John > John's Quotes

“We have two lives, and the second begins when we realize we only have one.”
― Confucius

“I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.”
― Carl Gustav Jung

“Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation.”
― Victor Frankl

“The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image. If in loving them we do not love what they are, but only their potential likeness to ourselves, then we do not love them: we only love the reflection of ourselves we find in them”
― Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island

“We really must understand that the lust for affluence in contemporary society is psychotic. It is psychotic because it has completely lost touch with reality. We crave things we neither need nor enjoy. 'We buy things we do not want to impress people we do not like.' ...It is time to awaken to the fact that conformity to a sick society is to be sick.”
― Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth

“You are in danger of living a life so comfortable and soft, that you will die without ever realizing your true potential.”
― David Goggins, Can't Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds

“There is meaning in every journey that is unknown to the traveler.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it.”
― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

“Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it.”
― Eckhart Tolle

“Sometimes letting things go is an act of far greater power than defending or hanging on.”
― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

“Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.”
― Soren Kierkegaard

“I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“Those with a grateful mindset tend to see the message in the mess. And even though life may knock them down, the grateful find reasons, if even small ones, to get up.”
― Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free

“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorns have roses.”
― Alphonse Karr, A Tour Round My Garden

“Analyze your schedule, kill your empty habits, burn out the bullshit, and see what’s left.”
― David Goggins, Can't Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds

“Worry pretends to be necessary but serves no useful purpose”
― Eckhart Tolle

“every complaint is a little story the mind makes up that you completely believe in.”
― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

“Grief can destroy you --or focus you. You can decide a relationship was all for nothing if it had to end in death, and you alone. OR you can realize that every moment of it had more meaning than you dared to recognize at the time, so much meaning it scared you, so you just lived, just took for granted the love and laughter of each day, and didn't allow yourself to consider the sacredness of it. But when it's over and you're alone, you begin to see that it wasn't just a movie and a dinner together, not just watching sunsets together, not just scrubbing a floor or washing dishes together or worrying over a high electric bill. It was everything, it was the why of life, every event and precious moment of it. The answer to the mystery of existence is the love you shared sometimes so imperfectly, and when the loss wakes you to the deeper beauty of it, to the sanctity of it, you can't get off your knees for a long time, you're driven to your knees not by the weight of the loss but by gratitude for what preceded the loss. And the ache is always there, but one day not the emptiness, because to nurture the emptiness, to take solace in it, is to disrespect the gift of life.”
― Dean Koontz, Odd Hours

“Pursue what catches your heart, not what catches your eyes.”
― Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart

“Always say “yes” to the present moment. What could be more futile, more insane, than to create inner resistance to what already is? what could be more insane than to oppose life itself, which is now and always now? Surrender to what is. Say “yes” to life — and see how life suddenly starts working for you rather than against you.”
― Eckhart Tolle

“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“If you want to know what a man's like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

“I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.”
― Thomas A. Edison

“It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.”
― Andre Gide, Autumn Leaves

“I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.”
― Groucho Marx

“Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person's ultimate good as far as it can be obtained.”
― C.S. Lewis

“I have decided to stick to love...Hate is too great a burden to bear.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches

“If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as a Michaelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, 'Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars.”
― Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy to a friend.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.