Welcome to my inspirational quotes and poems page.
I have gained much inspiration and pleasure from the wisdom and experience of others, and have collected inspiring words for most of my life. Enjoy, and feel free to pass on!
Quotes about Relationship with Self
Quotes about Relationship with Others
Quotes about Relationship with Nature and Spirituality
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Relationship with Self
"The most creative act you will ever undertake is the act of creating yourself."
--Deepak Chopra
"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind."
–Dr. Seuss
"You must do the thing that you think you cannot do."
--Eleanor Roosevelt
"Following another’s path leads to who they are, not to who you are."
--Harry Palmer
"I am what I wanted and I want what I am"
--Meister Eckhart
"If I didn’t define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies for me, and eaten alive."
--Audre Lorde
"We can choose to throw stones, to stumble on them, to climb over them, or to build with them."
--William Arthur Ward
"And the trouble is, if you don’t risk anything, you risk even more."
--Erica Jong
"If we do not change the direction we are going, we are likely to end up where we are headed."
–Chinese proverb.
"What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves?"
--Thomas Merton
"You need to claim the events of your life to make yourself yours. When you truly possess all you have been and done, which may take some time, you are fierce with reality."
-- Flonda Scott Maxwell
"There are vast realms of consciousness still undreamed of --vast ranges of experience, like humming of unseen harps, we know nothing of, within us."
--D. H. Lawrence
"Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything."
--George Bernard Shaw
"The difference between perseverance and obstinancy is that one often comes from a strong will, and the other from a strong won’t."
--Henry Ward Beecher
"We are sent into the world to live to the full everything that awakens within us and everything that comes toward us." -
–John O’ Donohue
"If you allow yourself to be the person you are then everything will come into rhythm."
—John O’ Donohue
"You can’t think your way to a new way of acting, you must act your way to a new way of thinking."
—David Schnarch
"The world can only change from within."
--Eckhart Tolle
"Movement practice gets all your creative juices flowing. It doesn’t just release your body, but it opens up your heart and empties out your mind, as well."
--Gabrielle Roth
"The important thing is this: to be able, at any moment, to sacrifice what we are for what we could become."
--Charles Dubois
"There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."
--Anais Nin
"To put the world in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must first put the family in order; to put the family in order, we must first cultivate our personal life; we must first set our hearts right.”
—-Confucius
"It’s easy to feel equal to wanting. It’s rare to feel equal to having."
—Helen Humphreys
"Let’s say no when we need to and yes when we want to but we’re scared!"
--Samaya Ryane
"Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing."
—Helen Keller
"Iron is full of impurities that weaken it; through forging, it becomes steel and is transformed into a razor-sharp sword. Human beings develop in the same fashion. "
–Morihei Ueshiba
Relationship with Others
"The surest way to make ourselves crazy is to get involved in other people’s business, and the quickest way to become sane and happy is to tend to our own affairs."
--Melody Beattie
"When we experience conflict or dissatisfaction in our relationships, we are being called on to develop something in ourselves that is weak, hidden, or unknown."
—Jett Psaris and Marlena Lyons.
"Take heart: marriage is more elegant than we dare believe. It can bring you bliss, but it’s harder than many people recognize."
–-David Schnarch
"One of the most precious things you should always preserve in a friendship and in love is your own difference."
--John O’ Donohue
"Love in the past is only a memory.
Love in the future is only a fantasy.
True love lives in the here and now."
--The Buddha
"It is wise to direct your anger toward problems--not people; to focus your energies on answers--not excuses. "
--Willliam Arthur Ward
"Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see each other whole against the sky."
-- Rainer Maria Rilke
Relationship with Nature and Spirituality
"In relation to others, gratitude is good manners; in relation to ourselves, it is a habit of the heart and a spiritual discipline."
--Daphne Rose Kingman
"...the art of living has more to do with finding a place for the inspirations that rise from the sea of possibilities than with planning and forecasting from anxiety."
--Thomas Moore
"Spiritual growth--looking inward--is replacing the pursuit of external power--reaching outward to manipulate and control--as the cure for the insecurity at the core of human experience."
--Gary Zukav
"When you lose touch with inner stillness, you lose touch with yourself. When you lose touch with yourself, you lose yourself in the world."
--Eckhart Tolle
"Wisdom is knowing I am nothing,
love is knowing I am everything,
and between the two my life moves."
-- Nisargadatta Maharaj
"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious."
--Albert Einstein
Wild Geese—Mary Oliver
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
"The beauty you craved in things was always my glimmer seen through a veil. Turn around and see where beauty comes from. –Rumi
As the cricket’s soft
autumn hum
is to us
so are we to the trees,
as are they
to the rocks and the hills.
--Gary Snyder
"It is inner stillness that will save and transform the world."
--Eckhart Tolle
"If the only prayer you said in your whole life was ’thank you’ -- that would suffice."
--Meister Eckhart
