Sunday, June 23, 2013

30 Favorite Quotes

1.      When I was 5 years old, my mom always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down “happy.” They told me I didn’t understand the assignment and I told them they didn’t understand life.” –John Lennon
2.      “The trick to finding ideas is to convince yourself that everyone and everything has a story to tell…good writing does not succeed or fail on the strength of its ability to persuade not the kind of writing that you’ll find in this book, anyway. It succeeds or fails on the strength of its ability to engage you, to make you think, to give you a glimpse into someone else’s head—even if in the end you conclude that someone else’s head is not a place you’d really like to be. I’ve called these pieces adventures, because that is what they are intended to be. Enjoy yourself.”--Malcolm Gladwell
3.      "It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your hearts' longing...I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive...I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain. I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fix it...I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself." –Oriah Mountain Dreamer
4.      “The complaint was the answer. To have heard myself making it was to be answered. Lightly men talk of saying what they mean. To say the very thing you mean, the whole of it, nothing more or less or other than what you really mean; that's the whole art and joy of words. When the time comes to you at which you will be forced at last to utter the speech which has lain at the center of your soul for years, which you have, all that time, idiot-like, been saying over and over, you'll not talk about joy of words. I saw well why the gods do not speak to us, openly, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?" –C. S. Lewis
5.      "You are not at all like my rose. As yet you are nothing. No one has tamed you, and you have tamed no one. You are beautiful, but you are empty. One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you--the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered; because it is she that I have put under the glass globe; because it is she that I have sheltered behind the screen; because it is she that I have listened to, when she grumbled, or boasted, or even sometimes when she said nothing. Because she is my rose."  —The Little Prince
6.      “Once, there was a small group of kids who decided to go to a park in the middle of the city, and dance and play, laugh and twirl. As they played in the park, they thought that maybe another child would pass by and see them. Maybe that child would think it looked fun and even decide to join them. Then maybe another one would. Then maybe a businessman would hear them from his skyscraper. Maybe he would look out the window. Maybe he would see them playing and lay down his papers and come down. Maybe they could teach him to dance. Then maybe another businessman would walk by, a nostalgic man, and he would take off his tie and toss aside his briefcase and dance and play. Maybe the whole city would join the dance. Maybe even the world. Maybe…Regardless, they decided to enjoy the dance.” –Shane Claiborne
7.      “Life is too short to spend it fighting against things. I don’t want to survive, I want to thrive. Life is too big for me if I only know what I am not—I want to know what I am. I am not anti-poverty. I am pro-abundance. I am not working to end scarcity, I am dancing to prove beauty and plenty. “  --Rachel Winzeler
8.      “Yale professor Harold Bloom observed that Karl Marx had it only partly right when he said that religion is the opiate of the people. More broadly speaking, it is the poetry of the people, both the good and the bad, for better and worse. Religion can, and should be, objected to, questioned, and talked about. Devastating criticism of religion is always part of religion. The religiously faithful aren’t just permitted to critique and complain and reform; they’re bound to do it by religion. When religion won’t tolerate questions…it has an unfortunate habit of producing some of the most hateful people ever to walk the earth.” –David Dark
9.      “It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us. Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate—our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure…We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.” —Marianne Williamson
10.  "We live in a fog most of the time. Twenty clear days a year. You are not what you think you are. There is a glory to your life that the enemy fears, and he is hell bent on destroying that glory before you act upon it. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. The deeper reason we fear our own glory is because once we let others see it, they will have seen the truest us, and that is nakedness indeed. We can repent of sin. We can work on "issues," but there is nothing to be "done" about our glory. It is an awkward thing to shimmer when everyone else around you is not." --John Eldredge, "Waking the Dead"
11.  "When you are desperate or even angry, there is at least a shred of hope that things might be different. A holy discontent. But despair is what happens when you are tired of being desperate." --The New Friars  by Scott Bessenecker
12.  “Us girls—we change for guys. We want to please them and we change for love. Guys—they determinedly don’t change. They wait and see if we will love and accept them just as they are. Then, when you aren’t looking, they go and change.” –Karine Moraes
13.  “Missions is less about the transport of God from one place to another and ore about the identification of a God who is already there. It is almost as if being a good missionary means having really good eyesight. Or maybe it means teaching people to use their eyes to see things that have always been there; they just didn’t realize it. You see God where others don’t, and then you point Him out. Perhaps we ought to replace the word “missionary” with “tour guide” because we cannot show people something we haven’t seen…and if you do see yourself as carrying God to places, it can be exhausting. God is really heavy.” –Rob Bell
14.  “There are things you cannot understand, and you must learn to live with this. You must learn to enjoy this…at the end of the day, when I am lying on my bed and I know the chances of any of our theology being exactly right are a million to one, I need to know that God has things figured out that if my math is wrong we are still going to be ok. And wonder is that feeling we get when we let go of our silly answers, our mapped out rules that we want God to follow. I don’t think there is any better worship than wonder.” –Donald Miller
