"Challenge is the purpose of the words in this book/blog."
M. Alibrando

"You can get your answers from anywhere,
from last years newspaper..."

"Close your eyes,
hold any question in you mind,
touch anything written,
and there's your answer."
R. Bach

"Live, so you do not have to look back and say:
'God, how I have wasted my life.' "
E. Kubler-Ross

"A subtle thought that is in error may
yet give rise to fruitful inquiry that can
establish truths of great value."
Isaac Asimov

"We have it in our power to
begin the world over again."
T. Paine

"In order to persue wisdom,
one must ask question and
be curious enough to
undertake the investigation
of reality;
in short,
one must wonder
about the things that
one does not know."
J. Marmysz

"Home is where one starts from."
T. S. Eliot

"Facts are stubborn things."
R. Reagan

"The good thing about science is that
it's true whether or not you believe in it."
N. deGrasse Tyson

"Science is what you know,
philosophy is what you don't know."
B. Russell

"Most of us need someone who is willing to
turn our eyes toward reality."

"Such a teacher cannot, of course,
make us open our eyes,
but this person can point us
in the right direction
and be persistent in pushing us
at those times when become
most resistant to learning."
J. Maymysz

"Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood."
T. S. Eliot

"It is far more virtuous to be courageous,
which results from a moderate
compromise between fear and conviction."
J. Marmysz

"Live enough of what
you've always dreamed
of doing and there's
no room left for bad feelings."
R. Bach

"Our immediate reaction when confronted
with uncomfortable truths is to deny them
and turn back to comfortable old lies that
we have lived our lives by for so long."
J. Marmysz

"Do you want to know who you are?
Don't ask. Act!
Action will delineate and define you."
T. Jefferson

"The World is my country,
all mankind are my brethren,
and to do good is my religion."
T. Paine

"What if" always leads us toward new possibilities --
or even new worlds of thinking.
M. Alibrando

"The transition from one set of beliefs
to another may be very difficult,
as it destabilizes and calls into
question everything
that we, at one time,
believed to be true."
J. Marmysz

"Wonder is an indispensable part of the philosophical way of life."
J. Marmysz

"Naming what's beyond seems to help
accommodate that which cannot be understood."
R. Fulghum

"...Philosophy begins in wonder."
Aristotle

"So, explain.
When the student appears,
the teacher is prepared."
R. Fulghum

"What does meaning mean?"
R. Bach

"How come we don't know the answer until we find the question..."
Me short-quoting R. Bach

"Remember who you are and there's your answer."
R. Bach

Start by doing what's necessary;
then do what's possible;
and suddenly you are doing the impossible.
G. F. di Bernardone

Have you ever written a sentence
using the words "I wonder" or "What if" ?
If so, you may have the soul of a philosopher.
M. Alibrando

"If we are to become consistently
adept at sifting truth from lies
then we must learn to fully develop
and utilize our capacity for logical thinking."

"The path to truth then,
is paved not with sensory observation
but with the exercise of the mind
and it's capacity for rational reflection."
J Marmysz

"You don't want a million answers as much as
you want a few forever questions.
The questions are like diamonds you hold in the light.
Study a lifetime and you
see different colors in the jewel.
The same questions, asked again, bring you
just the answers you need
just the minute you need them."
R. Bach

"The light's a silver chain,
like an anchor-chain in my mind,
going out of sight
down into deep water."
R. Bach

"Unique others,
soul mates,
the better friends you are,
the more beautiful they become."
R. Bach

"When we're together,
we're home."
R. Bach

"Philosophers love wisdom
without necessarily believing
themselves to be wise."
J. Marmysz

"...isn't it what lies within that matters?"
Me short-quoting R. Bach

"In the search for truth
we need all the help
that we can get..."
Me short-quoting J Marmysz

"Before we can aspire towards wisdom,
we must first turn our backs on old illusions.
It is then that the real learning can begin."
J. Marmysz

"...questions can be answered
and the wisest among us may
potentially become antiquated
with the governing principles
of the entire universe."
Me short-quoting J. Marmysz

"Belief in a cruel God
makes a cruel man."
T. Paine

"We can't help everyone,
but everyone can help someone."
R. Reagan

"Reason,
when properly used,
never fools is."
J. Marmysz

"Many people would
sooner die than think;
in fact, they do so."
B. Russell

"Those who claim to know the final truth
about reality are usually the one
who are least aware of their ignorance."
J Marmysz

"No race can prosper till it learns that
there is as much dignity in
tilling a field as in writing a poem."
B. T. Washington

"Leisure is the Mother of Philosophy."
T. Hobbes

"The only thing that will redeem
mankind is cooperation."
B. Russell

"You've decided,
for yourself of course,
what everything means,
how everything works."
R. Bach

"As I have,
so must you,
decide what works
best for you."
M. Alibrando

"How might what is perish?
How might it come into being?"
Parmenides

"...when we are exposed to new truths
we often find them painful to face."
Me - short-quoting J. Marmysz

"...the first step toward wisdom is
the realization of ignorance."
Me short-quoting J. Marmysz

