Monday, May 28, 2012

PRIDE

LUST

VANITY/SLOTH

GLUTTONY

ENVY

GREED

PRIDE

WRATH

Pride n.

a high or inordinate opinion of one's own dignity,importance, merit, or superiority, whether as cherished in the mind or as displayed in bearing, conduct, etc.
the state or feeling of being proud.
a becoming or dignified sense of what is due to oneself orone's position or character; self-respect; self-esteem.
pleasure or satisfaction taken in something done by orbelonging to oneself or believed to reflect credit upononeself: civic pride.
something that causes a person or persons to be proud: His art collection was the pride of the family.

Synonyms
1. Pride, conceit, self-esteem, egotism, vanity, vainglory imply an unduly favorable idea of one's own appearance, advantages,achievements, etc., and often apply to offensive characteristics.Pride is a lofty and often arrogant assumption of superiority insome respect: Pride must have a fall.

Conceit implies an exaggerated estimate of one's own abilities or attainments, together with pride: blinded by conceit.

Self-esteem may imply an estimate of oneself that is higher than that held by others: a ridiculous self-esteem.

Egotism implies an excessive preoccupation with oneself or with one's own concerns, usually but not always accompanied by pride or conceit: His egotism blinded him to others' difficulties.

Vanity implies self-admiration and an excessive desire to be admiredby others: His vanity was easily flattered.

Vainglory, somewhat literary, implies an inordinate and therefore empty or unjustified pride: puffed up by vainglory. boast.

Antonyms
1. humility.

Pride is an inwardly directed emotion that carries two common meanings.
With a negative connotation, pride refers to an inflated sense of one's personal status or accomplishments, often used synonymously with hubris.
With a positive connotation, pride refers to a satisfied sense of attachment toward one's own or another's choices and actions, or toward a whole group of people, and is a product of praise, independent self-reflection, or a fulfilled feeling of belonging. ~ Wikipedia

I'm not the only one having a time of trying to define "Pride" because it commonly means two distinctly different things and ... seems like quite more with subtle variation. And ... pride in one's accomplishments, early developmental accomplishments all the way through life to perhaps wonderful feats of accomplishment seem to be motivated by whatever dope pings us along. I want to be proud of myself. I hope I can behave in a way that I get "good" feedback, most especially from myself, but probably from my significant others, and maybe even from society at large. Here is an example ... people sometimes say there are not very many CFIs who are also women ... somewhere, very hidden within, I smile at that. I also realize that I spent days of my life on that ... days which may have been better spent, days which most definitely could have been wasted but weren't (I am also proud of that ... that I try not to waste my life ... this blogging stuff is the one thing I do that I would consider the most wasteful uses of my time ... I still think it's worth a bit of my time). Had I not spent time on flying accomplishments I know I would have found other challenges to pursue ... and I admire and congratulate people who make similar choices. I think there are tons of people who can be very proud of their life work ... and a lot of it isn't measured as favorably by society at large. People who choose to make right choices frequently do so with no accolades at all. In reading these soldier's stories of late, I can see how easily one doing "good things", "right things" doesn't feel that their life is being well spent. One writer spoke of digging holes in the sand ... which filled right back in. Yeah ... I get it ... truthfully, we all get it. I clear the front hall table ... every day. I do the same stuff over and over again every single (sometimes freakin') day. It doesn't seem to make a difference ... not the kind of difference that is worth a life. Seems like we can all be very proud to be on the planet with those who strive towards good ... whatever that is exactly.
Pride ... another thought on pride is I know pride has stopped me from doing some stuff that I would like to do but don't ... because it is wrong. I want to be proud of my choices and I hope to not disappoint God more then I have to. I would very much like to dip my finger in to not my ice cream ... part of the reason why I don't is pride as in the opposite of ashamed. I don't want to feel ashamed of my behavior ... I want to make choices I can be proud of.
It has been difficult for me to adjust to how my life is right now. I am used to having a goal ... a plan ... to see myself moving towards. I have used that strategy to organize my life. In a way it's fair to say to validate myself to myself. As long as I was accomplishing steps towards my goals I thought I must be "on track" and could feel proud of how the day was spent. Now ... I guess I am in the process of figuring some stuff out. Now ... I do the dishes and ... I mop the floors ... I have these home projects going, but ... well, I like things to be nice and tidy, but I also realize that it doesn't make much difference. I unload the dishwasher every morning while my yummy coffee brews ... I look out the window and smile with my dog ... I see the birds on the feeder ... yeah, everyday ... same thing. I do not feel pride in any of those five ways it is defined above. I do the best work I can. I don't think it is significant in anyway. I just do what I am supposed to do. I don't think it will be like this "forever" ... but I discipline myself to make the best of it. Sometimes I do pretty good with that sometimes not ... sometimes I feel pretty bitchy in general ... like I am wasting time. What I really think is I am in this time and it won't last forever ... I am trying to truly enjoy the ease of these days. I can pretty much think about whatever strikes my fancy ... and I have a lot of freedom to do as a wish ... .

