Catalyst Quotes

“Trolls, Respect, and Remedies”

“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)

“Some will tell you that treating people with respect is just an old-fashioned notion.   Everyone wants to be treated with respect — all the time.   In fact, when we treat people with respect, they’re more likely to do what we want.”     (Seth Godin)

“Lots of things about work are hard.  Dealing with trolls is one of them.  Trolls are critics who gain perverse pleasure in relentlessly tearing you and your ideas down.  Here’s the thing(s):

 1.   trolls will always be trolling

2.   critics rarely create

3.   they live in a tiny echo chamber, ignored by everyone except the trolled and the other trolls

4.   professionals (that’s you) get paid to ignore them.  It’s part of your job.

‘Can’t please everyone,’ isn’t just an aphorism, it’s the secret of being remarkable.”    (Seth Godin)

“I never blame myself when I’m not hitting. I just blame the bat and if it keeps up, I change bats.  After all, if I know it isn’t my fault that I’m not hitting, how can I get mad at myself?”    (Yogi Berra)

“Don’t find fault, find a remedy.”     (Henry Ford)

“The great secret to people excellence is treat people with manifest respect and appreciation and trust, and give them a chance to express the best in themselves and dramatically broaden their horizons — and ‘the rest’ will take care of itself.”     (Tom Peters)

“Everything is Accomplished”

“No man, with a man’s heart in him gets far on his way without some bitter, soul-searching disappointment.  Happy is he who is brave enough to push on to another stage of the journey.”     (John Mason Brown)

“Welcome every morning with a smile.  Look on the new day as another special gift from your Creator, another golden opportunity to complete what you were unable to finish yesterday.  Be a self-starter.  Let your first hour set the theme of success and positive action that is certain to echo through your entire day.  Today will never happen again.  Don’t waste it with a false start or no start at all.  You were not born to fail.”      (Og Mandino)

“This bright, new day … complete with 24 hours of opportunities, choices, and attitudes … a perfectly matched set of 1440 minutes. This unique gift, this one day, cannot be exchanged, replaced or refunded.  Handle with care.  Make the most of it.  There is only one to a customer.”     (Author Unknown)

“Goals are a means to an end, not the ultimate purpose of our lives.  They are simply a tool to concentrate our focus and move us in a direction.  The only reason we really pursue goals is to cause ourselves to expand and grow.  Achieving goals by themselves will never make us happy in the long term; it’s who you become, as you overcome the obstacles necessary to achieve your goals, that can give you the deepest and most long-lasting sense of fulfillment.”    (Anthony Robbins)

“Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.”     (Lao Tzu)

“Begin at the Beginning”

“He who is silent is forgotten; he who does not advance falls back; he who stops is overwhelmed; out distanced, crushed; he who ceases to grow becomes smaller; he who leaves off, gives up; the condition of standing still is the beginning of the end.”      (Henri Frédéric Amiel)

“You have brains in your head.

You have feet in your shoes.

You can steer yourself any direction you choose.

You’re on our own.

And you know what you know.

And YOU are the one who’ll decide where to go …”      (Dr. Seuss)

“Live out of your imagination, not your history.”      (Stephen Covey

“Begin at the beginning… and go on till you come to the end: then stop.”      (Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll)

“It all begins when the soul would have its way with you.”      (Emerson)

“I’ve always felt it was not up to anyone else to make me give my best.”     (Akeem Olajuwon)

“One of the commonest mistakes and one of the costliest is thinking that success is due to some genius, some magic — something or other which we do not possess.  Success is generally due to holding on, and failure to letting go.  You decide to learn a language, study music, take a course of reading, train yourself physically.  Will it be success or failure?  It depends upon how much pluck and perseverance that word ‘decide’ contains.  The decision that nothing can overrule, the grip that nothing can detach will bring success.  Remember the Chinese proverb, ‘With time and patience, the mulberry leaf becomes satin.’”       (Maltbie Davenport Babcock)

“You Have Not Done Enough”

“You must know that in any moment a decision you make can change the course of your life forever: the very next person stand behind in line or sit next to on an airplane, the very next phone call you make or receive, the very next movie you see or book you read or page you turn could be the one single thing that causes the floodgates to open, and all of the things that you’ve been waiting for to fall into place.”      (Anthony Robbins)

“Whatever you do, you need courage.  Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you you are wrong.  There are always difficulties arising which tempt you to believe that your critics are right.  To map out a course of action and follow it to an end, requires some of the same courage which a soldier needs.  Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men to win them.”            (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

“The adventure of life is to learn.  The purpose of life is to grow.  The nature of life is to change. The challenge of life is to overcome.  The essence of life is to care.  The opportunity of life is to serve. The secret of life is to dare.  The spice of life is to befriend.  The beauty of life is to give. The joy of life is to love.”    (William Arthur Ward)

“You have not done enough; you have never done enough so long as it is still possible that you have something of value to contribute.”     (Dag Hammarskjold)

“We Are Here on Earth to Do …”

“We are here on Earth to do good to others.  What others are here for, I don’t know.”     (W. H. Auden)

“It’s what each of us sows, and how, that gives us character and prestige. Seeds of kindness, goodwill, and human understanding, planted in fertile soil, spring up into deathless friendships, big deeds of worth, and a memory that will not soon fade out.  We are all sowers of seeds-and let us never forget it!”      (George Matthew Adams)

