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Creative
Ways to Transform Challenges: Quick Quote Pick-Me-Ups "If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn." Charlie Parker, American jazz musician "The victim who is able to articulate the situation of the victim has ceased to be a victim; he or she has become a threat." James Baldwin. "Growth is demanding and may seem dangerous, for there is loss as well as gain in growth. But why go on living if one has ceased to grow." May Sarton "When you get into a tight place and it seems you can't go on, hold on, for that's just the place and the time that the tide will turn." Harriet Beecher Stowe "The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen." Elizabeth Kubler Ross "It is more blissful that man be taken from pain than pain be taken from man for if pain be taken from us, it may come again..." Julian of Norwich "Tragedies serve as an express elevator to spirit." Dan Millman "Healing is a matter of time, but it is at times also a matter of opportunity." Hippocrates "People wish to be settled: only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them." Ralph Waldo Emerson "Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear-not absence of fear." Mark Twain "If you want to see the brave, look at those who can forgive. If you want to see the heroic, look at those who can love in return for hatred." Bhagavad-Gita "Hate is not conquered by hate. Hatred is conquered by love. This is a law eternal." Dammapada, Buddhist scripture "What would it be like if you lived each day, each breath, as a work of art in progress? Imagine that you are a Masterpiece unfolding every second of every day, a work of art taking form with every breath." Thomas Crum "When old words die out on the tongue, new melodies break forth from the heart; and where the old tracks are lost, new country is revealed with its wonders." Rabindranath Tagore "Most people have to delve into the dark areas and go through them before they reach a state of freedom, light and serenity." Cristina Grof and Stanislav Grof, M.D. "So, whenever a doctor tells you that you have an incurable or fatal disease, look him squarely in the eye and tell him--- ---! (whatever is your favorite expletive). Then go out and find yourself another doctor-one who believes in the body and not in the disease." Lawrence Badgley, M.D. "Throughout history the human mind and the human spirit have overcome and endured problems and situations that seemed insurmountable." Les Brown "A turning point is life's way of giving you a chance to move ahead spiritually, though you must reach for the gift yourself." Harold Klemp In Chinese, the character for crisis means both "peril" and "opportunity." "Our task is to say a holy yes to the real things of our life as they exist." Natalie Goldberg "Everything in life that we really accept undergoes a change." Katherine Mansfield "The only antidote to the irreversibility of history is the faculty of forgiveness." Hannah Arendt "It is impossible for anything to be lost, for in the divine economy, nothing can pass away. The little flower which bloomed once, blooms forever." Neville "There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle." Albert Einstein "We all have angels guiding us....They look after us. They heal us, touch us, comfort us with invisible warm hands....What will bring their help? Asking. Giving thanks." Sophy Burnham "We are most deeply asleep at the switch when we fancy we control any switches at all." Annie Dillard "We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us." Joseph Campbell "In my life's chain of events nothing was accidental. Everything happened according to an inner need." Hannah Senesh "Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow." Melodie Beattie "Bless a thing and it will bless you. Curse it and it will curse you...If you bless a situation, it has no power to hurt you, and even it if is troublesome for a time, it will gradually fade out, if you sincerely bless it." Emmet Fox "Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears." Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet "When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us." Helen Keller, Optimism "You cannot prevent the birds of sorrow from flying over your head, but you can prevent them from building nests in your hair." Chinese proverb "There are moments when, whatever be the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees." Victor Hugo "We shall draw from the heart of suffering, itself the means of inspiration and survival." Winston S. Churchill "I guess that the giants in life are those who just keep growing on the manure of every crisis and setback." Lynda Bloomberg "Real success comes when you learn to act as if everything depends on you and pray as if everything depends on God." Oprah Winfrey "We know finite disappointment, but infinite hope." Martin Luther King, Jr. "The choice today is no longer between violence and nonviolence. It's either nonviolence or nonexistence." Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. "My life is my message." Mahatma Gandhi "It's not the strongest species that survive, not the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change." Charles Darwin "If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find, in each person's life, sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostilities." Henry Wadsworth Longfellow "Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy." Abraham Joshua Heschel "Interviewer: If your house were on fire, which object would you take with you?" Jean Cocteau: The fire! "Always forgive your enemies-nothing annoys them so much." Oscar Wilde "To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance." Oscar Wilde "He who has a why to live can bear almost any now." Nietzsche "The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance." Alan Watts "True love and prayer are learned in the hour when love becomes impossible and the heart has turned to stone." Thomas Merton "I have come to appreciate how most of spiritual practice is learning to be kinder to one another." Aldous Huxley " The biggest disease today is not leprosy or tuberculosis, but rather the feeling of being unwanted, uncared for, and deserted by everybody." Mother Teresa of Calcutta "No matter how lonely you are, the world offers you imagination." Mary Oliver "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference." The Serenity Prayer attributed to Reinhold Neibuhr "Sometimes our light goes out but is blown again into flames by an encounter with another human being. Each of us owes the deepest thanks to those who have rekindled this inner light." Albert Schweitzer "Why is it that people always need love and understanding the most at a time when they probably deserve it the least? Lou Holtz "Don't throw anyone out of your heart." Neem Karoli Baba "Inside yourself or outside, you never have to change what you see, only the way you see it." Thaddeus Golas "Be here now." Ram Dass "The sun be warm and kind to you. In the darkest night some star shine through." Langston Hughes "Deep peace of the running river to you. Deep peace of the flowing air to you. Deep peace of the shining stars to you. Deep peace of the quiet earth to you." Gaelic blessing "No ray of sunshine is ever lost, but the green which it awakens into existence needs time to sprout, and it is not always granted for the sower to see the harvest. All work that is worth anything is done in faith." Albert Schweitzer "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world: Indeed it's the only thing that ever has." Margaret Mead "We have a long, long way to go. So let us hasten along the road, the road of human tenderness and generosity. Groping, we may find one another's hands in the dark." Emily Greene Balch, Nobel Peace Laureate
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