Catalyst Quotes

“When You Know Better, Do Better”

“Isn’t it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?”   (L. M. Montgomery)

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“We must make the choices that enable us to fulfill the deepest capacities of our real selves.”   (Thomas Merton)

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“Two ways to listen –

You can listen to what people say, sure.

But you will be far more effective if you listen to what people do.   (Seth Godin, Seth’s Blog, 3.21.14)

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“Do the best you can until you know better.  Then when you know better, do better.”   (Maya Angelou)

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“Confidence is going after Moby Dick in a rowboat and taking the tartar sauce with you.”   (Zig Ziglar)

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“Strange as it may seem, I still hope for the best, even though the best, like an interesting piece of mail, so rarely arrives, and even when it does it can be lost so easily.”   (Lemony Snicket, The Beatrice Letters)

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“Believe nothing.

No matter where you read it,

Or who said it, 

Even if I have said it, 

Unless it agrees with your own reason 

And your own common sense.”   (Buddha, The Dhammapada)

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“Don’t believe anything you read on the net.  Except this.  Well, including this, I suppose.”   (Douglas Adams)

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“You Know, Trust The Magic of Beginnings”

“It is one thing to read the Scriptures and affirm their truth.  But until you are in the trenches of trial, until you are faced with life circumstances that test your faith, until you are pressed to the absolute limit of your physical and emotional capacity, until you face the unrelenting stress of ongoing trauma, you never really know how you’ll respond to what you may have embraced so easily during a comfortable Bible study.”   (Kevin Malarkey, The Boy Who Came Back from Heaven: A Remarkable Account of Miracles, Angels and Life beyond This World)

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“My heart is so small

it’s almost invisible.

How can You place 

such big sorrows in it?

“Look,” He answered,

“your eyes are even smaller,

yet they behold the world.”  (Rumi)

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“Do not feel lonely; the entire universe is inside you.”   (Rumi)

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“True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so wants nothing.  The greatest blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach.  A wise man is content with his lot, whatever it may be, without wishing for what he has not.”   (Seneca)

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“They say a person needs just three things to be truly happy in this world:  someone to love, something to do, and something to hope for.”   (Tom Bodett)

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“When you begin to expect that there is always room for improvement, you put yourself in the driver’s seat.  Why wait for someone else to figure it out or do it?  Expect that you are the one.  Expect great outcomes.  Expect that you are the best candidate and that you will achieve your goals.”   (Lorii Myers, No Excuses, The Fit Mind-Fit Body Strategy Book)

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“And suddenly you know:  It’s time to start something new and trust the magic of beginnings.”   (Meister Eckhart)

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“Life is Short, Break the Rules”

“I can’t stand it to think my life is going so fast and I’m not really living it.”   (Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises)

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“And every day, the world will drag you by the hand, yelling, ‘This is important!  And this is important!  And this is important!  You need to worry about this!  And this!  And this!”  And each day, it’s up to you to yank your hand back, put it on your heart and say, ‘No.  This is what’s important.’” (Iain S. Thomas, ‘I Wrote This for You’)

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“I don’t know if I continue even today, always liking myself.  But what I learned to do many years ago was to forgive myself.  It is very important for every human being to forgive herself or himself because if you live, you will make mistakes – it is inevitable.  But once you do and you see the mistake, then you forgive yourself and say, ‘Well, if I’d known better I’d have done better,’ that’s all.  So you say to people who you think you may have injured, ‘I’m sorry,’ and then you say to yourself, ‘I’m sorry.’ If we all hold on to the mistake, we can’t see our own glory in the mirror because we have the mistake between our faces and the mirror; we can’t see what we’re capable of being.  You can ask forgiveness of others, but in the end the real forgiveness is in one’s own self.  I think that young men and women are so caught by the way they see themselves.  Now mind you.  When a larger society sees them as unattractive, as threats, as too black or too white or too poor or too fat or too thin or too sexual or too asexual, that’s rough.  But you can overcome that.  The real difficulty is to overcome how you think about yourself.  If we don’t have that we never grow, we never learn, and sure as hell we should never teach.”   (Maya Angelou)

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“Do more than belong:  participate.  Do more than care:  help.  Do more than believe:  practice. Do more than be fair:  be kind.  Do more than forgive:  forget.  Do more than dream:  work.”   (William Ward)

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“Life is short, Break the Rules.

Forgive quickly, Kiss SLOWLY.

Love truly.  Laugh uncontrollably

And never regret ANYTHING

That makes you smile.”   (Mark Twain)

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“Life Is All About Discovering”

“Challenges are what make life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful.”   (Joshua J. Marine)

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“I asked the Zebra,

are you black with white stripes?

Or white with black stripes?

And the zebra asked me,

Are you good with bad habits?

Or are you bad with good habits?

Are you noisy with quiet times?

Or are you quiet with noisy times?

Are you happy with some sad days?

Or are you sad with some happy days?

Are you neat with some sloppy ways?

Or are you sloppy with some neat ways?

And on and on and on and on and on and on he went.

