The Tragedy of Missing Things

The tragedy of life is not so much what men suffer, but rather what they miss.
Thomas Carlyle

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.
Thomas Alva Edison

Living never wore one out so much as the effort not to live.
Anais Nin


The way we live our days, is the way we live our lives.
Annie Dillard

It's better to regret what you have done than what you haven't.
Paul Arden, Whatever You Think Think The Opposite

You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don't try.
Beverly Sills

Hide not your talents. They for use were made. What's a sundial in the shade?
Benjamin Franklin


Life without risks is not worth living.
Charles A. Lindbergh

It's the goal of every Englishman to get to his grave unembarrassed.
John Cleese

On How To Live Life Quotes

What then is the right way to live? Life should be lived as play.
Plato

Work like you don't need the money.
Love like you've never been hurt.
Dance like nobody's watching.
Anon

Happiness is not having what you want, but wanting what you have.
Anon

Love and Persistence...Life and Persistence

This quote:

"The art of love... is largely the art of persistence."
Albert Ellis


is also applicable to life, don't you think?

"The art of life...is largely the art of persistence."

The Unexpected

We will only understand the miracle of life fully when we allow the unexpected to happen.
Paulo Coelho

Joy Quotes - Continued: Joy is a Choice

Those who gave thee a body, furnished it with weakness; but He who gave thee Soul, armed thee with resolution. Employ it, and thou art wise; be wise and thou art happy.

Akhenaton


There is no pain so great as the memory of joy in present grief.
Aeschylus


A real education will not teach you to be the first. It will tell you to enjoy whatever you are doing, not for the result, but for the act itself.
Osho


My motto is that I enjoy life. I think there's a kind of simplicity to that way of thinking.
Jenna Elfman


Joy and sorrow are inseparable - together they come and when one sits alone with you, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.
Kahlil Gibran


Success is following the pattern of life one enjoys most.
Al Capp


The sharing of joy, whether physical, emotional, psychic, or intellectual, forms a bridge between the sharers which can be the basis for understanding much of what is not shared between them, and lessens the threat of their difference.
Audre Lorde


Don't move the way fear makes you move.Move the way love makes you move.Move the way joy makes you move.
Osho


Friendship improves happiness, and abates misery, by doubling our joys, and dividing our grief.
Joseph Addison

We could never learn to be brave and patient if there were only joy in the world.
Helen Keller


The secret of joy in work is contained in one word - excellence. To know how to do something well is to enjoy it.
Pearl Buck


I can think of nothing less pleasurable than a life devoted to pleasure.
John Rockefeller


Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.
Mark Twain


Once you have started seeing the beauty of life, ugliness starts disappearing. If you start looking at life with joy, sadness starts disappearing. You cannot have heaven and hell together, you can have only one. It is your choice.
Osho


The first and most important step,is intention: making the decision to be happy.
James Baraz


Things won are done; joy's soul lies in the doing.
William Shakespeare


The joy of a spirit is the measure of its power.
Ninon de Lenclos


Indeed, there is ample evidence that a joy-filled workplace improves financial performance.
Dennis Bakke


We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.
Kahlil Gibran


Give not over thy soul to sorrow; and afflict not thyself in thy own counsel. Gladness of heart is the life of man and the joyfulness of man is length of days.
Ecclesiastes

Existence - And How We Perceive It

We don't exist in the way in which we think we have understood ourselves.
Jan Haasbroek

Winston Churchill Quotes

It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations. Bartlett's Familiar Quotations is an admirable work, and I studied it intently. The quotations when engraved upon the memory give you good thoughts. They also make you anxious to read the authors and look for more.
Winston Churchill

India is a geographical term. It is no more a united nation than the equator.
Winston Churchill

We are all worms, but I do believe I am a glowworm.
Winston Churchill

It is alarming and also nauseating to see Mr. Gandhi, a seditious Middle Temple lawyer of the type well-known in the East, now posing as a fakir, striding half naked up the steps of the Viceregal palace to parley on equal terms with the representative of the King-Emperor.
Winston Churchill

