Catalyst Quotes

“If You Remain Stuck, You Learn Nothing”

“It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life — daily and hourly.  Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct.  Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.”   (Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning)

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“Doubt yourself and you doubt everything you see.  Judge yourself and you see judges everywhere.  But if you listen to the sound of your own voice, you can rise above doubt and judgment.  And you can see forever.”   (Nancy Kerrigan)

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“If we did the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.”  (Albert Einstein)

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“If you walk on sunlight, bathe in moonlight, breathe in a golden air and exhale a Midas’ touch; mark my words, those who exist in the shadows will try to pull you into the darkness with them. The last thing that they want is for you to see the wonder of your life because they can’t see theirs.”   (C. JoyBell C.)

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“Do not accept the roles that society foists on you.  Re-create yourself by forging a new identity, one that commands attention and never bores the audience.  Be the master of your own image rather than letting others define if for you. Incorporate dramatic devices into your public gestures and actions – your power will be enhanced and your character will seem larger than life.”   (Robert Greene, The 48 Laws of Power)

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“I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts.”   (John Locke)

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“Any action is often better than no action, especially if you have been stuck in an unhappy situation for a long time. If it is a mistake, at least you learn something, in which case it’s no longer a mistake. If you remain stuck, you learn nothing.”   (Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment)

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“Politeness, Manners, Hot Air, Dogs, Philosophy and Self-Help”

“I’m making a list

I’m making a list of things I must say

For politeness,

And goodness and kindness and gentleness

Sweetness and rightness:

Hello

Pardon me

How are you?

Excuse me

Bless you

May I?

Thank you

Goodbye

If you know some that I’ve forgot,

Please stick them in your eye!”    (Shel Silverstein, Where the Sidewalk Ends)

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“’Oh Tigger, where are your manners?’ 

“I don’t know, but I bet they’re having more fun than I am.’”   (A. A. Milne)

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“The master was certainly not a stickler for etiquette and good manners but there was always a natural courtesy and grace in his dealings with others.

A young disciple once was very rude to a toll collector as he drove the Master home one night.  In self-defense he said, ‘I’d rather be myself and let people know exactly how I feel.  Politeness is nothing but a lot of hot air anyway.’

‘True enough,’ replied the Master pleasantly, ‘but that’s what we have in our automobile tires and see how it eases the bumps.’”   (Anthony de Mello, SJ)

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“Look at children.  Of course they may quarrel, but generally speaking they do not harbor ill feelings as much or as long as adults do.  Most adults have the advantage of education over children, but what is the use of an education if they show a big smile while hiding negative feelings deep inside?  Children don’t usually act in such a manner.  If they feel angry with someone, they express it, and then it is finished.  They can still play with that person the following day.”  (Dalai Lama XIV)

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“A dog has no use for fancy cars or big homes or designer clothes.  Status symbol means nothing to him. A waterlogged stick will do just fine.  A dog judges others not by their color or creed or class but by who they are inside.  A dog doesn’t care if you are rich or poor, educated or illiterate, clever or dull. Give him your heart and he will give you his.  It was really quite simple, and yet we humans, so much wiser and more sophisticated, have always had trouble figuring out what really counts and what does not.  As I wrote that farewell column to Marley, I realized it was all right there in front of us, if only we opened our eyes.  Sometimes it took a dog with bad breath, worse manners, and pure intentions to help us see.”   (John Grogan)

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“Several years back there was a terrific scene in Jeff MacNelly’s comic strip ‘Shoe.’  The main character is a frazzled ‘Perfesser’ sitting in his usual spot in Roz’s Diner.  He seems hard at work on his latest writing.

Roz stands behind the counter and asks the ‘Perfesser’ what he’s writing this time.  ‘I’m writing the definitive self-help book based on my personal philosophy,’ he explains.

‘Your philosophy?’ Roz chuckles.

