Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am.


~ Parker J. Palmer

Men shout to avoid listening to one another. 


~ Miguel de Unamuno, writer and philosopher (1864-1936) 

Guard well within yourself that treasure, kindness. Know how to give without hesitation, how to lose without regret, how to acquire without meanness. 


~ George Sand [pen name of Amantine Aurore Lucile Dupin], novelist (1804-1876) 

Always be smarter than the people who hire you.


~ Lena Horne

A writer needs three things, experience, observation, and imagination, any two of which, at times any one of which, can supply the lack of the others. 


~ William Faulkner, novelist (1897-1962) 

When you do the common things in life in an uncommon way, you will command the attention of the world.


~ George Washington Carver

Nothing will work unless you do. 


~ John Wooden

I cannot believe that the purpose of life is to be "happy." I think the purpose of life is to be useful, to be responsible, to be compassionate. It is, above all, to matter and to count, to stand for something, to have made some difference that you lived at all.

~ Leo C. Rosten

If it wasn't for bad luck, I wouldn't have no luck at all. 


~ Booker T. Jones, musician and songwriter (b. 1944) 

To a clear eye the smallest fact is a window through which the infinite may be seen. 


~ Thomas Henry Huxley, biologist and writer (1825-1895)

If you pray for rain long enough, it eventually does fall. If you pray for floodwaters to abate, they eventually do. The same happens in the absence of prayers.

~ Steve Allen, television host, musician, actor, comedian, and writer (1921-2000)

Money. You don't know where it's been, / but you put it where your mouth is. / And it talks.


~ Dana Gioia, poet, critic, and translator (b. 1950)

That action is best which accomplishes the greatest happiness for the greatest numbers. 

~ Francis Hutcheson, philosopher (1694-1746)

Everything is clearer when you're in love. 

~ John Lennon

War is terrorism, magnified a hundred times. 

~  Howard Zinn, historian, professor, author, playwright, and social activist (1922-2010)

Developing inner values is much like physical exercise. The more we train our abilities, the stronger they become. 

~ Dalai Lama

Only those things are beautiful which are inspired by madness and written by resaon.

~ Andre Gide , author , Nobel Laureate ( 1869-1951 ) 

 

It is my belief that the writer, the free-lance author, should be and must be a critic of the society in which he lives. It is easy enough, and always profitable, to rail away at national enemies beyond the sea, at foreign powers beyond our borders who question the prevailing order. But the moral duty of the free writer is to begin his work at home; to be a critic of his own community, his own country, his own culture. If the writer is unwilling to fill this part, then the writer should abandon pretense and find another line of work: become a shoe repairman, a brain surgeon, a janitor, a cowboy, a nuclear physicist, a bus driver.

~ Edward Abbey, naturalist and author (1927-1989)

He who has a why can endure any how.

~ Friedrich Nietzsche, philosopher (1844-1900)

Teaching a child not to step on a caterpillar is as valuable to the child as it is to the caterpillar. 

~ Bradley Miller, activist (b. 1956)