“For if there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.”   --Albert Camus

“A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it.”   --Jean de la Fontaine

The average man does not know what to do with his life, yet wants another which will last forever.

“The worse of all evil is to leave the ranks of the living before one dies.”   --Seneca

Look backward with gratitude and forward with confidence.

Some people grin and bear it.   Others smile and change it.

“This moment-- this day-- is as good as any moment in all eternity.   I shall make of this day-- each moment of this day-- a heaven on earth.”   --Dan Custer

“Without hope we live in desire.”   --Dante

“Words are plentiful, but deeds are precious.”   --Lech Walesa

“Life is easier than you think; all that is necessary is to accept the impossible, do without the indispensable, and bear the intolerable.”   --Kathleen Norris

“Most people spend more time and energy in going around problems than in trying to solve them.”   --Henry Ford

“We'll never be perfect (from personality's perspective), but as we grow spiritually and morally, we find that recognizing and behaving in keeping with basic goodness is much more automatic.   We find that basic goodness arises naturally from spending more time being awake and aware in the present.”   --Kramer & Kramer, Losing the Weight of the World, 95

“The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.”   --Emerson

You are exactly between two eternities...the past and the future.”   --na Hoti Kait

“Peace should be our constant aim if there is no danger of treachery.”   --Cicero

“Life is just too short to live out someone else's dream.”   --Dorinne Kondo

“There are three material things... essential to life-- These are pure air, water, and earth.   There are three immaterial things... essential to life-- these are admiration, hope and love.   Admiration-- the power of discerning and taking delight in what is beautiful in visible form and lovely in human character; and necessarily, striving to produce what is beautiful in form and to become what is lovely in character.   Hope-- the recognition, by true foresight, of better things to be reached hereafter, whether by ourselves or others; necessarily issuing in the straight-forward and undisappointable effort to advance, according to our proper power, the gaining of them.   Love-- both of family and neighbor, faithful and satisfyed.”   --John Ruskin

“The miracle is faith's most trusted child.”   --Goethe

It takes courage to stand up and speak.   It takes even more courage sometimes to sit down and listen.

“Excellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way.”   --Booker T. Washington

Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.

“By learning you will teach; by teaching you will learn.”  --Latin Proverb

“If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible.”   --Soren Kierkegaard

“Man's search for meaning is the primary motivation in his life and not a ‘secondary realization' of instinctual drives… Any attempt to restore a man's inner strength in the camp had first to succeed in showing him some future goal.   Nietzsche's words ‘He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how' could be the guiding model for all psychotherapeutic efforts regarding prisoners.”   --Frankl [Auschwitz survivor] in Taylor & Crain, Optimystics Handbook, 89

Other Frankl Definitions:

logotherapy—help people focus not on the past but on the present and future, not on their neuroses but on the meaning that life holds for them and the actions they can take to realize that meaning.

Tragic optimism—the ability of a human being to remain hopeful in the face of pain, suffering, and death, to turn negatives into positives, to grow with, not against, the grain of circumstance.

Hopelessness is the single most dangerous aspect of depression, for it is the one most accurate predictor of suicide.   Children under the age of seven cannot sustain a sense of hopelessness. They may experience depression but not despair.   –Martin Seligman, Learned Optimism, as quoted in Taylor & Crain, Optimystic's Handbook, 94

“Don't be run so much by what you lack as by what you have already achieved.” –Marcus Aurelius

“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”   --Anne Frank

“Look to this day! For it is life, the very life of life.   In its brief course lie all the verities and realities of your existence: the bliss of growth, the glory of action, the splendor of beauty; for yesterday is but a dream, and tomorrow is only a vision; but today, well lived, makes every yesterday a dream of happiness and every tomorrow a vision of hope. Look well, therefore, to this day.”   --Attributed to Kalidasa

You may be only one person in the world, but you may also be the world to one person.

Happiness comes through doors you didn't even know you left open.

“I shall take my voice wherever there are those who want to hear the melody of freedom or the words that might inspire hope and courage in the face of despair and fear.   My weapons are peaceful, for it only by peace that peace can be attained.   The song of freedom must prevail.”   --Paul Robeson

“My heart is moved by all I cannot save: So much as been destroyed// I have to cast my lot with those who, age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world.”   --Adrienne Rich

“To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; To be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich; To study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly; To listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open heart; To bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasions, hurry never.   To let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common.   This is to be my symphony.”   --William Henry Channing

“Hold fast to dreams/ for if dreams die/ life is a broken-winged bird/ that cannot fly. Hold fast to dreams,/ for when dreams go/ life is a barren field/ frozen with snow.” --Langston Hughes, Selected Poems of Langston Hughes, 1974

“People say, what is the sense of our small effort.   They cannot see that we must lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time.   A pebble cast into a pond causes ripples that spread in all directions.   Each one of our thoughts, words and deeds is like that.   No one has a right to sit down and feel helpless.   There's too much work to do.”   --Dorothy Day

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed it's the only thing that ever has.”   --Margaret Mead

“Courage is contagious.   When a brave person takes a stand, the spines of others are stiffened.”   --Billy Graham

“Courage is very important.   Like a muscle, it's strengthened by use.”   --Ruth Gordon

“Always it is easier to pay homage to prophets than to heed the direction of their vision.   It is easier blindly to venerate the saints than to learn the human quality of their sainthood.   It is easier to glorify the heroes of the race than to give weight to their examples.   To worship the wise is much easier than to profit by their wisdom.   Great leaders are honored, not but adulation, but by sharing their insights and values.   Grandchildren of those who stoned the prophet sometimes gather up the stones to build the prophet's monument.   Always it is easier to pay homage to prophets than to heed the direction of their wisdom.”   --Clinton Lee Scott

“But we have only begun to love the earth.   We have only begun to imagine the fullness of life.   How could we tire of hope?—So much is in the bud.   How can we desire to fail?—we have only begun to imagine justice and mercy, only begun to envision how it might be to live as siblings with beast and flower, not as oppressors.   Surely our river cannot already be hastening into the sea of nonbeing?   Surely it cannot drag, in the silt, all that is innocent?   Not yet, not yet—there is too much broken that must be mended, too much hurt that we have done to each other that cannot be forgiven.   We have only begun to know the power that is in us if we would join our solitudes in the communion of struggle.   So much is unfolding that must complete its gesture, so much is in the bud.” --Denise Levertov, Candles in Babylon, 1982

“The best bridge between despair and hope is a good night's sleep.”   --E. Joseph Coleman

“Begin at once to live, and count each day as a separate life.”   --Lucius Annaeus Seneca

“The three grand essentials of happiness are: something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.”   --Thomas Chalmers

“True contentment is the power of getting out of any situation all that there is in it.”   --G.K. Chesterton

“I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble… The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker.”   --Helen Keller

“Choices can change our lives profoundly.   The choice to mend a broken relationship, to say ‘yes' to a difficult assignment, to lay aside some important work to play with a child, to visit some forgotten person—these small choices may affect our lives eternally.”   --Gloria Gaither

“There is a loftier ambition than merely to stand high in the world.   It is to stoop down and lift mankind a little higher.”   --Henry Van Dyke

“If you want to become the greatest in your field, no matter what it may be, equip yourself to render greater service than anyone else.”   --Clinton Davidson

“I try to take one day at a time, but sometimes several days attack me at once.”   --Jennifer Unlimited