Quote of the Day

Find your voice, shout it from the rooftops, and keep doing it until the people that are looking for you find you.

-- Dan Harmon

Quote of the Day

'Tis curious that we only believe as deep as we live.

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Beauty

Quote of the Day

And when you realize that faith is not static, that it is a living and evolving thing, you look less for so-called "spiritual leaders" to tell you where to go, and more for spiritual companions with whom to travel the long journey.

-- Rachel Held Evans, A Year of Biblical Womanhood, p. 204

Quote of the Day

Becoming famous is of momentary reward, and then stressfully unimportant, like winning the set of steak knives in Glengarry Glen Ross.

-- Anne Lamott, Stitches, p. 86

Quote of the Day

Refusing to be happy because someone else is unhappy, though, is a bit like cleaning your plate because babies are starving in India.  Your unhappiness isn't making anyone else happier -- in fact, quite the opposite, given the fact that happier people are more likely to act altruistically.

-- Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project, p. 216

Quote of the Day

Let yourself be open and life will be easier.  A spoon of salt in a glass of water makes the water undrinkable.  A spoon of salt in a lake is almost unnoticed.

-- Jack Kornfield, Buddha's Little Instruction Book, p. 21

Quote of the Day

Getting the first draft finished is like pushing a peanut with your nose across a very dirty floor.

-- Joyce Carol Oates

Quote of the Day

You can't find your voice if you don't use it.

-- Austin Kleon, Show Your Work!, p. 20

Quote of the Day

Everyone once, once only.  Just once and no more.  And we also once.  Never again.  But this having been once, although only once, to have been of the earth, seems irrevocable.

-- Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies

Quote of the Day

As always, I felt a strange sense of relief upon giving all those amorphous fears a shape and parading them before the public like wild animals on a circus train.  Blogging is an inexpensive form of therapy if you do it right, if you use it to tell the truth about something other than what you had for dinner that night.

-- Rachel Held Evans, A Year of Biblical Womanhood, p. 186

Quote of the Day

Discipline, I have learned, leads to freedom, and there is meaning in freedom.  If you don't do ritual things in order, the paper doesn't read as well, and you'll be thrown off the whole day.  But when you can sit for a while at your table, reach for your coffee, look out the window at the sky or some branches, then back down at the paper or a book, everything feels right for the moment, which is maybe all we have.

-- Anne Lamott, Stitches, p. 86

Quote of the Day

There are times in the lives of most of us when we would have given all the world to be as we were but yesterday, though that yesterday had passed over us unappreciated and unenjoyed.

-- William Edward Hartpole Lecky

Quote of the Day

Hatred never ceases by hatred; by love alone is it healed.  This is the ancient and eternal law.

-- Jack Kornfield, Buddha's Little Instruction Book, p. 19

Quote of the Day

Writers all devise ways to approach that place where they expect to make the contact, where they become the conduit, or where they engage in this mysterious process.

-- Toni Morrison

Quote of the Day

On the spectrum of creative work, the difference between the mediocre and the good is vast.  Mediocrity is, however, still on the spectrum; you can move from mediocre to good in increments.  The real gap is between doing nothing and doing something.

-- Clay Shirky, Cognitive Surplus

Quote of the Day

Some people will dislike you for standing firmly by your ideals because they envy you.  Spineless sourpusses can't tolerate another person who does what they fear.  Do not look down upon these people, but rather, aim to inspire them to live on their own terms.
 
-- Jordan Bates, "The Gorgeous Reality of Not Being Liked by Everyone"

Quote of the Day

Like all who search for truth out of fear, I desperately wanted someone else to tell me exactly what to do.

-- Rachel Held Evans, A Year of Biblical Womanhood, p. 181

Quote of the Day

I love ritual and repetition.  Without them, I would be a balloon with a slow leak.

-- Anne Lamott, Stitches, p. 82

Quote of the Day

Zest and enthusiasm take energy, humility, and engagement; taking refuge in irony, exercising destructive criticism, or assuming an air of philosophical ennui is less taxing.

-- Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project, p. 216

Quote of the Day

Life is as fleeting as a rainbow, a flash of lightning, a star at dawn.  Knowing this, how can you quarrel?

-- Jack Kornfield, Buddha's Little Instruction Book, p. 18

Quote of the Day

I write when the spirit moves me and the spirit moves me every day.

-- William Faulkner

Quote of the Day

We're all terrified of being revealed as amateurs, but in fact, today it is the amateur -- the enthusiast who pursues her work in the spirit of love (in French, the word means "lover"), regardless of the potential for fame, money, or career -- who often has the advantage over the professional.  Because they have little to lose, amateurs are willing to try anything and share the results.

-- Austin Kleon, Show Your Work!, p. 15

Quote of the Day

Historically, many of the most loved people were also among the most hated while they were alive.  Jesus Christ, Abraham Lincoln, and John Lennon were all assassinated for spreading messages of love and understanding.  So, I'm suggesting that we'd all be much better off embracing those who will find reason to despise us.  It's so much easier to do this than to waste our lives allowing the faultfinders to dictate our actions.  Moreover, being disliked by people is actually a sign that you're doing something worthwhile.

-- Jordan Bates, "The Gorgeous Reality of Not Being Liked by Everyone"

Quote of the Day

We tend to take whatever's worked in our particular set of circumstances (big family, small family, AP, Ezzo, home school, public school) and project that upon everyone else in the world as the ideal.  We do this, I think, to protect ourselves, to quiet those pesky insecurities that follow us through life, nipping at our heels.  To declare that your way is the only way effectively eliminates any fear that you might be wrong, or at least pushes it below the surface for a time.

-- Rachel Held Evans, A Year of Biblical Womanhood, p. 177-178

Quote of the Day

[Funky rustic quilts are] improvised, like jazz, where one thing leads to another, without any idea of exactly where the route will lead, except that it will refer to something else maybe already established, or about to be.  Embedded in quilts and jazz are clues to escape and strength, sanctuary and warmth.  The world is always going to be dangerous, and people get badly banged up, but how can there be more meaning than helping one another stand up in a wind and stay warm?

-- Anne Lamott, Stitches, p. 72

Quote of the Day

There is, indeed, something inexpressibly pleasing in the annual renovation of the world, and the new display of the treasures of nature.

-- Samuel Johnson

Quote of the Day

Though we often live unconsciously, "on automatic pilot," every one of us can learn to be awake.  It just takes practice.

-- Jack Kornfield, Buddha's Little Instruction Book, p, 15

Quote of the Day

If you write a half hour a day it makes a lot of writing by year.

-- Gertrude Stein, Everybody's Autobiography

Quote of the Day

Give what you have.  To someone, it may be better than you dare to think.

-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Quote of the Day

The funny thing is -- whether we invest energy into making others like us or not, there will always be people who don't.

-- Jordan Bates, "The Gorgeous Reality of Not Being Liked by Everyone"