"All you have to do is sit still.
Once a day,
for fifteen minutes,
sit down,
shut up,
and be still."
R. Fulghum

"Life Is."
R. Bach

"The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time."
B. Russell

"...There's room for all of us up in the sky."
R. Bach

"To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom."
B. Russell

"The idea that things must have a beginning is
really due to the poverty of our imagination."
B. Russell

"Maybe failure is a job only grown-ups can handle."
R. Bach's friend Zerbe

"Make a note to yourself, then lose the note.
Wait a while, then see if
you can remember what was in the note.
You may not remember all of the details,
but the important things stick with you."
M. Alibrando

"All you have to do is sit still."
R. Fulghum

"It is the willingness of one to extend himself or herself
for the purpose of nurturing another's growth -
willingness to go out on a limb,
to truly involve oneself at an emotional level
in the relationship, to actually
struggle with another and oneself.
In short, the essential ingredient of a successful,
deep and meaningful relationship is love."
Me misquoting M. S. Peck

"Being and adult is dirty work.
But someone has to do it."
R. Fulghum

"I could do better.
The President and the Pope and
all the rest of humanity.
We could do better."
R. Fulghum

"...empathize with
the adventurer."
Me short-quoting J. Marmysz

"You're the only person
who can decide
if my truth is true for you
or if it is nonsense."
R. Bach

"Ditto on my nonsense."
M. Alibrando

"A reverence for Truth is
what makes one a real philosopher..."
Me short-quoting J. Marmysz

"There is a sacred simplicty
in not doing something -
and not doing it well.
All the great religious leaders
have done it.
The Buddha sat under a tree.
Jesus sat still in a garden.
Muhammad sat still in a cave.
And Gandhi and King and thousands of others
brought sitting still to perfection
as a powerful tool of social change.
Passive resistance, meditation, prayer -
one and the same."
R. Fulghum

"Violence doesn't end violence, it extends it."
The Doctor
Doctor Who - A Town Called Mercy

"Instead of talking in my mind,
what if, for a change,
I listen?"
R. Bach

"The line between good and evil,
hope and despair,
does not divide the world
between 'us and them.'
It runs down the middle of every one of us."
R. Fulghum

"Through the failure of philosophy
we come face to face with ourselves
as the sorts of beings
who must endlessly struggle
and fall short of our highest goals.
To do less than this is to be less than human.
To do more is to be a God."
J. Marmysz

"To eat of it -
the Tree of Knowledge -
is always trouble:
not to eat of it is not to be fully human."
Me misquoting R. Fulghum

"...What is it that is ultimately real?"
Me short-quoting J. Marmysm

"Overcome fear,
behold wonder."
R. Bach

"...everything changes.
It's beautiful."
Me short-quoting R. Bach

"Nothing has meaning until it changes
what we think and who we are?"
R. Bach

"Be silent. Be still.
The answers will come."
M. Alibrando

"...Through inner reflection
we might come to understand
the governing principle
of the entire universe."
Me short-quoting J. Marmysz

"Could we have more in common than the past,
could we share some core values yet unfound?"
R. Bach

"Drink in the delight of every moment."
M. Alibrando

"We can never know everything,
yet we should never give up on the
pursuit of the Absolute."
J. Marmysz

"First you have to live through it.
Wisdom comes later."
R. Fulghum

"For it is in giving that we receive."
Francis of Assisi

""Choose having time over having money."
R. Fulghum

"...open your eyes."
Me short-quoting R. Bach

"Remember your way around problems
when you can't run away from them."
R. Bach

"We are finite creatures
with a finite amount of time to
explore ourselves and the world."
J. Marmysz

"So often doing good involves a kind of grimness.
To assault evil, even a small evil,
with mischief, cleverness, merriment and laughter -
that takes genius few of us have but which,
when found, graces the human scene and
makes progress both possible and palatable."
R. Funghum

"...To be a philosopher is to
be curious..."
Me short-quoting J. Marmysz

"What are the questions you HATE not knowing the answers to?"
Unknown

"The art of writing is
the art of discovering
what you believe."
G. Flaubert

"Learn as much as you can
along the way,
but hunch in, hold your breath
coast down that long powerless
hill of dependence till you're
rolling fast enough to
pop the clutch and
start your engine
on your own."
R. Bach

"Only you know -
only you can speak
the magical words
that can magically
untie the knots of
the world - the universe
which you have
created for yourself."

