Inspirational and Challenging Quotations Submitted by Members



1
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind; and, love your neighbor as yourself.

Luke 10:27
2
We must not be attached to a view or a doctrine, even a Buddhist one. .. . The Buddha said that if in a certain moment or place you adopt something as the absolute truth, and you attach to that, then you will no longer have any chance to reach the truth. Even when the truth comes and knocks on your door, and asks you to open the door, you won't recognize it. So you must not be too attached to dogma--to what you believe, and to what you perceive.

Thich Nhat Hanh
3
Eighty percent of success is showing up.

Woody Allen
4
My life is a listening.
His is a speaking.
My salvation is to hear and respond.

Thomas Merton
5
And then out of the blue
And without any guide
You know what your decision is
Which is: not to decide..

Stephen Sondheim, "Into the Woods"
6
People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered. Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies.   Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and sincere people may deceive you. Be honest and sincere anyway.
What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight. Create anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous. Be happy anyway.
The good you do today, will often be forgotten. Do good anyway.
Give the best you have, and it will never be enough. Give your best anyway.
In the final analysis, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.

Mother Teresa
7
If God ever spoke, He is still speaking. If He has ever been in mutual and reciprocal communication with the persons He has made, He is still a communicating God as eager as ever to have listening and receptive souls. If there is something of His image and superscription in our inmost structure and being, we ought to expect a continuous revelation of His will and purpose through the ages.... He is the Great I Am, not a Great He Was.

Rufus Jones
8

Until one is committed there is a hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness.
Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation) there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless good ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never have otherwise occurred. A whole stream of events issue from the decision raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now!

Goethe


I think of this as a quote about the power that is reached by reaching Clearness or Consensus -and that we can be led without knowing all that will happen to be in following the leading but if rightly lead we will be supported by Spirit in almost magical ways.
9
Be patient towards all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked room and books that are written in a foreign tongue. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

Rainer Maria Rilke
10
The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of contemporary violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want
to help everyone in everything is to succumb to violence.

Thomas Merton
11
Give over thine own willing, give over thine own running,give over thine own desiring to know or be anything, and sink down to the seed which God sows in thy heart and let that be in thee, and grow in thee, and breathe in thee, and act in thee, and thou shalt find by sweet experience that the Lord knows that and loves that and owns that, and will lead it to the inheritance of life, which is his own portion…. There is a continual praying unto God. There is a continual blessing and praising of his name, in eating or drinking or whatever else is done.

Isaac Penington (1617-1679)
12
I expect to pass through this world but once. Any good thing, therefore, that I can do or any kindness I can show to any fellow human being let me do it now. Let me not defer nor neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.

Stephen Grellet
13
They that love beyond the world cannot be separated by it. Death cannot kill what never dies, nor can spirits ever be divided that love and live in the same Divine Principle, the root and reward of their friendship.

William Penn, 1693
14
We are a people that follow after those things that make for peace, love and unity. It is our desire that others' feet may walk in the same. We do deny and bear our testimony against all strife and wars and contention.

Margaret Fell, 1660
15
Our life is love, our life is peace, our life is tenderness and bearing with each other, and forgiving one another and not laying accusations one against another; but praying for each other and helping each other up with a tender hand.

Isaac Penningtson, 1667
16
Be patterns, be examples, in all countries, places, islands, nations, wherever you come; that your carriage and life may preach among all sorts of people and to them; then you will come to walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in everyone; whereby in them ye may be a blessing, and make the witness of God in them to bless you.

George Fox, 1656
17
May we look upon our treasure, our furniture and our garments, and try to discover whether the seeds of war are nourished by these, our possessions.

John Woolman, 1763
18
Our Gracious Creator cares and provides for all his creatures. His tender mercies are over all his works, and as far as his love influences our minds, so far we become interested in his workmanship and feel a desire to take hold of every opportunity to lessen the distresses of the afflicted and increase the happiness of the creation. Here we have the prospect of one common interest…to turn all that we possess into the channel of universal love becomes the business of our lives.

John Woolman (1720-1772)

19
But as I had forsaken the priests, so I left the separate preachers also, and those esteemed the most experienced people; for I saw there was none among them all that could speak to my condition. When all my hopes in them and in all men were gone, so that I had nothing outwardly to help me, nor could I tell what to do, then, oh, then, I heard a voice which said, "There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition";[30] and when I heard it, my heart did leap for joy.

The Journal of George Fox
20
[when asked if he has any regrets]
"Oh, enough to fill a lifetime. So much has been lost, so much forgotten. So much pain, so much blood. And for what, I wonder? The past tempts us, the present confuses us, and the future frightens us. And our lives slip away, lost in that vast, terrible in-between. But there is still a chance to seize that last, fragile moment. To choose something better. To make a difference, as you say. And I intend to do just that."

J. Michael Straczynski

21
You will say, Christ saith this, and the apostles say this; but what canst thou say? Art thou a child of Light and hast walked in the Light, and what thou speakest is it inwardly from God?

George Fox
22
Stay in the race!

Edward M. Kennedy
23
The woods are lovely dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Robert Frost
24
Dig deep, carefully cast forth the loose matter and get down to the rock, the sure foundation, and there hearken to the Divine Voice which gives a clear and certain sound.

John Woolman
25
The serenity prayer: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I can not change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Reinhold Niebuhr
26
He hath shown thee, O man, what is good: and what doth the Lord require of thee but to act justly, and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God.

Micah 6:8

27
Life is too short, time is too precious, and the stakes are too high to dwell on what might have been. We have to work together for what still can be.

Hillary Clinton
28
If God gave you children, love them with wisdom, correct them with affection, never strike in passion and suit the correction to their age as well as fault. Convince them more by their understanding then the rod.

William Penn
29
God, out of the pattern of God's own heart, has planted the Cross along the road of holy obedience. And God enacts in the hearts of those God loves the miracle of willingness to welcome suffering and to know it for what it is the final seal of God's gracious love. I dare not urge you to your Cross. But God, more powerfully, speaks within you and me, to our truest selves, in our truest moments, and disquiets us with the world's needs. By inner persuasions God draws us to a few very definite tasks, OUR tasks, God's burdened heart particularizing God's burden in us. ....Then we see that nothing matters, and that everything matters, and that this, my task matters for me and for my fellow beings and for eternity...

The Testament of Devotion  Thomas Kelly.
30
Over and over, love will bring up anything unlike itself for the purpose of resolution.

Anonymous
31
Everyday is the same, but all the moments are different.

Sister Remedios
32
Someday, after we have mastered the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love. Then for the second time in the history of the world man will have discovered fire.

Tielhard de Chardin
33
Don't cry because it is over, smile because it happened.

Dr. Seuss
34
Deep peace of the running wave to you.
Deep peace of the flowing air to you.
Deep peace of the quiet earth to you.
Deep peace of the shining stars to you.
Deep peace of the infinite peace to you.

adapted from ancient Gaelic Runes