These quotes are among my many favorites and are presented for inspiration, amusement and reflection. The sources are varied and are listed at the end. This is a changing feature of the website and I will present new ones from time to time.

I’d love to receive your favorites and will consider them for this page, if you’d like to email them to me: linda@lindatate.com

On Inner Peace

Learn to get in touch with silence within yourself and know that everything in this life has a purpose. There are no mistakes, no coincidences, all events are blessings given to us to learn from.
Elizabeth Kübler-Ross

Symptoms of Inner Peace

1. A tendency to think and act spontaneously rather than on fears of past experiences.
2. An unmistakable ability to enjoy each moment.
3. A loss of interest in judging other people.
4. A loss of interest in interpreting the actions of others.
5. A loss of the ability to worry.
6. Frequent, overwhelming episodes of appreciation.
7. Contented feelings of connectedness with others and nature.
8. Frequent episodes of smiling.
9. Letting things happen instead of forcing things to happen.
10. A willingness to be vulnerable and show emotions.
11. A giving and receiving of love without strings attached.
Author Unknown

Peace, or freedom from conflict, is the absolute core of happiness. It is in learning to watch our sense of peace that we avoid unhappiness. All forms of misery are heralded by a frame of mind that must become immediately recognizable if we are ever to gain mastery in happiness...Take the time to look in your heart and be clear. Walk through life being clear. Practice doing each thing in peace.
Hugh Prather

You cannot have peace in your outer life unless and until you have first established peace in your inner life. It is in the inner world that everything starts.
Sri Chinmoy

Difficult times have helped me to understand better than before how infinitely rich and beautiful life is in every way and that so many things that one goes worrying about are of no importance whatsoever.
Isak Dinesen

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 if it is troublesome for a time, it will gradually fade out, if you sincerely bless it.
Emmet Fox

Meditation is simply about being yourself and knowing about who that is. It is about coming to realize that you are on a path whether you like it or not, namely the path that is your life.
Jon Kabat-Zinn

It is only in the intentional silence of vigil and meditation, or in the quiet places of nature, that we encounter the song of the universe. Like the wind through the telegraph wires, this song echoes along the pathways of the cosmic web: it includes the celestial spinning of the planets, as well as the hum of insects and the dancing song of the grass; it includes the song of all the ancestors and spirits as well as the beating of our own hearts.
Caitlin Matthews

Stillness, insight, and wisdom arise only when we can settle into being complete in this moment, without having to seek or hold on to or reject anything.
Jon Kabat-Zinn

There must be quite a few things a hot bath won’t cure, but I don’t know many of them.
Sylvia Plath

Remember, one hundred years from now, all new people.
Richard Carlson

If someone throws you the ball, you don’t have to catch it.
Richard Carlson

On Being Creative

If your everyday life seems poor, don’t blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is no poverty and no poor indifferent place.
Rainer Maria Rilke

No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new heaven to the human spirit.
Helen Keller

The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes – ah, that is where the art resides.
Artur Schnabel

Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how....The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark.
Agnes De Mille

Inside you there’s an artist you don’t know about...Say yes quickly, if you know, if you’ve known it from before the beginning of the universe.
Jalai Ud-Din Rumi

We shall not cease from exploration; And the end of all our exploring; Will be to arrive where we started; And know the place for the first time.
T. S. Eliot

Learn the craft of knowing how to open your heart and to turn on your creativity. There’s a light inside of you.
Judith Jamison

The soul should always stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience.
Emily Dickenson

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once (s)he grows up.
Pablo Picasso

So you see, imagination needs moodling – long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling and puttering.
Brenda Ueland

Develop interest in life as you see it; in people, things, literature, music – the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself.
Henry Miller

I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.
Duke Ellington

I have said before that creativity is a spiritual issue. Any progress is made by leaps of faith, some small and some large.
Julia Cameron

The grace to be a beginner is always the best prayer for an artist. The beginner’s humility and openness lead to exploration. Exploration leads to accomplishment. All of it begins at the beginning, with the first small and scary step.
Julia Cameron

What moves men of genius, or rather what inspires their work, is not new ideas, but their obsession with the idea that what has already been said is still not enough.
Eugène Delacroix

When we pay attention to nature’s music, we find that everything on the earth contributes to its harmony.
Hazrat Inayat Khan

The sun shines not on us, but in us. The rivers flow not past, but through us, thrilling, tingling, vibrating every fiber and cell of the substance of our bodies, making them glide and sing.
John Muir

In fact, the word enchant comes from the Latin incantare, meaning “to sing or chant magical words or sounds.”
Jonathan Goldman

On Living Your Dreams

Often people attempt to live their lives backwards: they try to have more things, or more money, in order to do more of what they want so that they will be happier. The way it actually works is the reverse. You must first be who you really are, then, do what you need to do, in order to have what you want.
Margaret Young

And the day came when the risk [it took] to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
Anaïs Nin

There are only 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

I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of one’s dreams, and endeavors to live the life which one has imagined, one will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
Henry David Thoreau

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

You only live once – but if you work it right, once is enough.
Joe E. Lewis

I don’t wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to work.
Pearl S. Buck

Every time we say Let there be! in any form, something happens.
Stella Terrill Mann

Slow down and enjoy life. It’s not only the scenery you miss by going too fast – you also miss the sense of where you are going and why.
Eddie Cantor

We will discover the nature of our particular genius when we stop trying to conform to our own or to other peoples’ models, learn to be ourselves, and allow our natural channel to open.
Shakti Gawain

There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening, that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost.
Martha Graham

You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm.
Colette

It’s a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.
Somerset Maugham

What we need is more people who specialize in the impossible.
Theodore Roethke

Sources

Ban Breathnach, Sarah, Simple Abundance, Warner Books, 1995.
Cameron, Julia, The Artist’s Way, Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, 1992.
Cameron, Julia, The Vein of Gold, Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, 1996.
Carlson, Ph.D., Richard, Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff...And It’s All Small Stuff, Hyperion, 1997.
Chinmoy, Sri, The Wings of Joy, Fireside, 1997.
Kabat-Zinn, John, Wherever You Go, There You Are, Hyperion, 1994.
Prather, Hugh, Notes on How to Live in the World...And Still Be Happy, Doubleday, 1986.