I have no doubt that the Romans planned the time-table of their days far better than we do. They rose before the sun at all seasons. Except in wartime we never see the dawn. Sometimes we see sunset. The message of sunset is sadness; the message of dawn is hope. The rest and the spell of sleep in the middle of the day refresh the human frame far more than a long night. We were not made by Nature to work, or even play, from eight o’clock in the morning till midnight. We throw a strain upon our system which is unfair and improvident. For every purpose of business or pleasure, mental or physical, we ought to break our days and our marches into two.
Winston Churchill

What is the use of living, if it be not to strive for noble causes and to make this muddled world a better place for those who will live in it after we are gone? How else can we put ourselves in harmonious relation with the great verities and consolations of the infinite and the eternal? And I avow my faith that we are marching towards better days. Humanity will not be cast down. We are going on swinging bravely forward along the grand high road and already behind the distant mountains is the promise of the sun.
Winston Churchill

I had been brought up and trained to have the utmost contempt for people who got drunk – and I would have liked to have the boozing scholars of the Universities wheeled into line and properly chastised for their squalid misuse of what I must ever regard as a gift of the gods.
Winston Churchill



Some see private enterprise as a predatory target to be shot, others as a cow to be milked, but few are those who see it as a sturdy horse pulling the wagon.
Winston Churchill

It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.
Winston Churchill

You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.
Winston Churchill

If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without blood shed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.
Winston Churchill


History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.
Winston Churchill

Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement; then it becomes a mistress, and then it becomes a master, and then a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster, and fling him out to the public.
Winston Churchill


The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.
Winston Churchill

To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.
Winston Churchill

Politics is the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn’t happen.
Winston Churchill

Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy.
Winston Churchill

Solitary trees, if they grow at all, grow strong.
Winston Churchill


The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.
Winston Churchill

We contend that for a nation to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.
Winston Churchill

An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile—hoping it will eat him last.
Winston Churchill

The problems of victory are more agreeable than the problems of defeat, but they are no less difficult.
Winston Churchill

From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I shall not put.
Winston Churchill

A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.
Winston Churchill

Bessie Braddock: “Sir, you are drunk.”
Churchill: “Madam, you are ugly. In the morning, I shall be sober.”
Winston Churchill

Nancy Astor: “Sir, if you were my husband, I would give you poison.”
Churchill: “If I were your husband I would take it.”
Winston Churchill

A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.
Winston Churchill

We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and the oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.
Winston Churchill


If you have ten thousand regulations, you destroy all respect for the law.
Winston Churchill

You can always count on Americans to do the right thing—after they’ve tried everything else.
Winston Churchill

Once in a while you will stumble upon the truth but most of us manage to pick ourselves up and hurry along as if nothing had happened.
Winston Churchill

If you are going to go through hell, keep going.
Winston Churchill

Everyone has his day and some days last longer than others.
Winston Churchill

The whole history of the world is summed up in the fact that, when nations are strong, they are not always just, and when they wish to be just, they are no longer strong.
Winston Churchill

Those who can win a war well can rarely make a good peace and those who could make a good peace would never have won the war.
Winston Churchill

Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality that guarantees all the others.
Winston Churchill

The problems of victory are more agreeable than those of defeat, but they are no less difficult.
Winston Churchill

The truth is incontrovertible, malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end; there it is.
Winston Churchill

A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
Winston Churchill


We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.
Winston Churchill

There is no such thing as a good tax.
Winston Churchill

Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.
Winston Churchill

The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
Winston Churchill

A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.
Winston Churchill

It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.
Winston Churchill

The Little Prince Quotes

French: Les grandes personnes ne comprennent jamais rien toutes seules, et c'est fatigant, pour les enfants, de toujours et toujours leur donner des explications.
Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to have to explain things to them always and forever.


French: Voici mon secret. Il est très simple: on ne voit bien qu'avec le cœur. L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux.
Here is my secret. It is very simple: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.

French: Vous êtes belles, mais vous êtes vides.... On ne peut pas mourir pour vous.
You are beautiful, but you are empty... One could not die for you.

French: Les hommes ont oublié cette vérité, dit le renard. Mais tu ne dois pas l’oublier. Tu deviens responsable pour toujours de ce que tu as apprivoisé.
Men have forgotten this truth," said the fox. But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.

