Below are important reminders of how I believe we should spend time in this world:

Be True to Yourself

“Know thyself.”
-Inscription at the Delphic Oracle

“Keep true to the dreams of our youth.”
-Friedrich von Schiller

“For a tree to become tall it must grow tough roots among the rocks.”
-Friedrich Nietzche

“Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something.”
-Henry David Thoreau

“Absorb what is useful. Discard what is not. Add what is uniquely your own.”
-Bruce Lee

“Following your heart’s desire will lead you in the direction your spirit wants to go.”
-Oprah Winfrey

“A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be.”
-Abraham Maslow

“This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.”
-William Shakespeare, Hamlet

“No man can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude without finally getting bewildered as to which may be true.”
-Nathaniel Hawthorne

“You don’t ever have to do anything sensational to love or to be loved.”
-Fred Rogers

“Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.”
-William Morris

“You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don’t know what was in the newspaper that morning…a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be.”
-Joseph Campbell

Be Mindful of Others

“Do unto others as thou wouldst they should do to thee, and Do to none other but as thou wouldst be done to.”
-First printed version of the Golden Rule in English, attributed to Socrates by Richard Woodville, Earl Rivers, in Dictes and Sayengis of the Philosophres, 1477

“He could have added fortune to fame, but caring for neither, he found happiness in being helpful to the world.”
-Epitaph on the grave of George Washington Carver

“He that plants trees loves others beside himself.”
-Thomas Fuller

“Remember that everyone you meet is afraid of something, loves something and has lost something.”
-H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

“Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.”
-Bishop Desmond Tutu

“It is a joy to be hidden but a disaster not to be found.”
-D. W. Winnicott

“It is better to have your head in the clouds and know where you are…than to breathe the clearer atmosphere below them and think that you are in paradise.”
-Henry David Thoreau

“Die when I may, I want it said of me by those who knew me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow.”
-Abraham Lincoln

“The greatest pleasure I know is to do a good action by stealth, and to have it found out by accident.”
-Charles Lamb

“Love your neighbor, but don’t pull down the hedge.” -Swiss proverb

Be Direct and Confident

“Do, or do not. There is no “try.”
-Yoda in The Empire Strikes Back

“Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person.”
-Mother Teresa

“You are a king by your own fireside, as much as any monarch on his throne.”
-Miguel de Cervantes

“Every great achievement is the victory of a flaming heart.
”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about a reform. Those who are really in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothing in the world’s estimation.”
-Susan B. Anthony

“Be not the first by whom the new is tried, Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.”
-Anonymous, quoted by Dwight D. Eisenhower

“Dare to be naive.”
-R. Buckminster Fuller

“A man who is always ready to believe what he is told will never amount to anything.”
-Petronius Arbiter

“I believe life is a series of near misses. A lot of what we ascribe to luck is not luck at all. It’s seizing the day and accepting responsibility for your future. It’s seeing what other people don’t see and pursuing that vision.”
-Lewis Grizzard

“If man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears the beat of a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured or far away.”
-Henry David Throeau

“Don’t think of retiring from the world until the world will be sorry that you retire. I hate a fellow whom pride or cowardice or laziness drives into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl. Let him come out as I do, and bark.”
-Samuel Johnson

“Count that day lost whose low descending sun views from thy hand no worth action done.”
-Anonymous

“The safest course is to do nothing against one’s conscience. With this secret, we can enjoy life and have no fear of death.”
-Voltaire

“He who has nothing to die for has nothing to live for.”
-Moroccan proverb

“Life is painting a picture, not doing a sum.”
-Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Be Practical

“If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.” -Mark Twain

“There’s a sucker born every minute, and two to take him.”
-Attributed to P. T. Barnum

“You can’t cheat an honest man.”
-W. C. Fields

“You can keep your mouth closed and run the risk that people will think you are a fool, or open it and remove all doubt.”
-Anonymous

“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
-Eleanor Roosevelt

“Money will buy a bed, but not sleep; Books, but not brains; Food, but not appetite; Finery, but not beauty; A house, but not a home; Medicine, but not health; Luxuries, but not culture; Amusement, but not happiness; Religion, but not salvation; A passport to everywhere but heaven.”
-Anonymous

“Never test the depth of the water with both feet.”
-Anonymous

“Make new friends and keep the old; one is silver, the other gold.”
-Anonymous

A man’s feet should be planted in his country, but his eyes should survey the world.” -George Santayana

Be Flexible & Learn to Let Go

“My momma always said, ‘Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.’” – Forrest Gump, in Forrest Gump, but Winston Groom

“By letting it go it all gets done. The world is won by those who let it go. But when you try and try. The world is beyond the winning.”
-Lao Tzu

“We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the life that is waiting for us.”
-Joseph Campbell

“We live in a wonderful world that is full of beauty, charm and adventure. There is no end to the adventures we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open.”
-Jawaharial Nehru

“When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.”
-Lao Tzu

“Life is so largely controlled by chance that its conduct can be but a perpetual improvisation.”
-W. Somerset Maugham

“The reverse side also has a reverse side.”
-Japanese Proverb.

