Inspirational quotes or concepts....got any goodies?

[MsSparkie]

It is never too late to be what you might have been.

- George Eliot

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
~Benjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790), Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759

Mark Twain

MORAL STATISTICIAN. - I don't want any of your statistics. I took your
whole batch and lit my pipe with it. I hate your kind of people. You are
always ciphering out how much a man's health is injured, and how much
his intellect is impaired, and how many pitiful dollars and cents he
wastes in the course of ninety-two years' indulgence in the fatal
practice of smoking; and in the equally fatal practice of drinking
coffee; and in playing billiards occasionally; and in taking a glass of
wine at dinner, etc., etc., etc. And you are always figuring out how
many women have been burned to death because of the dangerous fashion of
wearing expansive hoops, etc., etc., etc. You never see but one side of
the question. You are blind to the fact that most old men in America
smoke and drink coffee, although, according to your theory, they ought
to have died young; and that hearty old Englishmen drink wine and
survive it, and portly old Dutchmen both drink and smoke freely, and yet
grow older and fatter all the time. And you never try to find out how
much solid comfort, relaxation and enjoyment a man derives from smoking
in the course of a lifetime, (and which is worth ten times the money he
would save by letting it alone,) nor the appalling aggregate of
happiness lost in a lifetime by your kind of people from not smoking. Of
course you can save money by denying yourself all these little vicious
enjoyments for fifty years, but then what can you do with it? -what use
can you put it to? Money can't save your infinitesimal soul; all the use
that money can be put to is to purchase comfort and enjoyment in this
life -therefore, as you are an enemy to comfort and enjoyment, where is
the use in accumulating cash? It won't do for you to say that you can
use it to better purpose in furnishing a good table, and in charities,
and in supporting tract societies, because you know yourself that you
people who have no petty vices are never known to give away a cent, and
that you stint yourselves so in the matter of food that you are always
feeble and hungry. And you never dare to laugh in the daytime for fear
some poor wretch, seeing you in a good humor, will try to borrow a
dollar of you; and in church you are always down on your knees when the
contribution box comes around; and you always pay your debts in
greenbacks, and never give the revenue officers a true statement of your
income. Now you know all these things yourself, don't you? Very well,
then, what is the use of your stringing out your miserable lives to a
lean and withered old age? What is the use of your saving money that is
so utterly worthless to you? In a word, why don't you go off somewhere
and die, and not be always trying to seduce people into becoming as
"ornery" and unloveable as you are yourselves, by your ceaseless and
villainous "moral statistics?" Now I don't approve of dissipation, and I
don't indulge in it, either, but I haven't a particle of confidence in a
man who has no redeeming petty vices whatever, and so I don't want to
hear from you any more. I think you are the very same man who read me a
long lecture, last week, about the degrading vice of smoking cigars, and
then came back, in my absence, with your vile, reprehensible fire-proof
gloves on, and carried off my beautiful parlor stove.

[cableguy]

As overplayed as it was, it can be pretty powerfull:
Don't worry, be happy!

[MsSparkie]

Today you are You,
that is truer than true.
There is no one alive who is Youer than You.
- Dr. Seuss


Watch your thoughts; they become words.

Watch your words; they become actions.

Watch your actions; they become habits.

Watch your habits; they become character.

Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.

- Frank Outlaw


Risk! Risk anything! Care no more for the opinions of others, for those voices. Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth.
- Katherine Mansfield


"Start every day with a smile and get it over with".
- W.C. Fields


Happiness makes up in height
for what it lacks in length.
-Robert Frost


"I am not available right now, but thank you for caring enough to call. I am making some changes in my life. Please leave a message after the beep. If I do not return your call, you are one of the changes."
- unknown


Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear.
- Mark Twain

As flowing waters disappear into the mist
We lose all track of their passage
Every heart is its own Buddha
Ease off; become immortal

Wake up: the world’s a mote of dust
Behold heaven’s round mirror
Turn loose: slip past shape and shadow
Sit side by side with nothing save Tao
- Shih-shu (17th century-early 18th)

The truth is there’s nothing to find.
Life and death are important.
Don’t suffer them in vain.
There’s no advantage in deceiving yourself.
Even if you have mountains of jewels
and as many servants as there are
grains of sand along the Ganges,
you see them when your eyes are open.
But what about when your eyes are shut?
You should realize that everything
you see is like a dream or illusion.
- Bodhidharma (d. 533)

"Progress isn't made by early risers. It's made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something."
Robert A. Heinlein

"Only he who handles his ideas lightly is master of his ideas, and only he who is master of his ideas is not enslaved by them."
- Lin Yutang

[MsSparkie]

Love #3 on your list, and #4 is funny!

[BigV]

Riffraff

[AlternateGray]

"I've always figured that if God wanted us to go to church a lot He'd have given us bigger behinds to sit on and smaller heads to think with."-
P.J. O'Rourke

[MsSparkie]

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

- Old Eskimo proverb

The Eagle suffers little birds to sing.
Titus Andronicus, A4, s4

[Bullitt]

"Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have more." -Groucho Marx

[Torrere]

Originally Posted by MsSparkie

"I am not available right now, but thank you for caring enough to call. I am making some changes in my life. Please leave a message after the beep. If I do not return your call, you are one of the changes."
- unknown

I'm not brutal enough to use that as my answering machine message, but it'd be true.

' We are born astride the grave ' . In Waiting for Godot somewhere . I forget if it was Vladimir or Estragon .

[Clodfobble]

It was Vladimir, and also Pozzo (I played Estragon.)

POZZO: ...They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more.

VLADIMIR: ...Astride of a grave and a difficukt birth. Down in the hole, lingeringly, the gravedigger puts on the foreceps.

[dar512]

To get where you want to go, you must be willing to leave where you are.
-- J. Conrad Hole

The greatest force on earth is the human soul on fire.
-- Ferdinand Foche