French: Quand on veut un mouton, c'est la preuve qu'on existe.
If anybody wants a sheep, that is a proof that he exists.


French: Quand on a terminé sa toilette du matin, il faut faire soigneusement la toilette de la planète.
When you've finished getting yourself ready in the morning, you must go get the planet ready.


French: J'aime bien les couchers de soleil. Allons voir un coucher de soleil...
I am very fond of sunsets. Come, let us go look at a sunset...


French: On ne sait jamais!
One never knows!


French: C'est véritablement utile puisque c'est joli.
It is truly useful since it is beautiful.

Le langage est source de malentendus.
Language is the source of misunderstandings.

French: Les enfants seuls savent ce qu'ils cherchent.
Only children know what they are looking for.

Philosophy Quotes

Some are slaves of ambition or money, but others are interested in understanding life itself. These give themselves the name of philosophers (lovers of wisdom), and they value the contemplation and discovery of nature beyond all other pursuits.
Pythagoras

Aristotle Onassis Quotes

Don't sleep too much. If you sleep 3 hours less each night for a year, you will have an extra month and a half to succeed in.
Aristotle Onassis


The secret of business is to know something nobody else knows
Aristotle Onassis

After a certain point, money is meaningless. It ceases to be the goal. The game is what counts.
Aristotle Onassis

If women didn't exist, all the money in the world would have no meaning.
Aristotle Onassis

I have no friends and no enemies -- only competitors.
Aristotle Onassis

The more you own, the more you know you don't own.
Aristotle Onassis

To be successful, keep looking tanned, live in an elegant building (even if you're in the cellar), be seen in smart restaurants (even if you only nurse one drink) and if you borrow, borrow big.
Aristotle Onassis

Change Quotes

Change. It's happening all to time.

How to deal with change? How to change the situation?
How to change yourself?

Good times, bad times. Change is there to stay!

Enjoy these quotes on change and be inspired.

Tip: Read each quote one by one, slowly, paying attention to your breathing.


Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.
Leo Tolstoy

When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.
Victor Frankl

They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.
Andy Warhol

Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are.
Bertold Brecht

Men do change, and change comes like a little wind that ruffles the curtains at dawn, and it comes like the stealthy perfume of wildflowers hidden in the grass.
John Steinbeck

A scholar who loves comfort is not fit to be called a scholar.
Confucius, Analects


Things do not change; we change.
Henry David Thoreau

Nothing endures but change.
Heraclitus (540 BC - 480 BC)

It's not that some people have willpower and some don't. It's that some people are ready to change and others are not.
James Gordon

The wheel of change moves on, and those who were down go up and those who were up go down.
Jawaharlal Nehru

We would rather be ruined than changed;
We would rather die in our dread
Than climb the cross of the moment
And let our illusions die.
W.H. Auden


Those who expect moments of change to be comfortable and free of conflict have not learned their history.
Joan Wallach Scott

All change is not growth, as all movement is not forward.
Ellen Glasgow

Oh, would that my mind could let fall its dead ideas, as the tree does its withered leaves!
Andre Gide


If you want to make enemies, try to change something.
Woodrow Wilson


If you would attain to what you are not yet, you must always be displeased by what you are. For where you are pleased with yourself there you have remained. Keep adding, keep walking, keep advancing.
Saint Augustine


There is no reason why the same man should like the same books at eighteen and forty-eight.
Ezra Pound


Every beginning is a consequence - every beginning ends some thing.
Paul Valery

If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude. Don't complain.
Maya Angelou
Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

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

It is never too late to become what you might have been.
George Eliot

Behold, I show you a mystery; we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye...
Corinthians

No two men ever judged alike of the same thing, and it is impossible to find two opinions exactly similar, not only in different men but in the same men at different times.
Michel Montaigne


If you want to truly understand something, try to change it.
Kurt Lewin

Our only security is our ability to change.
John Lilly


Every possession and every happiness is but lent by chance for an uncertain time, and may therefore be demanded back the next hour.
Arthur Schopenhauer

To change your life:

Start immediately;

Do it flamboyantly;

No exceptions.

