Catalyst Quotes

“To Survive Today …”

  

 

“To survive today, you have to be able to walk on quicksand and dance with electrons.”    (Frank Ogden)

 

 

 

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“As we go about our daily lives, it is important to remember that we always find what we’re looking for.  If you set out today thinking that this is going to be a bad day, shortly things will begin to order themselves to meet your expectation.  Conversely, if you set out with an expectation of greatness, this can be one of the greatest days of your life.”     (Jim Stovall)

 

 

 

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“Beginning of the Day”

 

“This is the beginning of a new day.   You have been given this day to use as you will.   You can waste it or use it for good.   What you do today is important because you are exchanging a day of your life for it.  When tomorrow comes, this day will be gone forever; in its place is something that you have left behind … let it be something good.”     (Author Unknown)

 

 

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“End of the Day”

 

“Finish every day and be done with it.   You have done what you could.  Some blunders and absurdities no doubt have crept in; forget them as soon as you can.   Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense.  This day is all that is good and fair.   It is too dear, with its hopes and invitations, to waste a moment on yesterdays.”     (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

 

 

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 “Every Day”

 

“There are only two ways to live your life.

 

One is as though nothing is a miracle.

 

The other is as though everything else is.”

 

(Albert Einstein)

 

  

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 “One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.”    (Johann Wolgang von Goethe, Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship)

 

  

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”Happy wowday.

 

Halloween gives you permission to dress up.  April Fool’s, a chance to play a prank.

 

What if there was one day of the year where you had permission to do things that made people say, ‘wow.’

 

 Acts of generosity or bravery or insight…

 

What if you focused and practiced and got your nerve up and leaned way over the edge, just one day of the year?  If you could get out of your comfort zone for a few hours in a way that benefitted and delighted people you care about, what would that look and feel like?

 

Today might be your wowday.

 

Or tomorrow.

 

Up to you.”   (Seth Godin, Seth’s Blog, 3.18.14)

 

  

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“May you live every day of your life.”    (Jonathan Swift)

 

  

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“What About the Rest of Your Life?”

 

“Every human being on this earth is born with a tragedy, and it isn’t original sin. He’s born with the tragedy that he has to grow up.  A lot of people don’t have the courage to do that.”    (Helen Hayes)

 

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“The power to change your life lies in the simplest of steps.”    (Steve Maraboli)

 

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“All I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten.  Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate-school mountain, but there in the sandpile at Sunday School.”    (Robert Fulghum)

 

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“Whatever you do, if you do it sincerely, will eventually become a bridge to your wholeness, a good ship that carries you through the darkness.”    (Carl Jung)

 

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“Never forget the nine most important words of any family –
‘I love you.’
‘You are beautiful.’
‘Please forgive me.’”    (H. Jackson Brown Jr.)

 

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“Time is an equal opportunity employer.  Each human being has exactly the same number of hours and minutes every day.  Rich people can’t buy more hours. Scientists can’t invent new minutes.  And you can’t save time to spend it on another day.  Even so, time is amazingly fair and forgiving.  No matter how much time you’ve wasted in the past, you still have an entire tomorrow.”    (Denis Waitley)

 

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“’What about the rest of your life?’
She shrugged. ‘What about it?’
‘Aren’t you worried about, like, forever?’
‘Forever is composed of nows,’ she says.”    (John Green, Paper Towns)

 

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“Don’t be afraid of death, be afraid of the unlived life.”    (Tuck Everlasting, Natalie Babbitt)

 

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“When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable.  But to grow up is to accept vulnerability.  To be alive is to be vulnerable.”    (Madeleine L’Engle)

 

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“Looking back, you realize that a very special person passed briefly through your life, and that person was you.  It is not too late to become that person again.”    (Robert Brault, Round Up the Usual Subjects)

 

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“Let Your Deeds Be Judged”

 

“Human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but … life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.”   (Gabriel García Márquez)

 

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“Life is tragic simply because the earth turns, and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time.  Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, the only fact we have.  It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death — ought to decide, indeed, to earn one’s death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life.  One is responsible for life:  It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return.”    (James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time)

 

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“As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light of meaning in the darkness of mere being.”    (C. G. Jung)

 

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“Every man’s life ends the same way.  It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another.”    (Ernest Hemingway)

 

