"Several years ago, I started collecting meaningful quotes and treatises to pass on to my wonderful daughter. Some of them are my own but most of them are from other authors/sources who have had an impact on my life. As in the tradition of King David and his Book of Proverbs, a originally put them together to hand down to my children. And now, I share them with you. I hope you are blessed and find something meaningful." - K.V.S.

 

 

 

 

Existence and Tranquility

 

As I walk, As I walk, the universe walks with me

Navajo Rain Dance Ceremony

 

The sun is warm; the grass is green. [In spite of trials, existence and universal tranquility continue]

Japanese proverb

 

All man's miseries derive from not being able to sit quiet in a room alone.

Blaise Pascal

 

When you merge with the universe the whole world is attracted to you, discovering through you it's own security, peace, and good health. Passing guests may stop by attracted to your savory food and inspirational music. But they might leave more enriched than they ever could have anticipated. Because the silent song of Tao is the ultimate music, and the infinite delicacy of Tao is the consummate nourishment.

Tao Te Ching

 

I have been to the end of the earth. I have been to the end of the waters. I have been to the end of the sky. I have been to the end of the mountains. I have found none that are not my friends.

Navajo Proverb

 

Will you begin to understand the meaning of the very soil beneath your feet? From a grain of sand to a great mountain, all is sacred. Yesterday and tomorrow exist eternally upon this continent. We natives are guardians of this sacred place.

Peter Blue Cloud, Mohawk

 

What is man without the beasts? If all the beasts were gone, men would die from great loneliness of spirit, for whatever happens to the beasts also happens to man. All things are connected. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the children of the earth.

Seathl, Duwamish chief

 

When we show our respect for other living things, they respond with respect for us.

Arapaho proverb

 

For the Lakota there was no wilderness. Nature was not dangerous but hospitable, not forbidding but friendly.

Luther Standing Bear, Lakota Sioux

 

Before eating always take a little time to thank the food.

Arapaho proverb

 

We must go beyond the arrogance of human rights. We must go beyond the ignorance of civil rights. We must step into the realm of natural rights because all the natural world has a right to existence. We are only a small part of it.

John Trudell, Santee Sioux

 

All plants are our brothers and sisters. They talk to us and if we listen, we can hear them.

Arapaho proverb

 

Our land is more valuable than your money. It will last forever. It will not even perish by the flames of fire. As long as the sun shines and the waters flow, this land will be here to give life to men and animals. We cannot sell the lives of men or animals. It was put here for us by the Great Spirit and we cannot sell it for it does not belong to us.

Crowfoot, Blackfoot

 

All of the universe has become my church - Great Spirit the all-patient guiding pastor, Mother Earth my warm loving sanctuary, all the plants, animals, and winged ones my preachers, teachers, prophets, and family. Kevin Village Stone

 

I expect to pass through this world but once, any good thing therefore that I do, or any kindness that I can show to any fellow-creature, let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.

Sign hanging in office of Tom Bowen (Bowen Healing Technique)

 

 

 

 

Life

 

God asks no man whether he will accept life. That is not a choice. You must take it. The only choice is how.

Henry Ward Beecher

 

Alas poor maiden, alas poor Judge. For rich repiner or household drudge. God pity them both - God pity us all! When vainly the dreams of youth we recall. For of all the saddest words of tongue or pen the saddest are these, "It might have been".

John Greenleaf Whitier

 

I would rather be a failure at something I enjoy than a success at something I hate.

George Goble

 

Remind me that each days is not always on the swift; that there is more to life than increasing it's speed. Let me look upward into the towering oak and know that it grew great and strong because it grew slowly and well.

Orin L. Crain

 

It is almost as important to know what is not important as to know what is.

John Kenneth Galbraith

 

Each man's life represents a road leading to himself.

Hermann Hess

 

As long as you live, keep learning how to live. Seneca My freedom and independence do not depend on any act of defiance or confrontation. They depend on my own attitudes and feelings. If I am always reacting, then I am never free.

Al-Anon

 

I have held many things in my hands, and I have lost them all; but whatever I placed in God?s hands, that I still possess.

Martin Luther

 

Besides the noble art of getting things done; there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The art of life consists in the elimination of nonessentials.

Lin Yutang

 

Never take someone for granted Hold every person close to your heart Because you might wake up one day And realize that you've lost a diamond While you were too busy collecting stones.

Unknown

 

Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.

