If you can, think of times in your life that you’ve treated people with extraordinary decency and love, and pure uninterested concern, just because they were valuable as human beings. We also need to do that with ourselves. To treat ourselves the way we would treat a really good, precious friend. Or a tiny child of ours that we absolutely loved more than life itself. And I think it’s probably possible to achieve that. I think part of the job we’re here for is to learn how to do it. ~ David Foster Wallace
We have thought of peace as the passive and war as the active way of living. The opposite is true. War is not the most strenuous life. It is a kind of rest cure compared to the task of reconciling our differences. From war to peace is not from the strenuous to the easy existence; it is from the futile to the effective, from the stagnant to the active, from the destructive to the creative way of life. We may be angry and fight; we may feel kindly and want peace—it is all about the same. The world will be regenerated by the people who rise above both these passive ways and heroically seek, by whatever hardship, by whatever toil, the methods by which people can agree. ~ Mary Parker Follet
The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes. ~ Marcel Proust
Everyone has some sainthood possible, and the unfolding of their goodness might sometimes be through their transgressions. There is always the chance that the world might reach out its hand, no matter how late the hour. ~Unknown
You can’t change the facts of the past, but you can change their meaning in your life. ~ Unknown
We need a witness to our lives. There’s a billion people on the planet… I mean, what does any one life really mean? But in a marriage, you’re promising to care about everything. The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things… all of it, all of the time, every day. You’re saying “Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go un-witnessed because I will be your witness”. ~ Susan Sarandon, in Shall We Dance?
The serious problems of life are never fully solved. If ever they should appear to be so, it is a sure sign that something has been lost. The meaning and purpose of a problem seem to lie not in its solution but in our working at it incessantly. ~ Carl Jung
Litigation [is a] machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage. ~ Klinge v. Bentien, 725 N.W.2d 13 (Iowa 2006)
War does not determine who is right; war determines who is left. ~Chinese proverb
He who forgives ends the quarrel. ~African proverb
You do not make peace with your friends. You make peace with your enemies. ~ Yitzak Rabin
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond all measure. ~ Marianne Williamson
Out beyond the ideas of wrongdoing and right-doing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there. ~ Rumi
If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, travel together. ~ African proverb
It is easy to dodge our responsibilities but we cannot dodge the consequences of dodging our responsibilities. ~Josiah Stamp
The only way to get a good result in a divorce is to work for a good result for the other person. ~ Stephen Erickson and Marilyn McKnight
There are no secrets to success. Don’t waste time looking for them. Success is the result of preparation, hard work, learning from failure, loyalty, and persistence. ~ Colin Powell
In truth, a family is …made strong, not by the number of heads counted at the dinner table, but by the rituals you help family members create, by the memories you share, by the commitment of time, caring, and love you show to one another, and by the hopes for the future you have as individuals and as a unit. ~ Marge Kennedy & Janet Spencer King, The Single Parent Family
The Real Work
It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,
and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.
The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.
~ Wendell Berry ~
