Catalyst Quotes

“Imagine / Thank the Lord for Letting You Have the Ride”

“I need, therefore I imagine.”    (Carlos Fuentes)

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“Imagination does not become great until human beings, given the courage and the strength, use it to create.”   (Maria Montessori)

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“Imagine smiling after a slap in the face.  Then think of doing it twenty-four hours a day.”  (Markus Zusak, The Book Thief)

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“In a world where billions believe their deity conceived a mortal child with a virgin human, it’s stunning how little imagination most people display.”   (Chuck Palahniuk)

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“I was blind and heart-broken and didn’t want to do anything and Gus burst into my room and shouted, ‘I have wonderful news!’  

And I was like, ‘I don’t really want to hear wonderful news right now,’ and Gus said, ‘This is wonderful news you want to hear,’ and I asked him, ‘Fine, what is it?’ and he said, ‘You are going to live a good and long life filled with great and terrible moments that you cannot even imagine yet!’”    (John Green, The Fault in Our Stars)

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“Anyone who imagines that bliss is normal is going to waste a lot of time running around shouting that he has been robbed.  The fact is that most putts don’t drop, most beef is tough, most children grow up to be just like people, most successful marriages require a high degree of mutual toleration, and most jobs are more often dull than otherwise.  Life is just like an old time rail journey … delays, sidetracks, smoke, dust, cinders, and jolts, interspersed only occasionally by beautiful vistas and thrilling bursts of speed.  The trick is to thank the Lord for letting you have the ride.”    (Jenkin Lloyd Jones)

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“Wisdom and Love; Between the Two My Life Flows”

“I divide by fears by multiplying the risks;

Adding bridges by subtracting walls.”   (Unknown Author)

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“Those who are able to see beyond their culture will never be understood, let alone believed, by the masses.”   (Plato)

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“Anyone can give up, it’s the easiest thing in the world to do.  But to hold it together when everyone else would understand if you fell apart, that’s true strength.”   (Anonymous)

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“The winners in life think constantly in terms of I can, I will, and I am.  Losers, on the other hand, concentrate their waking thoughts on what they should have or would have done, or what they can’t do.”   (Dennis Waitley)

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“Oftentimes we call Life bitter names, but only when we ourselves are bitter and dark.  And we deem her empty and unprofitable, but only when the soul goes wandering in desolate places and the heart is drunken with over-mindfulness of self.

Life is deep and high and distant; and though only your vast vision can reach even her feet, yet she is near; and though only the breath of your breath reaches her heart, the shadow of your shadow crosses her face, and the echo of your faintest cry becomes a spring and an autumn in her breast.

And Life is veiled and hidden, even as your greater self is hidden and veiled.  Yet when Life speaks, all the winds become words; and when she speaks again, the smiles upon your lips and the tears in your eyes turn also into words.  When she sings, the deaf hear and are held; and when she comes walking, the sightless behold her and are amazed and follow her in wonder and astonishment.”  (Kahlil Gibran)

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“Wisdom tells me I am nothing.

Love tells me I am everything.

Between the two my life flows.”    (Nisargadatta Maharaj)

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“Your Attitude – Control Center of Your Life”

“We are all manufacturers – some make good, others make trouble, and still others make excuses.”   (Anonymous)

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“The sages do not consider that making no mistakes is a blessing.  They believe, rather, that the great virtue of man lies in his ability to correct his mistakes and continually make a new man of himself.”   (Wang Yang-Ming)

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“I even have a superstition that has grown on me as the result of invisible hands coming all the time—namely that if you do follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you.”   (Joseph Campbell)

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“Man’s ideal state is realized when he has fulfilled the purpose for which he is born.  And what is it that reason demands of him?  Something very easy – that he live in accordance with his own nature.”   (Seneca)        

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“The purpose of life is to discover your gift.  The meaning of life is giving your gift away.”   (David Viscott)       

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“The control center of your life is your attitude.”   (Norman Cousins)

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“Express the Truth of Your Character”

“The hardest battle you will ever have to fight is between who you are now and who you want to be.”   (Anonymous)

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“There is no need to reach high for the stars.  They are already within you.  Just reach deep into yourself!”   (Unknown Author)

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“Whatever you think, be sure it is what you think; whatever you want, be sure that is what you want; whatever you feel, be sure that is what you feel.”   (T. S. Eliot)

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“The secret is here in the present.  If you pay attention to the present, you can improve upon it.  And, if you improve on the present, what comes later will also be better.  Forget about the future and live each day.  Each day, in itself, brings with it an eternity.”   (Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist)

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“You express the truth of your character with the choice of your actions.”   (Steve Maraboli)

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“The greatest learning of the ages lies in accepting life exactly as it comes to us.”   (Anthony de Mello, The Prayer of the Frog, Vol. 1)

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“Time to Go to a New Movie / Don’t Ask the World to Change”

“Got this one from a Tony Robbins seminar (I think it was ‘Date with Destiny’):

You have any movies you just absolutely hated?  Yah?  Me, too.

