"The greater danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it." ~Michelangelo

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"Regard your good name as the richest jewel you can possibly be possessed of - for credit is like fire; when once you have kindled it you may easily preserve it, but if you once extinguish it, you will find it an arduous task to rekindle it again. The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear."

-- Socrates

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“If Galileo had said in verse that the world moved, the inquisition might have let him alone.”  ~ Thomas Hardy

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"I really am an ordinary person with a few abilities which I've tried to use in the best way I can," he said.

~Sir Edmund Hillary

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"It was wrong if there was a man suffering altitude problems and was huddled under a rock, just to lift your hat, say 'good morning' and pass on by," he said. "Human life is far more important than just getting to the top of a mountain." ~Sir Edmund Hillary

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His philosophy of life was simple: "Adventuring can be for the ordinary person with ordinary qualities, such as I regard myself," he said in a 1975 interview after writing his autobiography, "Nothing Venture, Nothing Win."

~Sir Edmund Hillary

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"A wise man pays attention to what is said but listens to what goes unsaid." ~Ryan Steyn

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"Some of my best thoughts emerge into creativity when I take walks downtown in the crowded city that I live in, although I am constantly bombarded with the noise of business and traffic of the daily grind. Someway, somehow I am able to find a separate piece of serenity through all of the hustle and bustle. I get ideas for poems and stories from observing people, places, things and happenings in my immediate environment. I find comfort in knowing that my words, once written may take me to far away places without traveling. All I need is a pencil or pen and paper and the ability to dream. Just write. Just dream."

~Andre L. West

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“If man has good corn, or wood, or boards, or pigs to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles, or church organs, than anybody else, you will find a broad, hard-beaten road to his house, though it be in the woods.

~Ralph Waldo Emerson

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 “The only thing constant in life is change.”
~Francois de la Rochefoucauld

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Keep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the ground.

~Theodore Roosevelt

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“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable.”

~Helen Keller

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Her eyes beginning to water, she went on, "So I would like you all to make me a promise. From now on, on your way to school, or on your way home, find something beautiful to notice. It doesn't have to be something you see it could be a scent - perhaps of freshly baked bread wafting out of someone's house, or it could be the sound of the breeze slightly rustling the leaves in the trees, or the way the morning light catches the autumn leaf as it falls gently to the ground. Please look for these things, and cherish them. For, although it may sound trite to some, these things are the "stuff" of life. The little things we are put here on earth to enjoy. The things we often take for granted. We must make it important to notice them, for at any time...it can all be taken away." The class was completely quiet. We all picked up our books and filed out of the room silently.

That afternoon, I noticed more things on my way home from school than I had that whole semester. Every once in a while, I think of that teacher and remember what an impression she made on all of us, and I try to appreciate all of those things that sometimes we all overlook. Take notice of something special you see on your lunch hour today. Go barefoot. Or walk on the beach at sunset. Stop off on the way home tonight to get a double-dip ice cream cone.
For as we get older, it is not the things we did that we often regret, but the things we didn't do. Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away. 

~Anon. from a story "The Teacher" (A Powerful Lesson)

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“The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics whose horizons are limited by obvious realities. We need men and women who can dream of things that never were..." ~John F. Kennedy

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“The victory of success is half won when one gains the habit of setting goals and achieving them. Even the most tedious chore will become endurable as you parade through each day convinced that every task, no matter how menial or boring, brings you closer to fulfilling your dreams.”

~Og Mandino

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Respect human talent, respond to genius, recognize reality, admire truth and beauty, realize the meaning of the rare flower Reason.

~Peter Nivio Zarlenga

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"Our character...is an omen of our destiny, and the more integrity we have and keep, the simpler and nobler that destiny is likely to be."

~George Santayana

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"Talent is long on patience, and originality, an effort of will and of intense observation."

~Gustave Flaubert

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 “Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered down from generation to generation as presents to the posterity of those who are yet unborn."

