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When an old man dies, it is a whole library which burns.
African proverb

Experience is a hard teacher. She gives the test first, the lesson afterward.
Anonymous

Some people weave burlap into the fabric of our lives, and some weave gold thread. Both contribute to make the whole picture beautiful and unique.
Anonymous

I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is the victory over self.
Aristotle

Remember the high board at the swimming pool? After days of looking up at it you finally climbed the wet steps to the platform. From there, it was higher than ever. There were only two ways down: the steps to defeat of the dive to victory. You stood on the edge, shivering in the hot sun, deathly afraid. At last you leaned too far forward, it was too late for retreat, and you dived. The high board was conquered, and you spent the rest of the day diving. Climbing a thousand high boards, we demolish fear, and turn into human beings.
Richard Bach A Gift of Wings

Try again. Fail again. Fail better.
Samuel Beckett

Each morning the day lies like a fresh shirt on our bed; this incomparably fine, incomparably tightly woven tissue of pure prediction fits us perfectly. The happiness of the next twenty-four hours depends on our ability, on waking, to pick it up.
Walter Benjamin

In the universe, there are things that are known, and things that are unknown, and in between, there are doors.
William Blake

Don't be afraid of death so much as an inadequate life.
Bertolt Brecht

Destiny is not a choice, it is a chance.
It is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.
William Jennings Bryan

The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible, and achieve it, generation after generation.
Pearl S. Buck

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
Edmund Burke.

Life is like playing a violin in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.
Samuel Butler

Count no day lost in which you waited your turn, took only your share and sought advantage over no one.
--Robert Brault

A life of reaction is a life of slavery, intellectually and spiritually. One must fight for a life of action, not reaction.
Rita Mae Brown

If, after all, men cannot always make history have meaning, they can always act so that their own lives have one.
Albert Camus

If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in.
Rachel Carlson

Live passionately, even if it kills you, because something is going to kill you anyway.
Webb Chiles

Like a flash of lightning between the clouds, we live in the flicker.
Joseph Conrad

Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside of us while we live.
Norman Cousins

To be nobody-but-yourself-in a world which is doing its best night and day, to make you everybody else - means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.
E. E. Cummings

Life is pretty simple: You do some stuff. Most fails. Some works. You do more of what works. If it works big, others quickly copy it. Then you do something else. The trick is the doing something else.
Leonardo da Vinci

If we all did the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.
Thomas Alva Edison

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: His eyes are closed.
Albert Einstein

Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.
Albert Einstein

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all of our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time
T.S. Elliott

It is never too late to be who you might have been.
George Eliot

The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Don't be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.What if they are a little course, and you may get your coat soiled or torn? What if you do fail, and get fairly rolled in the dirt once or twice. Up again, you shall never be so afraid of a tumble.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

For everything you have missed, you have gained something else.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising which tempt you to believe that your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires courage.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

All men and women are born, live, suffer and die;what distinguishes us one from another is our dreams, whether they be dreams about worldly or unworldly things, and what we do to make them come about... We do not choose to be born. We do not choose our parents. We do not choose our historical epoch, the country of our birth, or the immediate circumstances of our upbringing. We do not, most of us, choose to die; nor do we choose the time and conditions of our death. But within this realm of choicelessness, we do choose how we live.
Joseph Epstein

Yesterday is ashes; tomorrow wood. Only today does the fire burn brightly.
Eskimo proverb

Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal .
Henry Ford

In three words, I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.
Robert Frost

To be surprised, to wonder, is to begin to understand.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset

 One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.
Andre Gide

We are shaped and fashioned by what we love.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The art of life is to know how to enjoy a little and endure much.
William Hazlitt

Experience is NOT what happens to you; it is what you do with what happens to you.
Aldous Huxley

The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.
William James

I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have .
Thomas Jefferson

Mistakes are the portals of discovery .
James Joyce

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable.
Helen Keller Let Us Have Faith

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature. Life is either a grand adventure or nothing ....
Helen Keller

The most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight, but no vision.
Helen Keller

Once i knew only darkness and stillness...my life was without past or future...but a little word from the fingers of another fell into my hand that clutched at emptiness, and my heart leaped to the rapture of living."
Helen Keller

Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.
Robert F. Kennedy

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

Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other one thing.
Abraham Lincoln

The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just.
Abraham Lincoln

And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count, it's the life in your years.
Abraham Lincoln

I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.
Jack London

Obstacles are like wild animals. They are cowards but they will bluff you if they can. If they see you are afraid of them... they are liable to spring upon you; but if you look them squarely in the eye, they will slink out of sight.
Orison Swett Marden (1850-1924) Founder, Success Magazine

Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off the goal.
Hannah More

The Universe is one great kindergarten for man. Everything that exists has brought with it its own peculiar lesson.
Orison Swett Marden (1850-1924) Founder, Success Magazine

Each day provides it's own gifts.
Martial (Roman Poet) From Epigrams 86 A.D.