Soren Kierkegaard

 

I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, but what direction we are moving.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

 

Life is not separate from death. It only looks that way.

Blackfoot proverb

 

God still gives my visions & dreams, and I dream in thread to sew up the seams. Like a puzzle on a concrete floor, fragmented till you see what's more, than shapes and edges that click into place, but it's the whole picture that gives it a face.

Lindy Day - musician, artist, maker of awesome baked goods, protector of little kittens.

 

The clouds weep and the garden awakens; the infant wails and the mother's milk will suddenly flow. And so the words of revelation say, Let "them cry a lot"

The Noble Muhammad

 

After awhile you learn the subtle difference Between holding a hand and chaining a soul.

And you learn that love doesn't mean leaning And company doesn't mean security.

And you begin to learn that kisses aren't contracts

And presents aren't promises.

And you begin to accept your defeats

With your head up and your eyes ahead

With the grace of a woman or man

Not with the grief of a child.

And you learn to build your roads on today

Because tomorrow's ground is too uncertain for plans

And futures have a way of falling down in mid-flight.

And after awhile you learn

That even sunshine burns if you ask too much.

So you plant your own garden and decorate your own soul Instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.

And you learn

That you really can endure

That you really are strong

And you really do have worth.

And you learn

And you learn

With every failure you learn.

Kara DiGiovanna

 

 

 

Wisdom

 

The grandfathers and the grandmothers are in the children; teach them well.

Ojibwa proverb

 

Better to practice the know than to know the practice.

Kiwamura

 

A smart person learns from experience. A wise person learns from the experience of others.

Benjamin Franklin I

 

t matters not how slowly you go, as long as you do not stop.

Confucious

 

Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they're yours.

Richard Bach

 

It is better to live your beliefs in silence than to preach them and be found a hypocrite.

Kiwamura

 

Go to your bosom: Knock there and ask your heart what it already knows.

Shakespeare

 

A New Year's resolution is something that goes in one year and out the other.

Unknown

 

Time will change and even reverse many of your present opinions. Refrain, therefore, for awhile from setting yourself up as a judge of the highest matters.

Plato

 

Change your thoughts and you change your world.

Norman Vincent Peale

 

Change the way you look at things and the things you look at will change.

Dr. Wayne Dyer

 

He who fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.

Friedrich Nietzsche

 

Consider the little mouse, how sagacious an animal it is which never entrusts it's life to one hole only.

Plautus

 

Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.

Martin Luther

 

In your quest and struggle to be freed from oppression, be careful you do not become the oppressor of your former oppressors and prove you are no better than they.

Kevin Village Stone

 

The problem is not setting your goals too high. It is setting them too low and reaching them.

Unknown

 

Water that is too pure has no fish

Chinese Proverb

 

But flowers distilled though they with winter meet, Leese but their show, their substance still lives sweet.

William Shakespeare, The Sonnets #5

 

Chase two rabbits and you will catch none.

Japanese Proverb

 

The Six Mistakes of Man:

* The illusion that personal gain is made up of crushing others.

* The tendency to worry about things that cannot be changed or corrected.

* Insisting that a thing is impossible because we cannot accomplish it.

* Refusing to set aside trivial preferences.

* Neglecting development and refinement of the mind, and not acquiring the habit of reading and study.

* Attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do.

Marcus Tillius Cicero (Roman Statesman 106-53 BC)

 

Men are disturbed not by the things that happen, but by their opinions of the things that happen.

Epictetus (emancipated slave and Greek philosopher 55-135 AD)

 

It is better to deserve honors and not get them, than to get them and not deserve them

Mark Twain

 

One good turn usually gets the whole blanket

E. Joseph Cossman

 

When diet is wrong, medicine is of no use. When diet is correct, medicine is of no need.

Ancient Ayurvedic Proverb

 

 

 

Spirituality

 

I cannot think that we are useless or God would not have created us. There is one God looking down on us all. We are all the children of one God. The sun, the darkness, the winds are all listening to what we have to say."

Goyathlay (Geronimo)

 

Great Spirit! You lived first, and you are older than all need, older than all prayer. All things belong to you; the two-legged, the four-legged, the wings of the air, and all green things that live. I am sending you a voice, Great Spirit, my Grandfather, forgetting nothing you have made, the stars of the universe, and the grasses of the earth.