~Joseph Addison

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“Put it before them briefly so they will read it, clearly so they will appreciate it, picturesquely so they will remember it, and above all, accurately so they will be guided by its light.”

~Joseph Pulitzer

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 "Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which those who dream only by night may miss."

~Edgar Allan Poe

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"The less we look with our eyes, the more we will see with our hearts." 

~Lyndsey Albrecht

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"Poetry is a mirror, which makes beautiful that which is distorted."

~Percy Shelley

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“Always be a poet, even in prose.”  ~Charles Baudelaire

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"Most of us, swimming against the tides of trouble the world knows nothing about, need only a bit of praise or encouragement, and we will make the goal."
~Jerome Fleishman

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"There will be a time when you believe everything is finished. That will be the beginning."
~Louis L'Amour

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 "To dream, big beautiful dreams, is to realize the dawn of our limitless horizons beaming within the depths of our eternal souls to the heights of our infinite spirit."
~Song Park

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"On the road to life there are many paths... some twist, some turn, some dip, some curve. As long as you keep your focus, your destination is obtainable."
~Brenda Good

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"A classic is classic not because it conforms to certain structural rules, or fits certain definitions (of which its author had quite probably never heard). It is classic because of a certain eternal and irrepressible freshness."

~Edith Wharton US novelist (1862 - 1937)

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"Keep writing. Keep doing it and doing it. Even in the moments when it's so hurtful to think about writing."

~Heather Armstrong

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“Write something to suit yourself and many people will like it; write something to suit everybody and scarcely anyone will care for it.”

~Jesse Stuart

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"When power leads man towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses."

~John F. Kennedy

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"Never forget that the subject is as important as your feeling; the mud puddle itself is as important as your pleasure in looking at it or splashing through it. Never let the mud puddle get lost in the poetry-because, in many ways, the mud puddle is the poetry." 

~Valerie Worth

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 "The most valuable of talents is never using two words when one will do."

~Thomas Jefferson

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"Begin to weave and God will give you the thread."

~German Proverb

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“Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.”

~Aristotle

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“Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen”

~Leonardo Da Vinci

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I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.”

~Leonardo Da Vinci

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“Why does the eye see a thing more clearly in dreams than the imagination when awake? ~Leonardo Da Vinci

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"Poetry surrounds us everywhere, but putting it on paper is, alas, not so easy as looking at it."~Vincent Van Gogh

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“If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.”

~Emily Dickinson

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“If I love something I do it, and if I don't, I don't. I think that this is the most important choice that any of us can make in life, in art, in history; to do the thing you love. If you love it then while you are doing it you are a true expression of yourself and your time and your story. You are authentic." 

~Lina Wertmuller

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"There's one thing your writing must have to be any good at all. It must have you. Your soul, your self, your heart, your guts, your voice -- you must be on that page. In the end, you can't make the magic happen for your reader. You can only allow the miracle of 'being one with' to take place. So dare to be yourself. Dare to reveal yourself. Be honest, be open, be true...If you are, everything else will fall into place." ~Elizabeth Ayres

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"If you’re going to be a writer, the first essential is just to write. Do not wait for an idea. Start writing something and the ideas will come. You have to turn the faucet on before the water starts to flow."

~Louis L’Amour

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 “A creation of importance can only be produced when its author isolates himself, it is a child of solitude.”

~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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"When you let go of your dreams it can take the better part of a lifetime to catch them again. It makes more sense to never let them go in the first place. Even if they eventually pass away, at least they were yours to hold onto all the while. Better is one day with an impossible dream planted firmly in your heart, than a thousand days spent in regret over the one you gave up on." ~Ray Basile

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A writer should say to himself, not, “How can I get more money?” but how can I reach more readers (without lowering standards)?

~Brian Aldiss

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“If by sharing what has felt so freely gifted to me this poem has been helpful in uplifting one human spirit beyond the realm of self and into a sphere of wholeness, I am thankful.”

