Bricolage Of Inspiration

Pause readers share their favorite quotes on balance and perspective. (Where sources were provided I’ve included them with the quotes.)

Via Deb K:

Work is a slice of your life. It’s not the entire pizza. – Jacquelyn Mitchard

Via Mo K:

If there are one hundred good things to do and you can only do ten of them, you will have to say no ninety times. – Richard Swenson

Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it. – George Santayana

Be aware of wonder. Live a balanced life – learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some. – Robert Fulghum

Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving. – Albert Einstein

To put everything in balance is good, to put everything in harmony is better. – Victor Hugo

Live so that they won’t have to lie at your funeral.

Via Brenda R:
I love the man who can smile in trouble, who can gather strength from distress and grow brave by reflection. -Thomas Paine

Via Cheryl W:
I can’t be happy every day, but at least I can be cheerful !

Happiness will not come from reading articles about happiness. Happiness comes when you do the things they recommend.

Via Kim L:
Don’t waste your life in doubts and fears; spend yourself on the work before you, well assured that the right performance of this hour’s duties will be the best preparation for the hours or ages that follow it. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Via Laurie W:
If you are planning for a year, sow rice; if you are planning for a decade, plant trees; if you are planning for a lifetime, educate people.

Via Rose B:
There are two ways to live your life – one is as though nothing is a miracle, the other is as though everything is a miracle – Albert Einstein

Live simply – so that others may simply live – Ghandi

Do or do not – there is no try. – Yoda

Via Linda C:
With acceptance comes peace.

Life is messy, wear a smock!
My workplace is a drama free zone and brings me peace and fulfillment. (Obviously this one is easier said than done, but it is right in front of my nose to at least try.)
Whatever you want to accomplish, whatever is important to you, do it and do it now, with as much grace, intensity and sense of ease as you can muster. – Marc Lesser
Do what you should do, when you should do it, whether you feel like it or not.

Via Ruth G:
Talk low, talk slow, and don’t say too much. – John Wayne
Bite your tongue before your tongue bites others!
Life is rough so wear a helmet.

Via Eileen B:
What can you do to promote peace? Go home and love your family. – Mother Teresa

Via Diane M:
What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Via Penny G:
A ‘no’ uttered from the deepest conviction is better than a ‘yes’ merely uttered to please, or what is worse, to avoid trouble. – Gandhi

Via Gwendolyn H:
Imagine life as a game in which you are juggling some five balls in the air. You name them – Work – Family – Health – Friends – Integrity, and you’re keeping all of these in the air. You will soon understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. But the other four balls — family, health, friends and integrity are made of glass. If you drop one of these, they will be irrevocably scuffed, marked, nicked, damaged or even shattered. – James Patterson

Via Larry C:
While they were saying among themselves, ‘It cannot be done,’ it was done. – Helen Keller

Via Alvina F:
Life is short, break the rules, forgive quickly, kiss slowly, love truly, laugh uncontrollably, and never regret anything that made you smile.

Via Gladys N:
Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow. – Melody Beattie

Measuring Success
What are my plans for the future?
Am I sufficiently curious?
How little do I need to be happy?
Have I proven that I care?
How many lives have I made better today?

Via Bets E:
Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.

If you want a thing done well, get a couple of old broads to do it! – Bette Davis.

Via Melanie G:
Go forth, do good, return home, stay blessed. Repeat as necessary. – Peter Davison

Via Cindy T:
Time spent laughing is time spent with the gods. – Japanese Proverb

Via Christine U:
Hope seems so far away but hope is always there for you. – 7 year old Kailey

Via Debby C:
Normal is just a setting on a washing machine.

Via Dawn M:
There is more to life than increasing its speed. – Ghandi

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

The world is wide, and I would not waste my life in friction when it could be turned into momentum. – Frances Willard

Via Channone D:
When you stop resisting, stop trying to change that which you cannot change, but be in the moment; be fully open to the blessings that you have already received and those that are yet to come to you…look at where you are and how far you’ve come…and what you’ve accomplished and who you are. Stand in that space of gratitude and honor and claim that for yourself. When you can claim that, when you SEE that, the vibration of your life will change. The vibration of your LIFE will change. – Oprah Winfrey

Via Valerie M:
Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter, don’t mind.