A portion of mankind take pride in their vices and pursue their purpose; many more waver between doing what is right and complying with what is wrong.
Horace

"For the wicked boasts of the desires of his heart, and the man greedy for gain curses and renounces The Lord. In the pride of his countenance the wicked does not seek Him" (Psalm 10:3-4 RSV)

... pride very often results in self-destructive behavior because, while a form of self-delusion, it isn't necessarily as much an overestimation of one's self as it is a dangerous underestimation of others, hence "Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall" (Proverbs 16:18 RSV). ~ Wayne Blank,
CoG pastor and author of on-line Bible studies.

"There is one vice of which no man in the world is free; which every one in the world loathes when he sees it in someone else; and of which hardly any people, except Christians, ever imagine they are guilty themselves." ~ C.S. Lewis on the sin of pride in his work "Mere Christianity"

When pride comes, then comes disgrace,
but with humility comes wisdom. ~ Proverbs 11:2 some translations say contention rather then disgrace.

Webster's handle on this word ...

it is the quality or state of being proud, as in inordinate self-esteem or conceit, or a reasonable or justifiable self-respect or delight or elation arising from some act, possession, or relationship (such as parental pride).
pride is also defined as proud or disdainful behavior or treatment.
an ostentatious display.

I've been thinking about pride for a while now.

“Pride is Satan’s disease” by Thomas Brooks“Pride is a sin, which of all sins, makes a person most like Satan. Pride is Satan’s disease. Pride is so base a disease, that God had rather see His dearest children buffeted by Satan, than that in pride they should be like to Satan (2 Cor. 12:7). When Paul, under the abundance of revelations, was in danger of being puffed up, the Lord rather than He would have him proud like Satan, suffers him to be buffeted by Satan…

It was pride which turned angels into devils. They would be above others in heaven—and therefore God cast them down to hell… Other sins strike at the word of God, the people of God, and the creatures of God, but pride strikes directly at the very being of God… God bears a special hatred against pride. His heart hates it, His mouth curses it, and His hand plagueth it.” –Thomas Brooks, “The Unsearchable Riches of Christ” in The Works of Thomas Brooks, Vol. 1, Ed. C. Bradley (London: L.B. Seeley and Son, 1824), 51-2.

Pride is interesting in that some pride is necessary ... an excess of pride is corrosive, absolutely destructive ... . It seems almost like a balancing act.

wounded warrior ... here because the reality is life is messy ... sometimes it sets you down ... this guy, we played with army men all the time when I was growing up ... this guy, wounded, is still all in, he's still a player, and ... he's gonna be a lot harder to knock down ... the lower CG is an asset to his whole team.

I thought I'd go ahead and post this ... go on to the last of the seven vices, ... I know there's plenty of more to think about here. So ... wrath.

