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Let everyone sweep in front of his own door and the whole world will be clean.  ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
~Wendell Berry, "The Peace of Wild Things"

Today, give a stranger one of your smiles.  It might be the only sunshine he sees all day.  ~Author Unknown

The words "I am" are potent words; be careful what you hitch them to.  The thing you’re claiming has a way of reaching back and claiming you.  ~A.L. Kitselman

I can’t complain, but sometimes I still do.  ~Joe Walsh

I would prefer not to.  ~Herman Melville, "Bartleby, the Scrivener"

Maybe we should develop a Crayola bomb as our next secret weapon.  A happiness weapon.  A beauty bomb.  And every time a crisis developed, we would launch one.  It would explode high in the air – explode softly – and send thousands, millions, of little parachutes into the air.  Floating down to earth – boxes of Crayolas.  And we wouldn’t go cheap, either – not little boxes of eight.  Boxes of sixty-four, with the sharpener built right in.  With silver and gold and copper, magenta and peach and lime, amber and umber and all the rest.  And people would smile and get a little funny look on their faces and cover the world with imagination.  ~Robert Fulghum

Pain is inevitable.  Suffering is optional.  ~M. Kathleen Casey

Some people like my advice so much that they frame it upon the wall instead of using it.  ~Gordon R. Dickson

If malice or envy were tangible and had a shape, it would be the shape of a boomerang.  ~Charley Reese

A horse loves freedom, and the weariest old work horse will roll on the ground or break into a lumbering gallop when he is turned loose into the open.  ~Gerald Raferty

You will not find a soulmate in the quiet of your room.  You must go to a noisy place and look in the quiet corners.  ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com

How strange to use "You only live once" as an excuse to throw it away.  ~Bill Copeland

I don’t rent space to anyone in my head.  ~Anonymous man on Candid Camera, answering Allen Funt’s question about why he had not gotten upset

For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin – real life.  But there was always some obstacle in the way.  Something to be got through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid.  Then life would begin.  At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life.  ~Fr. Alfred D’Souza

Up to a point a man’s life is shaped by environment, heredity, and movements and changes in the world about him.  Then there comes a time when it lies within his grasp to shape the clay of his life into the sort of thing he wishes to be.  Only the weak blame parents, their race, their times, lack of good fortune, or the quirks of fate.  Everyone has it within his power to say, "This I am today; that I will be tomorrow."  ~Louis L’Amour

A nod,
a bow,
and a tip of the lid
to the person
who coulda
and shoulda
and did.
~Robert Brault, "A Poem Missing the Word Woulda," www.robertbrault.com

May I never be complete.  May I never be content.  May I never be perfect.  Deliver me, Tyler, from being perfect and complete.  ~Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club, Chapter 5

If you want to be happy, be.  ~Leo Tolstoy

Heaven is on the other side of that feeling you get when you’re sitting on the couch and you get up and make a triple-decker sandwich.  It’s on the other side of that, when you don’t make the sandwich.  It’s about sacrifice…. It’s about giving up the things that basically keep you from feeling.  That’s what I believe, anyway.  I’m always asking, "What am I going to give up next?"  Because I want to feel.  ~Jim Carrey, from a Michael Fleming interview in the March 2004 issue of Playboy magazine

The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measurements anew each time he sees me.  The rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them.  ~George Bernard Shaw

I would not waste my life in friction when it could be turned into momentum.  ~Frances Willard

Seek freedom and become captive of your desires.  Seek discipline and find your liberty.  ~Frank Herbert

Try not.  Do or do not.  There is no try.  ~Yoda

There is always some specific moment when we become aware that our youth is gone; but, years after, we know it was much later.  ~Mignon McLaughlin