William James

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


The universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it.
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121 AD - 180 AD), Meditations

There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.
Nelson Mandela 'A Long Walk to Freedom'

Only I can change my life. No one can do it for me.
Carol Burnett

Change is the constant, the signal for rebirth, the egg of the phoenix.
Christina Baldwin

We all have big changes in our lives that are more or less a second chance.
Harrison Ford


Change your thoughts and you change your world.
Norman Vincent Peale


What can we take on trust
in this uncertain life? Happiness, greatness,
pride - nothing is secure, nothing keeps.
Euripides, Hecuba


They must often change, who would be constant in happiness or wisdom.
Confucius

Check out our selection of superb perseverance quotes, like these:

Hard work, sacrifice and focus will never show up in tests.
Lance Armstrong

Concerning all acts of iniative and creation, there is one elementary truth- that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves, too.
W.H. Murray, The Story of Everest

Life Quotes

I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.
Agatha Christie

People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think that what we're seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances within our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.
Joseph Cambell, The Power of Myth

Creativity - like human life itself - begins in darkness.
Julia Cameron

Life is not counted by the amount of breaths we take, but of the moments that leave us breathless.


Live life so completely that when death comes to you like a thief in the night, there will be nothing left for him to steal.



Life is like a game of cards. The hand that is dealt you represents determinism; the way you play is your own will. (Jawaharlal Nehru)

"No man is a failure who enjoys life."
William Feather

God loveth a cheerful giver.
Corinthians

"We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand."
Randy Pausch

The affairs of life embrace a multitude of interests, and he who reasons in any one of them, without consulting the rest, is a visionary unsuited to control the business of the world.
James F. Cooper

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
William Shakespeare, Macbeth, act 5, scene 5

Out of life's tragedy comes true greatness
The Bold and The Beautiful


Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart
and try to love the questions themselves ...
Don't search for the answers,
which could not be given to you now,
because you would not be able to live them.
And the point is, to live everything.
Live the questions now.
Rainer Maria Rilke

Life is a game with many rules but no referee.
One learns how to play it more by watching it than by consulting any book, including the holy book.
Small wonder, then, that so many play dirty, that so few win, that so many lose.
Joseph Brodsky

The world is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think.
Horace Walpole

What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.
Crowfoot


The supreme happiness of life is the conviction of being loved for yourself, or, more correctly, inspite of yourself.
Victor Hugo

The thing that we call living isn't gold or fame at all,
It is laughter and contentment and the struggle for a goal,
It is everything that's needful to the shaping of a soul.
Edgar A. Guest

Yoga

Anyone who practices can obtain success in yoga but not one who is lazy. Constant practice alone is the secret of success.
Hatha Yoga Pradipika

The body is your temple. Keep it pure and clean for the soul to reside in.
B.K.S Iyengar

Yoga is the fountain of youth.  You're only as young as your spine is flexible. 

Bob Harper

Yoga is difficult for the one whose mind is not subdued.

Bhagavad Gita

This yoga is not possible, for the one who eats too much, or who does not eat at all; who sleeps too much, or who keeps awake.

Bhagavad Gita

You cannot do yoga.  Yoga is your natural state.  What you can do are yoga exercises, which may reveal to you where you are resisting your natural state. 

Sharon Gannon

By degrees a person should become free of unwholesome and unnatural habits; similarly, one should try to develop wholesome natural habits. The way of doing this is to replace the unnatural with the natural. If withdrawal is gradual, addiction does not reappear; wholesome habits, gradually acquired, become firmly implanted.
Charaka Samhita

Do your practice and all is coming.
Sri K Patthabi Jois

Before you've practiced, the theory is useless. After you've practiced, the theory is obvious. David Williams

Yoga exists in the world because everything is linked Desikashar

Human unhappiness results from mankind's acceptance of the lowest conditions of our minds. By the practice of Yoga, all such conditioning can be overcome.
Patanjali Yoga Sutras

The yoga mat is a good place to turn when talk therapy and antidepressants aren't enough.  

