Although the connections are not always obvious, personal change is inseparable from social and political change. 

~ Harriet Lerner, psychologist (b. 1944)

On the mountains of truth you can never climb in vain: either you will reach a point higher up today, or you will be training your powers so that you will be able to climb higer tomorrow.

~ Friedrich Nietzsche, philosopher (1844-1900) 

I don't know what your destiny will be, but one thing I do know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve.

~ Albert Schweitzer, philosopher, physician, musician, Nobel laureate (1875-1965)

If you write to impress it will always be bad, but if you write to express it will be good.

~ Thornton Wilder, writer (1897-1975)

He who would accomplish little must sacrifice little; he who would achieve much must sacrifice much; he who would attain highly must sacrifice greatly.

~ James Allen

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.

~ Henry David Thoreau

True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice that produces beggars needs restructuring.

~ Martin Luther King, Jr., civil-rights leader (1929-1968)

Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense. 

~ The Buddha

May my silences become more accurate.

~ Theodore Roethke, poet (1908-1963)

Our lives are like islands in the sea, or like trees in the forest. The maple and the pine may whisper to each other with their leaves ... But the trees also commingle their roots in the darkness underground, and the islands also hang together through the ocean's bottom. 

~ William James, psychologist and philosopher (1842-1910) 

Do you ever read any of the books you burn?" "That's against the law!" "Oh. Of course.

~ Ray Bradbury, science-fiction writer (1920-2012)



Seek not to follow in the footsteps of men of old; seek what they sought.

~ Matsuo Basho, poet (1644-1694)

You must have been warned against letting the golden hours slip by. Yes, but some of them are golden only because we let them slip by.

~ James M. Barrie, novelist and playwright (1860-1937 )

Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.

~ Leo Buscaglia, author (1924-1998)

I'm not at all contemptuous of comforts, but they have their place and it is not first.

~ E.F. Schumacher, economist and author (1911-1977)

People change and forget to tell each other.

~ Lillian Hellman, playwright (1905-1984)

NEVER GIVE UP. No matter what is going on, Never give up. Develop the heart. Too much energy in your country is spent developing the mind instead of the heart. Be compassionate. Not just to your friends, but to everyone. Be compassionate. Work for peace in your heart and in the world. Work for peace. And I say again, never give up. No matter what is going on around you, never give up.

~  Dalai Lama

They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea. 

~ Francis Bacon, essayist, philosopher, and statesman (1561-1626) 

What a strange illusion it is to suppose that beauty is goodness.

~ Leo Tolstoy, novelist and philosopher (1828-1910)

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.

~ Walt Whitman, poet (1819-1892)

Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own, which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.

~ Jonathan Swift, satirist (1667-1745) 

There is then creative reading as well as creative writing. When the mind is braced by labor and invention, the page of whatever book we read becomes luminous with manifold allusion.

~ a Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)