“Everything has to come to an end, sometime.” 
― L. Frank Baum, The Marvelous Land of Oz 

"There are so many things in this world that we can not control. We are challenged as we endure natural disasters, losses and illness.  All the more important to focus on the things that we can control that shift dynamics, such as:  forgiveness, second chances, fresh starts.  The one thing that changes the world from a lonely place to a beautiful place is Love.  Love, in any of its forms, gives us hope and renews spirits."

"No one can go back, but everyone can go forward. And tomorrow, when the sun rises, all you have to say to yourself is: I am going to think of this day as the first day of my life.” 

- Paulo Coelho

"Things need to come to an end, to make way for a beautiful beginning." - Abhishek Tiwari

“How many observe Christ's birthday!  How few, His precepts!” - Benjamin Franklin

Change

"It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change."   - Charles Darwin

"The outer conditions of a person’s life will always be found to reflect their inner beliefs.” 

- James Allen

Death With Dignity

"Why should anyone -- the state, the medical profession, or anyone else -- presume to tell someone else how much suffering they must endure while dying?  Doctors should stand with their patients, not against them."

- Dr. Marcia Angell

Letting Go

“If you want to forget something or someone, never hate it, or never hate him/her. Everything and everyone that you hate is engraved upon your heart; if you want to let go of something, if you want to forget, you cannot hate.” 


― C. JoyBell C.

AN

OPEN

MIND

IS A

BEAUTIFUL

MIND.

Trust

Rocky the French Bulldog Puppy Jumps Into His Human's Arms

http://www.tastefullyoffensive.com/2014/08/rocky-french-bulldog-puppy-jumps-into.html

A Thought-Experiment

  

What if each of us has done it all…

in countless past lifetimes,

we’ve been born on every continent,

as every creature imaginable,

even sand, water, and mountains,

become comfortable in several genders,

all tribes, ethnicities, and religions,

been incredibly successful at every profession,

and also experienced profound failures.

What if we’ve crossed off a billion bucket-lists,

and now have no ambitions grander than

being aware that our true self looks through 

the eyes of every ‘stranger’ we encounter,

kindness is the very air we breathe, and

laughter is our overflowing bank account.

What if each of us has done it all…

- Harvey Taylor

"It is not happy people who are thankful.  It is thankful people who are happy."

"Wisdom is merely the movement from fighting life to embracing it." 

 - Rasheed Ogunlaru

“Every time you victimized someone,” I said, “you were victimizing yourself. Every act of kindness you’ve done, you’ve done to yourself. Every happy and sad moment ever experienced by any human was, or will be, experienced by you.”

“Do not overrate what you have received, nor envy others. He who envies others does not obtain peace of mind.” 

- Buddha

"When we can no longer change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” 

- Viktor Frankl

"Of all the seasons, autumn offers the most to man and requires the least of him."  - Hal Borland

"Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.” 

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Ideology always paves the way toward atrocity.” 

- Terence McKenna

"It is one of the most beautiful compensations of life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

“It was the beginning of the greatest Christmas ever. Little food. No presents. But there was a snowman in their basement.” 

“The real cause of problems is not life itself. It’s the commotion the mind makes about life.” 

The Untethered Soul by Michael A. Singer 

"Love is proved the moment you let go of someone because they need you to."

 - Shannon Alder

"Remember there’s no such thing as a small act of kindness. Every act creates a ripple with no logical end.” 

- Scott Adams

"Life is simple. Everything happens for you, not to you. Everything happens at exactly the right moment, neither too soon nor too late. You don't have to like it... it's just easier if you do.”

 – Byron Katie

“Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” 

- Marcel Proust

“Always maintain a kind of summer even in the middle of winter.”

- Henry David Thoreau

"When you let go, you give yourself peace."

“The amount of happiness that you have depends on the amount of freedom you have in your heart.” 

~Thich Nhat Hanh

"Non-attachment means that you are able to live your life outside of the other person; it ultimately takes pressure off and allows you to be without depending on anything or anyone to feed your soul."

- M. J. Ross

"If we destroy human rights and rule of law in the response to terrorism, they have won."

