Lord, make us instruments of your peace. Where there is hatred, let us sow love; Where there is injury, pardon; Where there is discord, union; Where there is doubt, faith; Where there is despair, hope; Where there is darkness, light; Where there is sadness, joy. Grant that we may not so much seek To be consoled as to console; To be understood as to understand; To be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; It is in pardoning that we are pardoned; And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. --The Prayer of St Francis (in The Prayer of St Francis)

The day I saw beneath dark clouds the passing light over the water and I heard the voice of the world speak out, I knew then, as I had before life is no passing memory of what has been nor the remaining pages in a great book waiting to be read. It is the opening of eyes long closed. It is the vision of far off thinks seen for the silence they hold. It is in the heart after years of secret conversing speaking out loud in the clear air. It is Moses in the desert fallen to his knees before the lit bush. It is the man throwing away his shoes as if to enter heaven and finding himself astonished, opened at last, fallen in love with solid ground. --David Whyte (in The Opening of Eyes)

Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment. --Alan Watts (in Cerebral Calasthenics)

At the end of our life our questions are simple: Did I live fully? Did I love well? --Jack Kornfield (in Near Death)

If we sell you the land, you must remember that it is sacred, and you must teach your children that it is sacred and that each ghostly reflection in the clear water of the lakes tells of events and memories in the life of my people. The water's murmur is the voice of my father's father. --Chief Seattle (in The Value of Earth)

I have one life and one chance to make it count for something . . . I'm free to choose what that something is, and the something I've chosen is my faith. Now, my faith goes beyond theology and religion and requires considerable work and effort. My faith demands -- this is not optional -- my faith demands that I do whatever I can, wherever I am, whenever I can, for as long as I can with whatever I have to try to make a difference. --Jimmy Carter (in Faith)

We are not born all at once, but by bits. The body first, and the spirit later; and the birth and growth of the spirit, in those who are attentive to their own inner life, are slow and exceedingly painful. Our mothers are racked with the pains of our physical birth; we ourselves suffer the longer pains of our spiritual growth. --Mary Antin, 1912 (in Birth Pains)

It is one of the most beautiful compensations of life, that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself. --Ralph Waldo Emerson (in Tsunami Service)

The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof. --Barbara Kingsolver (in Social Capitalists)

Learn from the lowliest in the earth, in the birds, in the trees, in the grass, in the flowers, in the bees -- likewise listen to the birds, watch the blush of the rose, listen to the life rising in the tree. --Edgar Cayce (in Honey Bee Network)

The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof. --Barbara Kingsolver (in Wings of Hope)

Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the world earth revolves - slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future. Live the actual moment. Only this moment is life. --Thich Nat Hahn (in Tea Time)

Therefore you must always keep in mind that a path is only a path; if you feel you should not follow it, you must not stay with it under any conditions. Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn't, it is of no use. Both paths lead nowhere; but one has a heart, the other doesn't. One makes for a joyful journey; as long as you follow it, you are one with it. The other will make you curse your life. One makes you strong; the other weakens you. --Don Juan as quoted by Carlos Casteneda (in A Path With Heart)

Could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy. --Kahlil Gibran (in The Miracle of Positive Thinking)

The seemingly uneventful and motionless moment when our future steps into us is so much closer to life than that other loud and accidental point of time when it happens to us as if from outside. --Rainer Maria Rilke (in Stand-by Energy Drain)

I see your life as already artful, waiting, just waiting and ready for you to make it art. --Toni Morrison (in $30,000 Dumpster Dive)

Music is the language of the spirit. It opens the secret of life bringing peace, abolishing strife. --Kahlil Gibran (in Playing For Change: Peace Through Music)

When we share -- that is poetry in the prose of life. --Sigmund Freud (in Breaking Bread Together)

I have never come across anything in nature that is superfluous and does not fulfill a function. There seems to be no redundancy or unemployment in these natural worlds. Be it rock or plant, bird or tree, or even the bacteria within the soil, everything occupies a vital place in the dance of life. --Michael Lindfield (in Eco-Cities For 400 Million People)

Ironically, rural America is viewed by a growing number of people as having a higher quality of life not because of what it has, but rather because of what it does not have! --Don Dillman (in Urban Takes Over Rural)

Together, we see new leaves glowing against the sun, green hillsides shimmering with the breeze, the bright purple bursts of lupine. And it's okay if there is nothing beyond this, because there is this: life, everlasting, in the bloom of every flower. --Jamaica Ritcher (in This I Believe)

One way or another, we all have to find what best fosters the flowering of our humanity in this contemporary life, and dedicate ourselves to that. --Joseph Campbell (in America’s Best-Selling Poet)

I have always thought it would be a blessing if each person could be blind and deaf for a few days during his early adult life. Darkness would make him appreciate sight; silence would teach him the joys of sound. --Helen Keller (in Nobel Laureate's Odes To Common Things)

Life shrinks and expands in proportion to one's courage. --Anais Nin (in Class of One)

Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around. --Leo Buscaglia (in Anonymous Kindness Catches On!)

