Catalyst Quotes

“Stop Becoming Someone; You Are Already a Masterpiece”

“When you die and go to heaven, our maker is not going to ask, ‘Why didn’t you discover the cure for such and such?’  The only question we will be asked in that precious moment is, ‘Why didn’t you become you?’”    (Elie Wiesel)

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“You were not born a winner, and you were not born a loser.  You are what you make yourself to be.”    (Lou Holtz)

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“The deepest secret is that life is not a process of discovery, but a process of creation.  You are not discovering yourself, but creating yourself anew.  Seek therefore, not to find out Who You Are, but seek to determine Who You Want to Be.”    (Neale Donald Walsch)

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“Drop the idea of becoming someone, because you are already a masterpiece.  You cannot be improved.  You have only to come to it, to know it, to realize it.”    (Osho)

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“Everyone has inside him a piece of good news.  The good news is that you don’t yet realize how great you can be!  How much you can love!  What you can accomplish!  And what your potential is!”    (Anne Frank)

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“You’ll seldom experience regret for anything that you’ve done.  It is what you haven’t done that will torment you.  The message, therefore, is clear.  Do it! Develop an appreciation for the present moment.  Seize every second of your life and savor it.  Value your present moments.  Using them up in any self-defeating ways means you’ve lost them forever.”    (Dr. Wayne Dyer)

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“I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life.  The problem is that I can’t find anybody who can tell me what they want.”   (Mark Twain)   

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“Find Out Where You Want to Go”

“Each person comes into this world with a specific destiny — he has something to fulfill, some message has to be delivered, some work has to be completed. You are not here accidentally — you are here meaningfully. There is a purpose behind you.  The whole intends to do something through you.”    (Osho)

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“When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break their bonds: Your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction, and you find yourself in a new, great, and wonderful world.  Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive, and you discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be.”   (Patanjali)

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“People travel to wonder at the height of the mountains, at the huge waves of the seas, at the long course of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, a the circular motion of the stars, and yet they pass by themselves without wondering.”    (Saint Augustine)

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“There is no greater burden than having great potential.”   (Linus from ‘Peanuts’)

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“Do not wish to be anything but what you are,

And try to be that perfectly.”    (Saint Francis de Sales)

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“You’re going to have to find out where you want to go.  And then you’ve got to start going there.  But immediately.  You can’t afford to lose a minute.”    (J. D. Salinger)

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“A Life That Sizzles and Pops; Create Something, Anything”

“Why does life give you nothing when you ask for so little?

That’s why.”    (Robert Brault)

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“Remember, most of us got something for nothing the first time just by showing up here at birth.  Now we have to qualify.”     (Robert Fulghum, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten)

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“You don’t want to get to the end of life’s journey and discover you never left the interstate.”   (Robert Brault)

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“It is not the end of the physical body that should worry us.  Rather, our concern must be to live while we’re alive – to release our inner selves from the spiritual death that comes with living behind a façade designed to conform to external definitions of who and what we are.”  (Elisabeth Kubler-Ross)

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“To all the secret writers, late-night painters, would-be singers, lapsed and scared artists of every stripe, dig out your paintbrush, or your flute, or your dancing shoes.  Pull out your camera or your computer or your pottery wheel. Today, tonight, after the kids are in bed or when your homework is done, or instead of one more video game or magazine, create something, anything.

Pick up a needle and thread, and stitch together something particular and honest and beautiful, because we need it.  I need it.

Thank you, and keep going.”  (Shauna Niequist, Cold Tangerines:  Celebrating the Extraordinary Nature of Everyday Life)

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“I want a life that sizzles and pops and makes me laugh out loud.  And I don’t want to get to the end, or to tomorrow, even, and realize that my life is a collection of meetings and pop cans and errands and receipts and dirty dishes. I want to eat cold tangerines and sing out loud in the car with the windows open and wear pink shoes and stay up all night laughing and paint my walls the exact color of the sky right now.  I want to sleep hard on clean white sheets and throw parties and eat ripe tomatoes and read books so good they make me jump up and down, and I want my everyday to make God belly laugh, glad that he gave life to someone who loves the gift.”  (Shauna Niequist, Cold Tangerines:  Celebrating the Extraordinary Nature of Everyday Life)

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“Dreams – An Index to Your Greatness”

“Be a yardstick of quality.  Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.”   (Steve Jobs)

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“Initiating comes from imagination.  An atmosphere where people initiate can only come from a place where dreaming is encouraged.

