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Around 4 dozen quotes of encouragement on peace, fairness, time management, action, deeper meaning, perception, reality, conflict resolution, personal growth and learning.

I am only one.
But still I am one.

I cannot do everything.
But still, I can do something.

And because I cannot do everything,
I will not refuse to do the something
that I can do.

-- Edward Everett Hale

  Go In Peace Constantly

 

1

"Peace is not the absence of war. It is the presence of justice and the absence of fear."
--Dr. Ursula Franklin, metallurgist and Toronto-based peace advocate 

 

2

"Don't confuse your comfort with your safety", and the corollary, don't confuse your discomfort with danger.
-- from the How to Build a Global Community Poster of the Syracuse Cultural Workers

 

3

"There is no road to peace. Peace is the road."
-- M.K. Gandhi among others

 

3

"The softest thing in the world can overcome the hardest. A sword that can cut through sinew and bone...has little effect on a silk scarf wafted on the wind."
--Lao Wei  ( but where, when and which "old wei" or   "foreigner", I`m not sure)

 

4

"An eye for an eye leaves everybody blind."
-- Martin Luther King Jr. [I prefer to not (knowingly) add to internet redunancies by also putting up common ones but that one was so key there is also one about falling in water and drowning or not byEdwin Louis Cole ... google it out]

 

5

Build bridges, don't burn them.
-- cultural quote?

 

6

"Making heroes and devils does everyone a disservice. Both are within each person."
-- we all bleed red (and those lives that don't can suffer just the same)

 

7

"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete."
--R. Buckminster Fuller, Critical Path

 

8

"Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen."
-- Speaker uncited, from 10 years of classic quotes 1986-1995, Classic Mouldings Publisher compiled by Hamilton, Hamilton and Hamilton

 

9

If something we said can be interpreted two ways, and one of the ways makes you sad or angry, we meant the other one.

(from what the guys want to tell womenfolk joke but applies broadly http://appletothecore.com/misc/humor.html )

10
If the world should blow itself up, the last audible voice would be that of an expert saying it can't be done. Peter Ustinov (1921 - )
11 
The faster you fail the sooner you succeed
-- Motto of the innovation company, Ideo

 

 

_________________________

Fair's Fair

Superior isn't better and equal isn't the same

 

1

Don't do unto others as you would have them to do unto you; their tastes may be different."
- G. B. Shaw, Irish writer

 

2

"As far as posssible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons; speak your truth quietly and clearly...If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself..."
-- excerpts from the poem Desiderata by Max Ehrmann

 

3

"The grass is not, in fact, greener on the other side of the fence...The grass is greenest where it is watered. When crossing over fences, carry water with you and tend the grass wherever you may be."
-- Robert Fulghum, minister and humor writor, in It was On Fire When I Lay Down on It, Ivy Books, 1989

 

 

Warning: One man's chaff is another man's bran and another's mulch. So if you're not feeling up to mulch today, come back when it pleases you because life is to short to dwell on poor timing or on tools that don't work for the situation at hand. - Pearl

_________________________

Writing

1

"The writer does the most, who gives his readers the most knowledge, and takes from him the least time."
-- C.C. Coulton (1800's) although I'd amend to say "insight"   instead of "knowledge"

 

2

"Writing a book of poetry is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo."
-- Don Marquis (1878-1937), U.S. humorist, journalist in 1962

 

3

"The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think."
-- Edwin Schlossberg

 

4

Teaching is what happens outside the head; learning is what happens inside the head.
--Ruby Payne, educator on formal registers and poverty cycles

 

5

"A man only begins to grasp the meaning of life when he plants a tree under whose shade he knows he will never sit."
-- a sign posted by the Society of Ontario Nut Growers

_________________________

Problems

1

"What  people need is not freedom from suffering, but something to suffer for."
-- Washington writer Colman McCarthy, paraphrasing Frankl

 

2

A problem ignored is a crisis invented.
-- Dear Abby says it's attributed to Henry Kissinger

 

3

Everything that is important is not urgent. Prioritize the important.
--from a Lifepath seminar along with the pithy memorable bit that could be as overapplied as a geisha face at a avon party: Failing to plan is planning to fail; Don`t fail yourself. Also remember,  "life is what happens while you are busy making other plans", John Lennon. 

 

__________________________

Live Life

1

"The plural of anecdote is not data. They say is not a reliable source."
-- sig lines

 

2

"Open your eyes! The world is still intact!"
-- Paul Claudel, 1800's poet in France

 

3

"Hay que sedimentarlo."
--Spanish proverb meaning, "In understanding and wine, clarity takes time."

 

4

"Late spring: paling rose, bitter rhubarb."
-- Sodo 1641-1716, in translation by Stryk.

 

5

This moment is your present; live in that box.
--Pearl Pirie.

 

6

"Too many people mistake gravity for maturity."
-- Mike Cooke, Ottawa teacher and human extraordinaire

 

7

"Maturity is: The ability to stick with a job until it's finished; the ability to do a job without being supervised; the ability to carry money without spending it and the ability to bear an injustice without wanting to get even."
--Reprint of Dear Abby (Abigail Phillips) from 1963

 

8

"Something good will happen."
-- fridge magnet

_________________________

This Ain't No Dress Rehearsal!

