me.
- Ursula K. Le Guin
What work I have done I have done because it has been play.
If it had been work I shouldn't have done it.
- Mark Twain
It is only when we truly know and understand
that we have a limited time on earth
and that we have no way of knowing when our time is up
that we will begin to live each day to the fullest,
as if it were the only one we had.
- Elizabeth Kubler-Ross
If I had no sense of humor,
I would long ago have committed suicide.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi
The only good luck many great men ever had was
being born with the ability and determination to overcome bad luck.
- Channing Pollock
If I had eight hours to chop down a tree,
I'd spend six hours sharpening my ax.
- Abraham Lincoln
Never cease loving a person, and never give up hope for him,
for even the prodigal son who had fallen most low,
could still be saved; the bitterest enemy
and also he who was your friend could again be your friend;
love that has grown cold can kindle
- Soren Kierkegaard
No stream rises higher than its source.
Whatever man might build, could never
express or reflect more than he was.
He could record neither more nor less
than he had learned of life.
- Frank Lloyd Wright
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately,
to front only the essential facts of life,
and see if I could not learn what it had to teach,
and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
- Henry David Thoreau
When we quarrel, how we wish we had been blameless.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Piglet noticed that even though he had a Very Small Heart,
it could hold a rather large amount of Gratitude.
- A. A. Milne (Winnie-The-Pooh)
Does anybody really think that they didn't get what they had
because they didn't have the talent
or the strength or the endurance or the commitment?
- Nelson Mandela
My father always used to say that when you die,
if you've got five real friends, then you've had a great life.
- Lee Iacocca
I recognize that the person I was in my past
is not the person I am today.
That person did the very best they could,
given the knowledge, emotions, and prior experience
they had to draw upon at the time.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
In the long run, men hit only what they aim at.
Therefore, they had better aim at something high.
- Henry David Thoreau
Ever had a bad hair day -
a day when everything seemed to be going wrong?
Perhaps today is a day to soothe your ruffled feathers,
take a deep breath, and reaffirm that
the weight of the world is really not on your shoulders,
unless you choose to assume that burden.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Look at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end.
It's not a day when you lounge around doing nothing;
it's when you've had everything to do, and you've done it.
- Margaret Thatcher
It had long since come to my attention
that people of accomplishment
rarely sat back and let things happen to them.
They went out and happened to things.
- Leonardo da Vinci
The soul would have no rainbow,
Had the eyes no tears.
- John Vance Cheney
Essentially all suffering is the result of...
1. Comparing what we have (or don't have) today
... with what we had yesterday.
2. Comparing what we fear we might have (or not have) tomorrow)
... with what we have today.
3. Comparing what we have (or don't have) with what others have.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
If someone had told me I would be Pope one day,
I would have studied harder.
- Pope John Paul I
A person isn't who they are during
the last conversation you had with them -
they're who they've been
throughout your whole relationship.
- Rainer Maria Rilke
That's what learning is, after all;
not whether we lose the game,
but how we lose and h
ow we've changed because of it
and what we take away from it
that we never had before,
to apply to other games.
Losing, in a curious way, is winning.
- Richard Bach
Everyone who got where he is,
had to begin where he was.
- Richard L. Evans
I was wise enough to never grow up
while fooling most people into believing I had.
- Margaret Mead
If the tongue had not been framed for articulation,
man would still be a beast in the forest.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
I have lost my seven best friends,
which is to say that God has had mercy on me
seven times without realizing it.
He lent a friendship, took it from me, and sent me another.
- Jean Cocteau
Suppose our gratitude could be zero-based gratitude.
With zero-based gratitude,
we would be grateful for everything we had each day -
regardless of whether it was more or less than yesterday.
With zero-based gratitude, I can be grateful for all the people,
the love, the food, the shelter, the services,
the health, that I am blessed with today,
regardless of what I had yesterday.
With zero-based gratitude,
I can be grateful each day for the gift of life itself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
My father and he had one of those English friendships
which begins by avoiding the intimacies
and eventually eliminates speech altogether.
- Jorge Luis Borges
I honor you, Hero, for you do not play to the crowd.
You play to your own soul.
An audience of one fills the house with its appreciation and applause.
Others follow you, and may attempt to emulate you,
but that is not why you are a hero.
Fame may smile upon you, or it may not.
The world may cheer your name, or you may be the unknown warrior
who rescued comrades in battle,
or taught a young girl how to shed tears of joy.
