"The only way we are ever going to ensure peace on this planet is to adopt the entire world as "our family." We are going to have to hug them, and kiss them. And dance and play with them. And we are going to have to sit and talk and walk and cry with them. Because when we do, we'll be able to see that, indeed, everyone is beautiful, and we all complement each other beautifully and we would all be poorer without each other."
- Stan Dale

"Let your life lightly dance on the edges of Time like dew on the tip of a leaf."
- Rabindranath Tagore, Indian Poet (1861-1941)

"The illusion that we are separate from one another is an optical delusion of our consciousness."
- Albert Einstein

"God is a comic playing to an audience that's afraid to laugh."
- Voltaire

"Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much of life. So aim above morality.
Be not simply good; be good for something."
- Henry David Thoreau

"Be the change you want to see in the world."
- Mahatma Gandhi

"Creative minds have always been known to survive any kind of bad training."
- Anna Freud

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

"Every man has his own destiny: the only imperative is to follow it, to accept it, no matter where it leads him."
- Henry Miller

"Hard work never killed anybody... but why take chances?"
- Anonymous

"Work. Trust me, there's no future in it."
- Anonymous

"One man gathers what another man spills."
- Robert Hunter

The Invitation

It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ached for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.
It doesn't interest me how old you are, I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dreams, for the adventure of being alive.
It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon. 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 fade it or fix it.
I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wilderness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic, or to remember the limitations of being human.
It doesn't interest me if the story you're telling me is true. I want to know if you can be true to yourself, if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul.
I want to know if you can see beauty even when it is not pretty every day, and if you can source your life from God's presence.
I want to know if you can live with failure and still stand on the edge of a lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, "Yes"!
It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done.
It doesn't interest me who you are, how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.
It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away.
I want to know if you can be alone with yourself, and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.
- Oriah Mountain Dreamer, Indian Elder, May 94

"They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel."
- Carl W. Buechner

"Music is a higher revelation than philosophy."
- Ludwig van Beethoven

"Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit."
- William Somerset Maugham

"When you woman your woman
And I man my man
We get to lovin'
hmmmm... Honey like we can
It's enough, goddammit, it's enough"
- Greg Brown

"Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life."
- Berthold Auerbach

"It's a strange world
She thinks as she looks around
This one horse town...
Day in and Day out
All seems like one act plays
Until you take five just to breathe...
Wake up with a cup of coffee and a D.J.
Hop in a car before the sun is up
Get out of the car, stare at a computer for eight hours
Listen to bullshit thankful there are
A couple of people who make some sense
Out of it sometimes through the day.
Laughing, bitching, swearing, running,
Searching, and typing all day long...
Like Pavlov's dog the clock strikes
Four and she begins drooling for
Sunshine, Fresh Air, and
Freedom.
Again drive home unwind thinking
Of all the things that need to be
Accomplished in five hours time.
Walk the dog, clean the bathroom,
Go to the bank, go to the grocery store,
Come home put the groceries away,
Put the laundry away, Sun goes down,
Walk the dog, write a letter,
Say Hi to the roommate, go to
Bed.
Only - to - do - it - all - over - again - in - the morning...
Maybe with some slight variations.
Hmmmmm.
It's no wonder she drinks on the weekends..."
- Anonymous

A seven year old boy says to his dad, "When I grow up I want to be a musician."
His dad just shakes his head and says, "Son, you can't have it both ways."

"In the beginning of all things, wisdom and knowledge were with the animals; for Tirawa, the One Above, did not speak directly to man. He sent certain animals to tell men that he showed himself through the beasts, and that from them, and from the stars and the sun and the moon, man should learn. Tirawa spoke to man through his works."
- Chief Letakots-Lesa, Pawnee Tribe

"Given the choice between accomplishing something and just lying around, I'd rather lie around. No contest."
- Eric Clapton

"We secure our friends not by accepting favors but by doing them."
- Thucydides

"Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy."
- Benjamin Franklin

If there is righteousness in the heart
there will be beauty in the character.
If there is beauty in the character
there will be harmony in the home.
If there is harmony in the home
there will be order in the nation.
If there is order in the nation
there will be peace in the world.
- Anonymous

"A benevolent act is like a locust; it sleeps until it is called."
- from "Winter's Tale" by Mark Helprin

