The very idea of a bird is a symbol and a suggestion to the poet. A bird seems to be at the top of the scale, so vehement and intense his life. . . . The beautiful vagabonds, endowed with every grace, masters of all climes, and knowing no bounds -- how many human aspirations are realised in their free, holiday-lives -- and how many suggestions to the poet in their flight and song! --John Burroughs (in The Generosity of Birds)

Take your needle, my child, and work at your pattern; it will come out a rose by and by. Life is like that - one stitch at a time taken patiently and the pattern will come out all right like the embroidery. --Oliver Wendell Holmes (in Sewing For Hope In The Favela)

Gratitude bestows reverence, allowing us to encounter everyday epiphanies, those transcendent moments of awe that change forever how we experience life and the world. --John Milton (in Message in a Wallet)

Gratitude is something of which none of us can give too much. For on the smiles, the thanks we give, our little gestures of appreciation, our neighbors build their philosophy of life. --A.J. Cronin (in Secrets of a Successful Relationship)

So often in time it happens, we all live our life in chains, and we never even know we have the key. --The Eagles (in Around the World and Bach)

Life is eternal, and love is immortal, and death is only a horizon; and a horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight. --Rossiter Worthington Raymond (in A 9 Year-Old Writes of Loss)

People are hungry for messages of hope and life. --Morgan Brittany (in Know a Word? Then, Donate Rice.)

It is worth reminding ourselves that what brings us the greatest joy and satisfaction in life are those actions we undertake out of concern for others. Indeed we can go further. For whereas the fundamental questions of human existence, such as why we are here, where we are going, and whether the universe had a beginning, have each elicited different responses in different philosophical traditions, it is self-evident that a generous heart and wholesome actions lead to greater peace. --Dalai Lama (in What Makes Us Moral?)

The personal life deeply lived always expands into truths beyond itself. --Anais Nin (in Live Like Andrew)

We are all too much inclined to walk through life with our eyes shut. There are things all around us, and right at our very feet, that we have never seen; because we have never really looked. --Alexander Graham Bell (in Unleashing Creativity)

Life is a celebration of awakenings, of new beginnings, and wonderful surprises that enlighten the soul. --Cielo (in The Mystery Muffin Giver)

When I look back, I am so impressed again with the life-giving power of literature. If I were a young person today, trying to gain a sense of myself in the world, I would do that again by reading, just as I did when I was young. --Maya Angelou (in World's Fastest Literacy Program)

To maintain a skillful balance between the inner and outer aspects of our lives is an enormously challenging and continuously changing process. The objective is not to dogmatically live with less, but is a more demanding intention of living with balance in order to find a life of greater purpose, fulfillment and satisfaction. --Duane Elgin (in The Story of Stuff)

A flower's appeal is in its contradictions -- so delicate in form yet strong in fragrance, so small in size yet big in beauty, so short in life yet long on effect. --Adabella Radici (in Kindness In Full Bloom)

I have been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened. --Mark Twain (in 10 Ways We Get the Odds Wrong)

Essentially, a story expresses how and why life changes. --Robert McKee (in Storytelling That Moves People)

If you observe a really happy man you will find him building a boat, writing a symphony, educating his son, growing double dahlias in his garden, or looking for dinosaur eggs in the Gobi desert. He will not be searching for happiness as if it were a collar button that has rolled under the radiator. He will not be striving for it as a goal in itself. He will have become aware that he is happy in the course of living life twenty-four crowded hours of the day. --W. Beran Wolfe (in The Geography of Bliss)

It does not seem to be true that work necessarily needs to be unpleasant. It may always have to be hard, or at least harder than doing nothing at all. But there is ample evidence that work can be enjoyable, and that indeed, it is often the most enjoyable part of life. --Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (in The 7 Keys To Joy at Work)

The joy is that we can take back our bodies, reclaim our health, and restore ourselves to balance. We can take power over what and how we eat. We can rejuvenate and recharge ourselves, bringing healing to the wounds we carry inside us, and bringing to fuller life the wonderful person that each of us can be. --John Robbins (in What The World Eats In A Week)

Life is short and we have never too much time for gladdening the hearts of those who are travelling the dark journey with us. Oh be swift to love, make haste to be kind. --Henri-Frederic Amiel (in For the Homeless From the Heart)

Opportunities to find deeper powers within ourselves come when life seems most challenging. --Joseph Campbell (in 14 Engineering Challenges)

When we are motivated by goals that have deep meaning, by dreams that need completion, by pure love that needs expressing -- then we truly live life. --Greg Anderson (in Relying on Kindness & A Donkey)

Some people give time, some money, some their skills and connections, some literally give their life's blood. But everyone has something to give. --Barbara Bush (in Donor Match Over Coffee)

A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience. --Oliver Wendell Holmes (in The Power of Mindsight)