Quick question:  Would you go watch it 10,000 times?

Um.  Riiiight.

That’d be pretty stupid, eh?

So, another quick question:  Why do we replay that horrible scene from our lives over and over and over and over and over and over again?

Time to go to a new movie, wouldn’t you say?”   (Brian Johnson, Chief Philosopher and CEO of en*theos)

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“Begin challenging your own assumptions. Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in awhile, or the light won’t come in.”   (Alan Alda)

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“I know who I WAS when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.”   (Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass)

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“You think of yourself as a citizen of the universe.

You think you belong to this world of dust and matter.

Out of this dust you have created a personal image, and have forgotten about the essence of your true origin”   (Rumi, Hush, Don’t Say Anything to God:  Passionate Poems of Rumi)

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“You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going.  What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith and hope.”    (Thomas Merton)

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“Don’t ask the world to change….you change first.”    (Anthony de Mello)

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“Put On Your Big Boots / An Adventure is Going to Happen”

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”

“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.”

“I don’t much care where –”

“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go.”   (Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland)

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“I’d like to repeat the advice that I gave you before, in that I think you really should make a radical change in your lifestyle and begin to boldly do things which you may previously never have thought of doing, or been too hesitant to attempt.  So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservation, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future.  The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure.  The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.  If you want to get more out of life, you must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life that will at first appear to you to be crazy.  But once you become accustomed to such a life you will see its full meaning and its incredible beauty.

Don’t settle down and sit in one place.  Move around, be nomadic, make each day a new horizon. You are still going to live a long time … and it would be a shame if you did not take the opportunity to revolutionize your life and move into an entirely new realm of experience.

You are wrong if you think Joy emanates only or principally from human relationships.  God has placed it all around us.  It is in everything and anything we might experience.  We just have to have the courage to turn against our habitual lifestyle and engage in unconventional living.”   (Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild)

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“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.”   (Helen Keller)

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“Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.”   (Rumi)

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“When you see someone putting on his Big Boots, you can be pretty sure that an Adventure is going to happen.”  (A. A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh)

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“Do Not Be Afraid / Learn to Turn on the Light”

“Most of us are not raised to actively encounter our destiny.  We may not know that we have one.  As children, we are seldom told we have a place in life that is uniquely ours alone. Instead, we are encouraged to believe that our life should somehow fulfill the expectations of others, that we will (or should) find our satisfactions as they have found theirs.  Rather than being taught to ask ourselves who we are, we are schooled to ask others.  We are, in effect, trained to listen to others’ versions of ourselves.  We are brought up in our life as told to us by someone else!  When we survey our lives, seeking to fulfill our creativity, we often see we had a dream that went glimmering because we believed, and those around us believed that the dream was beyond our reach.  Many of us would have been, or at least might have been, done, tried something, if…

If we had known who we really were.”    (Julia Cameron)

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“There are some things that are best forgotten.  And when I remember what a few of them are, I’ll drop you a line.  But a couple of things worth remembering, that are all too easily forgotten, are the times in your life when you felt absolutely alone and uncertain.  Yet somehow, perhaps beyond perception, there was a great click, after which suddenly a new friend appeared, an idea was imparted, or a connection established, causing the tides to turn and the floodgates to open.

And remembering this, should such ‘alone and uncertain times’ ever revisit you, however dark they may seem, you’ll at least be comforted by recalling how transient they always are. Pass it on.      (signed)    The Universe.”    (Mike Dooley, ‘Notes from the Universe’)

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“Do not be afraid.  Do not be satisfied with mediocrity.  Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.”  (John Paul II)

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“We all walk in the dark and each of us must learn to turn on his or her own light.”   (Earl Nightingale)

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“When you get rid of your fear of failure, your tensions about succeeding … you can be yourself.  Relaxed.   You’ll no longer be driving with your brakes on.”   (Anthony de Mello)

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“Maybe there is something you’re afraid to say, or someone you’re afraid to love, or somewhere you’re afraid to go.  It’s gonna hurt.  It’s gonna hurt because it matters.”    (John Green, Will Grayson)

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“We are all worms, but I do believe that I am a glow worm.”   (Winston Churchill)

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“You Are a Child of the Universe / You Have an Appointment with Destiny”

“Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.”   (Dr. Seuss, Happy Birthday to You!)

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“Sometimes in life you have an appointment with destiny, and sometimes you just have to get destiny to squeeze you in.”   (Robert Brault)

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“It’s time to start living the life you’ve imagined.”   (Henry James)

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“Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.

As far as possible without surrender, be on good terms with all persons.  Speak your truth quietly and clearly, and listen to others, even the dull and ignorant; they too have their story.  Be ourself.  Especially do not feign affection.  Neither be cynical about love – for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment is it perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.  Nurture strength of spirit to shield you from misfortune.  But do not distress yourself with imaginings.  Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.  Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself.

You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.  And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be, and whatever your labours and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.  With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.”   (Max Ehrmann, Desiderata:  A Poem for a Way of Life)

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“Life begins where fear ends.”   (Osho)

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