The ‘Perfesser’ indignantly looks up and says, ‘Yes. I’m calling my book The Three Ups: Shut Up, Grow Up and Listen Up.’”   (Apple Seeds)

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“I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman, ‘Where’s the self-help section?’ She said if she told me, it would defeat the purpose.”   (George Carlin)

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“Here’s Some Advice and Other Things for You”

“’I’m bored’ is a useless thing to say.  I mean, you live in a great, big, vast world that you’ve seen none percent of.  Even the inside of your own mind is endless; it goes on forever, inwardly, do you understand?  The fact that you’re alive is amazing, so you don’t get to say ‘I’m bored.’”  (Louis C.K)

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“Everyone is born creative; everyone is given a box of crayons in kindergarten.  Then when you hit puberty they take the crayons away and replace them with dry, uninspiring books on algebra, history, etc.  Being suddenly hit years later with the ‘creative bug’ is just a wee voice telling you, ‘I’d like my crayons back, please.’”    (Hugh MacLeod, Ignore Everybody:  and 39 Other Keys to Creativity)

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A wise older woman once told me that humans are victims of time.  We fall prey to the illusion that there is always tomorrow while missing today.  And in that way, we only have yesterday.

And so this year, I only have one resolution.

To not stand in the quicksand.  To not let wistful turn to longing and longing to regret and regret to disappointment.  To turn longing to this moment.  To be wistful for today.  To not wish.  To just do.

To live for today.”    (Nayia Moysidis)

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“One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out.  Be as I am – a reluctant enthusiast…. a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic.  Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure.  It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it.  While you can. While it’s still here.  So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space.  Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators.  I promise you this; you will outlive the bastards.”   (Edward Abbey)

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“As the saying goes, you might as well be yourself; everyone else is taken.”   (Robert Bly)

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“When one man, for whatever reason, has the opportunity to lead an extraordinary life, he has no right to keep it to himself.”   (Jacques-Yves Cousteau)

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“Always & Never:  Two words you should ALWAYS remember NEVER to use.”  (Wendall Johnson)

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“Absolute Cooperation with the Inevitable”

“Part of the problem with the word ‘disabilities’ is that it immediately suggests an inability to see or hear or walk or do other things that many of us take for granted.  But what of people who can’t feel?  Or talk about their feelings?  Or manage their feelings in constructive ways? What of people who aren’t able to form close and strong relationships?  And people who cannot find fulfillment in their lives or those who have lost hope, who live in disappointment and bitterness and find in life no joy, no love?  These, it seems to me, are the real disabilities.”   (Fred Rogers, The World According to Mister Rogers)

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“Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself.  And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams.”   (Paulo Coelho)

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“Refuse to fall down.  If you cannot refuse to fall down, refuse to stay down, lift your heart toward heaven like a hungry beggar, ask that it be filled and it will be filled.  You may be pushed down.  You may be kept from rising.  But no one can keep you from lifting your heart toward heaven – only you.  It is in the middle of misery that so much becomes clear.  The one who says nothing good came of this is not yet listening.”   (Clarissa Pinkola Estés)

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“I think the highest forgiveness is to accept that creation is thoroughly tangled, with every possible quality given outlet for expression.  People need to accept once and for all that there is only one life and each of us is free to shape it through the choices we make.

Seeking can’t get anyone out of the tangle because everything is tangled up… it’s much easier to keep up the fight between good and evil, holy and profane, us and them.  But as awareness grows, these opposites begin to calm down in their clashes, and something else emerges – a world you feel at home in.”    (Deepak Chopra, The Book of Secrets)

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“Enlightenment is:  absolute cooperation with the inevitable.”   (Anthony de Mello)

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In the Mess of Our ‘Unfixedness'”