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“If other people do not understand our behavior — so what?  Their request that we must only do what they understand is an attempt to dictate to us.  If this is being ‘asocial’ or ‘irrational in their eyes, so be it.  Mostly they resent our freedom and our courage to be ourselves.  We owe nobody an explanation or an accounting, as long as our acts do not hurt or infringe on them.  How many lives have been ruined by this need to ‘explain,’ which usually implies that the explanation be ‘understood,’ i.e. approved.  Let your deeds be judged, and from your deeds, your real intentions, but know that a free person owes an explanation only to himself — to his reason and his conscience — and to the few who may have a justified claim for explanation.”    (Erich Fromm, The Art of Being)

 

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“Who are you to judge the life I live?
I know I’m not perfect – and I don’t live to be –
but before you start pointing fingers… make sure your hands are clean!”    (Bob Marley)

 

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“We are taught you must blame your father, your sisters, your brothers, the school, the teachers – but never blame yourself.  It’s never your fault.
But it’s always your fault, because if you wanted to change you’re the one who has got to change.”    (Katherine Hepburn, Me, Stories of My Life)

 

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“Start by doing what’s necessary; then do what’s possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.”    (St. Francis of Assisi)

 

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The muscle of kick-assery is like any other muscle.  You have to use it or lose it.”  (Jen Sincero)

 

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“If we did the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.”    (Thomas A. Edison)

 

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“Life’s Journey / Know Yourself”

 

“Human life is but a series of footnotes to a vast obscure unfinished masterpiece.”   (Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita)

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“When we are young we squander time as though it were unlimited; when we grow older, then like beggars, we wish for crumbs of remembrance… .”    (Nannette L. Avery)

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“One lives in the hope of becoming a memory.”    (Antonio Porchia)

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“There comes a time in your life when you have to choose to turn the page, write another book or simply close it.”    (Shannon L. Alder)

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“unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don’t do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don’t do it.

when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.

and there never was.”    (Charles Bukowski)

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“Life is too short, or too long, for me to allow myself the luxury of living it so badly.”    (Paulo Coelho)

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“Please, keep looking.  Not for a person, but for your passion, your love, your courage, your goals, your dreams, your happiness, yourself.

Keep looking.  Explore yourself before you explore another.  Know your worth, know yourself.

Only then will you know what you need over what you want.  You need yourself to become your own.”    (Unknown Author)

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“Life’s journey is not to arrive at the grave safely in a well-preserved body, but rather to skid sideways totally worn out, shouting ‘holy shit … what a ride!’”   (Hunter S. Thompson)

 

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“Make Your Spirit Glow Out Loud”

 

 

“I’ve been making a list of the things they don’t teach you at school.  They don’t teach you how to love somebody.  They don’t teach you how to be famous.  They don’t teach you how to be rich or how to be poor.  They don’t teach you how to walk away from someone you don’t love any longer.  They don’t teach you how to know what’s going on in someone else’s mind.  They don’t teach you what to say to someone who’s dying.  They don’t teach you anything worth knowing.”    (Neil Gaiman, The Kindly Ones)

 

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“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.”     (C. G. Jung)

 

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“When I do good, I feel good.  When I do bad, I feel bad.  That’s my religion.”  (Abraham Lincoln)

 

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“The practice of assertiveness means acting.  Act as if you are already the healthiest person you can be.  Do not wait until you feel better about yourself or until you believe you have what it takes.  Act as if you are self-actualized and your beliefs will follow suit.  Act while you fear rather than waiting until you feel unafraid.  ‘Acting as if’ is a form of playfulness.  Play successfully combines contrasts and opposites.  When we act as if we are already more advanced than we imagine ourselves to be, we are creatively playing with an old, habitual self-image and welcoming a new self that wants to emerge.  This new self is encouraged into existence by the image we are displaying when we ‘act as if.’”    (David Richo, How to Be an Adult)

 

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“Because, from the beginning, God said, ‘I’m gonna put this world into your hands. If I run everything, then that’s not you.’  So, we were created with a piece of divinity inside us, but with this thing called free will, and I think God watches us every day, lovingly, praying we will make the right choices.”    (Mitch Albom, Have a Little Faith: A True Story)

 

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“Be happy about your own life and you’ll be amazed at just how much more beautiful you’ll find it to be.”    “Do whatever makes your spirit glow out loud.”    (TemitOpe Ibrahim)

 

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“Life is a creation, not a discovery.”    (Neale Donald Walsch)

 

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“Oh, what we might accomplish, were it not for an exaggerated sense of our own unimportance.”    (Robert Brault, Round Up the Usual Subjects)

 

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“If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.”     (C. S. Lewis)

 

 

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