Sophie's World

“Life is both sad and solemn. We are led into a wonderful world, we meet one another here, greet each other - and wander together for a brief moment. Then we lose each other and disappear as suddenly and unreasonably as we arrived.”

2018

“For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning."

~ T.S. Eliot~

“Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man.” 

~ Benjamin Franklin ~

"I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re doing something." 

~ Neil Gaiman ~

Andrew Solomon

“Listen to the people who love you. Believe that they are worth living for even when you don't believe it. Seek out the memories depression takes away and project them into the future. Be brave; be strong; take your pills. Exercise because it's good for you even if every step weighs a thousand pounds. Eat when food itself disgusts you. Reason with yourself when you have lost your reason.”

Søren Kierkegaard

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”

Thay

"Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy."

"You carry Mother Earth within you.  She is not outside of you.  Mother Earth is not just your environment.  In that insight of inter-being, it is possible to have real communication with the Earth, which is the highest form of prayer."

"People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar."

~Thich Nhat Hanh~

cookie

"Know when to be in Silence"

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

"Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself, and know that everything in life has purpose. There are no mistakes, no coincidences, all events are blessings given to us to learn from."

Walt Whitman

“This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless,
Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,
Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou lovest best.
Night, sleep, and the stars.”

Thomas Merton

"But there is greater comfort in the substance of silence than in the answer to a question.”

Mother Teresa

“In the silence of the heart God speaks. If you face God in prayer and silence, God will speak to you. Then you will know that you are nothing. It is only when you realize your nothingness, your emptiness, that God can fill you with Himself. Souls of prayer are souls of great silence.”

Jon Krakauer

“It's not always necessary to be strong, but to feel strong.”

Vincent van Gogh

“It is good to love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is well done.”

NF

"When I die, put my ashes in the trash bag
I don't care where they go
Don't waste your money on my gravestone
I'm more concerned about my soul
Everybody's gonna die
Don't everybody live though
Sometimes I look up to the sky
And wonder do You see us down here?
Oh Lord."

Osho

“If you love a flower, don’t pick it up.  Because if you pick it up it dies and it ceases to be what you love.  So if you love a flower, let it be.  Love is not about possession.  Love is about appreciation.”

Esther Hicks

“Tell everyone you know: “My happiness depends on me, so you’re off the hook.” And then demonstrate it. Be happy, no matter what they’re doing. Practice feeling good, no matter what. And before you know it, you will not give anyone else responsibility for the way you feel, and then, you’ll love them all. Because the only reason you don’t love them, is because you’re using them as your excuse to not feel good.”

Mahatma Gandhi

“Man often becomes what he believes himself to be. If I keep on saying to myself that I cannot do a certain thing, it is possible that I may end by really becoming incapable of doing it. On the contrary, if I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I may not have it at the beginning.”

Thich Nhat Hanh

 "Do not accumulate wealth whilst millions are hungry. Do not take as the aim of your life, fame, profit, wealth, or sensual pleasure. Live simply and share time, energy, and material resources with those who are in need."

victor frankl

"Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way."

"Live as if you were living a second time, and as though you had acted wrongly the first time."

"Ever more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for."

Edgar Allan Poe

“I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active - not more happy - nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago.”

Lao Tzu

“Time is a created thing. To say 'I don't have time,' is like saying, 'I don't want to.”

George Harrison

“It's being here now that's important. There's no past and there's no future. Time is a very misleading thing. All there is ever, is the now. We can gain experience from the past, but we can't relive it; and we can hope for the future, but we don't know if there is one.”

Andy Warhol

“They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.”

Soren Kierkegaard

"The present state of the world and the whole of life is diseased.  If I were a doctor and were asked my advice I should reply: Create Silence."

T. Brown Jr

"Man living in the island of self is living but a small part of what life is all about.  Man must transcend the barriers, the prisons of ego and thought, and reach the Creator.  All islands, all circles, must be bridged.  Each world must be understood, then finally fused into an absolute and pure oneness.  Then there can be no inner or outer dimension, no separation of self, just a pure oneness where man is at once all things.  It is in this fusion of worlds that man will know all things and live the deeper meanings of life... Then and only then can man ever hope to touch God."

Dyer

"We all share the same oxygen, drink from the same water, walk and reside on the same soil.  And whether we like to admit it or not, we are all intimately sharing each other's continually changing atoms and molecules.  Everything that is manifested in a material form is changing at all moments.  The continuous shift of atoms means that there is no separateness in the quantum scientific sense or in  any other sense.  Your sacred self is waiting for you to make the choice to let your ego know the truth."

Gary McKay

"You have the capacity to choose what you think about.  If you choose to think about past hurts, you will continue to feel bad.  While it's true you cannot change the effect past influences had on you once,  you can change the effect they have on you now."

Job 12:8

"Speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee."

Nathan Kollar

"Suffering breaks our world.  Like a tree struck by lightening -- splintered, shaken, denuded -- our world is broken by suffering, and we will never be the same again. What will become of us is a mystery."

J.K. Rowling

“Those we love never truly leave us… There are things that death cannot touch.”

george herbert

"was ever grief like mine?"