Whatever you did, you did not do for fame.
If you had, you would not be a Hero.
You are a Hero for your bold courageous inspired action.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
I do not fear death.
I had been dead for billions and billions
of years before I was born,
and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.
- Mark Twain
It's YOUR time - it's YOUR life -
YOU get to choose how you use it. T
here is no way that your life is "supposed" to be.
Your parents had their vision for your life.
Your boss, your spouse, your church, your friends,
and even the family next door have their ideas
of how you should live your life.
What about YOUR vision for your life?
What do YOU want?
YES, it matters what you want.
YES you can have what you want.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
I once had a rose named after me
and I was very flattered.
But I was not pleased to read
the description in the catalogue:
no good in a bed, but fine up against a wall.
- Eleanor Roosevelt
I tried to remember how to exhale.
I had to look away before it came back to me.
- Bella, from Twilight saga by Stephenie Meyer
Touch me in the morning
Then just walk away
We don't have tomorrow
But we had yesterday
- Ron Miller/Michael Masser
If a friend of mine gave a feast, and did not invite me to it,
I should not mind a bit.
but if a friend of mine had a sorrow
and refused to allow me to share it,
I should feel it most bitterly.
If he shut the doors of the house of mourning against me,
I would move back again and again and beg to be admitted
so that I might share in what I was entitled to share.
If he thought me unworthy, unfit to weep with him,
I should feel it as the most poignant humiliation.
- Oscar Wilde
When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant
I could hardly stand to have the old man around.
But when I got to be 21, I was astonished
at how much the old man had learned in seven years.
- Mark Twain
It was the nation and the race dwelling all round the globe
that had the lion's heart.
I had the luck to be called upon to give the roar.
- Winston Churchill
When people hear good music,
it makes them homesick for
something they never had,
and never will have.
- Edgar Watson Howe
The slavery of fear had made men afraid to think.
But such is the irresistible nature of truth,
that all it asks, and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing.
- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, 1791
My wife and I tried two or three times in the last 40 years
to have breakfast together,
but it was so disagreeable we had to stop.
- Winston Churchill
I think that people want peace so much
that one of these days government had better
get out of their way and let them have it.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
I have great hopes that we shall love each other all our lives
as much as if we had never married at all.
- Lord Byron
You ask me if I keep a notebook
to record my great ideas.
I've only ever had one.
- Albert Einstein
I only wish that ordinary people
had an unlimited capacity for doing harm;
then they might have an unlimited power for doing good.
- Socrates
Early in life I had to choose between honest arrogance
and hypocritical humility.
I chose the former and have seen no reason to change.
- Frank Lloyd Wright
When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim Soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
- William Butler Yeats
It is much more painful to have lost
something you thought you had,
than never to have had it at all.
If feels as if our trust was dashed.
We are disappointed and we are angry;
but not quite sure at who to direct our anger.
Someone, perhaps "the system," perhaps God,
should have done better.
Most of all we are angry at ourselves -
even though we did our best -
and we are afraid.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
If you have been divorced, you know it hurts -
especially if your marriage had lasted many years.
Whatever the circumstances of your relationship,
and whatever the nature of its ending,
there is always grief and regret -
perhaps regret over the ending,
or perhaps regret over not ending the relationship sooner -
or perhaps both.
Nonetheless, move past the grief and regret.
No matter how painful, divorce, like all endings,
opens the door to new beginnings.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
When I took office, only high energy physicists
had ever heard of what is called the Worldwide Web...
Now even my cat has its own page.
- William J. Clinton
Who made the rule that life has to be so serious?
One would think that "life is serious" had been engraved
upon stone tablets to judge from how most lives are lived.
Get a life, smile broadly, sing loudly,
paint your rooms in bold colors,
search every rabbit hole for a magical white bunny,
have caviar for breakfast and oatmeal for dinner,
wear a purple coat with a red hat - dance lightly with life.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Time to Die:
A Zen teacher had a rare and priceless teacup.
One day, his precocious student accidentally broke the cup.
Hearing the footsteps of his teacher,
the student held the pieces of the cup behind his back.
When the master appeared, he asked: "Why do people have to die?"
"This is natural," explained the teacher.
"Everything has to die and has just so long to live."
The student showed the shattered cup, saying,
"It was time for your cup to die."
- Traditional Zen Koan
Another day, another dollar, another war, another tower
Went up where the homeless had their home.
- Jewel
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May the world be kind to you,
and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
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