Every life has a story. What's yours? --Autobiography Project Tagline (in Bus Stand Autobiographies)

In the future, people will live by the motto, "If it can live, let it live". Everything we have and everything we do and everything we would consider buying will in some way embrace life. --Richard Reames (in How To Grow A Chair)

There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will truly have defeated age. --Sophia Loren (in 12 Year Old Who Doesn't Age)

Life is the only real counseler; wisdom unfiltered through personal experience does not become a part of the moral tissue. --Edith Wharton (in 41 Letters To Younger Selves)

Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood. --Ralph Waldo Emerson (in Serving on Philadelphia's Streets)

As we respond with caring and vision to all work, we develop our capacity to respond fully to all of life. Every action generates positive energy which can be shared with others. These qualities of caring and responsiveness are the greatest gift we can offer. --Tarthang Tulku (in Smashing a Law of Physics?)

No system or machinery or economic doctrine or theory stands on its own feet: it is invariably built on a metaphysical foundation, that is to say, upon man's basic outlook on life, its meaning and its purpose. I have talked about the religion of economics, the idol worship of material possessions, of consumption and the so-called standard of living, and the fateful propensity that rejoices in the fact that 'what were luxuries to our fathers have become necessities for us.' --E. F. Schumacher (in Small-Mart Revolution)

I envision a future where more of us will call ourselves artists and work together to make an art concerned with the primary issues of life. I envision a future where art is once again honored for its power to inspire, teach, transform and heal. I envision a future where all people dance together, where the circle is open enough for both children and grandparents. --Anna Halprin (in Dancing to Heal)

I want to know if you can see Beauty even when it is not pretty, every day. And if you can source your own life from its presence. I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine and still stand at the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, "Yes." --Oriah Mountain Dreamer (in Frustration Transformed Into Inspiration)

When the heart breaks open, it marks the beginning of a real love affair with this world. It is a broken-hearted love affair, rather than the conventional kind based on hope and expectation. Only in this fearless love that can respond to life's pain as well as its beauty can we be of real help to ourselves or anyone else in this difficult age. --John Welwood (in Cancelled Wedding Benefits Charity)

The accumulation of small, optimistic acts produces quality in our culture and in your life. Our culture resonates in tense times to individual acts of grace. --Jennifer James (in 100$ Ripples of Goodness)

There is something deep within our nature. A guiding light if you will. A voice that always speaks of goodness. A voice that is always moving us towards more love, towards more life. Can we hear it? Sitting in silence is an attempt to become in tune with your own self, with your own voice. --Sukh Chugh (in One Million Meditate for Peace)

The discovery of song and the creation of musical instruments both owed their origin to a human impulse which lies much deeper than conscious intention: the need for rhythm in life ... the need is a deep one, transcending thought, and disregarded at our peril. --Richard Baker (in Musical Training Fosters Brain Power)

When it's over, I don't want to wonder if I have made of my life something particular, and real. I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened, or full of argument. I don't want to end up simply having visited this world. --Mary Oliver (in When Death Comes: A Poem About Life)

It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power. --Alan Cohen (in Need A Lightbulb? Change the World.)

Prayer is a radical response to the mysteries of life. --Matthew Fox (in The Health Benefits of Faith)

Many years later, I had a chance to ask him. I said, 'Come on, you were a great man, you invited your jailers to your inauguration, you put your pressures on the government. But tell me the truth. Weren't you really angry all over again?' And he said, 'Yes, I was angry. And I was a little afraid. After all I've not been free in so long. But,' he said, 'when I felt that anger well up inside of me I realised that if I hated them after I got outside that gate then they would still have me.' And he smiled and said, 'I wanted to be free so I let it go.' It was an astonishing moment in my life. It changed me. --Bill Clinton (on Nelson Mandela) (in Contemporary Tribute To Mandela)

If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change. --Buddha (in Putting Our World In Perspective)

When searching for harmony in life, one must never forget that in the drama of existence we are ourselves both actors and spectators. --Niels Bohr (in Amazon Natives Save Forests with Google Earth)

If there is any responsibility in the cycle of life it must be that one generation owes to the next that strength by which it can come to face ultimate concerns in its own way. --Erik Homburger Erikson (in The Vibrancy of Generation Next)

Art condenses the experience we all have as human beings, and, by forming it, makes it significant. We all have an in-built need for harmony and the structures that create harmony. Basically, art is an affirmation of life. --Trevor Bell (in A Company's Unusual Gift Of Art)

To live more voluntarily is to live more deliberately, intentionally and purposefully -- in short, it is to live more consciously. We cannot be deliberate when we are distracted from life. We cannot be intentional when we are not paying attention. We cannot be purposeful when we are not being present. --Duane Elgin (in The Power of Intention)

Connection with gardens, even small ones, even potted plants, can become windows to the inner life. The simple act of stopping and looking at the beauty around us can be prayer. --Patricia R. Barret (in Studying The Power of Flowers)

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 (in The Impact of Gratitude)

Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials. --Lin Yutang (in Shared Shopping Sabbatical)