"Speak the magical words
that will set you free."
M. Alibrando

"Mind surrounds and encapsulates the particle of the world,
the way that the water in a stream surrounds the gravel in it's bed,
putting things in motion and giving them order and structure."
J. Marmysz

"Lean into you fears...
... dare them to do their worst
and cut them down when they try."
R. Bach

"Truth is being disclosed..."
Me short-quoting J. Marmysz

"...we've all learned something
that someone somewhere
needs to remember."
R. Bach

"You find what you love
and you learn everything
about it.
You bet you life on
what you know and you
run from safety."
R. Bach

"...what matters a about people is
the quality of what they've learned."
R. Bach

"Every once in a while,
I like to look back over my life time,
and ask a question of myself:
Did you have fun?"
M. Alibrando

"To ponder is not to brood
or grieve or even meditate.
It is to wonder at a deep level."
R. Fulghum

"I wouldn't be surprised if some of my
dreams I remember as fact,
and some of the
facts I remember as dreams."
R. Bach

"We are such fun to watch
when we do what we do."
R. Fulghum

"Does anybody learn writing,
or do they just touch someone
who lets them see
the power of the deleted word?"
R. Bach

"The quirks of the human mind
seem inherently more interesting than
the quirks of the human body."
Me misquoting M. S. Peck

"...home is whatever we know and love,
that home is with us
where ever we choose to be."
R. Bach

"Anything we need to know,
we can learn from books."
R. Bach

"The true delight is in the finding out
rather than in the knowing."
I. Asimov

"Never let your sense of
morals get in the way
of doing what's right."
I. Asimov

"If knowledge can create problems,
it is not through ignorance
that we can solve them."
I. Asimov

"According to the wisest souls,
we know everyone everywhere
without having met in person."
R. Bach

"We are as different from one another
on the inside of our heads as
we appear to be different from one another
on the outside of our heads."
R. Fulghum

"You are never alone
in these things.
Never."
R. Fulghum

"Sip life slowly.
Savor it."
M. Alibrando

"Each night,
when I go to sleep,
I die.
And the next morning,
when I wake up,
I am reborn."
M. Gandhi

"Do the kinds of things that come from the heart.
When you do, you won't be dissatisfied,
you won't be envious,
you won't be longing for somebody else's things.
On the contrary, you will be overwhelmed with
what comes back."
M. Schwartz

"The individual's health depends opun the health of the society;
the health of the society depends upon the health of the individual."
M. S. Peck

"The genuine lover always perceives the beloved as
someone who has a totally separate identity.
More over, the genuine lover always respect and
even encourages this separateness and the
unique indivduality of the beloved."
M. S. Peck

"If you want to climb mountains
one must have a good base camp,
a place where there are shelters and provisions,
where one may receive nurture and rest
before one venture forth again
to seek another summit."

"Successful mountain climbers know that they must
spend at least as much time, if not more,
in tending to their base camp as they
actually do in climbing mountains,
for their survival is dependent upon their
seeing to it that their base camp is
sturdily constructed and well stocked."
M.S. Peck

"...if you're trying to show off for the people at the top,
forget it, they will look down on you anyhow.
And if you're trying to show off for the people at the bottom,
forget it, they will envy you.
Only an open heart will allow you to
float equally between everyone."
M. Schwartz

"Devote yourself to loving others,
devote yourself to your community around you,
and devote yourself to creating something that
gives you purpose and meaning."

"You notice there's
nothing in there
about salary."
M. Schwartz

"Close your eyes,
hold any question in you mind,
touch anything written,
and there's your answer."
R. Bach

"I've found that this world is not remotely what it seems,
that whatever we hold in our thoughts come true in our lives,
that miracles aren't miraculous."
R. Bach

"Try writing a letter to the you you were twenty year ago."
Me misquoting R. Bach

"What am I doing?
What will become of me?"
R. Bach

"Are you happy?
Are you doing, this moment,
exactly what you most want to do?"
R. Bach

"If it's never our fault,
we can't take responsibility for it.
If we can't take responsibility for it,
we'll always be its victim."
R. Bach

"You must stay drunk on writing
so reality cannot destroy you."
R. Bradbury

"You fail only if you stop writing."
R. Bradbury

"A professional writer is
an amateur who didn't quit."
R. Bach

"This is how you get respect,
by offering something that you have."
M. Schwartz

"...when you most need it,
neither money nor power
will give you the feeling
you're looking for,
no matter how much
of them you have."
M. Schwartz

"You can't substitute material things for love
or for gentleness or tenderness or for a
sense of comradeship."
M. Schwartz

"Love is life.
And if you miss love,
you miss life."
L. Buscaglia

"The only source of
knowledge is experience."
A. Einstein

"A story is told as much by silence as by speech."
S. Griffin

"Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom."
F. Bacon

"God's first creature,
which was light."
F. Bacon

"Be aware of wonder. Live a balanced life -
learn some and think some and
draw and paint and sing and dance and
play and work every day some."
R. Fulghum

"Some thoughts and ideas are like balloons
and may even rise far above the others.
Try setting these thought balloons on fire.
It will make you brilliant thoughts shine out.
This may even reveal some ideas that were
hidden in dark corners waiting to be illuminated."
M. Alibrando

"With enough illuminated reflections,
even the darkest nights,
can seen as bright as day."
M. Alibrando

"Someone once said,
'The more I learn about the universe we live in,
the more questions I have and the more questions
I have, the less I know.' "

"Physicist and Cosmologist of this age seem more
convinced then ever that there is more of nothing
in the universe than there is of of something.
Perhaps infinity plays a factor in the equation."