"No one ever said that you would live to see the repercussions of everything you do, or that you have guarantees, or that you are not obliged to wander in the dark, or that everything will be proved to you and neatly verified like something in science. Nothing is: at least nothing that is worthwhile. I didn't bring you up only to move across sure ground. I didn't teach you to think that everything must be within our control or understanding. Did I? For, if I did, I was wrong. If you won't take a chance, then the powers you refuse because you cannot explain them, will, as they say, make a monkey out of you."
- from "Winter's Tale" by Mark Helprin

"Character is a victory, not a gift."
- Anonymous

"Extraordinary events seldom keep appointments with precision."
- from "Winter's Tale" by Mark Helprin

"Everybody is somebody else's weirdo."
- Anonymous

"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."
- Friedrich Nietzsche

"The sun shines not on us, but in us. The rivers flow not past, but through us..."
- John Muir

"You will find as you look back upon your life that the moments when you have truly lived are the moments when you have done things in the spirit of love."
- Henry Drummond

"People say true friends must always hold hands, but true friends don't need to hold hands because they know the other hand will always be there."
- Anonymous

"I don't believe in miracles. I rely on them."
- Anonymous

"How come you don't like winters? Don't you know it's good for ya? I don't know - I moved to California and, well, it was too much for me. I really missed spring, fall, winter. I needed the cycles for my own "self." I know that everyone isn't like that. I think that people are darling when they come in from outside and their cheeks are all red and their eyes are all sparkly and their hair is all smashed this way and that cuz of a warm fuzzy hat. I like how you never want to get out of bed cuz you're warm and cozy in the flannel sheets; taking hot showers and when you get out your body is steaming cuz it's colder in the bathroom than your skin and you look like a big red lobstah.... I like that... I like taking walks and seeing your breath and the hoarfrost all over the trees and everything. I like seeing laughter on peoples' faces when they are sledding. I like that in Wisconsin there aren't earthquakes or hurricanes but we have ice to make us humble. And Mother Nature gets us with that! You try to walk your dog and every other step you reach out into thin air and try to balance yourself with your arms. I think it's funny watching my dog slip on the ice when he's walking and I laugh... and then slip on the ice myself! I like that my friend Rick was screwing around with his car on the way home from work - he was driving and hitting the emergency brake and skidding around - and then he did it one too many times and did a couple of doughnuts and landed in the ditch and it cost him 75$ to get out... that's funny... :)"
- Amos

"true lovers in each happening of their hearts live longer than all which and every who"
- e. e. cummings

"This world is not a conclusion. A sequel stands beyond invisible as music but positive as sound."
- Emily Dickinson

"Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Until he extends the circle of his compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace."
- Albert Schweitzer

"The whole drift of my education goes to persuade me that the world of our present consciousness is only one out of many worlds of consciousness that exist."
- William James

"Drink to me, only with thine eyes, and I will pledge with mine; or leave a kiss but in the cup and I'll not look for wine."
- Ben Jonson

"Renew thyself completely each day; do it again, and again, and forever again."
- Chinese inscription

"How long do you think you're going to live in this world? This is a one-way deal. I've never seen a luggage rack for a hearse. Have you?"
- Frank Novak

"Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect."
- Chief Seattle

"Where heaven and earth come together, gentle nurturing rains fall."
- Taoist proverb

"He who does not attempt to make peace when small discords arise is like the bee's hive which leaks drops of honey. Soon, the whole hive collapses."
- Nagarjuna (c. 100-200 A.D.)

"I shall allow no man to belittle my soul by making me hate him."
- Booker T. Washington

"If you live by the rule of love, there is no need for other rules."
- T.A.P

"D'you call life a bad job? Never! We've had our ups and downs, we've had our struggles, we've always been poor, but it's been worth it, ay, worth it a hundred times I say when I look round at my children."
- W. Somerset Maugham

"The newer people of this modern age are more eager to amass than to realize."
- Rabindranath Tagore

"It is not what we do, but also what we do not do, for which we are accountable."
- Moliere

"Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts."
- Charles Dickens

"I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man."
- Chuang Tzu

"He who would travel happily must travel light."
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

"It is unwise to be too sure of one's own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err."
- Mohandas K. Gandhi

"We wouldn't care so much what people thought of us if we knew how seldom they did."
- John Lanchester

"Knowing others is intelligence, knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength, mastering yourself is true power."
- Lao-Tzu