1

"Everything changes, everything is connected; pay attention."
-- Buddhism in 7 words from Jane Hirshfield

2

Be kinder than you need to be.

3

"He who waits for roast duck to fly into his mouth must wait a very long time."
-- Chinese proverb from fortune cookie

 

4

All things are difficult before they are easy.

 

5

Don't say no, can't, will try, would like to and shouldn't: "Say yes to life."
-- from Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway by Jeffers. ISBN 0-449-90292-7  

6

Try something once to get over the fear. Try something again to learn how and try it again to see if you like it or not

7

Embrace the unexpected! It keeps life interesting.

8

Live every day you are alive.

9

Sometimes you just gotta laugh.  

_________________________

 

Happiness

1

"Happiness is a by-product which sneaks up on you unsought when you are busy at something else."
-- Betty Jane Wylie (1931-) Manitoba playwright, poet and journalist

 

2

Feet straight, ribcage up, shoulders down and back, chin level, cardio up for 8 minutes and eat your prunes!
-- Anonymous  (Ok, so it was actually Nancy a.k.a. Shakira   for the first part and me in the second bit)
 

3

Live in this hour as you want the pattern to be in ten year's time.
-- Or as MK Gandhi, great soul of peace said:  Be the change you wish to seek. It starts with you now. "You must be the change you wish to see in the world."

Another of my musings: Worry and relaxation are practiced skills, not inalienable, inalterable birthrights. They are rehearsed and reinforced, products of decisions and brain chemistry. They flow from action and inaction: social, dietary, medical and physical. Why stick  to worries when you can exercise your peace-muscles, flexibility and resiliency to greater long term effect? Practice faith and scanning for options. Be observant to see equally all that could be. When you worry either act or let it go--  Not pithy or memorable but hey it's mine and my quote page, my rules.

_________________________

Eye of the Beholder

 

1

"Maybe life isn't one big pachinko game; endless variation in a set pattern where the house always wins. Maybe there is no pattern. Maybe there is no pattern except those we project onto our lives, like constellations on a field of stars."
--Will Ferguson, Canadian humorist on p.418, Hokkaido Highway Blues; Hitchhiking Japan, Soho Press 1998

 

2

"Do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness...Beyond a wholesome discipline be good to yourself. It still is a beautiful world."
-- excerpts from the poem Desiderata by Max Ehrmann.

 

 

3

Whether you believe you can or you can't, you're right"
- Henry Ford who made the first modern large scale mechanized assembly line

 

 

4

No life is so hard that you can't make it easier by the way you take it."
-- Ellen Glasgow, turn of the century American novelist   (1874-1945)

5

"Rosiness is not a worse [nor easier] window pane than gloomy grey when viewing the world."
-- Grace Paley, anti-nuclear activist, peace activist, poet and short-story writer with biting wit

6

"If there's one thing Canadians hate, it's people who think they're clever."
-- Russell Smith, Globe and Mail, Oc 16, 03  (Modesty and humbleness ROCK!) ;-)

7

Social groupings bigger than family or clan are made of myth. Although they (race, nationality, ethnicity, tribe) look permanant they are as temporary as water running down the glass.
-- Athabasca University course on Human Nature, lesson on tribalism as demonstrated thru the filter of South African history (The jist is that the movement towards tribalism is characteristically human but should be resisted in a long-view as ultimately destructive deception, a tool for power and against individual identity, free thoughts, basic human rights and safe just democracy)

8

"You don't see the world as it is but as you are."
-- Goethe, (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the frantically emotive writer of 1749-1832, nonetheless bear it in mind, along with the fact that you are transitory, not a fixed given. The idea of self you shackle yourself to is a trap but you are trapped only in so far as you believe you are. You limits are separate, different and farther than what you suppose. Feelings are a cartoon version of reality. So what do you wanna watch? )

 

My musing... There is an almost infinite amount of both positive and negative to elect to pay attention to.  Don't give into the habit of deferring the the lowest mood of any room, whether with a group or alone.  Hope and discouragement are both parts of the human equation. There must be enough on the hopeful side or else the body and society self-destructs. Self-management requires policing your perceptions, occasionally shutting off the "truth" of negative data  and feeding the soul what it needs to be healthy. It is not fakery, shallowness or insensitivity to be cheerful. Nor is it morally corrupt to have a dark view. Eliminating the sin and virtue significance of things relieves the soul of undue torsion. How do other primates process all of this understanding? viserally? Do they carry the same unseen emotional baggage and that is what  leads to troupe wars? Pearl

 

_________________________

 

Learning from Mistakes

1

"There are 3 kinds of men: The one who learns by reading, the few who learn by observation and the rest of them have to wee-wee on the electric fence for themselves!"
-- from Tony Cote's consumer's aid column Action Line, June 23, 2000, p. F7, Ottawa Citizen. from Will Rogers from early 1900s

 

2

If you don't change directions, you're going to end up where you're heading.
--Turkish proverb (?)

 

3

Can I go play now?
-- mind and legs- don't shush them. You're only young once - i.e. while you are still alive.

___________________________

 

Ultimately, in the words of the eminent, most imitable Winnie the Pooh, "The more it snows, tiddly pum, the more it goes, tiddly pum, on snowing, the colder my nose, tiddly pum, the colder my toes, tiddly pum, are growing..."

 

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Favorite Quotes of Pearl Pirie