As a monk, you get more and more used to the serendipity of good things in life. And you become comfortable with that joyful serendipity of things happening -- like people that show up at the right time. And you just accept it. It shouldn't be strange. --Bernard McCoy (in Laser Monks)

Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music. Your days are your sonnets. --Oscar Wilde (in The Day So Far)

Fulfilling the four needs [spiritual, mental, physical, social] in an integrated way is like combining elements in chemistry. When we reach a "critical mass" of integration, we experience spontaneous combustion--an explosion of inner synergy that ignites the fire within and gives vision, passion, and a spirit of adventure to life. --Stephen Covey (in Be A Better Leader, Lead a Richer Life)

Choose your intention carefully and then practice holding your consciousness to it, so it becomes the guiding light in your life. --John Roger (in Being the Change & Singing It)

Nearly all the best things that came to me in life have been unexpected, unplanned by me. --Carl Sandburg (in The Security Guard's Idea)

This is the beginning of a new day. You have been given this day to use as you will. You can waste it or use it for good. What you do today is important because you are exchanging a day of your life for it. When tomorrow comes, this day will be gone forever; in its place is something that you have left behind...let it be something good. --Author Unknown (in Doing Good, While Wearing Tuxedos!)

Soon silence will have passed into legend. Man has turned his back on silence. Day after day he invents machines and devices that increase noise and distract humanity from the essence of life. --Jean Arp (in Man-Made Noise)

If in our daily life we can smile, if we can be peaceful and happy, not only we, but everyone will profit from it. This is the most basic kind of peace work. --Thich Nhat Hanh (in Measuring Success With A Smile)

When we are motivated by goals that have deep meaning, by dreams that need completion, by pure love that needs expressing, then we truly live life. --Greg Anderson (in First Woman To Walk Lost Arrow)

Thirty-five years earlier, before the relapse of my dystrophy, I couldn't have done what I've done. I was a businesswoman, I had a shop, I was in a marriage, and I was a conformist. I probably had to go through all this to come out at the other end, to be sort of hit on the head and to realize that my former life wasn't all that good and that it was time to try something else. --Hanni Sager (in Hanni's Toy Workshops in Mexico)

Thought is cause: experience is effect. If you don't like the effects in your life, you have to change the nature of your thinking. --Mariannne Williamson (in Resonant Leadership)

Nothing is more powerful than an individual acting out of his conscience, thus helping to bring the collective conscience to life. --Norman Cousins (in Germany's Very Unusual Traffic Solution)

If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain; If I can ease one life the aching, Or cool one pain, Or help one fainting robin Up to his nest again, I shall not live in vain. --Emily Dickinson (in A Story of Five Million Steps)

There is a spark of good in everybody, no matter how deeply it may be buried, it is there. It's waiting to govern your life gloriously. --Peace Pilgrim (in Mildred Norman's Simple Message)

Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind. --Henry James (in Hannah's Socks)

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing. --Helen Keller (in The Real Meaning of Security)

There are no days in life so memorable as those which vibrated to some stroke of the imagination. --Ralph Waldo Emerson (in The Link Between Memory & Imagination)

Something that has always puzzled me all my life is why, when I am in special need of help, the good deed is usually done by somebody on whom I have no claim. --William Feather (in An Unexpected Thank You)

Always in life an idea starts small, it is only a sapling idea, but the vines will come and they will try to choke your idea so it cannot grow and it will die and you will never know you had a big idea, an idea so big it could have grown thirty meters through the dark canopy of leaves and touched the face of the sky. --Bryce Courtenay (in 4800 Books and 10 Legs)

Live your life from your heart. Share from your heart. And your story will touch and heal people's souls. --Melody Beattie (in Why I Blog)

Nature, where life is reproduced and exists, has the right to exist, persist, maintain, and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions, and its processes in evolution. Every person, people, community, or nationality will be able to demand the recognition of rights for nature before the public bodies. --Quote From Constitution of Ecuador (in Now Nature Has Its Own Rights, in Ecuador!)

When we share - that is poetry in the prose of life. --Sigmund Freud (in Why Children Like to Share)

Every single moment has a particular rhythm to it, and we have the capacity to expand or contract an individual moment as appropriate. One way to shift what's going on in our world is not to try to rush to do more, but to allow ourselves to go deeper into that moment of being present. Our ability to shift gears, to shift our rhythm to meet that moment and be present in it, is what allows us to experience the fullness of life. --Stephan Rechtschaffen (in 6 Tips for Living in the Moment)

There is a wonderful mythical law of nature that the three things we crave most in life -- happiness, freedom, and peace of mind -- are always attained by giving them to someone else. --Peyton Conway March (in Designing For Generosity)

Do not stop thinking of life as an adventure. You have no security unless you can live bravely, excitingly, imaginatively, unless you can choose a challenge instead of a competence. --Eleanor Roosevelt (in Ohio's Blind Marching Band)

The unselfish effort to bring cheer to others will be the beginning of a happier life for ourselves. --Helen Keller (in Cheering for the Other Side)