"To live for some future goal is shallow. It's the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top."
- Robert M. Pirsig, author "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"

"All wars are civil wars, because all men are brothers... Each one owes infinitely more to the human race than to the particular country in which he was born."
- Francois Fenelon

"No man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty whether in a similar situation he might not have done the same."
- Viktor Frankl

"The most happy marriage I can picture or imagine to myself would be the union of a deaf man to a blind woman."
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge

"It is a shameful thing to insult a little child. It has its feelings, it has its small dignity; and since it cannot defend them, it is surely an ignoble act to injure them."
- Mark Twain

"The mind and the world are opposites, and the vision arises where they meet. When your mind doesn't stir inside, the world doesn't arise outside. When the world and the mind are both transparent, this is true vision, and such understanding is true understanding."
- Bodhidharma

"People are like stained glass windows: they sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light within."
- Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

"He who sacrifices his conscience to ambition burns a picture to obtain the ashes."
- Chinese Proverb

"Observing without judging is sometimes called "unconditional love." All humans are spiritual souls. All were created in the same instant. No one is older, smarter, or better off than anyone else. Each was given the same gift, the gift of free will, freedom of choice. The Source is perfect, and everything created by the Source is perfect. We were created spiritually perfect and have remained so, but our gift lets us believe and act otherwise. We allow ourselves to see ourselves and others as less than perfect and have the adventure of acting less than our potential peaceful selves.
There are no mistakes in terms of Forever. You can't make a mistake because human life is your gift and you are exploring. You can observe what is taking place and, without judging it as wrong, decide that it doesn't smell, taste, or feel intuitively good for your path. You then bless it and walk on. That is how you can fulfill the requirement to love everyone. It doesn't mean you like their actions, or how they choose to conduct themselves. But you don't judge the person as being wrong. It is simply not a part of your path. You put no energy in that direction. No words, no actions, no thoughts."
- from "Mutant Message from Forever" by Marlo Morgan

"There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth."
- Leo Tolstoy

"Nature magically suits a man to his fortunes, by making them the fruit of his character."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."
- Blaise Pascal

"The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent upon it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as it if had nothing else in the universe to do."
- Galileo Galilei

"One of the keys to happiness is a bad memory."
- Rita Mae Brown

"When I despair, I remember that all through history, the way of truth and love has always won. There have been murderers and tyrants, and for a time they can seem invincible. But in the end they always fall. Think of it, always."
- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

"If you bungle raising your children, I don't think whatever else you do well matters very much."
- Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

"The highest purpose is to have no purpose at all. This puts one in accord with nature in her manner of operation."
- John Cage

"Fame is a vapor; popularity an accident; the only earthly certainty is oblivion."
- Mark Twain

"After I'm dead I'd rather have people ask why I have no monument than why I have one."
- Cato the Elder (234-149 BC)

"It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words: "And this, too, shall pass away." How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction!"
- Abraham Lincoln

..."Tell me, amigo," said Switters in a voice just loud enough to penetrate the fellow's earphones, "do you know why boom-boom movies are so popular? Do you know why young males, especially, love, simply love, to see things blown apart?"
The man stared blankly at Switters. He lifted his headset, but on one side only. "It's freedom," said Switters brightly. "Freedom from the material world. Subconsciously, people feel trapped by our culture's confining buildings and its relentless avalanche of consumer goods. So, when they watch all this shit being demolished in a totally irreverent and devil-may-care fashion, they experience the kind of release the Greeks used to get from their tragedies. The ecstasy of psychic liberation."
The Latino smiled, but it was not a friendly smile; it was, in fact, the sort of quasi-smile one observes on small dogs in the backseats of parked cars just before they begin to bark hysterically and try to chew their way through the window glass. Perhaps he doesn't understand, thought Switters.
"Things. Cosas. Things attach themselves like leeches to the human soul, then they bleed out the sweetness and the music and the primordial joy of being unencumbered upone the land. Comprende? People feel tremendous pressure to settle down in some sort of permanent space and fill it up with stuff, but deep inside they resent those structures, and they're scared to death of that stuff because they know it controls them and restricts their movements. That's why they relish the boom-boom cinema. On a symbolic level, it annihilates their inanimate wardens and blows away the walls of their various traps."
Feeling loquacious now, Switters might have gone on to offer his theory on suicide bombers, to wit: Islamic terrorist groups were successful in attracting volunteer martyrs because the young men got to strap explosives on themselves and blast valuable public property to smithereens. Exhilarating boom-boom power. If they were required to martyr themselves by being dragged behind a bus or sticking a wet finger in a light socket, volunteers would be few and far between. "Incidentally," he might have added, "are you aware that there's no such thing as a smithereen? The word exists only in the plural." He said none of this, however, because the Latino had begun to grind his teeth at him...
- from "Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates" by Tom Robbins