Leaders imagine a world that they would like to be a part of, a world worth fighting for.  With this vision and all the emotion that gets stirred up in the heart, the leader begins to initiate. They see the issue or challenge that not everyone else sees and lead people to do something about it that was not done before.  Passion sparks initiative, a tremendous focus, belief, desire, and drive.”   (Seth Godin)

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“Wisdom cannot be imparted.  Wisdom that a wise man attempts to impart always sounds like foolishness to someone else …  Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom.  One can find it, live it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.”     (Siddhartha, Herman Hesse)

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“Fear.  We become afraid of rejection, looking foolish, losing face and being vulnerable and hurt by others.  As a result of these fears, we become passive.  We settle for less than we really want and we sit in judgment of others who are getting what we want.

The main overriding fear that stops us from asking for what we want is the fear of rejection.”    (The Aladdin Factor, Jack Canfield and Mark V. Hansen)

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“If you can tell me who your heroes are, I can tell you how you’re going to turn out in life.” (Warren Buffet)

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“A man’s dreams are an index to his greatness.”   (Zadok Rabinwitz)

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“Accomplish the Impossible Once a Day.”

“Life is not like a box of chocolates.  It’s more like a jar of jalapenos.  What you do today might burn your ass tomorrow.”   (Author Unknown)

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 “The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature.”    (Joseph Campbell)

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 “Clear your mind of can’t.”    (Samuel Johnson)

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 “What a snapshot is to your life, your life is to eternity, so wouldn’t it be nice if eternity captured you smiling?”   (Robert Brault)

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“Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterward.”    (Vernon Law)

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“No one ever gets far unless he accomplishes the impossible at least once a day.”   (Elbert Hubbard)

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“Cosmic Understanding, Questions, Jigsaw Puzzle and a Smile”

“After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color, bountiful with life.  Within decades we must close our eyes again.  Isn’t it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it?  This is how I answer when I am asked — as I am surprisingly often — why I bother to get up in the mornings.”    (Richard Dawkins)   

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“I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I’m not absolutely sure of anything, and many things I don’t know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we’re here, and what the question might mean.  I might think about it a little bit, but if I can’t figure it out, then I go on to something else.  But I don’t have to know an answer….  I don’t feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in the mysterious universe without having any purpose, which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell, possibly.  It doesn’t frighten me.”    (Richard Phillips Feynman)

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“My quest for cosmic understanding is a book I have picked up and put down many times, always forgetting to insert a bookmark.”    (Robert Brault)

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“There are no extra pieces in the universe.  Everyone is here because he or she has a place to fill and every piece must fit itself into the big jigsaw puzzle.”    (Deepak Chopra)  

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“My friend asked me the essence of life and I smiled.”    (Mike Dolan)

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“The Whole Universe Surrenders”

“It’s just an accident that we happen to be on earth, enjoying our silly little moments, distracting ourselves as often as possible so we don’t have to really face up to the fact that, you know, we’re just temporary people with a very short time in a universe that will eventually be completely gone.  And everything that you value, whether it’s Shakespeare, Beethoven, da Vinci, or whatever, will be gone.  The earth will be gone.  The sun will be gone.  There’ll be nothing.  The best you can do to get through life is distraction.  Love works as a distraction.  And work works as a distraction.  You can distract yourself a billion different ways.  But the key is to distract yourself.”    (Woody Allen, Esquire Magazine, 2013)

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“You block your dream when you allow your fear to grow bigger than your faith.”    (Mary Manin Morrissey)