I’ll never ask a zebra about stripes … again.”    (Shel Silverstein)

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“We learn something from everyone who passes through our lives.  Some lessons are painful, some are painless… but, all are priceless.”   (Author Unknown)

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“Life is all about discovering things that do matter in the end.”   (Robert Brault)

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“I don’t regret the things I’ve done; I regret the things I didn’t do when I had the chance.”   (Unknown)

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“It’s hard to wait around for something you know might never happen; but it’s harder to give up when you know it’s everything you want.”   (Unknown)

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“In the end, some of your greatest pains become your greatest strengths.”  (Drew Barrymore)

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“Giving is the Basis of Success”

“Don’t worry about who doesn’t like you, who has more, or who’s doing what.”   (Erma Bombeck)

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“I do not care so much what I am to others as I care what I am to myself.”   (Michel de Montaigne)

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“No matter where you’re from or what you’ve done, you’re never stuck in a particular circumstance, relationship, or cycle unless you say you are.”   (Russell Simmons, Super Rich:  A Guide to Having it All)

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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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“Believe that you possess a basic goodness, which is the foundation for the greatness you can ultimately achieve.”   (Les Brown)

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“Since I was young, I have always known this:  Life damages us, every one.  We can’t escape that damage.  But now, I am also learning this:  We can be mended.  We mend each other.”   (Veronica Roth)

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“Giving, not trading or selling, is the basis of success.  The most rewarding thing you can do is just to give the world something good.  And ultimately you will be paid so much more for that gift than if you had tried to trade it for something else.”   (Russell Simmons, Do You!  12 Laws to Access the Power in You to Achieve Happiness and Success)

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“Whatever You’re Scared of Doing, Do It”

“I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinion of himself than on the opinion of others.”   (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations)

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“I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes.

Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world.  You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re Doing Something.

So that’s my wish for you and all of us, and my wish for myself.  Make New Mistakes.  Make glorious, amazing mistakes.  Make mistakes nobody’s ever made before.  Don’t freeze, don’t stop, don’t worry that it isn’t good enough, or it isn’t perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life.

Whatever it is you’re scared of doing, Do it.

Make your mistakes, next year and forever.”   (Neil Gaiman)

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“Stop comparing yourself with others.  If they are good at something, you too are good at something else.  Self-confidence is not measured by your own capabilities versus that of others, but by your own needs.”   (Stephen Richards, Develop Jedi Self-Confidence:  Unleash the Force within You)

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“It doesn’t matter what ‘they’ do.

Your net worth, net health, and net happiness all hinge exclusively upon your net thoughts, net words, and net deeds.  Though little can rob you as quickly as thinking that it matters what ‘they’ do.

You’ve got the power.  Besides, you summoned them to show you this.     (signed)  The Universe”   (Mike Dooley, ‘Notes from the Universe,’ 3.24.14)

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“They may try to stop you by their words and deeds, but like air you will rise above it all.  You are unstoppable.”   (Bernard Kelvin Clive, Your Dreams Will Not Die)

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“It is not enough that we do our best; sometimes we must do what is required.”   (Winston Churchill)

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“Get Up Off Your Knees and Do Something”

“The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for.  And the most you can do is live inside that hope.  Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.”  (Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams)

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“Be a master of your own brain,

And then change the world for the good.”   (Jerril Thomas Abraham)

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“When someone tells me “no,” it doesn’t mean I can’t do it, it simply means I can’t do it with them.”   (Karen E. Quinones Miller)

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“Everything in the universe is within you.  Ask all from yourself.”  (Rumi)

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“Accept who you are; and revel in it.”   (Mitch Albom, Tuesdays With Morrie)

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“What could we accomplish if we knew we could not fail?”   (Eleanor Roosevelt)

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“Keep your best wishes, close to your heart and watch what happens.”   (Tony DeLiso, Legacy:  The Power Within)

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“If you want your prayers answered, get up off your knees and do something about them.”   (Wally Lamb, She’s Come Undone)

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“Your Belief Will Create the Fact”

“If my mind can conceive it, and my heart can believe it – then I can achieve it.”   (Muhammad Ali, The Soul of a Butterfly:  Reflections on Life’s Journey)

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“Believe and act as if it were impossible to fail.”   (Charles F. Kettering)

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“Does a firm persuasion that a thing is so, make it so?”  He replied, “All poets believe it does. And in ages of imagination, this firm persuasion removes mountains; but many are not capable of firm persuasion of anything.”   (William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell)

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“Luke:  I can’t believe it.

Yoda:  That is why you fail.”  (Star Wars)

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”People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are.  I don’t believe in circumstances.  The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can’t find them, make them.”  (George Bernard Shaw)

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“The good news is that the moment you decide that what you know is more important than what you have been taught to believe, you will have shifted gears in your quest for abundance.  Success comes from within, not from without.”   (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

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“Whatever I hold in my mind tends to manifest itself in my life.  What we believe and assume creates most of our reality and our experience.”   (David Emerald, ‘Quotes from The Power of TED’)

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“Confidence is a resolute state of mind by which you believe nothing is impossible.”   (John Eliot, Ph.D. Overachiement)

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“Be not afraid of life.  Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.”   (William James)

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