Encouragement/Support; Example; Excellence; Exploration; Expectations; Experience; Failure/Mistakes; Faith; Family: Fear; Forgiveness; Freedom; Friendship   ENCOURAGEMENT/SUPPORT Celebrate what you want to see more of. ~Tom Peters Note how good you feel after you have encouraged someone else. No other argument is necessary to suggest that we should never miss the opportunity to give encouragement. ~George Adams A word of encouragement during a failure is worth more than an hour of praise after success. ~Unknown EXAMPLE Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing. ~Albert Schweitzer You get the best out of others when you give the best of yourself. ~Harvey Firestone We usually look outside of ourselves for heroes and teachers. It has not occurred to most people that they may already be the role model they seek. The wholeness they are looking for may be trapped within themselves by beliefs, attitudes, and self-doubt. But our wholeness exists in us now. Trapped though it may be, it can be called upon for guidance, direction, and most fundamentally, comfort. It can be remembered, Eventually we may come to live by it. ~Rachel Naomi Remen Nothing is so contagious as an example. We never do great good or great evil without bringing about more of the same on the part of others. ~Francois de La Rochefoucauld EXCELLENCE We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. ~Aristotle Excellence is the sum of the individual actions of hundreds of thousands of people who do the thousands of little things that add up to a big difference. ~Unknown EXPLORATION We must not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we began and to know the place for the first time. ~T. S. Eliot Sail forth - steer for the deep waters only, Reckless O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me, For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go, And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all, O my brave soul! O farther farther sail! O daring joy, but safe! are they not all the seas of God? ~Walt Whitman The real act of discovery is not in finding new lands, but in seeing with new eyes. ~Marcel Proust EXPECTATIONS Treat a man as he is, he will remain so. Treat a man the way he can be and ought to be, and he will become as he can be and should be. ~Goethe Expect everything, and anything seems nothing. Expect nothing, and anything seems everything. ~Samuel Hazo What we see depends mainly on what we look for. John Lubbock top of page EXPERIENCE Experience is a great advantage. The problem is that when you get the experience, you're too damned old to do anything about it. ~Jimmy Connors Experience is a good school but the fees are high. ~Heinrich Heine A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes The trouble with experience is that it usually teaches you something you really didn't want to know. ~Unknown FAILURE/MISTAKES A mistake proves that someone stopped talking long enough to do something. ~Unknown There is no such thing as a failed experiment, only experiments with unexpected outcomes. ~Buckminster Fuller Always know in your heart that you are far bigger than anything that can happen to you. ~Dan Zadra It is not because the truth is too difficult to see that we make mistakes... we make mistakes because the easiest and most comfortable course for us is to seek insight where it accords with our emotions - especially selfish ones. ~Alexander Solzhenitsyn We must touch the weaknesses with a delicate hand. There are some faults so nearly allied to excellence that we can scarce weed out the faults without eradicating the virtue. ~Oliver Goldsmith Good people are good because they’ve come to wisdom through failure. We get very little wisdom from success, you know. ~William Saroyan Fanatacism consists in redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim. ~George Santayana If I had to live my life again, I'd make the same mistakes, only sooner. ~Tallulah Bankhead FAITH You can do very little with faith, but you can do nothing without it. ~Samuel Butler Calmness is always Godlike. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson All the scholastic scaffolding falls, as a ruined edifice, before one single word — faith. ~Napoleon There are no atheists in foxholes. ~William T. Cummings top of page FAMILY A brother is a friend provided by nature. ~Legouve Pere A family is a place where principles are hammered and honed on the anvil of everyday living. ~Charles Swindoll A father is someone who carries pictures in his wallet where his money used to be. ~Unknown A happy family is but an earlier heaven. ~John Bowring An ounce of blood is worth more than a pound of friendship. ~Spanish Proverb As the family goes, so goes the nation and so goes the whole world in which we live. ~Pope John Paul II Blood's thicker than water, and when one's in trouble best to seek out a relative's open arms. ~Unknown Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family. Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one. ~Jane Howard Each day of our lives we make deposits in the memory banks of our children. ~Charles R. Swindoll Families are like fudge... mostly sweet with a few nuts. ~Unknown Family life is too intimate to be preserved by the spirit of justice. It can be sustained by a spirit of love which goes beyond justice. ~Reinhold Niebuhr Family quarrels have a total bitterness unmatched by others. Yet it sometimes happens that they also have a kind of tang, a pleasantness beneath the unpleasantness, based on the tacit understanding that this is not for keeps; that any limb you climb out on will still be there later for you to climb back. ~Mignon McLaughlin Family: A social unit where the father is concerned with parking space, the children with outer space, and the mother with closet space. ~Evan Esar Having a family is like having a bowling alley installed in your brain. ~Martin Mull He that raises a large family does, indeed, while he lives to observe them, stand a broader mark for sorrow; but then he stands a broader mark for pleasure too. ~Benjamin Franklin I don't care how poor a man is; if he has family, he's rich. ~Dan Wilcox and Thad Mumford If you look deeply into the palm of your hand, you will see your parents and all generations of your ancestors. All of them are alive in this moment. Each is present in your body. You are the continuation of each of these people. ~Thich Nhat Hanh In every conceivable manner, the family is link to our past, bridge to our future. ~Alex Haley It is not flesh and blood but the heart which makes us fathers and sons. ~Johann Schiller