Amy Weintraub

Yoga is possible for anybody who really wants it.  Yoga is universal.... But don't approach yoga with a business mind looking for worldly gain. 

Sri Krishna Pattabhi Jois


By embracing your mother wound as your yoga, you transform what has been a hindrance in your life into a teacher of the heart. 

Phillip Moffitt


Yoga is 99% practice and 1% knowledge.  

Sri Krishna Pattabhi Jois

The yogi is deemed greater than body-disciplining ascetics, greater even than the followers of the path of wisdom or of the path of action; be thou, O Arjuna, a yogi.

Bhagavad Gita

Sitting (in a comfortable position) and concentrating the mind on a single object, controlling the thoughts and the activities of the senses, let the yogi practice meditation for self-purification.

Bhagavad Gita

The meaning of our self is not to be found in its separateness from God and others, but in the ceaseless realization of yoga, of union.

Rabindranath Tagore

This yoga should be practiced with firm determination and perseverance, without any mental reservation or doubts.

Bhagavad Gita

Sun salutations can energize and warm you, even on the darkest, coldest winter day. 

Carol Krucoff

Undisturbed calmness of mind is attained by cultivating friendliness toward the happy, compassion for the unhappy, delight in the virtuous, and indifference toward the wicked.
Yoga sutras of Patanjali

Joy Quotes

Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.
Thich Nhat Hanh

No man is a failure who enjoys life.
William Feather

One joy scatters a hundred griefs.
Chinese Proverbs

Joy is not in things, it is in us.
Benjamin Franklin

We find greatest joy, not in getting, but in expressing what we are...Men do not really live for honors or for pay; their gladness is not the taking and holding, but in doing, the striving, the building, the living. It is a higher joy to teach than to be taught. It is good to get justice, but better to do it; fun to have things but more to make them. The happy man is he who lives the life of love, not for the honors it may bring, but for the life itself.
R. J. Baughan

Being Humble Quotes

It’s hard to be humble, when you’re as great as I am.
Muhammad Ali

"How does the see become the queen of all rivers and streams?
By lying lower than they do."
Tao Te Tching

I cannot agree with those who rank modesty among the virtues. To the logician all things should be seen exactly as they are, and to underestimate one's self is as much a departure from truth as to exaggerate one's own powers.
Sherlock Holmes




"The word humility is used here to mean admission that God infinitely exceeds anything anyone has ever said of Him; and that He is infinitely beyond human comprehension and understanding."
John Templeton, The Humble Approach

It is always the secure who are humble.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Don't be so humble - you are not that great.
Golda Meir

Whoever loves becomes humble. Those who love have, so to speak, pawned a part of their narcissism.
Sigmund Freud

Who cared if there was really any Being to pray to? What mattered was the sense of giving thanks and praise, the feeling of a humble and grateful heart.
Oliver Sacks

A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small bundle.
Benjamin Franklin

Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy.
Norman Vincent Peale

To be humble to superiors is duty, to equals courtesy, to inferiors nobleness.
Benjamin Franklin

Wash out your ego every once in a while, as cleanliness is next to godliness not just in body but in humility as well.
Abbe Yeux-verdi


Humility enables people to realize their mistakes and correct themselves. Real humility results in so much power of truth that we don't need to say anything at all in words. The very power of our inner state of being will make the other person realize the error of their ways. While giving directions or corrections to someone, we need to check our own attitude, reminding ourselves of the humility within and only then say what we have to say. With humility our words will be for their benefit and this will enable them to learn.
Brahma Kumaris


True humility is intelligent self respect which keeps us from thinking too highly or too meanly of ourselves. It makes us modest by reminding us how far we have come short of what we can be.
Ralph Sockman

In my whole life nobody has ever accused me of being humble. Although humility is a trait I much admire, I don't think I quite got my full share.
Charlie Munger

"Among you, whoever wants to be great must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be the willing slave of all."
Jesus (The Bible - Matthew 20:26-27)

Modesty

With people of only moderate ability modesty is mere honesty; but with those who possess great talent it is hypocrisy.
Arthur Schopenhauer

Modesty is the gentle art of enhancing your charm by pretending not to be aware of it.
Oliver Herford