In my day, we didn't have self-esteem; we had self-respect, and no more of it than we had earned. —Jane Haddam More about this quote Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
Are you not ashamed of heaping up the greatest amount of money and honor and reputation, and caring so little about wisdom and truth and the greatest improvement of the soul? —Socrates More about this quote Tags: truth wisdom soul money reputation honor Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
Every time I've done something that doesn't feel right, it's ended up not being right. —Mario Cuomo More about this quote Tags: feeling right intuition Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
Not being able to govern events, I govern myself. —Michel de Montaigne More about this quote Tags: self events control Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
I have a friend who has devoted most of his adult life to resisting the madness of war through actions of justice and peace. He . . . lives in poverty so as to stay below the taxation level. . . . The money he "should" have given the government over the years he has donated to peace-and-justice projects. Does he have any results to show for his efforts? Has he been effective? Hardly — at least, not by the normal calculus. His years of commitment to peacemaking have been years of steady increase in wars and rumors of wars. So how does he stay healthy and sane? How does he maintain a commitment to this sort of active life? "I have never asked myself if I was being effective," he says, "but only if I was being faithful." He judges his action not by the results it gets, but by its fidelity to his own calling and identity. —Parker J. Palmer More about this quote Tags: justice war peace identity poverty government faith calling Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
A man who looks for security, even in the mind, is like a man who would chop off his limbs in order to have artificial ones which will give him no pain or trouble. —Henry Miller More about this quote Tags: trouble pain security Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
It's a shallow life that doesn't give a person a few scars. —Garrison Keillor More about this quote Tags: life memory scars Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
Avoid safety. The very word has a mean sound. —Constance Wagner More about this quote Tags: words safety sound Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, and so on — have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear — what remains? Nature remains. —William Wadsworth More about this quote Tags: politics nature business Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
They paved paradise and put up a parking lot. —Joni Mitchell More about this quote Tags: paradise Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
Moses sees the bush as it actually is. . . . All that is living burns. This is the fundamental fact of nature. And Moses saw it with his own two eyes directly. That glimpse of the real world — of the world as it is known to God — is not a world of isolated things but of processes in concert. God tells Moses, "Take off your shoes, because the ground where you are standing is holy ground." He is asking Moses to experience in his own body what the burning bush experiences: a living connection between heaven and earth, the life that stretches out like taffy between our father the sun and our mother the earth. If you do not believe this, take off your shoes and stand in the grass or in the sand or in the dirt. —William Bryant Logan More about this quote Tags: God experience nature earth heaven Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
If the Garden of Eden really exists it does so moment by moment, fragmented and tough, cropping up like a fan of buddleia high up in the gutter of a deserted warehouse, or a heap of frozen cabbages becoming luminous in the reflected light of roadside snow. —Helen Dumore More about this quote Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
The heron, unseen for weeks, came flying wide-winged toward me, settled just offshore on his post, took up his vigil. If you ask why this cleared a fog from my spirit, I have no answer. —Denise Levertov More about this quote Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
Nature is not a place to visit. It is home. —Gary Snyder More about this quote Tags: nature home Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
I woke up in the middle of the night and climbed out of the tent to make coffee. There was no sound save the wind and, in all that space, not one light, just a scant new moon that hung in the sky like a fine silk thread. The twentieth century had vanished. I raised my cup in a toast. —Richard West More about this quote Tags: moon sound sky Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email