Catalyst Quotes

“When I Do Good, I Feel Good”

“I’d always believed that a life of quality, enjoyment, and wisdom were my human birthright and would be automatically bestowed upon me as time passed. I never suspected that I would have to learn how to live – that there were specific disciplines and ways of seeing the world I had to master before I could awaken to a simple, happy, uncomplicated life.”   (Dan Millman) 

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“There are times in our lives when, momentarily, we are illumined.  We see that everything follows a pattern and that pattern fits together beautifully.

We don’t always feel this way of course.  We all occasionally have ‘one of those days,’ but we also have days, moments and hours in which we see that all the right things have happened, that our lives have unfolded just as they should, that we have been given just what we needed.

This kind of seeing is recognizing the pattern, and this recognition is knowing that, at the center everything is connected, is tied together by love.”    (365 Days of Love, Daphne Rose Kingma, Conari Press)

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“Life moves on, whether we act as cowards or heroes.  Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly.  Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate or despise, serves to defeat us in the end.  What seems nasty, painful, evil can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind.  Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.”   (Henry Miller)

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“For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself:  ‘If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?’  And whenever the answer has been ‘No’ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.”  (Steve Jobs)

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“You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I have lived through this horror.  I can take the next thing that comes along.’  You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”  (Eleanor Roosevelt)

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“When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad, and that is my religion.”   (Abraham Lincoln)

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Moving Through Life in a Positive Way With Cookies and Milk”

“I have a friend who, no matter when you ask him what he is doing, will say:  “I’m generally moving through life in a positive way.”

To generally move through life in a positive way is to live in a state of grace, of love, expecting that life will bring you remarkable surprises, and knowing that your effect on life will as gracious as its effect on you.

To move through life in a generally positive way is not only an attitude or an expectation; it is a prayer of thanksgiving to the universe for the pleasure of being alive.”    (365 Days of Love, Daphne Rose Kingma, Conari Press)

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“Think what a better world it would be if we all-the whole world-had cookies and milk about three o’clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap.  Or if all governments had as a basic policy to always put things back where they found them and to clean up their own mess.

And it is still true, no matter how old you are-when you go out into the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.”   (Robert Fulghum, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten)

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“Trust the one who can see these 3 things in you:

• Sorrow behind your smile,
• Love behind your anger, &
• Meaning behind your silence.”   (Kamari, aka Lyrikal)

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“Don’t rely on someone else for your happiness and self-worth.  Only you can be responsible for that.  If you can’t love and respect yourself – no one else will be able to make that happen.  Accept who you are – completely; the good and the bad – and make changes as YOU see fit – not because you think someone else wants you to be different.”   (Stacey Charter)

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“A best friend is someone who never disturbs your solitude but won’t let your loneliness have a moment alone.”  (Robert Brault)

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“In the end, no thought is unthinkable, no problem unshrinkable, no two strangers unlinkable.”   (Robert Brault)

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“Keep the Main Thing the Main Thing; No ‘Excuse Bag'”

“A few strong instincts and a few plain rules suffice us.”   (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

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“The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.”   (Stephen R. Covey)

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“Every day, think as you wake up, ‘today I am fortunate to have woken up, I am alive, I have a precious human life, I am not going to waste it.  I am going to use all my energies to develop myself, to expand my heart out to others, to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all beings, I am going to have kind thoughts towards others, I am not going to get angry or think badly about others, I am going to benefit others as much as I can.’”   (Dalai Lama)

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“Ancient Egyptians believed that upon death they would be asked two questions and their answers would determine whether they could continue their journey in the afterlife.  The first question was, ‘Did you bring joy?’ The second was, ‘Did you find joy?’”   (Leo Buscaglia)

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“Throw away your “excuse bag.”   (J. Meyer)

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“Perhaps the Ten Commandments would be more widely observed if Moses had brought them down on refrigerator magnets.”   (Robert Brault)

“This Is to Be My Symphony”

“Most of the shadows in life are caused by standing in one’s own sunshine.”   (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

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“One of the things I learned in my maddest years was that one could be in a room, with walls and barred windows and locks on the doors, surrounded by other crazy people, or even stuffed into an isolation cell all alone, but that really wasn’t the room one was in at all.  The real room that one occupied was constructed by memory, by relationships, by events, by all sorts of unseen forces.  Sometimes delusions.  Sometimes hallucinations.  Sometimes desires. Sometimes dreams and hopes, or ambitions.  Sometimes anger.  That was what was important:  to always recognize where the real walls were.”     (John Katzenbach, The Madman’s Tale)

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“I have not failed. I’ve just found ten thousand ways that won’t work.”   (Thomas Edison)

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“Act the way you’d like to be, and soon you will be the way you act.”   (George W. Crane)

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“To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury; and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable; and wealthy, not rich; to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly; to listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open heart; to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasion, hurry never; in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious grow up through the common.  This is to be my symphony.”   (Ellery Channing)

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“Life – Breathe, Soul Oxygen & Replay”

“There are really only two types of people:

Those you now love.

And, those you will love.

Until, there’s only one type of person … and then we’ll probably hit, “Replay.”

That’s what life’s for.”

(Mike Dooley, Notes from the Universe, July 9, 2013)    

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“Abraham Maslow, the Great-Granddaddy in my spiritual family tree and 20th-century humanistic psychologist who studied the greatest people of his generation (including rock stars like Eleanor Roosevelt, Einstein and Frederick Douglass) tells us that what one ‘can’ be, one MUST be.