"Someday I may just learn everything that there is to
learn about the universe that one could possible learn.
And in that moment of knowledge of everything
my report to you will be thus:
'I know absolutely nothing.' "
M. Alibrando

"Wise is the one who knows his or her limitation.
Wiser still is the one who always seeks to improve oneself,
who tries to find ways to overcome these same limitations.
Let patience be your watchword."
M. Alibrando

"The deeper you go on you journey to find wisdom,
the more valuable that wisdom may become to you."
M. Alibrando

"Wisdom is not found only on mountain tops.
It can also be found in the deepest,
darkest caves and tunnels.

Carry with you the illumination
gathered on previous sojourns.

Let the illuminations of your heart,
be both compass and lantern."
M. Alibrando

"Wisdom does not always arrive in full light of day.
Sometimes the brightest ideas arrive when you are
sitting alone in the dark."
M. Alibrando

"...there is no limit to the amount of good a man can
do if he does not worry about who gets credit."
R. Fulghum

"Clean up your own mess."
R. Fulghum

"The examined life is no picnic."
R. Fulghum

"It is best for us to
make our discoveries
in order, one at a time."
E. S. Maggin

"Oh, people shouldn't pick living people for their heroes,
somebody who's dead can't disappoint you anymore."
E. S. Maggin

"I learned never to empty the well of my writing,
but always to stop when there was still
something there in the deep part of the well,
and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it."
E. Hemingway

"Poetry surrounds us everywhere,
but putting it on paper is, alas,
not so easy as looking at it."
V. Van Gogh

"The ultimate lesson
all of us have to learn is
unconditional love,
which includes
not only others but
ourselves as well."
E. Kubler-Ross

"The reason you suffer is because
you think your identity and worth
as a human being are inextricably
tied into your career.
Don't think that."
C. M. Levine

"One must be an inventor to read well.
There is then creative reading
as well as creative writing."
R. W. Emerson

"Hope lies in dreams,
in imagination,
and in the courage
of those who
dare to make
dreams into reality."
J. Salk

"One of the great blessings
of getting older is realizing,
without shame and remorse,
what an idiot you've been
at earlier stages of your life.
I can think of nothing that
breeds humility better than
this on-going epiphany.
C. M. Levine

"Nothing breeds humility better
than an on-going epiphany."
Me re-writing C. M. Levine

"Should you shield the canyons from the windstorms
you would never see the true beauty of their carvings."
E. Kubler-Ross

"People are like stained - glass windows.
They sparkle and shine when the sun is out,
but when the darkness sets in, their true
beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.
E. Kubler-Ross

"Mankind's greatest gift,
also its greatest curse,
is that we have free choice.
We can make our choices
built from love or from fear."
E. Kubler-Ross

"Our deeds determine us,
as much as
we determine our deeds."
G. Eliot

"Cruelty, like every other vice,
requires no motive outside of itself;
it only requires opportunity.
G. Eliot

"When death, the great reconciler, has come,
it is never our tenderness that we repent of,
but our severity.
G. Eliot

"Heroes are those who can
somehow resist the power
of the situation and
act out of noble motives,
or behave in ways that
 do not demean others
when they easily can.
P. Zimbardo

"Evil is knowing better,
but willingly doing worse."
P. Zimbardo

"Freeing yourself was one thing;
claiming ownership of that freed self was another."
T. Morrison

"All water has a perfect memory and is
forever trying to get back to where it was.
T. Morrison

"If you surrendered to the air,
you could ride it."
T. Morrison

"Wear a smile and have friends:
Wear a scowl and have wrinkles."
G. Eliot

"The most important thing for poets to do
is to write as little as possible."
T. S. Eliot

"You are the music while the music lasts."
T. S. Eliot

"Hope lies in dreams, in imagination,
and in the courage of those who
dare to make dreams into reality."
J. Salk

"Now, it's your turn. Jump!"
R. Bradbury

"What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?"
G. Eliot

"The best proof of love is trust."
Dr. J. Brothers

"What do we live for, if not to
make life less difficult for each other?"
G. Eliot

"There is a great deal of unmapped country within us
which would have to be taken into account in
an explanation of our gusts and storms."
G. Eliot

"The world is full of hopeful analogies and
handsome, dubious eggs, called possibilities." 
G. Eliot

"The important work of moving the world forward
does not wait to be done by perfect men."
G. Eliot

"Falsehood is easy, truth so difficult."
G. Eliot

"Adventure is not outside man; it is within."
G. Eliot

"If I am what I have
and if I lose what I have
who then am I?"
E. Fromm

"Creativity requires the courage to
let go of certainties."
E. Fromm

"There is a great deal of unmapped country within us
which would have to be taken into account
in an explanation of our gusts and storms."
G. Eliot

"A writer writes.
If you want to
be a writer,
write."
R. Brett

"Wear a smile and have friends; wear a scowl and have wrinkles."
G. Eliot

"He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it
as he who helps to perpetrate it."
M. L. King

"If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead,
either write things worth reading or do things worth writing."
B. Franklin