 When we are alone on a starlit night, when by chance we see the migrating birds in autumn descending on a grove of junipers to rest and eat; when we see children in a moment when they are really children, when we know love in our own hearts; or when, like the Japanese poet, Basho, we hear an old frog land in a quiet pond with a solitary splash--at such times the awakening, the turning inside out of all values, the "newness", the emptiness and the purity of vision that make themselves evident, all these provide a glimpse of the cosmic dance.
Thomas Merton

Dream dreams and write them aye, but live them first.
Samuel Eliot Morrison 1887-1976

It is a glorious privilege to live, to know, to act, to listen, to behold, to love. To look up at the blue summer sky; to see the sun sink slowly beyond the line of the horizon; to watch the worlds come twinkling into view, first one by one, and the myriads that no person can count, and lo! the universe is white with them; and you and I are here.
Marco Morrow assistant publisher of the Capper Publications mid 1930's in Kansas was a good friend of American Writer, Sherwood Anderson. The quote was published in Elbert Hubbard's Scrap Book, p46 in 1923.

And the day came when the wish to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
Anais Nin

Where I was born and where and how I have lived is unimportant. It is what I have done with where I have been that should be of interest.
Georgia O'Keeffe

When you walk to the edge of all the light you have
And you take the first step into the darkness of the unknown
You must believe that one of two things will happen
There will be something solid for you to stand upon
or you will be taught to fly.
- Patrick Overton

Fortune and love befriend the bold.
Ovid

Chance is always powerful. Let your hook be always cast; in the pool where you least expect it, there will be a fish.
Ovid, in Risk

In matters of observation chance favors only the prepared mind. (not literal translation) - Dans les champs de l¹observation le hasard ne favorise que les esprits prepares
Louis Pasteur (Translation privoded from the lecture, Chance Favors the Prepared Mind by Edythe L. P. Anthony.)

The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.
Marcel Proust

I read and walked for miles at night along the beach, writing bad blank verse and searching endlessly for someone wonderful who would step out of the darkness and change my life. It never crossed my mind that that person could be me.
Anna Quindlen

Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.
Theodore Roosevelt

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.
Eleanor Roosevelt

We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand- and melting like a snowflake.
Marie B. Ray

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.
Ambrose Redmoon

Should you shield the canyons from the windstorms, you would never see the beauty of their carvings.
Elisabeth Kubler Ross

The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.
Elisabeth Kubler Ross

The opportunity that God sends does not wake up him who is asleep.
Senegalese proverb

One should count each day a separate life
Lucius Annaeus Seneca (5BC - 65AD)

A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it bearing within him the image of a cathedral.
Antoine De Saint-Exupery French Author, Aviator

People travel to wonder at the height of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars; and they pass by themselves without wondering.
St. Augustine (354-430)

This is true joy in life, being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being force of nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy .I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no "brief candle" to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) playwright

Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got a hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) playwright

Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) playwright

The thing about failure is that you never know how close you were to success.
Brian Simo Race car driver, founder No Fear Gear

Everybody, soon or late, sits down to a banquet of consequences.
Robert Louis Stevenson

Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.
Robert Louis Stevenson

Life is a promise .Fufill it.
Mother Teresa

The very uprightness of the pines and maples asserts the ancient rectitude and vigor of nature. Our lives need the relief of such a background, where the pine flourishes and the jay still screams.
Henry David Thoreau

The question is not what you look at, but what you see .
Henry David Thoreau

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. It is not important that he should mature as soon as an apple-tree or oak. Shall he turn his spring into summer? If the condition of things which we were made for is not yet, what were any reality which we can substitute? We will not be shipwrecked on a vain reality
Henry David Thoreau -Walden

Do not worry if you have built your castles in the air. They are where they should be. Now put the foundations under them..
Henry David Thoreau

If one advances confidently in the direction of one's dreams, and endeavors to live the life which one has imagined, one will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
Henry David Thoreau

Do not lose hold of your dreams or aspirations. For if you do, you may still exist but you have ceased to live.
Henry David Thoreau

The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding, go out to meet it.
Thucydides

Life is not an easy matter.... You cannot live through it without falling into frustration and cynicism unless you have before you a great idea which raises you above personal misery, above weakness, above all kinds of perfidy and baseness.
Leon Trotsky - Diary In Exile, Entry for April 3, 1935

The miracle, or the power, that elevates the few is to be found in their perseverance under the promptings of a brave, determined spirit.
Mark Twain

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
Mark Twain

Trying is the touchstone to accomplishment.
Paul von Ringelheim, artist

A window of opportunity won't open itself.
Dave Weinbaum

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It's not just in some of us, it's in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."
~ Marianne Williamson, 21st century spiritual teacher
from A Return to Love

Some things cannot be spoken or discovered until we have been stuck, incapacitated, or blown off course for awhile. Plain sailing is pleasant, but you are not going to explore many unknown realms that way.
David Whyte

The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work.
Emile Zola