"The more we live by our intellect, the less we understand the meaning of life."
- Leo Tolstoy

"Man's life does not commence in the womb and never ends in the grave."
- Charan Singh

"Non-violence and cowardice go ill together. I can imagine a fully armed man to be at heart a coward. Possession of arms implies an element of fear, if not cowardice. But true non-violence is an impossibility without the possession of unadulterated fearlessness."
- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

"Ultimately, the only power to which man should aspire is that which he exercises over himself."
- Elie Wiesel

"There is, nevertheless, a certain respect and a general duty of humanity that ties us, not only to beasts that have life and sense, but even to trees and plants."
- Michel de Montaigne

"People are often unreasonable, illogical, 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 false friends and some true enemies;
Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you;
Be honest and frank anyway.
What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight;
Build anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous;
Be happy anyway.
The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;
Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough;
Give the world the best you've got anyway.
You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God;
It was never between you and them anyway."
- Mother Theresa

"It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one's life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than "try to be a little kinder."
- Aldous Huxley

"The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself."
- Henry Miller

"Simplicity doesn't mean to live in misery and poverty. You have what you need, and you don't want to have what you don't need."
- Charan Singh

"Make the most of the hemp seed. Sow it everywhere."
- George Washington

"Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children."
- Kahlil Gibran

"Kindness is the golden chain by which society is bound together."
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"So many gods, so many creeds, so many paths that wind and wind, while just the art of being kind is all the sad world needs."
- Ella Wheeler Wilcox

"The only difference between me and a madman is that I'm not mad."
- Salvador Dali

"Take a music bath once or twice a week for a few seasons, and you will find that it is to the soul what the water bath is to the body."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

"An eye for an eye leaves everyone blind."
- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

"The believer is happy; the doubter is wise."
- Hungarian proverb

"I contend that Freedom was never threatened by, nor could it ever be threatened by, terrorists. The only threat to Freedom is the US Federal government. Terrorists can *only* take my life, only the government can infringe upon my Freedom."
- Anonymous

"It's a shallow life that doesn't give a person a few scars."
- Garrison Keillor

"Sometimes I think we're alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we're not. In either case, the idea is quite staggering."
- Arthur C. Clarke

"A good heart is better than all the heads in the world."
- Edward Bulwer-Lytton

"Please subdue the anguish of your soul. Nobody is destined only to happiness or to pain. The wheel of life takes one up and down by turn."
- Kalidasa

"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 listen to stars and birds, babes and sages, with open heart; to study hard; to think quietly, act frankly, talk gently, await occasions, hurry never; in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common - this is my symphony."
- William Henry Channing

"We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them."
- Kahlil Gibran

"Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral."
- Paulo Freire

"What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset."
- Crowfoot

"We are not human beings on a spiritual journey, we are spiritual beings on a human journey."
- Teilard De Chardin

"The deeper that sorrow carves into your being the more joy you can contain. Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven?"
- Kahlil Gibran

"Once you have decided to keep a certain pile, it is no longer yours; for you can't spend it."
- Michel De Montaigne

"You think your pains and heartbreaks are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who have ever been alive."
- James Baldwin

"What a strange machine man is! You fill him with bread, wine, fish, and radishes, and out comes sighs, laughter, and dreams."
- Nikos Kazantzakis

"The greatest minds are capable of the greatest vices as well as of the greatest virtues."
- Rene Descartes

"Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons. It is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth."
- Walt Whitman

"What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset."
- Crowfoot

"At bottom, every man knows perfectly well that he is a unique being, only once on this earth; and by no extraordinary chance will such a marvelously picturesque piece of diversity in unity as he is, ever be put together a second time."
- Friedrich Nietzsche

"He who sings scares away his woes."
- Cervantes

"A man is not old until his regrets take the place of dreams."
- Yiddish proverb

"The fingers of your thoughts are molding your face ceaselessly."
- Charles Reznikoff