My father always used to say that when you die, if you've got five real friends, then you've had a great life. ~Lee Iacocca quotes One of life's greatest mysteries is how the boy who wasn't good enough to marry your daughter can be the father of the smartest grandchild in the world. ~Unknown top of page Parents who are afraid to put their foot down usually have children who step on their toes. ~Chinese Proverb The family is one of nature's masterpieces. ~George Santayana The family is the school of duties... founded on love. ~Felix Adler The family you come from isn't as important as the family you're going to have. ~Ring Lardner The family, that dear octopus from whose tentacles we never quite escape, nor in our innermost hearts never quite wish to. ~Dodie Smith The family. We were a strange little band of characters trudging through life sharing diseases and toothpaste, coveting one another's desserts, hiding shampoo, borrowing money, locking each other out of our rooms, inflicting pain and kissing to heal it in the same instant, loving, laughing, defending, and trying to figure out the common thread that bound us all together. ~Erma Bombeck The love of a family is life's greatest blessing. ~Unknown The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother. ~Theodore Hesburgh The strength of a nation derives from the integrity of the home. ~Confucius There is no doubt that it is around the family and the home that all the greatest virtues, the most dominating virtues of human society, are created, strengthened and maintained. ~Winston Churchill For love within a family, love that's lived in But not looked at, love within the light of which All else is seen, the love within which All other love finds speech. This love is silent. ~T. S. Eliot To understand your parents' love, you must raise children yourself. ~Chinese proverb To us, family means putting your arms around each other and being there. ~Barbara Bush Treat your family like friends and your friends like family. ~Proverb We all grow up with the weight of history on us. Our ancestors dwell in the attics of our brains as they do in the spiralling chains of knowledge hidden in every cell of our bodies. ~Shirley Abbott When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years. ~Mark Twain When you look at your life, the greatest happinesses are family happinesses. ~Joyce Brothers You don't choose your family. They are God's gift to you, as you are to them. ~Desmond Tutu top of page FEAR Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood. ~Marie Curie The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely, or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere they can be quite alone with the heavens, nature and God. ~Anne Frank Our fear often prevents us from being open to new connections. We become afraid that we will lose our capacity if we open our organization to new and different members, or if we reveal anything to those we have labelled as competitors. But these are just futile attempts to hold the world still, to stop its cohering motions. In fear, we stop the energy available to us. We choose control over effectiveness. ~Margaret Wheatley FORGIVENESS Forgiveness is the key to action and freedom. ~Hannah Arendt It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend. ~William Blake Good nature and good sense must ever join; to err is human, to forgive divine. ~ A. Pope Mutual forgiveness of each vice. Such are the Gates of Paradise. ~William Blake, from The Gates of Paradise FREEDOM No man is free who is not master of himself. Epictetus top of page FRIENDSHIP To reveal something personal to another that does not reveal the best in you is to pay that person the highest tribute of friendship. ~Unknown Don't stop giving love, even if you don't receive it. Smile and have patience. ~Unknown People say true friends must always hold hands, but true friends don't need to hold hands because they know the other hand will always be there. ~Unknown Friendships multiply joys and divide grief. ~Thomas Fuller A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson Some persons are given for a few hours; others, for a few days, or months, or years. And some are given for a life-time. But all are given for eternity, and if we could only know this to be true, we could accept the gift in this life with thanksgiving, and let it go in thanksgiving. For the love that passes between two persons, if it be truly love, is part of them forever, even though they may part, never to meet again. The gift of person to person, once given, is given for eternity. Yet only when we are able to say 'thank you' can we see that this is so. ~Philip Thatcher (Being Human) When we honestly ask ourselves which people in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares. ~Henri Nouwen Friendship improves happiness, and abates misery, by doubling our joys, and dividing our grief. ~Joseph Addison Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born. ~Anais Nin Don't walk in front of me, I may not follow. Don't walk behind me, I may not lead. Walk beside me and be my friend. ~Albert Camus It's one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson "Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind. 'Pooh!' he whispered. “Yes, Piglet?' 'Nothing,' said Piglet, taking Pooh's paw. "I just wanted to be sure of you.'" Friends are the pillars on your porch. Sometimes they hold you up, sometimes they lean on you, and sometimes it's just enough to know that they are standing by. ~Unknown May the road rise to meet you, May the wind be always at your back, May the rain fall soft upon your fields and, until we meet again May God hold you in the palm of his hand. ~Irish Blessing When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving much advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a gentle and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares. ~Henri Nouwen What made us friends in the long ago when we first met? Well, I think I know. The best in you and the best in me hailed each other, because they knew that always since life began, our being friends was part of God's plan. ~Unknown My father always used to say that when you die, if you've got five real friends, then you've had a great life. ~Lee Iacocca True friends are those who, When you make a fool of yourself, don't believe the condition is permanent. ~Erwin T. Randall I will not drag you along; I will not leave you alone; I will stand by you and have my hand there for you to hold when you need to... top of page

 

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