- Joichi Ito

The Thin Line Between Righteousness and Hate

"When a person turns to wrong, is it a want to be, belong?

Part of things at any cost, at what price a life is lost

At what point do we begin, fighter spirit a will to win

But what makes a man decide, take the wrong or righteous road

There's a thin line between love and hate
Wider divide that you can see between good and bad
There's a grey place between black and white
But everyone does have the right to choose the path that he takes

We all like to put the blame on society these days
But what kind of good or bad a new generation brings . . ."

- The Persuaders lyrics

“There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.” 

- Epictetus

"Without giving up hope—that there’s somewhere better to be, that there’s someone better to be—we will never relax with where we are or who we are.” 

- Pema Chödrön

“A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what's going on.” 

 - William S. Burroughs

"Take the high road. No matter how much strife, and consternation, frustration and anger you might be confronted with - don't go to that level." 

- Tim Gunn

"Wherever we go in life, our attitude goes ahead of us. So if you’re carrying an attitude of doom and self-defeatism, the world’s going to give you a lot of reasons to sustain that attitude. Similarly, if you can shift your attitude to one of more positive expectation, agree with yourself that surprises might be fun, that challenges and gifts might both be part of your learning process in life, you will do better. So these are fundamental rules of living:  check your attitude.  Recognize that whatever you think or feel, the universe is going to say yes."

- Robert Moss

“The main affliction of our modern civilization is that we don’t know how to handle the suffering inside us and we try to cover it up with all kinds of consumption.”

 ~Thich Nhat Hạnh

“Fame is a vapor, popularity an accident, riches take wing. Only one thing endures ... and that is character.”  

—Horace Greeley

"The less you open your heart to others, the more your heart suffers.” 

- Deepak Chopra

"If only our eyes saw souls instead of bodies how very different our ideals of beauty would be."

"You have a choice each and every single day. I choose to feel blessed. I choose to feel grateful. I choose to be excited. I choose to be thankful. I choose to be happy.” 

 - Amber Housley

"In order to be irreplaceable one must also be different."

- Coco Chanel

"The most important relationship you have in life is the one you have with yourself."

- Diane von Furstenberg

"There comes a time in life when you walk away from all the drama and people who create it.  Surround yourself with people who make you laugh, forget the bad, and focus on the good.  Love the people who treat you right.  Pray for the ones who don't.  Life is too short to be anything but happy.  Falling down is part of life, getting back up is living."

"The weird thing is, you get more comfortable in yourself, even as time is giving you less reason for it. When you’re young and beautiful, you’re paranoid and miserable. I think one of the great advantages of getting older is that you let go of certain things."

- Helen Mirren

"Experience never gets old."

"Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you."  – Frank Lloyd Wright

The Observer

"Don’t try to force outcomes — let them happen.  Be open to what emerges."

"The less you respond to rude, critical, argumentative people...the more peaceful your life will become." 

- Mandy Hale

"In my experience, it is when we are empty that we feel the need to have so much. When I was the most happy in my life, I had the least amount of "stuff." 

"You need a little bit of insanity to do great things."

- Henry Rollins

"I look at the good. When you are relaxed, your body is always relaxed. When you are pessimistic, your body behaves in an unnatural way. It is up to us whether we look at the good or the bad. When you are nice to others, they are nice to you. When you give, you receive."   

- Alice Herz-Sommer, pianist and holocaust survivor

"People all over the world tell me that whatever it was they were chasing . . . and as a psychiatrist, my opinion is that everybody is chasing something.  Some people are chasing power, which is so ridiculous.  I, myself, have spent my life chasing knowledge, some people chase fame or money or any of these other things. But whatever they were chasing up to this near death experience, they come back and they say the same thing from all over the world -- 

-- they say what this life is all about is learning how to love, because that is what everybody saw.  When they had their life review, the most important things in this review had to do with the love they showed other people."

- Raymond Moody, M.D.

