Defeats

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We may encounter many defeats – maybe it’s imperative that we encounter the defeats – but we are much stronger than we appear to be and maybe much better than we allow ourselves to be.

Maya Angelou, The Art of Fiction, The Paris Review Interviews, vol. IV

A Sign of health in the mind

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A sign of health in the mind is the ability of one individual to enter imaginatively and accurately into the thoughts and feelings and hopes and fears of another person; also to allow the other person to do the same to us.

Donald Winnicott

Hope

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You get what you hope for, but what you hope for isn’t something you can always recognize.

Zadie Smith, In Conversation with Zadie Smith by Eleanor Wachtel

Hope

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Hope is the pillar of the world.

African Proverb

Who we are

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Our being is silent, but our existence is noisy.

Thomas Merton

Spiritual practice

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The important point of spiritual practice is not to try to escape your life, but to face it – exactly and completely.

Dainin Katagiri Roshi

Winds of grace

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The winds of grace are always blowing, but you have to raise the sail.

Sri Ramakrishna

Identity

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An organization’s identity includes current interpretations of its history, present decisions and activities, and its sense of its future. Identity is both what we want to believe is true and what our actions show to be true about ourselves.

Margaret J. Wheatley, Finding Our Way: Leadership For an Uncertain Time

Belief

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Some things have to be believed to be seen.

Ralph Hodgson

Stories

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The only thing that keeps us from floating off with the wind is our stories. They give us a name and put us in a place, allow us to keep on touching.

Tom Spanbauer

To be alive

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We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.

Thornton Wilder

Role model

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Children have more need of models than critics.

Joseph Joubert

Home again

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We have circled and circled till we have arrived home again, we two,
We have voided all but freedom and all but our own joy.

Walt Whitman, We Two, How Long We Were Fool'd

Laughter

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Laughter is the shortest distance between two people.

Victor Borge

Time

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Time is too slow for those who wait,
too swift for those who fear,
too long for those who grieve,
too short for those who rejoice,
but for those who love, time is eternity.

Henry Van Dyke

Love

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Love is an irresistible desire

to be irresistibly desired.

Rober Frost

We

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We fly; we dream in darkness; we devour heaven in bites too small to be measured.

Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost

Abundance

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The age of abundance is over not because of things are no longer abundant, but because abundance has lost its status as our reigning aspiration.

Youngme Moon, Different: Escaping the Competitive Herd

Alone

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Alone, I have seen many marvelous things, none of which were true.

African proverb

Giving

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When I give, I give myself.

Walt Whitman