Via Lou M:
Work when there is work to do. Rest when you are tired. One thing done in peace will most likely be better than ten things done in panic. I am not a hero if I deny rest; I am only tired. – Susan McHenry

Via Roberta S:
The person who figures out how to harness the collective genius of the people in his or her organization is going to blow the competition away. – Walter Winston

Be master of your petty annoyances and conserve your energies for the big, worthwhile things. It isn’t the mountain ahead that wears you out – it’s the grain of sand in your shoe. – Robert Service

Via Tammy S:
In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years. – Abraham Lincoln

Via Stacy M:
Patience in the present, faith in the future, and joy in the doing. – George Perera

Via Sherrill M:
Miracles begin with you. You must find that place inside yourself where nothing is impossible. – Deepak Chopra

I believe that for each of us, the presence of our being is the greatest gift we can give. Truly accepting and loving ourselves has a ripple effect beyond comprehension. – Courtney Milne

Correct … and continue. – Harv Eker

Every object well contemplated opens a new organ in us. You have to live in that world of phenomena. You have to attend carefully. Every object, well contemplated – attended to – over time, repeatedly changes who you are – to the point where you begin to see things that you didn’t see originally … and perhaps which no one before you has seen. – Arthur Zajonc

Via Jean M:
No pressure? No diamonds!

Get rid of anything that isn’t useful, beautiful, or joyful!

Make peace with your past so it won’t screw up the present.

When it comes to chocolate, resistance is futile.

Leaders have to step up and leaders have to step it up!

When in doubt, just take the next small step.

Life is too short to waste time hating anyone.

Via Susan E:
Happiness consists of living each day as if it were the first day of your honeymoon and the last day of your vacation.

Good judgment comes from experience, and often experience comes from bad judgment. – Rita Mae Brown

It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change. – Charles Darwin

Life is short but really really wide – trust the process. – Kevin Burns

Life is like a buffet line. There aren’t any waiters, so you have to help yourself.

Patience is the ability to idle your motor when you feel like stripping your gears.

One is constantly sweeping away the leaves that are always falling and never actually setting off on the path that the leaves keep covering. Thus do we squander our time, our lives. – Needleman

In the future, the new illiterate will be the person who has not learned to learn. – Alvin Toffler

Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow, it only saps today of its joy. – Leo Buscaglia

The brain that does the work is the brain that learns. – David Sousa

Via Cathy M:
Every time I’ve done something that doesn’t feel right, it’s ended up not being right. – Mario Cuomo

Via Barry M:
If you knew you could not fail, what would you attempt?

We expect to one day laugh about the times we cried, but never to cry about the times we laughed.

This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man. – William Shakespeare (Polonius in Hamlet)

Via Pat D:
No woman is required to build the world by destroying herself.

Via Judy-Ann W:
Life is a journey, not a destination.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained!

Dwell in possibilities – Emily Dickinson

The best things in life aren’t things.

People always make time to do the things they really want to do.

Getting without giving is to miss the best part of living.

Via Janice T:
Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.

You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand.

If you have knowledge, let others light their candles at it. – Margaret Fuller

Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart to give yourself to it. – Buddha

Via Alice H:
The Japanese phrase, wabi sabi, describes the ability to find joy and beauty in things incomplete, imperfect, and impermanent.

Via Laurie C:
There is a mountain of reasons to be optimistic.

Be fully engaged in life and as passionate in anger as you are in love, never let the sun go down on your wrath, no matter how mad you are.

Via Rose-Marie C:
When life gives you curves, flaunt them.

Via Allan P:
The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone. – Harriet Beecher Stowe

Obstacles are things you see when you take your eyes off the goal.

If you want to be successful, it’s just this simple. Know what you are doing. Love what you are doing. And believe in what you are doing. – Will Rodgers

All the breaks you need in life are within your imagination. Imagination is the workshop of your mind, capable of turning the mind energy into accomplishment and wealth. – Napoleon Hill

Life is service. The one who progresses is the one who gives his fellow human beings a little more, a little better service. – E. M. Statler

The Five Secrets You Must Discover Before You Die, by John Izzo –
– be true to yourself
– leave no regrets
– become love
– live the moment
– give more than you take

Via Cheryl G:
A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right. – Thomas Paine

We would all be better off if wisdom, rather than foolishness, was the default expectation for older people. – Dr. Bill Thomas

Via Debbie W:
In every situation good, bad or indifferent, you must take something out of it. Always try to find the positive thing, even if you really have to dig down deep and look.

Have a wonderful festive season and may your gifts of togetherness with family and friends be wrapped up with ribbons and bows!

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