“Be careful what you water your dreams with.  Water them with worry and fear and you will produce weeds that choke the life from your dream.  Water them with optimism and solutions and you will cultivate success.  Always be on the lookout for ways to turn a problem into an opportunity for success. Always be on the lookout for ways to nurture your dream.”    (Lao Tzu)

“If we are ever to enjoy life, now is the time-not tomorrow, nor next year, nor in some future life after we have died.  The best preparation for a better life next year is a full, complete, harmonious, joyous life this year.  Our beliefs in a rich future life are of little importance unless we coin them into a rich present life.  Today should always be our most wonderful day.”      (Thomas Dreier)

“The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another, and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it.”       (J.M. Barrie)

“Be the Poem; Share What You Have to Give”

“To change who you are, change who you think you are.”     (Jonathan Lockwood Huie)

“The golden opportunity you are seeking is in yourself.  It is not in your environment; it is not in luck or chance, or the help of others; it is in yourself alone.”      (Orison Swett Marden)

“If you cannot be a poet, be the poem.”        (David Carradine)

“The majority of us lead quiet, unheralded lives as we pass through this world.  There will most likely be no ticker-tape parades for us, no monuments created in our honor.  But that does not lessen our possible impact, for there are scores of people waiting for someone just like us to come along; people who will appreciate our compassion, our unique talents. Someone who will live a happier life merely because we took the time to share what we had to give.  Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have a potential to turn a life around.  It’s overwhelming to consider the continuous opportunities there are to make our love felt.”        (Leo Buscaglia)

“Everything Will Work Out”

“There is something infantile in the presumption that somebody else has the responsibility to give your life meaning and point . . .  The truly adult view, by contrast, is that our life is as meaningful, as full and as wonderful, as we choose to make it.”        (Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker)

“Any fact facing us, however difficult, even seemingly hopeless, is not so important as our attitude towards that fact.  How you think about a fact may defeat you before you ever do anything about it.  You may permit a fact to overwhelm you mentally before you deal with it actually.  On the other hand, a confident and optimistic thought pattern can overcome or modify the fact altogether.”         (Norman Vincent Peale)

“None of us can predict with certainty the twists and turns our lives will take.  Life is uncertain, the future unknown.  This is neither good nor bad.  It just is, like gravity.  Yet the task remains: how to master our own fate, even so.”        (Jim Collins and Morten Hansen, Great by Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos, and Luck — Why Some Thrive Despite Them All)

“Everything will work out in the end.  If it’s not working out, it’s not the end.”      (Author Unknown)

“The Sight of the Stars Makes Me Dream”

“Life is all about choices.  How many people are trapped in their everyday habits:  part numb, part frightened, part indifferent?  To have a better life we must keep choosing how we’re living.”     (Albert Einstein)

“I am who I am today because of the choices I made yesterday.”        (Author Unknown)

“(You have a choice as to whether) you are either part of the steam roller or part of the road.”    (Author Unknown)

“Sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think, ‘I’m not going to make it’ but you laugh inside – remember all the times you’ve felt that way.”        (Charles Bukowski)

“Worrying will never change the outcome.”         (Author Unknown)

“Lord, when we are wrong, make us willing to change.  And when we are right, make us easy to live with.”       (Peter Marshall)

“I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.”      (Vincent Van Gogh)

“It Hurts to Become”

“I said to the sun, ‘Tell me about the big bang.’     The sun said, ‘It hurts to become.’”      (Andrea Gibson)

“I have lived nearly fifty years, and I have seen life as it is.

Pain, misery, hunger … cruelty beyond belief.  I have heard the singing from taverns and the moans from bundles of filth on the streets.  I have been a soldier and seen my comrades fall in battle … or die more slowly under the lash in Africa.  I have held them in my arms at the final moment.  These were men who saw life as it is, yet they died despairing.  No glory, no gallant last words … only their eyes filled with confusion, whimpering the question, “Why?”  I do not think they asked why they were dying, but why they had lived.  

When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies?  Perhaps to be too practical is madness.  To surrender dreams — this may be madness. To seek treasure where there is only trash.  Too much sanity may be madness — and maddest of all:  to see life as it is, and not as it should be!”          (Don Quixote, Man of La Mancha, Miguel Cervantes)

“When you arise in the morning, give thanks for the morning light.  Give thanks for your life and strength.  Give thanks for your food.  And give thanks for the joy of living.   

And if perchance you see no reason to give thanks, rest assured the fault is yours.”          (American Indian Saying)

“It’s not hard to decide what you want your life to be about.

What’s hard, she said, is figuring out what you’re willing to give up in order to do the things you really care about.”            (Bittersweet, Shauna Niequist)

“Think About These Things”

Think about these things …

     “The road to success is dotted with many tempting parking places.”

      “When you feel terrific, notify your face.”

     “The one thing worse than a quitter is the person who is afraid to begin.”

     “The most important ability is availability.”

     “There is no great success without great commitment.”

     “It is better to hold out a hand than to point a finger.”

     “Doing your best is more important than being the best.”

     “Giant oak trees started out as little nuts that held their ground.”

     “To disagree, one doesn’t have to be disagreeable.”

     “An obstacle may be either a stepping stone or a stumbling block.”

     “The difficulties of life are intended to make us better, not bitter.”

     “The best thing you can spend on your children is time.”          (InnerTalk)

     “Be kind whenever possible.  It is always possible.”      (Dalai Lama)