15.  “Take wrong turns. Talk to strangers. Open unmarked doors. And if you see a group of people in a field, go find out what they are doing. Do things without always knowing how they will turn out. You’re curious and smart and bored, and all you see is the choice of working hard or slacking off. There are many adventures that you miss because you’re waiting to think of a plan. To find them, look for tiny interesting choices. And remember that you are always making up the future as you go.”
16.  “People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered.  Forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives.  Be kind anyway. If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies. Succeed anyway. If you are honest and sincere people may deceive you.  Be honest and sincere anyway. What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight.  Create anyway. If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous.  Be happy anyway. The good you do today, will often be forgotten.  Do good anyway. Give the best you have, and it will never be enough.  Give your best anyway. In the final analysis, it is between you and God.  It was never between you and them anyway.” –Mother Teresa
17.  “It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view. The Kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision. We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work. Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of saying that the Kingdom always lies beyond us. We plant the seeds that one day will grow. We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise. We lay foundations that will need further development. We provide yeast that produces effects far beyond our capabilities. We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something, and to do it very well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest. We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker. We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs. We are prophets of a future that is not our own. Amen.” –Oscar Romero
18.  “The only people for me are the mad ones. The ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow Roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars…”—Jack Kerouac
19.  “I hate a Roman named Status Quo!” he said to me. “Stuff your eyes with wonder,” he said, “Live as if you’d drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It’s more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories. Ask no guarantees, ask for no security, there never was such an animal.”—Ray Bradbury
20.  “They’re not that different from you, are they? Same haircuts. Full of hormones, just like you. Invincible, just like you feel. The world is their oyster. They believe they are destined for great things, just like many of you, their eyes are full of hope, just like you. Did they wait until it was too late to make from their lives even one iota of what they were capable? Because, you see gentlemen, these boys are now fertilizing daffodils. But if you listen real close, you can hear them whisper their legacy to you. Go on, lean in. listen, you hear it? Carpe—hear it?—Carpe, carpe diem, seize the day boys, make your lives extraordinary.” –“Dead Poet’s Society”
21.  “I have come to the realization that I am somewhat of a nomad on this earth. I am learning to be okay with that. Human beings long for a place to call home. I have many and none. My heart lives in so many places. With so many people. But God whispers to me that I really have only one home, and that is with Him. I will never be content on this earth. I will always be a nomad. It was meant to be that way. And I will continue bouncing from one home to another, loving with everything I have in whatever location I currently reside, excitedly awaiting the day when I am called heavenward and He says to me, “Welcome home.” –Katie Davis
22.  “Choose what to leave out. In this age of information abundance and overload, those who get ahead will be the folks who figure out what to leave out, so they can concentrate on what’s really important to them. Nothing is more paralyzing than the idea of limitless possibilities. The idea that you can do anything is absolutely terrifying.” –Austin Kleon
23.  Don't surrender your loneliness so quickly. Let it cut more deep. Let it ferment and season you as few human ingredients can. Something missing in my heart tonight has made my eyes so soft, my voice so tender, my need of God absolutely clear.” –Rumi
24.  “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.”—Lao-Tze
25.  “See that I am God. See that I am in everything. See that I do everything. See that I lead everything on to te conclusion I ordained for it before time began, by the same power, wisdom and love with which I made it. How can anything be amiss?” –Julian of Norwich
26.  “Friendships with people who are poor or vulnerable can challenge our arrogance in thinking we know how to fix their circumstances. Our sweeping critiques of multinational corporations become more nuanced when friends are grateful for their jobs and proud of their products. Friendships undermine our tendency to locate the problem “out there” and try to fix it at a distance. And friendships give an urgency to our work for justice, to our search for ways to affect the decisions of multinationals and governments. Friends who are poor challenge our lifestyles of consumption when they build generous and gracious lives out of very few material resources. When we get to know people who are vulnerable, we are challenged to take more seriously the power and opportunities we have. A wise friend once observed that we are most likely to worry about the people we see first thing in the morning. If we live in comfortable circumstances, we need to make decisions to plant one foot in another world. Only then will we keep friends in mind as we make our choices each day.” –Chris Heuertz
27.  “If you don’t know your purpose, discover it, now. The core of your life is your purpose. Everything in your life, from your diet to your career, must be aligned with your purpose if you are to act with coherence and integrity in the world. If you know your purpose, your deepest desire, then the secret of success is to discipline your life so that you support your deepest purpose and minimize distractions and detours.” – David Deida
28.  “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that 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.”- Mark Twain
30.  “Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.” –Steve Jobs


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