Great Thoughts

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I say to you in all sadness of conviction, that to think great thoughts you must be heroes as well as idealists.

Oliver Wendell Holms, Jr.

Mother

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“Mother” does not mean being the woman who gives birth to and cares for a child; to be a mother is to feel in your own flesh the suffering of all the children, all the men, and all the young people who die, as though they had come from your own womb.

Luz Beatriz Arellano [Nicaragua]

Look into your heart

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When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find that it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.

When you are sorrowful, look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for what has been your delight.

Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

Greatest disease

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The greatest disease in the West today is not TB or Leprosy; it is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for. We can cure physical diseases with medicine, but the only cure for loneliness, despair, and hopelessness is love.

Mother Teresa, A Simple Path

Who am I?

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Who I am is what fulfills me and what fulfills the vision I have of a world.

Audre Lorde

Door

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A door is truly an amazing thing.

Closed, it is an agent of separation. …
But swing it open and it becomes an invitation,
uniting what before was separate.

Drew Leder

Love

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Love where you live.

Truth

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The truth knocks on the door and you say,
"Go away, I'm looking for the truth"
and so it goes away. Puzzling.

Robert Pirsig

Greatest gift

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The greatest gift is not being afraid to question.

Ruby Dee

The messenger

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Do not ask who the messenger is.
It is you.

Joseph T. Nolan

Seed of growth and liberation

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Every painful event contains in itself a seed of growth and liberation.

Anthony de Mello

Homeless

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Probably no word better summarizes the suffering of our times than the word “homeless.” It reveals one of our deepest and most painful conditions, the condition of not having a sense of belonging, of not having a place where we can feel safe, cared for, protected, and loved.

Henri J. M. Nouwen

Anthropology

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The key revelation of anthropology is the idea that distinct cultures represent unique visions of life itself, morally inspired and inherently right. ... To dismiss indigenous peoples as trivial, to view their societies as marginal, is to ignore and deny the central revelation of anthropology.

Wade Davis, Light at the Edge of the World

Heaven on Earth

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Sing like no one's listening, love like you've never been hurt, dance like nobody's watching, and live like its heaven on earth.

Mark Twain

Emptiness

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Emptiness is the footprint on which the centred person moves.

Tibetan sage

The World

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The world is not like a picture painted by an artist centuries ago which now hangs untouchable in a museum. It is more like a work of art in constant process of creation, still in a studio.

Ernesto Cardenal

Miracles

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But that is the thing about miracles: it is perception that determines them as such, not facts.

Camilla Gibb, sweetness in the belly

Story

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Everyone has a story. That’s what the circle teaches us. We become better people, a better species, when we take the time to hear them. That’s how you change the world, really. One story, one voice at a time.

Richard Wagamese, One Native Life

Door

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The traveler has to knock at every alien door to come to his own.

Rabindranath Tagore

Resurgam

     Exiled afar from youth and happy love,

     If death should ravish my fond spirit hence

     I have no doubt but, like a homing dove,

     It would return to its dear residence,

     And through a thousand stars find out the road

     Back into earthly flesh that was its loved abode.

       Alan Seeger

Dreamer

The subject of the dream is the dreamer.

Tony Morrison

Exceptional

Eventually it comes to you: the thing that makes you exceptional is also what makes you lonely.

Lorraine Hansberry

Gift

It is not because we have value that we are loved, but because we are loved that we have value.  Our value is a gift, not an achievement.

William Sloane Coffin

Quality of Life

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The quality of life is initially and inevitably predicated by love. ... And what is at stake is always the quality of life, which people know cannot be bettered, unless love is factored in.


Pier Giorgio Di Cicco, Municipal Mind: Manifestos for the Creative City

Miracle

A miracle is not defined by an event.  A miracle is defined by gratitude.

Kate Braestrup, Here If You Need Me: A True Story

Forgiveness

   
    God's forgiveness is more than a blessing;
    it's a challenge.

        William Sloane Coffin

Democracy

We can have a democracy or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of the few.  We cannot have both.

Justice Louis Brandeis

Character

Ultimately my character is defined by the quality of my sensitivity to other people.  I exist in equilibrium.  I am here to the degree I am there.

Hugh Prather, Love and Courage

Reading & Writing

Reading and writing are in themselves subversive acts.  What they subvert is the notion that things have to be the way they are, that you are alone, that no one has ever felt the way you have.

Mark Vonnegut on his Dad Kurt Vonnegut's writing

A poem in progress

Isn't a city a poem in progress?  ...  The citizen must self-identify as an artist,
with the same moral commitment to ideals, before we can have any credible allegiance to our environment.  This is the key to sustainability.

Pier Giorgio Di Cicco, Municipal Mind: Manifestos for the Creative City