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“Bad things are always going to happen in life.  People will hurt you.  But you can’t use that as an excuse to fail or to hurt someone back.  You’ll only hurt yourself.”    (Unknown Author)

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“The bad news is, people are crueler, meaner and more evil than you’ve imagined.  The good news is, people are kinder, gentler and more loving than you’ve ever dreamed.”    (I Wrote This For You)

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“If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense.  Nothing would be what it is because everything would be what it isn’t.  And contrary-wise; what it is it wouldn’t be, and what it wouldn’t be, it would.  You see?”    (Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll)

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“If a guy like you can stand up and do what you did for all those people, well, maybe everyone can.  Maybe everyone can live beyond what they’re capable of.”    (I Am the Messenger, Markus Zusak)

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“To the mind that is still, the whole Universe surrenders.”    (Lao Tzu)

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“No More ‘Supposed Tos,’ OK?”

“Sometimes the truth isn’t good enough, sometimes people deserve more.  Sometimes people deserve to have their faith rewarded.”    (The Dark Knight movie)

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“Passion is passion.  It’s the excitement between the tedious spaces, and it doesn’t matter where it’s directed … It can be coins or sports or politics or horses or music or faith … the saddest people I’ve ever met in life are the ones who don’t care deeply about anything at all.”    (Nicholas Sparks, Dear John)

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“To hold our tongues when everyone is gossiping, to smile without hostility at people and institutions, to compensate for the shortage of love in the world with more love in small, private matters; to be more faithful in our work, to show greater patience, to forgo the cheap revenge obtainable from mockery and criticism:  all these are things we can do.”    (Hermann Hesse)

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“I used to think I knew everything.  I was a ‘smart person’ who ‘got things done,’ and because of that, the higher I climbed, the more I could look down and scoff at what seemed silly or simple, even religion.

But I realized something as I drove home that night:  that I am neither better nor smarter, only luckier.  And I should be ashamed of thinking I knew everything, because you can know the whole world and still feel lost in it.  So many people are in pain – no matter how smart or accomplished – they cry, they yearn, they hurt.  But instead of looking down on things, they look up, which is where I should have been looking, too.  Because when the world quiets to the sound of your own breathing, we all want the same things:  comfort, love, and a peaceful heart.”    (Mitch Albom, Have a Little Faith: a True Story)

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“Don’t lose your focus, anticipate your future, activate your faith then pursue your dreams.”    (Doctor Tawandia Smith-Daniel)

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“No more ‘supposed tos,’ OK?

You’re not supposed to work harder, look better, sleep less, sell more, run faster, talk slower, be happier, stay longer, leave earlier, cook, clean, negotiate, settle, start, stop, move, try, win, shake, rattle or roll.

Other people made all that up.

I love you the way you are.

  (signed) The Universe”    (Mike Dooley, Notes from the Universe, 8.6.13)                                         

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‘I Was Put on This Earth to Accomplish Certain Things’

“Every single morning I wake with a bang,’ he said.  ‘It’s as though the fact that I am alive is injected into me; I am a character in a fairytale, bursting with life.”    (Jostein Gaarder, The Solitaire Mystery)

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“He awoke each morning with the desire to do right, to be a good and meaningful person, to be, as simple as it sounded and as impossible as it actually was, happy.”    (Jonathan Safran Foer)

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“Let us rise up and be thankful, for if we didn’t learn a lot today, at least we learned a little, and if we didn’t learn a little, at least we didn’t get sick, and if we got sick, at least we didn’t die; so let us all be thankful.”    (Buddha)

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“One must not allow the clock and the calendar to blind him to the fact that each moment of life is a miracle and mystery.”     (Robin S. Sharma, The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari)

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“Remember that sometimes not getting what you want is a wonderful stroke of luck.”    (Dalai Lama XIV)

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“God put me on this earth to accomplish a certain number of things.  Right now I am so far behind that I will never die.”    (Bill Watterson)

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