I planted a maple tree next to the first house I owned, just a skinny runt of a thing...  It seemed far off in the future before that tree would amount to anything.  But when I went back there 40 years later, I couldn't believe my eyes.  The tree was towering over the house, the queen of the neighborhood.  In the meantime, I'd become an old man.  ( Read more... )

Genius is the gold in the mine, talent is the miner who works and brings it out.

Marguerite, Countess of Blessington

The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit.   The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are.

Marcus Aurelius

Remember to be gentle with yourself and others.  We are all children of chance, and none can say why some fields will blossom and others lay brown beneath the August sun.  Care for those around you.  Look past your differences.  Their dreams are no less than yours, their choices in life no more easily made.   And give.  Give in any way you can, of ( Read more... )

 In oneself lies the whole world, and if you know how to LOOK and LEARN, then the door is there and the key is in your hand. Nobody on earth can give you either that key or the door to open...except YOURSELF.

- Krishnamurti ~~ posted by Rhiannon

You won't grow a tree if you don't plant one.

(Pastor Mark Beeson)

To live you need a purpose. Without one you might as well be dead.

--Gaara, naruto ep. 56

It takes as much courage to have tried and failed as it does to have tried and succeeded.

--Anne Marrow Lindbergh

But you see, just because we've been...dealt a certain hand...it doesn't mean that we can't choose to rise above - to conquer the boundaries of a destiny that none of us wanted.

- Edward, Twilight by Stephenie Meyer 

 If you live your life by other people's standards, your life's not really your own.

- Eddie Lee, in Beck