~Randi Done

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“If the artist does not fling himself, without reflecting, into his work, as Curtis flung himself into the yawning gulf, as the soldier flings himself into the enemy's trenches, and if, once in this crater, he does not work like a miner on whom the walls of his gallery have fallen in; if he contemplates difficulties instead of overcoming them one by one...he is simply looking on at the suicide of his own talent.”

~Honore de Balzac

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"One demands two things of a poem.  Firstly, it must be a well-made verbal object that does honor to the language in which it is written.  Secondly, it must say something significant about a reality common to us all, but perceived from a unique perspective.  What the poet says has never been said before, but, once he has said it, his readers recognize its validity for themselves."

~W. H. Auden

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"Writing from the heart requires vision, and vision is beyond skill. Vision writers write what they want to write. This means they write about things that have moved them deeply. Such writing is not something that you can learn. For vision is a gift. But if you open your heart wide, the gift will be great."  ~Cyn-Young Ahn

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"People on the outside think there's something magical about writing, that you go up in the attic at midnight and cast the bones and come down in the morning with a story, but it isn't like that. You sit in back of the typewriter and you work, and that's all there is to it."

~Harlan Ellison

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"Each man has his own way. After all, most writing is done away from the typewriter, away from the desk. I'd say it occurs in the quiet, silent moments, while you're walking or shaving or playing a game or whatever, or even talking to someone you're not vitally interested in. You're working, your mind is working, on this problem in the back of your head ... What's an artist? He's a man who has antennae, who knows how to hook up to the cosmos; . . . why do ideas, why do great scientific discoveries often occur in different parts of the world at the same time? The same is true of the elements that go to make up a poem or a great novel or any work of art. They are already in the air, they have not been given voice, that's all. They need the man, the interpreter, to bring them forth."

~Henry Miller

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"Our bodies are garbage heaps: we collect experience, and from the decomposition of the thrown-out eggshells, spinach leaves, coffee grinds, and old steak bones out of our minds, come nitrogen, heat, and very fertile soil. Out of this fertile soil bloom our poems and stories. But this does not come all at once. It takes time. Continue to turn over and over the organic details of your life until some of them fall through the garbage of discursive thoughts to the solid ground of black soil."

~Natalie Goldberg

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"Successful writers are not the ones who write the best sentences. They are the ones who keep writing. They are the ones who discover what is most important and strangest and most pleasurable in themselves, and keep believing in the value of their work, despite the difficulties." ~Bonnie Friedman

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"By making us stop for a moment, poetry gives us an opportunity to think about ourselves as human beings on this planet and what we mean to each other."

~Rita Dove

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"Of course I'm a black writer. I'm not just a black writer, but categories like black writer, woman writer and Latin American writer aren't marginal anymore. We have to acknowledge that the thing we call ''literature'' is more pluralistic now, just as society ought to be. The melting pot never worked. We ought to be able to accept on equal terms everybody from the Hasidim to Walter Lippmann, from the Rastafarians to Ralph Bunche."

~Toni Morrison (1931-), African-American Novelist

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“The need to express oneself in writing springs from a maladjustment to life, or from an inner conflict, which the adolescent (or the grown man) cannot resolve in action. Those to whom action comes as easily as breathing rarely feel the need to break loose from the real, to rise above, and describe it... I do not mean that it is enough to be maladjusted to become a great writer, but writing is, for some, a method of resolving a conflict, provided they have the necessary talent.”

~Andre Maurois (1885-1967), French Writer

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Quote: "the difference between an optimist and a pessimist is that a pessimist sees problems in opportunities whereas an optimist sees opportunities in problems"

~Winston Churchill Prime minister

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“Here is the secret of inspiration: Tell yourself that thousands and tens of thousands of people, not very intelligent and certainly no more intelligent than the rest of us, have mastered problems as difficult as those that now baffle you.”