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

"Only the wisest and the stupidest of men never change."
Confucius

"Laughter is the shortest distance between two people."
V. Borge

"The more you sweat in peacetime,
the less you bleed during war."
Sunzi

"Writers don't retire.
I will always be a writer."
A. Rooney

"Do your little bit of good where you are; 
its those little bits of good put together 
that overwhelm the world." 
D. Tutu 

"If you smile when no one else is around,
you really mean it."
A. Rooney

"A writer's job is to tell the truth."
A. Rooney

"There is no such thing as a little freedom.
Either you are all free, or you are not free."
W. Cronkite

"You must show the world that
you abhor fighting."
D. Tutu

"Without forgiveness,
there is no future."
D. Tutu

"My humanity is bound up by yours,
we can only be human together."
D. Tutu

"A hungry man is not a free man."
A. E. Stevenson

"In a controversy the instant we feel anger
we have already ceased striving for the truth,
and have begun striving for ourselves."
Buddha

Warhawk - "What are you supposed to do when you
have the weight of the world on your shoulders?"
Green Lantern -  "Plant your feet."
Justice League Unlimited - The Once and Future Thing

"Where do thoughts go once they've been thought?"
Anonymous Child

"Listening, not imitation, may be the sincerest form of flattery."
J. Brothers

"The fishermen know that the sea is
dangerous and the storm terrible,
but they have never found these dangers
sufficient reason for remaining ashore."
V. Van Gogh

"If there's a book you really want to read,
but it hasn't been written yet,
then you must write it."
T. Morrison

"Find a place of bliss."
M. Alibrando

"The journey towards wisdom never ends."
M. Alibrando

"I feel I am at my wisest when I am actually seeking wisdom and knowledge."
M. Alibrando

"The unexamined life is not worth living."
Socrates

"All you have to do is write one true sentence.
Write the truest sentence that you know."
E. Hemingway

"Now, it's your turn. Jump!"
R. Bradbury

"...go forth into the world and explode an idea."
Me misquoting R. Bradbury

"We are all rich and ignore the buried fact of accumulated wisdom."
R. Bradbury

"...we're so busy looking out,
to find way and means,
we forget to look in."
R. Bradbury

"What we are trying to do is find a way
to release the truth that lies in all of us."
R. Bradbury

"Dream and learn and build."
R. Bradbury

"...the entire history of mankind is problem solving...
Me misquoting R. Bradbury

What sets you free?
M. Alibrando

"Eventually you learn there are no rules except the ones you make up."
R. Bradbury

“Yell. Jump. Play.”

“Go do it.”

“…find the courage to rebel, change your life…”
Me misquoting R. Bradbury

"The truth is, part of me is every age.
I'm a three-year-old, I'm a five-year-old,
I'm a thirty-seven-year-old, I'm a fifty-year-old.
I've been through all of them and I know what it's like.
I delight in being a child when it's appropriate to
be a child.
I delight in being a wise old man when it's appropriate to
be  a wise old man.
Think of all I can be! I am every age up to my own.
Do you understand?"
M. Schwartz

"You have to find what's good and true and beautiful in your life as it is now.
Looking back makes you competitive. and age is not a competitive issue."
M. Schwartz

"If you are always battling against getting older,
you're always going to be unhappy, because
it will happen anyhow."
M. Schwartz

"...if you found meaning in life,
you don't want to go back.
You want to go forward.
you want to see more.
You want to do more."
M. Schwartz

"You must learn to govern your passions; they will be your undoing."
Spock to McCoy in Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan

"We are not the stony dry ground over
which the wind blows and the river runs.
We are part of the energy that gives the wind
motion and that drives the river to to the sea."
R. Fulghum 

"Armed with life on our side and
a lifetime to experiment
the odds are in our favor."
L. Buscaglia

"The first principle of a free society is
an untrammeled flow of words in an open forum."
A. E. Stevenson

"You can tell the size of a man by
the size of the thing that makes him mad."
A. E. Stevenson

"In quite places,
reason abounds."
A. E. Stevenson

"How can I be envious of where you are -
when I've been there myself?"
M. Schwartz

"We all know how to be a child.
It's inside of us all."
M Schwartz

"Give as an adult,
take as a child."
M. Alibrando

"Who wants to live everyday when
you don't know what's going on?"
M. Schwartz

"I think, at a child's birth, if a mother could
ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the
most useful gift, that gift should be curiosity."
Eleanor Roosevelt

"Find a place of bliss."
M. Alibrando

"If we amplify everything
we hear nothing."
J. Stewart

"We can have animus and not be enemies."
J. Stewart

"Any principle that requires admiration isn't real.
Any God who requires worship doesn't exist."
R. Bach

"God doesn't require us to worship him.
It is we who require Him to be worshiped by us."
Anonymous

"You don't have to fight
to live as you wish.
Live as you wish,
and pay whatever price
is required."
R. Bach

"The IS doesn't need you
to tell anybody how it works."
R. Bach

"The only thing that matters at the end of a stay on Earth is:
How well did you love?
What was the quality of your love?"
R. Bach

"Your religion is your way
of finding out what is true."
R. Bach

"How others deal with
the gifts you've given
is not your decision,
but theirs."
R. Bach