No comments:

Quotes I like

"Apparently there is nothing that cannot happen today." ~ Mark Twain
"Since love grows within you, so beauty grows. For love is the beauty of the soul. " ~ Augustine
"That we come as a seed of who we might be and make choices which tend ourselves as we grow towards who we are becoming. so ... the idea of where we spend our time and collect our thoughts is pretty consequential ". ~unknown
"How to hit home runs: I swing as hard as I can, and I try to swing right through the ball... The harder you grip the bat, the more you can swing it through the ball, and the farther the ball will go. I swing big, with everything I've got. I hit big or I miss big. I like to live as big as I can." ~ Babe Ruth
"Often we don't even discover them as memories until years later when they emerge, not as they were, but as they have become as our souls expand enough to value what we thought at the time was dross as the real gold of our lives". ~ Gerard Van der Leun
“It is by loving, and not by being loved, that one can come nearest the soul of another; yea, that, where two love, it is the loving of each other, that originates and perfects and assures their blessedness. I knew that love gives to him that loveth, power over any soul beloved, even if that soul know him not, bringing him inwardly close to that spirit; a power that cannot be but for good; for in proportion as selfishness intrudes, the love ceases, and the power which springs therefrom dies. Yet all love will, one day, meet with its return. ” ~ George MacDonald, Phantastes
“from what we cannot hold the stars are made” ~ W.S.Merwin
“we travel far and fast and as we pass through we forget where we have been” ~ W.S.Merwin
"Ring the bells that still can ring Forget your perfect offering There is a crack, a crack in everything That's how the light gets in.
"Always do what you are afraid to do." ~ Emerson
“Sometimes you will never know the value of something,until it becomes a memory.” ~ Dr. Seuss
"Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good." ~ Vaclav Havel
"Pure logical thinking cannot yield us any knowledge of the empirical world: all knowledge of reality starts from experience and ends in it....Because Galileo saw this, and particularly because he drummed it into the scientific world he is the father of modern physics-indeed, of modern science altogether." ~Einstein
"The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds." ~John Maynard Keyes
"Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person; having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but to pour them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, knowing that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then, with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away." ~ George Eliot
"If nothing saves us from death, may love at least save us from life." - Pablo Neruda
"Yes I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world." ~ Oscar Wilde
"God bears His soul in the words of His book - thereby He draws me to Himself." ~ Gary Spooner
"Negative capability...is being capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason." ~ John Keats
"I choose love . . . No occasion justifies hatred; no injustice warrants bitterness. I choose love. Today I will love God and what God loves." ~ Max Lucado
"If you had the chance to change your fate, would you?" ~ Merida from BRAVE
"There are those who say fate is something beyond our command. That destiny is not our own, but I know better. Our fate lives within us, you only have to be brave enough to see it." ~ Merida from BRAVE
What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
"To my left, Scorpius' tail, embedded in the Milky Way, is dragging billions of stars west." ~ "Captain Dave" via FL390
“There would be no chance at all of getting to know death if it happened only once. But fortunately, life is nothing but a continuing dance of birth and death, a dance of change. Every time I hear the rush of a mountain stream, or the waves crashing on the shore, or my own heartbeat, I hear the sound of impermanence. These changes, these small deaths, are our living links with death. They are death’s pulses, death’s heartbeat, prompting us to let go of all the things we cling to.” ~ Sogyal Rinpoche
"Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart." ~ Kahlil Gibran
“It's a bizarre but wonderful feeling, to arrive dead center of a target you didn't even know you were aiming for.” ~ Lois McMaster Bujold