“As spiritual searchers we need to become freer and freer of the attachment to our own smallness in which we get occupied with me-me-me.  Pondering on large ideas or standing in front of things which remind us of a vast scale can free us from acquisitiveness and competitiveness and from our likes and dislikes.  If we sit with an increasing stillness of the body, and attune our mind to the sky or to the ocean or to the myriad stars at night, or any other indicators of vastness, the mind gradually stills and the heart is filled with quiet joy. Also recalling our own experiences in which we acted generously or with compassion for the simple delight of it without expectation of any gain can give us more confidence in the existence of a deeper goodness from which we may deviate.”   (Ravi Ravindra)

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“Spirituality is not about being fixed; it is about God’s being present in the mess of our unfixedness.”   (Mike Yaconelli, Messy Spirituality)

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“I don’t think that God says, ‘Go to church and pray all day and everything will be fine.’  No.  For me God says, ‘Go out and make the changes that need to be made, and I’ll be there to help you.’”  (Elvia Alvarado, Don’t Be Afraid, Gringo)

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“As I thought of these things, I drew aside the curtains and looked out into the darkness, and it seemed to my troubled fancy that all those little points of light filling the sky were the furnaces of innumerable divine alchemists, who labor continually, turning lead into gold, weariness into ecstasy, bodies into souls, the darkness into God; and at their perfect labor my mortality grew heavy, and I cried out, as so many dreamers and men of letters in our age have cried, for the birth of that elaborate spiritual beauty which could alone uplift souls weighted with so many dreams.”   (W. B. Yeats)

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“Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that, behind all the discernible laws and connections, there remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable.  Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion. To that extent I am, in fact, religious.”   (Albert Einstein)

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“Move in a Certain Direction, Fulfill Your Potential”

“If you obsess over whether you are making the right decision, you are basically assuming that the universe will reward you for one thing and punish you for another.

The universe has no fixed agenda.  Once you make any decision, it works around that decision. There is no right or wrong, only a series of possibilities that shift with each thought, feeling, and action that you experience.

If this sounds too mystical, refer again to the body.  Every significant vital sign- body temperature, heart rate, oxygen consumption, hormone level, brain activity, and so on – alters the moment you decide to do anything… decisions are signals telling your body, mind, and environment to move in a certain direction.”   (Deepak Chopra, The Book of Secrets:  Unlocking the Hidden Dimensions of Your Life)

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“The inner speech, your thoughts, can cause you to be rich or poor, loved or unloved, happy or unhappy, attractive or unattractive, powerful or weak.”   (Ralph Charell)

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“If you leave the smallest corner of your head vacant for a moment, other people’s opinions will rush in from all quarters.”   (George Bernard Shaw)

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“Every day that we fail to live out the maximum of our potentialities we kill the Shakespeare, Dante, Homer, Christ which is in us.”   (Henry Miller)

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“Create your legacy by fulfilling your potential…”   (Gino Norris, Stress Diary Journal)

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“The great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.”   (Walter Bagehot)

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“Who the hell said you no longer had it in you?”   (Charles Bukowski)

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“Find Yourself, Get Even with People, Have a Good Day”

“You’ve got to find yourself first.  Everything else’ll follow.”   (Charles de Lint, Dreams Underfoot)

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“Once the soul awakens, the search begins and you can never go back.  From then on, you are inflamed with a special longing that will never again let you linger in the lowlands of complacency and partial fulfillment.  The eternal makes you urgent.  You are loath to let compromise or the threat of danger hold you back from striving toward the summit of fulfillment.”   (John O’Donohue, Anam Cara:  A Book of Celtic Wisdom)

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“Let today be the day you stop being haunted by the ghost of yesterday. Holding a grudge & harboring anger/resentment is poison to the soul.  Get even with people… but not those who have hurt us, forget them, instead get even with those who have helped us.”   (Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free)

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“The potential of the average person is like a huge ocean unsailed, a new continent unexplored, a world of possibilities waiting to be released and channeled toward some great good.”   (Brian Tracy)

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“If you limit your choice only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is a compromise.”   (Robert Fritz, The Path of Least Resistance)

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“Have a good day, count your blessings, and pass this along to remind everyone else how blessed we all are.”   (Racheal Gordon)

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