"When will you learn to expect
what you can't imagine will happen."
R. Bach

"Avoid problems and you'll never
be the one who over came them."
R. Bach

"Listen to your life.
It's showing you
everything you need
to know about
who you can become."
R. Bach

"Take a moment, now and again, to
rediscover those bits of wisdom
you collected long ago."
M. Alibrando

"Old wisdom can refresh the soul."
M. Alibrando

"With practice, words become wisdom."
M. Alibrando

"I feel I am at my wisest when
I am actually seeking wisdom
and knowledge."
M. Alibrando

We are not the stony dry ground over
which the wind blows and the river runs.
We are part of the energy that gives the wind
motion and that drives the river to to the sea.
Robert Fulghum

"The cosmos is also within us,
We're made of star stuff.
We are a way for the cosmos to know itself."
C. Sagan

"The unexamined life is not worth living."
Socrates

"The little I know I owe to my ignorance."
S. Guitry

"Not being known doesn't stop the truth from being true."
R. Bach

"Whatever harm you would do to another,
first do to yourself."
R. Bach

"You may not be aware, but you know."
R. Bach

"You are led,
when you share your loves,
to an enchanted life
of inner happiness,
which unsharing others cannot know."
R. Bach

"There's nothing to which you cannot
give yourself consent,
There is nothing
from which you cannot draw it."
R. Bach

"No heavens,
no hells,
just the endless worlds
you create
till you think
you've got it right."
R. Bach

"You adjust your perception to a certain frequency
and call what you see 'This World.'
You can tune yourself to other frequencies
when ever you wish."
R. Bach

"You're master of what you've lived,
artisan at what you're living,
amateur at what's next to live."
R. Bach

"Time cares about Becoming.
Reality cares about Is."
R. Bach

"No one forces you to learn.
You'll learn when you want to."
R. Bach

"How do you want to come out of this experience -
How do you want to be changed because of it."
R. Bach

"You wait a lifetime to meet
someone who understands you,
accepts you as you are.
At the end,
you find that someone,
all along,
has been you."
R. Bach

"To learn anything
you must put aside
the safety of
your ignorance."
R. Bach

"You are fiction to the selves who took other paths and choices.
They are fiction to you.
You've got a lot to learn from each other."
R. Bach

"Care about understanding
and before you know it,
you'll have a system of thinking
that gives you answers
when ever you ask."
R. Bach

"How east is it to be compassionate
when it's yourself you see in trouble."
R. Bach

"Whoever wants truth and light
will find it for themselves."
R. Bach

"No one does anything
uncharacteristic
of who they are."
R. Bach

"Is this my highest sense of right?

Is this the direction I most want to go?

Is this the way in which I can give my greatest gift?"
R. Bach

"No matter how qualified
or deserving you are,
you will never
reach a better life
until you can imagine it
for yourself to have it."
R. Bach

"...is this what I really want to do...?"
Me misquoting R. Bach

"With every choice
you risk the life
you would have had;
with every decision
you lose it."
R. Bach

"Having climbed certain peaks
you'll descend no more, but
spread your wings and fly beyond."
B. Bach

"It's a slow process,
changing principles,
and you'll never know
they've changed
until something that used
to be right
just doesn't feel that
way any more."
R. Bach

"It's okay to do ordinary
so long as you
don't feel ordinary."
R. Bach

"When I genuinely love, I am extending myself,
and when I am extending myself, I am growing."
M. S. Peck

"The more I love,
the longer I love,
the larger I become."
M. S. Peck

"Genuine love is self-replenishing."
M. S. Peck 

"The more I nurture the spiritual growth of others,
the more my own spritual growth is nurtured."
M. S. Peck

"...there is no foundation, no secure ground upon
which people may stand today if it isn't the family."
M. Schwartz

"If you don't have support and love and caring
and concern that you get from a family,
you don't have much at all."
M. Schwartz

"Love is so supremely important.
As our great poet Auden said,
'Love each other or perish.' "
M. Schwartz

"Without love, we are birds with broken wings."
M. Schwartz

"While one should not be a slave to one's feelings,
self-discipline does not mean the squashing of
one's feelings into non-existence."
M. S. Peck

"I hope you can find the healing power in grieving."
Me misquoting M. Schwartz

"Make good peace."
Me misquoting M. Albom

"Shallow brooks are noisy,
still water runs deep."
Unknown

"Our wisdom comes from our experience,
and our experience comes from our foolishness."
S. Guitry

"Humanity isn't a physical description,
it's a spiritual goal.
It's not something you're given,
it's something you earn."
R. Bach

"It may be true that the
law can't change the heart,
but it can restrain the heartless."
M. L. King, Jr.

