Catalyst Quotes

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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“You Are Valuable, Equipped, Anointed, and Approved!”

“There are plenty of others willing to call you a failure.  A fool.  A loser.  A hopeless souse!  Don’t you ever say it of yourself.  You send out the wrong signal.  That is what people pick up.  Do you understand?  If you care about something fight for it.  You hit a wall, push through it.  There’s something you need to know about failure, Tintin:  You can never let it defeat you.”   (Captain Haddock, The Adventures of Tintin)

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“It doesn’t make any difference whether what you face is something that affects your work, your personal relationships, your sense of security, your appraisal of self-worth, or your appearance — the way you think about your situation largely determines whether you will do anything about it and what you will do.”   (Dr. Arthur Freeman and Rose DeWolf)

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“A small trouble is like a pebble.  Hold it too close to your eye and it fills the whole world and puts everything out of focus.  Hold it at a proper distance and it can be examined and properly classified.  Throw it at your feet and it can be seen in its true setting, just one more tiny bump on the pathway of life.”   (Celia Luce)

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“The trouble with many plans is that they are based on the way things are now. To be successful, your personal plan must focus on what you want, not what you have.”   (Nido Qubein)

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“‘What is the world’s greatest lie?’ the little boy asks.

The old man replies, ‘It’s this:  that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what’s happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate.  That’s the world’s greatest lie.’”  (Paulo Coelho)

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“If you keep focusing on your flaws, listening to what other people are saying, you can miss your destiny.  Instead, remind yourself that you are valuable, you are equipped, you are anointed, you are approved!”   (Joel Osteen)

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“Man is a Marvelously Picturesque Piece of Diversity”

“It is never too late to give up your prejudices.”   (Henry David Thoreau)

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“In this country we have no place for hyphenated Americans.”  (Theodore Roosevelt)

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“At bottom every man knows well enough that he is a unique being, only once on this earth; and by no extraordinary chance will such a marvelously picturesque piece of diversity in unity as he is, ever be put together a second time.”    (Friedrich Nietzsche)

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“Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events.  It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped.  Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”   (Robert F. Kennedy)

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“There are not more than five musical notes, yet the combinations of these five give rise to more melodies than can ever be heard.

There are not more than five primary colors, yet in combination they produce more hues than can ever been seen.

There are not more than five cardinal tastes, yet combinations of them yield more flavors than can ever be tasted.”   (Sun Tzu, The Art of War)

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“You Are a Rainbow With Gold at Both Ends”

“We spend our lives asking the question, ‘What do people want me to do?  Who do they want me to be?’  But this is a betrayal of our inner truth.  We should be investing our lives in the pursuit of discovering who we are and what we were created to do.”   (Elizabeth Grace Saunders)

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“A bad day for your ego is a great day for your soul.”   (Jillian Michaels)

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“Learn to be brave and adventurous because you’ll never discover your place in the world, if you’re too afraid to leave your own backyard.”   (Nina Guilbeau)

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“Unless we take that first step into the unknown, we will never know our own potential!”   (Allan Rufus)

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“Life is an opportunity, benefit from it.  Life is a beauty, admire it.  Life is a dream, realize it. Life is a challenge, meet it.  Life is a duty, complete it.  Life is a game, play it.  Life is a promise, fulfill it.  Life is sorrow, overcome it.  Life is a song, sing it.  Life is a struggle, accept it.  Life is a tragedy, confront it.  Life is an adventure, dare it.  Life is luck, make it.  Life is life, fight for it!”  (Mother Teresa)

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“Dare to love yourself

as if you were a rainbow

with gold at both ends.”   (Aberjhani, The River of Winged Dreams)

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“Don’t Change the World, Change Yourself”

“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”    (Aristotle)

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“In the beginning, it is difficult and even painful to see the faults in yourself, the flaws in your soul, the error of your ways.  But I have come to love the moments when I see my flaws and I spot my errors!  It is one of the most beautiful things, really!  Because it is when we see our own flaws and our own errors that we can find the opposite of those things!  It is when we see our own flaws and our own errors that we can see that there is so much more room to become better!  And so I have come to actually rejoice when I find something wrong with me! And I know when it’s really wrong because I can see it and I can feel it in my heart both at the same time — it is a revelation. It’s not something that comes from any external source; but it is my own spirit and the voice of God revealing these things to me, unfolding them, rolling them out of a silken cloth at my feet. And I smile.”   (C. JoyBell C.)

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“Note and Quote to Self – What you think, say and do!

Your life mainly consists of 3 things!

• What you think,
• What you say and
• What you do!

So always be very conscious of what you are co-creating!”   (Allan Rufus, The Master’s Sacred Knowledge)

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“There are essentially two questions in life – a spiritual question and a material question.  The spiritual question is ‘Who am I?’  The material question is ‘What am I to do with my life?’  One leads to the other.”   (Rasheed Ogunlaru)

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“You don’t need to change the world; you need to change yourself.”    (Miguel Ruiz)

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“The Soul Unfolds Itself”

“A man said to the universe:  ‘Sir, I exist!’

‘However,’ replied the universe.

‘The fact has not created in me a sense of obligation.’”   (Stephen Crane, War is Kind and Other Poems)

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“So many people walk around with a meaningless life.  They seem half-asleep, even when they’re busy doing things they think are important.  This is because they’re chasing the wrong things.  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.”   (Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie:  An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life’s Greatest Lesson)

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“At various points in our lives, or on a quest, and for reasons that often remain obscure, we are driven to make decisions which prove with hindsight to be loaded with meaning.”   (Swami Satchidananda, The Young Sutras)

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“Say not, ‘I have found the truth,’ but rather, ‘I have found a truth.’  Say not, ‘I have found the path of the soul.’  Say rather, ‘I have met the soul walking upon my path.’  For the soul walks upon all paths.  The soul walks not upon a line, neither does it grow like a reed.  The soul unfolds itself, like a lotus of countless petals.”   (Kahlil Gibran)

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“Sometimes, the most profound of awakenings come wrapped in the quietest of moments.”  (Stephen Crane)

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“A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.”   (Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan)

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“Most of us have far more courage than we ever dreamed we possessed.”   (Dale Carnegie)

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“The Sum Total of Everything That Went Before Me”

“We do not create our destiny; we participate in its unfolding.  Synchronicity works as a catalyst toward the working out of that destiny.”   (David Richo, The Power of Coincidence)

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“I don’t want to be little again.  But at the same time I do. I want to be me like I was then, and me as I am now, and me like I’ll be in the future.  I want to be me and nothing but me.  I want to be crazy as the moon, wild as the wind and still as the earth.  I want to be every single thing it’s possible to be.  I’m growing and I don’t know how to grow.  I’m living but I haven’t started living yet.  Sometimes I simply disappear from myself.  Sometimes it’s like I’m not here in the world at all and I simply don’t exist.  Sometimes I can hardly think.  My head just drifts and the visions that come seem so vivid.”    (David Almond, Jackdaw Summer)

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“You are afraid to die, and you’re afraid to live.  What a way to exist.”   (Neale Donald Walsch, Home With God, In a Life That Never Ends)

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“Before you write, think.

Before you spend, earn.

Before you invest, investigate.

Before you criticize, wait.

Before you pray, forgive.

Before you quit, try.

Before you retire, save.

Before you die, give.”   (William Arthur Ward)

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“I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all I have been seen done, of everything done-to-me.  I am everyone everything whose being-in-the-world affected was affected by mine.  I am anything that happens after I’m gone which would not have happened if I had not come.”   (Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children)

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