“Life consists not in holding good cards but in playing well those you hold.”
-Josh Billings

“All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on.”
-Havelock Ellis

“The art of living is more like that of wrestling than dancing. The main thing is to stand firm and be ready for an unseen attack.” -Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

“In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.”
-Robert Frost

“There is always inequity in life. Some men are killed in a war and some men are wounded, and some men never leave the country…Life is unfair.”
-John F. Kennedy

“Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers but to be fearless in facing them. Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain but for the heart to conquer it. Let me not look to allies in life’s battlefield but to my own strengths. Let me not crave in anxious fear to be saved but for the patience to win my freedom.”
-Prayer of the Bodhisattva

“Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life.”
-Jack Kerauac

“The paramitas are six stages of study and practice followed by the Bodhisattvas in their progress to Buddhahood. They are (1) charity, or alms-giving; (2) discipline, or observance of precepts; (3) forbearance, or patient resignation; (4) energy; (5) concentration; and (6) wisdom.”

“God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things which should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.”
-Reinhold Niebuhr, The Serenity Prayer

“The happiness of life is made up of minute fractions — the little soon forgotten charities of a kiss or smile, a kind look, a heartfelt compliment.”
-Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“And we should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh.”
-Friedrich Nietzsche

“Just living is not enough. One must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower.”
-Hans Christian Anderson

“We can’t all be heroes because someone has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by.”
-Will Rogers

“If you will call your troubles experiences, and remember that every experience develops some latent force within you, you will grow vigorous and happy, however adverse your circumstances may seem to be.”
–John Heywood

“For everything you have missed, you have gained something else, and for everything you gain, you lose something else.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.” -William Jones

Be Aware of Today

“You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.”
-Albert Camus

“You’re only here for a short visit. Don’t hurry. Don’t worry. And be sure to smell the flowers along the way.”
-Walter C. Hagen

“My advice to you is not to inquire why or whither, but but just enjoy your ice cream while it’s on your plate — that’s my philosophy.” -Thornton Wilder, The Skin of Our Teeth

“Breathe. Let go. And remind yourself that this very moment is the only one you know you have for sure.”
-Oprah Winfrey

“You have been warned against letting the golden hours slip by. Yes, but some of them are golden only because we let them slip by.”
-James Matthew Barrie

“The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.”
-St. Augustine

“Life is like a coin. You can spend it any way you wish, but you only spend it once.”
-Lillian Dickson

“The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.”
-Eleanor Roosevelt

“I have a simple philosophy: Fill what’s empty. Empty what’s full. Scratch where it itches.”
-Alice Roosevelt Longworth

“There is only one success — to be able to spend your life in your own way.”
-Christopher Morley

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”
-Mahatma Gandhi

“If you’re not failing every now and again, it’s a sign you are playing it safe.”
-Woody Allen

“Life is a great big canvas, and you should throw all the paint on it you can.”
-Danny Kaye

“You don’t get to choose how you’re going to die, or when. You can only decide how you’re going to live, now.”
-Joan Baez

“Wherever your life ends, it is all there. The advantage of living is not measured by length, but by use; some men have lived long, and lived little; attend to it while you are in it. It lies in your will, not in the number of years, for you to have lived enough.”
-Michel de Montaigne

“Living involves tearing up one rough draft after another.”
-Anonymous

“Life has meaning only if one barters it day by day for something other than itself.”
-Antoine de Saint-Exupery

“If you’re alive you’ve got to flap your arms and legs, you’ve got to jump around a lot, for life is the very opposite of death, and therefore you must at the very least think noisily and colorfully, or your’e not alive.”
-Mel Brooks

“When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, “I used everything you gave me.”
-Erma Bombeck

Be Humble and Love All Good Things

“Love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whoever loves much, performs much, and can accomplish much, and that which is done in love is well done.”
-Vincent van Gogh

“Some people think only intellect counts: knowing how to solve problems, knowing how to get by, knowing how to identify an advantage and seize it. But the functions of intellect are insufficient without courage, love, friendship, compassion, and empathy.”
-Dean Koontz

“There is time for work. And time for love. That leaves no other time.”
-Coco Chanel

“You cannot, in human experience, rush into the light. You have to go through the twilight into the broadening day before the noon comes and the full sun is upon the landscape.”
-Woodrow Wilson

“The Sun never says to the Earth, “You owe me.”
Look what happens with a love like that,
it lights the whole sky.”
-Hafiz

“Fear less, hope more; whine less, breathe more; talk less, say more; hate less, love more; and all good things are yours.”
-Swedish proverb

“To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.”
-Bertrand Russell

“First do no harm.”
-Hippocrates

“I am part of the sun as my eye is part of me. That I am part of the earth my feet know perfectly, and my blood is part of the sea. There is not any part of me that is alone and absolute except my mind, and we shall find that the mind has no existence by itself, it is only the glitter of the sun on the surfaces of the water.
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-D. H. Lawrence

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