"If you legislate to make the masses properous,
their prosperity will find it's way up
and through every class that rest upon it."
W. Buffett quoting William Jennings Bryan

"To see what is in front of one's nose
needs a constant struggle."
E. A. Blair

"Human beings want to feel."
Me misquoting M. Schwartz

"Once you learn how to die,
you learn how to live."
M. Schwartz

"Death transcends all religious differences."
M. Alibrando

"...know you're going to die,
and be prepared for it at any time."
Me misquoting M. Schwartz

"...be more involved in your life
while you're living."
Me misquoting M. Schwartz

"Everyone knows they're going to die,
but nobody believes it.
If we did, we would do things differently."
M. Schwartz

"Give your ears to
hear what is said,
and your heart to
understand what is meant."
A. C. Grayling

"Let what is wise rest in
the casket of the mind,
to be the key to your heart."
A. C. Grayling

"We must not assume that someone whose feelings are
modulated and controled is not a passionate person."
M. S. Peck

"Passion is feeling of great depth.
The fact that a feeling is uncontrolled
is no indication whatsoever that it is any
deeper than a feeling that is disciplined."
M. S. Peck

"A genuine leader is not a
searcher for consensus
but a molder of consensus."
Martin Luther King, Jr.

"All other things, in their cycles and rhythms,
exist in and of themselves;

But in human kind there is experience also,
which is what makes good and it's opposite,

In both of which humankind
seeks to grasp the meaning of things."
A. C. Grayling

"New eyes were needed to see
what lay hidden in ignorance,
new language to
express the unknown."
A. C. Grayling

"The earth was a glorious orchestra,
and we were it's audience,
thrilling to the birdsong and
the symphony of the breezes."
A. C. Grayling

"Seeing that a task is a thing
so great that it can
be content with it's own merit,
requiring no further reward."
A. C. Grayling

"Everyone knows they're going to die,
but nobody believes it."
M. Schwartz

"Who am I to influence the course of human events?"
Me misquoting M. S. Peck

"Life flows like a river.
Be you rock, stick, or fish
the river will flow."
M. Alibrando

"A teacher affects eternity;
he can never tell where his
influence stops."
H. Adams

"You don't need speech or hearing to feel [friendship]."
Me misquoting M. Schwartz

"And the greatest lesson that the end of each day teaches
is that wisdom and the freedom it brings,
must be daily won anew."
A. C. Grayling

"The wise study to practice,
not only to teach."
A. C. Grayling

"The wise acknowledge truth."
A. C. Grayling

"A mighty man is he who conquers himself."
A. C. Grayling

"[Do you] Just say NO or Just DO it?"
Me misquoting M. Albom

"It's what everyone worries about, isn't it?
What if today were my last day on Earth?"
M. Schwartz

"...Genuine love requires and
respects the unique individuality
and seperate identity of the
other person."
M. S. Peck

"Nothing perishes utterly,
nor does anything
come to birth but through
some other things death,

For death is nothing
but the origin of life,
as life is the
compensation of death."
A. C. Grayling

"How useful it would be to
put a daily limit on self-pity.
Just a few tearful minutes,
then on with the day."
M. Albom

"Sometimes you cannot believe what you see,
you have to believe what you feel.
And if you are ever going to have people trust you,
you must feel that you can trust them, too -
even when you're in the dark.
Even when you're falling."
M. Schwartz

"Why are we embarrassed by silenced?
What comfort do we find in all the noise?"
M. Schwartz

"Let it come in.
We think we don't deserve love,
we think if we let it in we'll become too soft.
But a wise man named Levine said it right.
He said, 'Love is the only rational act.' "
M. Schwartz

"The most important thing in life is to
learn how to give out love,
and let it come in."
M. Schwartz

"Do you think because I'm dying, I should not care about the world?"
M. Schwartz

"Maybe death is the great equalizer. The one big thing that can finally
make strangers shed a tear for one another."
M. Schwartz

"...be fully human."
Me misquoting M. Schwartz

"The way you get meaning into your life
is to devote yourself to loving others,
devote yourself to your community around you,
and devote yourself to creating something that
gives you purpose and meaning."
M. Schwartz

"Love wins. Love always wins."
M. Schwartz

"To respond to ...   ...healthy needs
we must change ourselves."
Me misquoting M. S. Peck

"There come many points on
one's journey of spiritual growth...
... when one must take new
and unfamiliar actions
in consonance with
one's new world view."
Me misquoting M. S. Peck

"Risk change."
M. Alibrando

"Anyone who is truly concerned for
the spiritual growth of another knows,
consciously or instinctively,
that he or she can significantly
foster that growth only through
a relationship of constancy."
M. S. Peck

"Commitment is inherent in any
genuinely loving relationship."
M. S. Peck

"...commitment is the foundation,
the bedrock of any genuinely loving relationship."

"Deep commitment does not guarantee
the success of the relationship
but does help more than
any other factor to assure it."
M. S. Peck

"You mustn't be afraid of dying."
M. Schwartz

"...the culture we have does not
make people feel good about themselves.
We're teaching the wrong things.
And you have to be strong enough to say
if the culture doesn't work, don't buy it.
Create your own.
Most people can't do it.
They're more unhappy than me -
even in my condition.
I may be dying, but I am surrounded
by loving, caring souls.
How many people can say that?"
M. Schwartz

"Dying is only one thing to be sad over...
Living unhappily is something else."
me misquoting M. Schwartz

"Have you found someone to share your heart with?"