Black Elk, Oglala Sioux

 

Going to church or reading spiritual books doesn't make you a spiritual person any more than standing in your garage makes you a car.

Unknown

 

The world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles-only by a spiritual journey-by which we arrive at the ground at our feet, and learn to be at home.

Wendell Berry

 

Finding inner strength is looking beyond the visible and focusing life's search on the unseen.

Al-Anon

 

We ought not to insist on everyone following in our footsteps, nor to take upon ourselves to give instructions in spirituality when, perhaps, we do not even know what it is.

Teresa of Avila

 

I found the secret of the sea in meditation upon a dewdrop

Kahlil Gibran

 

God alone knows the secret plan of the things He will do for the world using my hand.

Toyohiko Kagawa

 

We must alter our lives in order to alter our hearts, for it is impossible to live one way and pray another.

William Law

 

If you lose the rhythm of the drumbeat of God, you are lost from the peace and rhythm of life.

Cheyenne proverb

 

All man(kind)'s miseries derive from not being able to sit quietly in a room alone.

Blaise Pascal

 

All of the universe has become my church - Great Spirit the all-patient guiding pastor, Mother Earth my warm loving sanctuary, all the plants, animals, and winged ones my preachers, teachers, prophets, and family.

Kevin Village Stone

 

Do not believe what you have heard. Do not believe in tradition because it is handed down many generations. Do not believe in anything that has been spoken of many times. Do not believe because the written statements come from some old sage. Do not believe in conjecture. Do not believe in any authority, teachers, or elders. But by careful observation and analysis, when it agrees with reason and it will benefit one and all, then accept it and live by it.

Prince Siddhartha Gautama

 

Keep me from the philosophy that does not laugh, the wisdom that does not cry, and the greatness that does not bow before children.

Kahlil Gibran "Mirrors of the Soul"

 

What if you slept

And what if, In your sleep

You dreamed.

And what if, In your dream,

You went to heaven

And there plucked

A strange and

Beautiful flower?

And what if,

When you awoke,

You had the flower in your hand?

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (English poet 1772-1834)

 

Wherever you stand, be the soul of that place.

Rumi

 

They point the Way all of them, to the Unchanging One. So why do their words turn in a hundred different directions? Their stories are all over the place! Are they talking about the same thing? A prince orders a great tent to be made. One craftsman winds the ropes. Another sharpens pins. Another sews panels. How varied their activities, how united their intention is, and how single the task.

Rumi

 

The man known to Christians as Jesus, to Muslims as Issa, and to his companions as Ye'shua, spoke the ancient Semetic language of Aramaic. In Aramaic, sacred words carry many shades of meaning, the better to reflect the ungraspable nature of divinity. When Jesus says "God", his Aramaic is "Alaha". The understandings evoked by Alaha are far more subtle and complex than those of "God", which comes from the Germanic word for "good". According to bible scholar Neil Douglas-Klotz, "Alaha" would have been understood on the streets of Jerusalem as "O Sacred Unity!" or "O Encompassing Oneness" or "All" or "Ultimate Power" or "Ultimate Potential" or "One with No Opposite".

Michael Green - One Song

 

 

 

Inspiration

 

It is no longer good enough to cry peace. We must act peace, live peace, and live in peace.

Shenandoah proverb

 

Courage is fear that has said it's prayers

Unknown

 

Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul.

Samuel Ullman

 

He who would have beautiful roses in his garden must have beautiful roses in his heart

S.R. Hole

 

The problem is not setting your goals too high. It is setting them too low and reaching them.

Unknown

 

Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.

George Bernard Shaw

 

All glory comes from daring to begin.

Eugene F. Ware

 

I shall hear in Heaven.

Ludwig von Beethoven (on his deathbed)

 

I like it well. I shall die before my heart is soft or I have said anything unworthy of myself.

Canonchet, Narragansett (before an English firing squad)

 

I am a red man. If the Great Spirit had desired me to be a white man he would have made me so in the first place. Now we are poor but we are free. No white man controls our footsteps. If we must die, we die defending our rights.

Sitting Bull, Hunkpapa Sioux

 

A mountain is never so big that it blocks the sun.

Unknown

 

It's not the size of the dog in the fight. It's the size of the fight in the dog.

Unknown

 

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 (author of Yoga Sutras 100-300 BC)

 

I know of nobody who is purely autistic or purely neurotypical. Even God had some autistic moments, which is why the planets all spin.

Jerry Newport