"Worship is the submission of all of our nature to God. It is the quickening of conscience by His holiness, nourishment of mind by His truth, purifying of imagination by His beauty, opening of the heart to His love, and submission of will to His purpose. All this gathered up in adoration is the greatest of all expressions of which we are capable." ~ William Temple
“The truth of the matter is that you always know the right thing to do. The hard part is doing it.” ~ Norman Schwarzkopf
"True leadership only exists if people follow when they have the freedom not to." ~Jim Collins
"The practice of leadership is not the same as the exercise of power."~James MacGregor Burns
“They slipped briskly into an intimacy from which they never recovered.” ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise
"To contemplate Supreme Truth is like looking upon the face of God; it is consumation and therefore extermination, while learning, which is an endless extenstion of conscious activity, is the striving after, but not the acquisition of truth." ~Martin Nozick (Miquel De Unamuno*The Agony of Belief)
"Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in dreams?" ~ Tennyson
“Words, like nature, half reveal and half conceal the soul within.” ~Tennyson
“There is meaning in every journey that is unknown to the traveler.” ~Bonhoeffer
"For my part I know nothing with certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream." ~ Vincent Van Gogh
“These are the days that must happen to you.” ~ Whitman
"We die daily. Happy those who daily come to life as well." ~George MacDonald
"Love ceases to be a demon only when he ceases to be a god." ~ Dennis De Rougemont
“Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.” ~ Dr.Seuss
"All that we may see or seem, is but a dream within a dream." ~ Edgar Allan Poe
“The strongest and sweetest songs yet remain to be sung.” ~ Whitman
“Have you learned the lessons only of those who admired you, and were tender with you, and stood aside for you? Have you not learned great lessons from those who braced themselves against you, and disputed passage with you?” ~ Walt Whitman
"Man is not imprisoned by habit. Great changes in him can be wrought by crisis - once that crisis can be recognized and understood. " ~ Norman Cousins
“Some people meet the way the sky meets the earth, inevitably, and there is no stopping or holding back their love. It exists in a finished world, beyond the reach of common sense.” ~ Louise Erdrich, Tales of Burning Love
“When we are young, the words are scattered all around us. As they are assembled by experience, so also are we, sentence by sentence, until the story takes shape.” ~ Louise Erdrich, The Plague of Doves
“I think the universe was spontaneously created out of nothing, according to the laws of science. It has no beginning and no end.” ~ Stephen Hawking
“They were so strong in their beliefs that there came a time when it hardly mattered what exactly those beliefs were; they all fused into a single stubbornness” ~ Louise Erdrich
"I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own--a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty." ~ Einstein
“There are moments in life, when the heart is so full of emotion that if by chance it be shaken, or into its depths like a pebble drops some careless word, it overflows, and its secret, spilt on the ground like water, can never be gathered together” ~ H.W. Longfellow
“We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can make for us, which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world. The lives that you admire, the attitudes that seem noble to you, have not been shaped by a paterfamilias or a schoolmaster, they have sprung from very different beginnings, having been influenced by evil or commonplace that prevailed round them. They represent a struggle and a victory.” Marcel Proust
"To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man's life." ~ T. S. Eliot
"Your work is to discover your world and then with all your heart give yourself to it." ~ Buddha
"The way is not in the sky. The way is in the heart." ~ Buddha
"Nothing happens unless first a dream." ~ Carl Sandburg
"We can do no great things - only small things with great love." ~ Mother Teresa
"Thinking is the talking of the soul with itself." ~ Plato
"The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread." ~Mother Teresa
"We see things as we are, not as they are. " ~ Leo Rosten
"I learned that it is the weak who are cruel, and that gentleness is to be expected only from the strong. " ~ Leo Rosten
“I'm proof against that word failure. I've seen behind it. The only failure a man ought to fear is failure of cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best.” ~ T.S. Eliot
" Heaven wheels above you, displaying to you her eternal glories, and still your eyes are on the ground. " ~ Dante
