This first month of the new year l am drawn to share little nuggets . . . good quotes to keep in the heart pocket to learn from and to share.
Phrases posted on Facebook, January 2024
Here is a wonderful nugget from Pema Chodron. “You are the sky. Everything else – it’s just the weather.”
This one is from Eckhart, the Meister of Meisters, is lovely. “This I know. The only way to live is like the rose which lives without a why”.
Here’s one from Chief Oren Lyons, faith keeper of the Turtle Clan of the Onondaga Nation in the Iroquois Confederacy. “As long as there is one to speak and one to listen, one to sing and one to dance, the fight is on. That is hope: to not give up.”
Enjoy this one from Helen Keller: “The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen, nor touched, but are felt in the heart.”
I love this one from Desmond Tutu: “Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.”
I’ve always liked this one by Frank A. Clark reminding me to accept the big pot holes in the road that crop up regularly and also make me love the rainbows that grace the way after rain. “If you can find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn’t lead anywhere.”
Here’s a pithy one from Friedrich Nietzsche: “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.”
I think we all get discouraged from time to time, even feeling a bit hopeless, not wanting to get out of bed in the morning. I find this quote by Barbara Kingsolver from High Tide In Tucson of real help. Here it is:
“In my own worst seasons I’ve come back from the colorless world of despair by forcing myself to look hard, for a long time, at a single glorious thing: a flame of red geranium outside my bedroom window. And then another: my daughter in a yellow dress And another: the perfect outline of a full, dark sphere behind the crescent moon. Until I learned to be in love with my life again.”
This quote is by Jeanne Lohmann.
“At the end there may be no answers
and only a few very simple questions
did I love,
finish my task in the world?
Learn at least one
of the many names of God?
At the intersections,
the boundaries where one life began
and another
ended, the jumping-off places
between fear and
possibility, at the ragged edges of pain,
did I catch the
smallest glimpse of the holy?”
We can count on Hafiz. Here’s a Daniel Ladinsky translation. “How did the rose ever open its heart and give the world all its beauty? It felt the encouragement of light against its being. Otherwise, we all remain too frightened.”
How many times do I need this reminder from Dale Wendell . . . not a word out of place? “The first thing. The last thing. Start from where you are.”
When I come to moments in my life that are stunning and life changing, I remind myself of this quote attributed to the Buddha, especially the last part: “In the end only three things matter; how much you loved, how gently you lived and how gracefully you let go of things not meant for you.”
