Catalyst Quotes

“You Are Responsible for Your Actions”

“There’s always pressure, from other people and yourself.  We keep thinking up new things and finding better ways of doing things because we’re not happy with what we’re given.”  (Natalie Portman)

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“You are responsible for your actions.  Whether you shine or not is entirely up to you.  No one else.”   (I Wrote This for You)

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“In each of us lie good and bad, light and dark, art and pain, choice and regret, cruelty and sacrifice.  We’re each of us our own chiaroscuro, our own bit of illusion fighting to emerge into something solid, something real.  We’ve got to forgive ourselves that.  I must remember to forgive myself.  Because there is a lot of grey to work with.  No one can live in the light all the time.”   (Libba Bray)

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“You could be right.  You could be wrong.  Remember this.  Especially the second part.  Being wrong allows you to take responsibility for your actions.  It allows you to change.  Constantly needing to be right doesn’t.”   (I Wrote This for You)

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“I found out that the things that hurt us the most can become the fuel and the catalyst that propel us toward our destiny.  It will either make you bitter or it will make you better.”   (T. D. Jakes)

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“Lily:  ‘I can never go backwards.  I can only go forward.’

Robin:  ‘No, you’re wrong.  You can go anywhere.  The question is where do you want to go?”   (How I Met Your Mother)

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“Live As If This Is All There Is / Thank You”

“Live with intention.

Walk to the edge.

Listen Hard.

Practice wellness.

Play with abandon.

Laugh.

Choose with no regret.

Appreciate your friends.

Continue to learn.

Do what you love.

Live as if this is all there is.”   (Mary Anne Radmacher)

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“Two of the most powerful words in the English language for bringing about change, are “thank you.”  Especially when offered before the change even occurs and everything still looks pretty much like it did yesterday.

You’ll have to think of something to say afterwards on your own.

Thank you.”   (Mike Dooley, ‘Notes from the Universe’)

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“Do you really want to be happy?  You can begin by being appreciative of who you are and what you’ve got.”   (Benjamin Hoff, The Tao of Pooh)

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“The two hardest tests on the spiritual road are the patience to wait for the right moment and the courage not to be disappointed with what we encounter.”   (Paulo Coelho, Veronika Decides to Die)

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“Certainly, none of us enjoy going through struggles, but you have to understand that your struggle may be an opportunity for advancement and promotion.  The very thing you are fighting against so tenaciously may be the springboard that catapults you to a new level of excellence.  Your challenges may become your greatest assets.”   (Joel Osteen, Your Best Life Now:  7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential)

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“There’s no way I could pay you back but my plan is to show you that I understand you are appreciated.”   (Tupac Shakur)

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“Be Very Still and Open Your Mind”

“A learning experience is one of those things that say, ‘You know that thing you just did?  Don’t do that.’”   (Douglas Adams)

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“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”   (Albert Einstein)

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“Maybe the thing to do after you roll the dice – and lose – is simply pick them up and roll again.”   (Something Borrowed)

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“This is about all the bad days in the world.  I used to have some little bad days and I kept them in a little box.  And one day, I threw them out into the yard.  ‘Oh, it’s just a couple little innocent bad days.’  Well, we had a big rain.  I don’t know what it was growing in, but I think we used to put eggshells out there and coffee grounds, too.  Don’t plant your bad days.  They grow into weeks.  The weeks grow into months.  Before you know it you got yourself a bad year.  Take it from me.  Choke those little bad days.  Choke ‘em down to nothing’.  They’re your days.  Choke ‘em!”   (Tom Waits)

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“Life is a series of pulls back and forth.  You want to do one thing, but you are bound to do something else.  Something hurts you, yet you know it shouldn’t.  You take certain things for granted, even when you know you should never take anything for granted.  A tension of opposites, like a pull on a rubber band.  And most of us live somewhere in the middle.”  (Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie)

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“Never expect; always give the benefit of doubt; give better than your best; be open to everything; don’t expect the worst but if it happens, embrace it; do your karma by giving but never let the person know; never crush your creativity; don’t live life with blinkers on; and learn at least one new thing every day.”   (Rekha)

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“All your pain comes simply from a futile search for what you want, insisting it must be found outside you.”  …  “Listen in deep silence.  Be very still and open your mind.”   (A Course in Miracles)

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“Life is Simple / Life is Delicious Ambiquity”

“Tanzan and Ekido were once traveling together down a muddy road.  A heavy rain was still falling.