Personality implies that as this person: I am completely determined on every side and so finite, yet nonetheless I am simply and solely self-relation, and therefore in finitude I know myself as something infinite, – universal, and free. Philosophy of Right (1821) ~ GWF Hegel ... and ... ‘Person’ is essentially different from ‘subject’, since ‘subject’ is only the possibility of personality; every living thing of any sort is a subject. A person, then, is a subject aware of this subjectivity, since in personality it is of myself alone that I am aware. Philosophy of Right (1821) ~ Hegel ... and ... ‘Be a person and respect others as persons.’ Philosophy of Right (1821) ~ Hegel
"I've loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night." ~ Galileo
"Night is purer than day; it is better for thinking and loving and dreaming. At night everything is more intense, more true. The echo of words that have been spoken during the day takes on a new and deeper meaning. The tragedy of man is that he doesn't know how to distinguish between day and night. He says things at night that should only be said by day." ~ Elie Wiesel (Dawn)
"Think higher, feel deeper." ~ Elie Wiesel
"One person of integrity can make a difference." ~ Elie Wiesel
"Words can sometimes, in moments of grace, attain the quality of deeds." ~ Elie Wiesel
"... Their words aren't heard, their voices aren't recorded, but their silence fills the earth: unspoken truth is spoken everywhere..." Ps 19:3-4 ~ King David
"I distinctly remember forgetting that." ~ Clara Barton
"This constellation in the dark - grace, thanksgiving, joy - it might be like that - reaching for the stars. So hard. So hard." ~ Ann Voskamp
"People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life." ~ Liz Gilbert
"If you want to be happy, be." ~ Henry David Thoreau
"In the midst of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer." ~ Albert Camus
“Forbid us something, and that thing we desire” ~ Geoffrey Chaucer
'There is no easy way from the earth to the stars. -Non est ad astra mollis e terris via." ~ Seneca
"Never take counsel of your fears." ~ General Stonewall Jackson
"the truth is, everyone is going to hurt you...you just got to find the ones worth suffering for..." ~Bob Marley
"A compliment is something like a kiss through a veil."-~Victor Hugo
"He who chooses the beginning of a road chooses the place it leads to. It is the means that determine the end." Harry Emerson Fosdick
"The difficulty in life is the choice." - George A Moore
"... who would not, finding a way, break loose from hell ... and boldly venture to whatever place farthest from pain?" - John Milton (Paradise Lost)
"If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is compromise." - Robert Fritz
"Choose the life that is most useful, and habit will make it the most agreeable." - Sir Francis Bacon
"There are always two choices. Two paths to take. One is easy. And its only reward is that it's easy." - Richard Bach
"The future is not a result of choices among alternate paths offered by the present, but a place that is created ... created first in the mind and will, created next in activity. The future is not some place we are going to, but one we are creating. The paths are not found, but made, and the activity of making them, changes both the maker and the destination." - Richard Bach
"Honor isn't about making the right choices. It's about dealing with the consequences." - Richard Bach
"Some choices we live not once but a thousand times over, remembering them for the rest of our lives." - Eleanor Roosevelt
"Instead of looking at life as a narrowing funnel, we can see it ever widening to choose the things we want to do, to take the wisdom we've learned and create something." - Liz Carpenter
"If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice." Neil Peart
"In the long run, we shape our lives and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility." - Victor Frankl
" The last of human freedoms is to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances." - Victor Frankl
"The strongest principle of growth lies in human choice." - George Eliot (aka Mary Anne Evans)
"Every choice you make has an end result." - Zig Ziglar
"We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them." - Kahlil Gibran
"Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It's perfect when it arrives and puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday." - John Wayne
"For what is the best choice for each individual is the highest it is possible for him to acheive ... we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act but a habit. What we have to learn to do, we learn by doing." - Aristotle

