*Inspirational Insights*

"Feed your mind and elevate your spirit, and it's only then you begin to get it."

-Erfan Hettini

Do the one thing you think you cannot do. Fail at it. Try again. Do better the second time. The only people who never tumble are those who never mount the high wire. This is your moment. Own it.
- Oprah Winfrey

takes a lot of courage to show your dreams to someone else.
Erma BombeckI've had enough success for two lifetimes. My success is talent put together with hard work and luck.
- Kareem Abdul-Jabar

You have to recognize when the right place and the right time fuse and take advantage of that opportunity. There are plenty of opportunities out there. You can't sit back and wait.
- Ellen Metcalf

Learn the art of patience. Apply discipline to your thoughts when they become anxious over the outcome of a goal. Impatience breeds anxiety, fear, discouragement and failure. Patience creates confidence, decisiveness, and a rational outlook, which eventually leads to success.
- Brian Adams

Have patience with all things, but chiefly have patience with yourself. Do not lose courage in considering you own imperfections but instantly set about remedying them - every day begin the task anew.
- Saint Francis de Sales

am careful not to confuse excellence with perfection. Excellence, I can reach for; perfection is God's business.
- Michael J. Fox

The path to our destination is not always a straight one. We go down the wrong road, we get lost, we turn back. Maybe it doesn't matter which road we embark on. Maybe what matters is that we embark.
- Barbara Hall, Northern Exposure

Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb.
- Sir Winston Churchill

Our lives improve only when we take chances - and the first and most difficult risk we can take is to be honest with ourselves.
- Walter Anderson

Formulate and stamp indelibly on your mind a mental picture of yourself as succeeding. Hold this picture tenaciously. Never permit it to fade. Your mind will seek to develop the picture...Do not build up obstacles in your imagination.
- Norman Vincent Peale

Hide not your talents, they for use were made. What's a sun-dial in the shade?
- Benjamin Franklin

Use what talents you possess: the woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best.
- Henry Van Dyke

A human being is only interesting if he's in contact with himself. I learned you have to trust yourself, be what you are, and do what you ought to do the way you should do it. You have got to discover you, what you do, and trust it.
- Barbra Streisand

Just trust yourself, then you will know how to live.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Hard work spotlights the character of people: some turn up their sleeves, some turn up their noses, and some don't turn up at all.
- Sam Ewing

People of mediocre ability sometimes achieve outstanding success because they don't know when to quit. Most men succeed because they are determined to.
- George Herbert Allen

Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.
- Albert Einstein

Creativity often consists of merely turning up what is already there. Did you know that right and left shoes were thought up only a little more than a century ago?
- Bernice Fitz-Gibbon

So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable.
- Christopher Reeve

Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
- Bertrand Russell

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.

- George Bernard Shaw

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

- George Eliot

And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight inside the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.

- Anais Nin

There is only one success--to be able to spend your life in your own way.

- Christopher Morley

"One of the most important rules for success is this:
Every great success is the result of hundreds and thousands
of small efforts and accomplishments
that no one sees or appreciates."

-Brian Tracy, Author and Speaker

If your only prayer that you ever say is,
“Thank-you” that will be enough

-Meister Ekhart

Whatever you can do or dream you can;
Begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.
Begin it … Now."

- Goethe

Worrying is like a rocking chair:
It gives you something to do,
but it doesn't get you anywhere…He who waits until circumstances
completely favor his undertaking,
will never accomplish anything.
- Martin Luther King

"Many of life's failures are people who had not realized how close they
were to success when they gave up."

- Thomas Edison

“You gain strength, courage, and confidence
by every experience in which you really stop to look fear
in the face. You must do the thing, which you think you cannot do.”

- Eleanor Roosevelt

"To love oneself is to struggle to rediscover and maintain
your uniqueness. It is understanding and appreciating the idea that you
will be the ONLY YOU to ever live upon this earth, that when you die,
so will all of your fantastic possibilities. It is the realization
that even you are not totally aware of the wonders which
lie dormant within yourself."

- Leo Buscaglia

Happiness is when what you think, what you say,
and what you do are in harmony.

-Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869-1948)

“Never doubt that a small group of
thoughtful committed citizens
can change the world;
indeed it's the only thing that ever has.”

- Margaret Mead (1901-1978), American Anthropologist

Determine that the thing can and shall be done,
and then we shall find the way.

- Abraham Lincoln

"Some people get frozen by a fear of failure. They get it from
their peers or from just thinking about the possibility of negative
results. They might be afraid of looking bad or being embarrassed. I
realized that if I was going to achieve anything in life, I had to be
aggressive. I had to get out there and go for it. I don't believe you
can achieve anything by being passive. I'm not thinking about
anything except what I'm trying to accomplish. Any fear is an
illusion. You think something is standing in your way, but nothing
is really there. What is there is an opportunity to do your best and
gain some success. If it turns out my best isn't good enough, then at
least I'll never be able to look back and say I was too afraid to try.
Failure always made me try harder next time."

Michael Jordan

The person who removes a mountain
begins by carrying away small stones.

-Anonymous

"There is only one thing more painful than learning from
experience and that is; not learning from experience. "

-Archibald McLeish, Poet

"More often in life we end up regretting
the chances in life that we had, but didn't take,
than those chances that we took and wished we hadn't"

-Anonymous

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

"One of the greatest discoveries a man makes,
one of his great surprises, is to find he can do
what he was afraid he couldn't do."

- Henry Ford -
Inventor and Founder of Ford Motor Company

"If you are looking for the Key to the Universe
I have some bad news, and some good news.
The bad news is... There is no Key to the Universe.
The good news is... It has been left unlocked."

-Swami Beyondananda

"Most people never run far enough on their first wind to find out if
they've got a second. Give your dreams all you've got and you'll be
amazed at the energy that comes out of you."

- William James 1842-1910, American Philosopher

 

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If
(for his son)
- by Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on !";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!