Serendipity & Synchronicity

"Nothing happens by accident when your soul gets involved. It is the most intentional presence in your life whether you recognize its existence or not. Your soul is omniscient and ever present. It informs your decision making through the thoughts and images it provides. It is the essence that fuels your intuition. When you are certain of something it is your soul’s voice that resounds from the depths of psyche. When a mysterious coincidence occurs it is often the design of your soul’s whimsical nature. Yes, the soul has a sense of humor and often speaks to us through metaphors, symbols, riddles, and clues."

- Dr. Carder Stout

The Interconnectedness of Everything

https://vimeo.com/59197479

"Be strong enough to let go and patient enough to wait for what you deserve."

"Getting over a painful experience is much like crossing monkey bars. You have to let go at some point in order to move forward.” 

- C.S. Lewis 

The only thing that is lasting in the physical world is the love we gave and received.

"Givers have to set limits because takers never do." 

- Irma Kurtz

"Life is filled with roses and thorns and how you deal with it is the true test."

"Finding truth is difficult and the road to it is rough. As seekers of the truth, you would be wise to withhold judgment and not simply put your trust in the writings of the ancients. You must question and critically examine those writings from every side. You must submit only to argument and experiment and not to the sayings of any person. For every human being is vulnerable to all kinds of imperfections. As seekers of the truth, we must also suspect and question our own ideas as we perform our investigations, to avoid falling into credulous or careless thinking. Take this course and truth will be revealed to you." 

- Islamic scholar Ibn Alhazen, 965 - 1040 AD

"Remember, if you ever need a helping hand, it's at the end of your arm, as you get older, remember you have another hand:  The first is to help yourself, the second is to help others."

- Audrey Hepburn

hurt people hurt people

"History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.” 

- Maya Angelou

“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.” ~Lao Tzu

YOU BECOME LIKE

THE 5 PEOPLE 

YOU SPEND THE

MOST TIME WITH.

____________________

CHOOSE CAREFULLY.

"NEVER let an abuser live rent free in our minds....that allows them to continue to hurt us.  Let it go."

"kindness is a language that the deaf can hear and the blind can see"

- Mark Twain

Life = Risk

"To love is to recognize yourself in another."

- Eckhart Tolle

“Stress happens when your mind resists what is.” 

- Dan Millman

"Attention is all that we have, that is to say, attention is all that we can bring. The rest is out of our control. A higher energy is there. The purpose of man's existence on Earth is to allow the exchange of energy between the earth and higher levels of existence."

- Madame De Salzmann
 

“Waking up to who you are requires letting go of who you imagine yourself to be.”

- Alan Watts

"The only thing worse than a liar is a liar who's also a hypocrite!"

- Tennessee Williams

GRATITUDE

"Suffering is part of our training program for becoming wise.” 

~Ram Dass

"In most of our human relationships, we spend much of our time reassuring one another that our costumes of identity are on straight.” 

- Ram Dass

“When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” 

- Maya Angelou

“The attempt to prevent our kids from struggling for fear it might scar their permanent records is, instead, scarring them for life.”  

- Heather Choate Davis

"You've got to learn to leave the table when love's no longer being served."

- Nina Simone

"To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” 

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Autumn wins you best by this its mute appeal to sympathy for its decay."   - Robert Browning

“When people don't like themselves very much, they have to make up for it. The classic bully was actually a victim first.” 

— Tom Hiddleston

"It is important to expect nothing, to take 

every experience, including the negative 

ones, as merely steps on the path, and to 

proceed."

- Ram Dass

"People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar.” 

~Thich Nhat Hanh 

"I vow to let go of all worries and anxiety in order to be light and free.” 

~Thich Nhat Hanh

"Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure that you are not, in fact, just surrounding yourself with assholes."

- William Gibson

"He who would be serene and pure needs but one thing, detachment."

- Meister Eckhart

"All ideologies are idiotic, whether religious or political, for it is conceptual thinking, the conceptual word, which has so unfortunately divided man."

- Jiddu Krishnamurit

"Don't criticize what you can't understand."

- Bob Dylan

"THOSE WHO WILL NOT REASON ARE BIGOTS, THOSE WHO CANNOT ARE FOOLS, AND THOSE WHO DARE NOT ARE SLAVES."


- George Gordon Byron

"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society."

- Jiddu Krishnamurti