~William Feather

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“I dreamed of myself in a dream, and told the dream, which was mine, as if it were another person's of whom I dreamed. Indeed what is life when thinking of the past, but dreaming of a dream dreamt by another who seems to be oneself?”

~Stopford Brooke

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"Dream is not a revelation. If a dream affords the dreamer some light on himself, it is not the person with closed eyes who makes the discovery, but the person with open eyes lucid enough to fit thoughts together. Dream -- a scintillating mirage surrounded by shadows -- is essentially POETRY." ~ Michel Leiris

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"Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent."

~Calvin Coolidge

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“For my own part, I declare I know nothing whatever about it. But to look at the stars always makes me dream, as simply as I dream over the black dots of a map representing towns and villages. Why, I ask myself, should the shining dots of the sky not be as accessible as the black dots on the map of France? If we take the train to get to Tarascon or Rouen, we take death to reach a star. One thing undoubtedly true in this reasoning is this: that while we are alive we cannot get to a star, any more than when we are dead we can take the train.”

~Vincent Van Gogh

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“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”    
~Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Poet)

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When things go wrong as they sometimes will;

When the road you're trudging seems all uphill;
When the funds are low, and the debts are high
And you want to smile, but have to sigh;
When care is pressing you down a bit-
Rest if you must, but do not quit.

Success is failure turned inside out;
The silver tint of the clouds of doubt;
And you can never tell how close you are
It may be near when it seems so far;
So stick to the fight when you're hardest hit-
It's when things go wrong that you must not quit.
"Don't Quit,” Author Unknown

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"One great thing about poems and stories, for that matter, is that most often they have the ability to touch someone from a far away part of the world. I mean, it's this universal appeal that brings people together for common purposes. Love and beauty can be found in darkness and in the light, through our own experiences with poetry and writing."

~Andre L. West

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"The total life of the writer is the source of his work, all of these go into his writing in varying quantities: the sense, as of taste and touch, the rate of metabolism, blood pressure, the digestion, body temperature, the memory of things past, perhaps going back to the childhood not only of the writer but of the race itself. The success of his work depends on the liveliness and alertness of his brain, previous reading of books, shrewdness of insight into human character, his ear for the sound of language. The writer, therefore, must have a more than ordinary capacity for life and the power to retain what he experiences."

~Paul Engle

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“We must nurture our dreams like we would a child. They are God-given and just as precious. Without ambition how would a child learn to ride a bicycle, play an instrument or whistle? We deny the spirit of God when we as adults settle for less than our dreams!”

~Conway Stone

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"You will achieve grand dream, a day at a time, so set goals for each day -- not long and difficult projects, but chores that will take you, step by step, toward your rainbow. Write them down, if you must, but limit your list so that you won't have to drag today's undone matters into tomorrow. Remember that you cannot build your pyramid in twenty-four hours. Be patient. Never allow your day to become so cluttered that you neglect your most important goal -- to do the best you can, enjoy this day, and rest satisfied with what you have accomplished."

~Og Mandino (1923-1996)

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"Are you disappointed, discouraged and discontented with your present level of success? Are you secretly dissatisfied with your present status? Do you want to become a better and more beautiful person than you are today? Would you like to be able to really learn how to be proud of yourself and still not lose genuine humility? Then start dreaming! It's possible! You can become the person you have always wanted to be!"

~Robert H. Schuller

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“Dreaming is not an accident. It is not a wistful idea you hope will come true. Dreaming is not the stuff of long-haired hippies wistfully running along a beach. No! Dreaming is a sophisticated tool used by the elite of our society to make themselves and this world a better place. People like Millard Fuller, founder of Habitat for Humanity, Warren Buffet, Col. Sanders and Walt Disney all started with a dream. The dreams started small, but like the trickle of water that eventually formed the great Grand Canyon, DREAMS ARE POWERFUL!”

~Conway Stone

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"A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral."  
~Antoine De Saint-Exupery

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"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams."

~Eleanor Roosevelt

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