"Are you giving to your community?"

"Are you at peace with yourself?"

"Are you trying to be as human as you can be?"
M. Schwartz

"What happened to me?'
M. Albom

"I'm on the last great journey here - and
people want me to tell them what to pack."
M. Schwartz

"The highest forms of love
are inevitably totally free choices
and not acts of conformity."
M. S. Peck

"The only real security in life
lies in relishing life's insecurity."
M. S. Peck

"Of the thousands, maybe even millions,
of risks we can take in a lifetime
the greatest is the risk of growing up."
M. S. Peck

"Thus all life itself represents a risk,
ad the more lovingly we live our lives
the more risks we take."
M. S. Peck

"When we shy away from death,
the ever-living nature of things,
we inevitably shy away from life."
M. S. Peck

"A full life will be full of pain.
But the only alternative is
not to live fully or
not to live at all."
M. S. Peck

"Move out or grow in any dimension and
pain as well as joy will be your reward."
M. S. Peck

"On some level spiritual growth,
and therefore love,
always requires courage
and involves risk."
M. S. Peck

"Courage is not the absence of fear;
it is the making of action in spite of fear,
the moving out against the resistance.
Engendered by fear into the unknown
and into the future."
M. S. Peck

"The experience of change,
of unaccustomed activity,
of being on unfamiliar ground, of
doing things differently is frightening."
M. S. Peck

"Don't assume
that it's too late to
get involved."
M. Schwartz

"Learn to forgive yourself
and forgive others."
M. Schwartz

"Accept the past as past,
without denying or discarding it."
M. Schwartz

"Accept what you are
able to do and
what you are not able to do."
M. Schwartz

"Since love is work,
the essence of
non-love is laziness."
M. S. Peck

"Romantic love is effortless,
and couples are frequently reluctant to
shoulder the effort and dicipline
of true love and listening.
But when and if they finally do,
the results are superbly gratifying."
M. S. Peck

"Yet true listening can occur only
when time is set aside for it and
conditions are supporting of it."
M. S. Peck

"...teach them how to listen."
M. S. Peck

"...since true listening involves bracketing,
a setting aside of the self,
it also temporarilyinvolves a total acceptance of the other."
M. S. Peck

"True listening, total concentration on the other,
is always a manifestation of love."
M. S. Peck

"Value creates value,
love begets love."
M. S. Peck

"The need for one's parents to listen is never outgrown."
M. S. Peck

"...the more children feel valuable,
the more they will begin to
says things of value.
They will rise to your expectation."
M. S. Peck

"There is no better and ultimately no other way to
teach your children that they are valuable people
than by valuing them."
M. S. Peck

"If you are not willing to put aside everything,
including your own worries and preoccupations for a time,
then you are not willing to truly listen."
M. S. Peck

"...nothing more can be attempted than to establish
the beginning and the direction of an infinitely long road."
Unknown

"For me there is only the traveling on paths that have heart.
There I travel, and the only worthwhile challenge is to traverse its full length.
And there I travel looking, looking breathlessly."
C. Castaneda quoting Don Juan Matu

"The twilight is the crack between worlds."
C. Castaneda quoting Don Juan Matu

"Anthropology has taught us that the world is differently defined in different places.
It is not only that people have different customs;
it is not only that people believe in different gods
and expect different post-mortem fates.
It is rather, that the worlds of different people have different shapes."
C. Castaneda

"You cannot truly listen to anyone
and do anything else at the same time."
M. S. Peck

"For true listening,
no matter how brief,
requires tremendous effort."
M. S. Peck

"Love, as we shall see,
again and again,
is invariably a two-way street,
a reciprocal phenomenon
whereby the receiver also gives
and the giver also receives."
M. S. Peck

"Listening well is an exercise of attention
and by necessity hard work.
It is because they do not realize this
or because they are not willing
to do the work that
most people do not listen well."
M. S. Peck

"By far the most common and important way in which
we can exercise our attention is by listening."
M. S. Peck

"When we love another
we give him or her our attention;
we attend to that person's growth."
M. S. Peck

"Love then is a form of work or a form of courage."
M. S. Peck

"Trying the Empty Nothing,
and demanding something;
Banging the Silent Zero,
in search of sound."
Lu Chi

"Comfort lies in the fact that
the first step is taken."
L. Buscaglia

"To master an art requires time,
the understanding of and sensitivity
for the materials necessary,
and extreme patience while
the basic skills are being learned.
It includes the willingness to experiment,
to fail, to risk,
to know frustration and even despair
before one can abandon learned,
parroted techniques and
project oneself fully
in self-creation.

To be an artist of life
requires no less."
L. Buscaglia

"Your personhood is real.
It is your most valuable possession."
L. Buscaglia

"The only way to to win,
sometimes,
is to surrender."
R. Bach

"Courage is knowing what not to fear."
Plato

"For a man to conquer himself
is the first and noblest of all victories."
Plato

"Good actions give strength to ourselves
and inspire good actions in others."
Plato