Quotes I like:

"The march of improvement in any given field is always marked by periods of inactivity and then by sudden bursts of energy which revolutionize existing methods sometimes in a day." ~ George Eastman
"As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a single pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives." ~Henry David Thoreau
"The Art of Thinking is the art of being one's self and this art can only be learned if one is by one's self." ~Ernest Dimnet
'It is a dangerous thing to ask why someone else has been given more. It is humbling -- and indeed healthy -- to ask why you have been given so much." ~ Condoleeza Rice (commencement speech at University of Alabama
"... life does not consist mainly -- or even largely -- of facts and happenings. It consists mainly of the storm of thougths that is forever blowing through one's head. " ~ Mark Twain
"It is human life. We are blown upon the world; we float buoyantly upon the summer air a little while, complacently showing off our grace of form and our dainty iridescent colors; then we vanish with a little puff, leaving nothing behind but a memory--and sometimes not even that. I suppose that at those solemn times when we wake in the deeps of the night and reflect, there is not one of us who is not willing to confess that he is really only a soap-bubble, and as little worth the making." ~ Mark Twain
"God's gift to you is life itself. What you do with it is your gift to God." ~ Leo Buscaglia
"Success is relative. It is what we can make of the mess we have made of things. ~ T.S. Eliot
"For believe me: the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and greatest enjoyment is - to live dangerously." Also; "A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions--as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all." Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science
''I would finish hoeing my garden.'' ~ St. Francis of Assisi
"Friends... they cherish one another's hopes. They are kind to one another's dreams." ~ Thoreau
"It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see." ~ Thoreau
"A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone." ~ Thoreau
"I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now." ~ Thoreau
"It is best to avoid the beginnings of evil." ~ Thoreau
"If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment." ~Thoreau
"I put a piece of paper under my pillow, and when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark." ~ Thoreau
"I have found that hollow, which even I had relied on for solid." ~ Thoreau
"Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still." ~ Thoreau
"I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor." ~ Thoreau
"In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood." ~ Thoreau
"The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready." ~ Thoreau
"Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes." ~ Thoreau
"No face which we can give to a matter will stead us so well at last as the truth. This alone wears well." ~ Thoreau
"Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them." ~ Thoreau
There's enough poison in that drink to kill an army platoon. Good thing I'm a marine." - chuck/tv
"Hell, there are no rules here- we're trying to accomplish something." - Thomas A Edison
"Do more than belong, participate. Do more than care, help. Do more than believe, practice. Do more than be fair, be kind. Do more than forgive, forget. Do more than dream, work." - W. A. Ward"
"Death isn't sad. The sad thing is: most people don't live at all." - Socrates in The Peaceful Warrior
"Try not. Do, or do not. There is no try." which is Yoda from "The Empire Strikes Back"
"Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace and gratitude." - Denis Waitley
"There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy." - R.L. Stevenson
"Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go." - T.S. Eliot
"The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run" ~Thoreau
"Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing." - Abraham Lincoln
"Who so loves believes the impossible.” - Elizabeth Barrett Browning
"Earth's crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God; But only he who sees, takes off his shoes - The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.” - Elizabeth Barrett Browning
"Far better to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, then to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the grey twilight that knows not victory nor defeat." - Theodore Roosevelt
"Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it." - Colin Powell
"The freedom to pursue an aesthetic quality in life is an added dimension, like being able to fly where others walk." - Truman Capote
"Do you have the patience to wait til your mud settles and the water is clear? Can you remain unmoving till the right action arises by itself?" - Lao Tzu
"When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different. You just know that your name is safe in their mouth." Billy - age 4
"Leadership is getting someone to do what they don't want to do, to achieve what they want to achieve." - Tom Landry

...and more favorite quotes...

"But the dream is never forgotten, only put aside and never out of reach: Where once the dream connected boys with the world of men, now it reconnects men with the spirit of boys." ~ John Thorn
“My real self wanders elsewhere, far away, wanders on and on invisibly and has nothing to do with my life.” ― Hermann Hesse
“Ordinary riches can be stolen, real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.” ~ Oscar Wilde
"Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length." ~ Robert Frost
"A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog, when you are just as hungry as the dog." ~ Jack London
"It is written on the arched sky; it looks out from every star. It is the poetry of Nature; it is that which uplifts the spirit within us." ~ John Ruskin
No more is it a question of speaking of space and light: the question is to make space and light, which are there, speak to us." ~ Merleau-Ponty
"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy." ~ Dr. ML King
"Originality is... a by-product of sincerity." ~Marianne Moore
"Things can fall apart, or threaten to, for many reasons, and then there's got to be a leap of faith. Ultimately, when you're at the edge, you have to go forward or backward; if you go forward, you have to jump together." - Yo-Yo Ma
"Dreams are illustrations... from the book your soul is writing about you." - Marsha Norman
"After climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb." - Nelson Mandela
"If we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a Universe, does science do us a disservice in deflating our conceits? " - Carl Sagan
"Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known." - Carl Sagan
"The brain is like a muscle. When it is in use we feel very good. Understanding is joyous." - Carl Sagan
Cherish your visions and your dreams as they are the children of your soul, the blueprints of your ultimate achievements." - Napoleon Hill
"If I only had an hour to chop down a tree, I would spend the first 45 minutes sharpening my axe" - Abraham Lincoln