Coming around a bend, they met a lovely girl in a silk kimono and sash, unable to cross the intersection.

‘Come on, girl,’ said Tanzan at once.  Lifting her in his arms, he carried her over the mud.

Ekido did not speak again until that night when they reached a lodging temple.  Then he could no longer restrain himself.  ‘We monks don’t go near females,’ he told Tanzan, ‘especially not young and lovely ones.  It is dangerous.  Why did you do that?”

‘I left the girl there,’ said Tanzan.  ‘Are you still carrying her?’”   (Nyogen Senzaki, Zen Flesh, Zen Bones:  A Collection of Zen and Pre-Zen Writings)

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“Guilt is a wasted emotion.  Look back on the past but don’t stare.”   (Wally Lamb, We Are Water)

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“We can never judge the lives of others, because each person knows only their own pain and renunciation.  It’s one thing to feel that you are on the right path, but it’s another to think that yours is the only path.”   (Paulo Coehlo)

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“Life is this simple: we are living in a world that is absolutely transparent and the divine is shining through it all the time.  This is not just a nice story or a fable, it is true.”   (Thomas Merton)

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“Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next.  Delicious Ambiguity.”   (Gilda Radner)

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“Hardest Battle to Fight – To Be Just You”

“People do not seem to realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.”   (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

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“The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells the Great Spirit, and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us.”   (Black Elk)

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“There is only one purpose for all of life, and that is for you and all that lives to experience fullest glory … everything else you say, think, or do is attendant to that function.  There is nothing else for your soul to do, and nothing else your soul wants to do.”   (Neal Donald Walsch)

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“From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know:  that we are here for the sake of each other – above all for those upon whose smile and well-being our own happiness depends, and also for the countless unknown souls with whose fate we are connected by a bond of sympathy.  Many times a day I realize how much my own outer and inner life is built upon the labors of my fellow men, both living and dead, and how earnestly I must exert myself in order to give in return as much as I have received.”   (Albert Einstein)

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“Don’t get too comfortable with who you are at any given time – you may miss the opportunity to become who you want to be.”   (Jon Bon Jovi)

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“The hardest battle you’re ever going to fight is the battle to be just you.”   (Leo Buscaglia)

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“You Are the Big Bang / One is Not in Bondage to the Past”

“It’s like you took a bottle of ink and you threw it at a wall.  Smash!  And all that ink spread. And in the middle, it’s dense, isn’t it?  And as it gets out on the edge, the little droplets get finer and finer and make more complicated patterns, see? So in the same way, there was a big bang at the beginning of things and it spread.  And you and I, sitting here in this room, as complicated human beings, are way, way out on the fringe of that bang.  We are the complicated little patterns on the end of it.  Very interesting.

But so we define ourselves as being only that.  If you think that you are only inside your skin, you define yourself as one very complicated little curlicue, way out on the edge of that explosion.  Way out in space and way out in time. Billions of years ago, you were a big bang, but now you’re a complicated human being.  And then we cut ourselves off, and don’t feel that we’re still the big bang.  But you are. Depends how you define yourself.  You are actually — if this is the way things started, if there was a big bang in the beginning — you’re not something that’s a result of the big bang.  You’re not something that is a sort of puppet on the end of the process.  You are still the process.

You are the big bang, the original force of the universe, coming on as whoever you are.  When I meet you, I see not just what you define yourself as – Mr. so-and- so, Ms. so-and-so, Mrs. so-and-so – I see every one of you as the primordial energy of the universe coming on at me in this particular way.  I know I’m that, too.  But we’ve learned to define ourselves as separate from it.”   (Alan Wilson Watts)

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“The greatest discovery of our generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.  As you think, so shall you be.”   (William James)

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“Whenever you are to do a thing, though it can never be known but to yourself, ask yourself how you would act were all the world looking at you, and act accordingly.”   (Thomas Jefferson)

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“What we call our destiny is truly our character and that character can be altered.  The knowledge that we are responsible for our actions and attitudes does not need to be discouraging, because it also means that we are free to change this destiny.  One is not in bondage to the past, which has shaped our feelings, to race, inheritance, background.  All this can be altered if we have the courage to examine how it formed us.  We can alter the chemistry provided we have the courage to dissect the elements.”  (Anaïs Nin)

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