As we ascend his hierarchy of needs, taking care of the basics like food/shelter/safety and moving up through love and self-esteem we reach a place where we literally have a need to fully express ourselves — to, in Maslow’s words ‘self-actualize.’

Of course, it will take different forms for different peeps.  But whether it’s a calling to be an exceptional parent or artist or entrepreneur, Maslow tells us that this impulse isn’t a sure-would-be-nice-to-have-fulfilled kinda thing but a fundamental NEED — kinda like that need we have for oxygen.

Powerful stuff.

So, the next time you’re feeling funky, check in and see if you’re really living fully or if you’re only kinda – sorta showing up.

That funkiness is your soul gasping for the oxygen of you truly rockin’ it.

P.S.  Maslow sternly advises us:  ‘If you deliberately plan on being less than you are capable of being, then I warn you that you’ll be unhappy for the rest of your life’”   Eek.

All good though.  He also reminds us:  ‘It seems that the necessary thing to do is not to fear mistakes, to plunge in, to do the best that one can, hoping to learn enough from blunders to correct them eventually.’

P.P.S.  So, plunge in!”    (Brian Johnson, Chief Philosopher, “A Philosopher’s Notes”)

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“No matter where you go, there you are.”   (Yogi Berra)

“Be Kind, Tell the Truth and When You Die, Your Body Breaks Up Into …”

“Be kind to everyone.  You may not be able to save a person, but at least you weren’t one of the people who didn’t try.”   (Chloe Higashida)

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“Sometimes, you have to lie.  But to yourself, you must tell the truth.”   (Louise Fitzhugh, Harriet the Spy)

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“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:  How Life Shows Us What We Need to Know)

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“… an eight-year-old boy who described what happens when you die: ‘Your body breaks up into thousands of pieces and goes into all the people whose lives you have touched. That way you live in them always.’”    (Mark Albion, ‘Making a Life Making a Living: Reclaiming your Purpose and Passion in Business and in Life’)

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“I’ve come to believe that all my past failures and frustrations were actually laying the foundation for the understandings that have created the new level of living in me and now I enjoy every bit of my life and hope best for rest.    (Atul Purohit, Love Vs Destiny)

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“A Statement As to Our Purpose”

“I exist, I am, I am here, I am becoming, I make my own life and no one else makes it for me.  I must face my own shortcomings, mistakes, transgressions. No one can suffer my non-being as I do, but tomorrow is another day, and I must decide to leave my bed and live again.  And if I fail, I don’t have the comfort of blaming you or life or God. ”   (Leo Buscaglia, Living Loving and Learning)

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“The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are.  You trade in your reality for a role.  You trade in your sense for an act.  You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask.  There can’t be any large-scale revolution until there’s a personal revolution, on an individual level.  It’s got to happen inside first.”    (Jim Morrison)

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“For attractive lips, speak words of kindness.

For lovely eyes, seek out the good in people.

For a slim figure, share your food with the hungry.

For beautiful hair, let a child run their fingers through it once a day.

For poise, walk with the knowledge that you never walk alone.

People, more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed.  Remember, if you ever need a helping hand, you will find one at the end of each of your arms.

As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands, one for helping yourself and the other for helping others.”    (Sam Levenson)

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“The whole system that we live in drills into us that we’re powerless, that we’re weak, that our society is evil, that it’s fragmented.

It’s all a big fat lie.

We are powerful, beautiful, extraordinary.

There is no reason why we cannot understand who we truly are, where we are going.

There is no reason why the average individual cannot be fully empowered.

We are incredibly powerful beings.”   (Zeitgeist, ‘spirit of the time’)

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“Each of our acts makes a statement as to our purpose.”   (Leo Buscaglia)

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“So, Who’s Writing Your Story?”

“Extend to each person, no matter how trivial the contact, all the care and kindness and understanding and love that you can muster, and do it with no thought of any reward.  Your life will never be the same again.”   (Og Mandino)

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“Don’t be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others.  Unfold your own myth.”  (Rumi)

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“Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.”  (Desmond Tutu)

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“Be wise in the use of time.  The question in life is not ‘how much time do we have?’  The question is ‘what shall we do with it?’”   (Anna Robertson Brown)

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“Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.”   (Ronald E. Osborn)

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“Did you know the word ‘author’ comes from the same root as the word ‘authentic’?  Yeppers.  To be authentic is to be the author of our own lives. 

So, uh, who’s writing your story?”   (Brian Johnson, Chief Philosopher, “A Philosopher’s Notes”)

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“In the book of life, the answers aren’t in the back.”   (Charlie Brown)

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“Three Things in Human Life Are Important”

“This is my simple religion.  There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy.  Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.”   (Dalai Lama)

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“Guard well within yourself that treasure, kindness.  Know how to give without hesitation, how to lose without regret, how to acquire without meanness.”    (George Sand)

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“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”   (Plato)

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“Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can.”   (John Wesley)

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“Hello babies.  Welcome to Earth.  It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter.  It’s round and wet and crowded.  On the outside, babies, you’ve got a hundred years here.  There’s only one rule that I know of, babies – ‘_ _ _damn it, you’ve got to be kind.’”   (Kurt Vonnegut)

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“Three things in human life are important:  the first is to be kind.  The second is to be kind.  The third is to be kind.”   (Henry James)