"You can't always see growth, roots grow underground" -Terces Engelhart

"The most beautiful discovery that true friends can make is that they can grow separately without growing apart." -Elizabeth Foley

"At an everyday level I would reckon myself more than fortunate."
-Peter Garrett

"I am beginning to learn that it is the sweet, simple things of life which are the real ones after all." -Laura Ingalls Wilder

"Happiness belongs to the self-sufficient" -Aristotle

"People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them."
~G.B. Shaw, Mrs. Warren's Profession, 1893

"Don't be put off by people who know what is not possible. Do what needs to be done, and check to see if it was impossible only after you are done." - Paul Hawken

"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams." -Eleanor Roosevelt

"Insist on yourself. Never imitate." -Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Do not anticipate trouble, or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight. " -Benjamin Franklin

"We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations."
-Anais Nin

"Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined."
-Henry David Thoreau

"What is a friend? I will tell you...it is someone with whom you dare to be yourself." Frank Crane

"Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in, forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day, you shall begin it well and serenely." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Let a joy keep you. Reach out your hands and take it when it runs by."
- Carl Sandburg

I am only one,
But still I am one.
I cannot do everything,
But still I can do something;
And because I cannot do everything
I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.
- Edward Everett Hale

"Change your thoughts and you change your world."
- Norman Vincent Peale

"They say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself."
- Andy Warhol

"Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each." -Henry David Thoreau

"We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures."  -  Thornton Wilder

Joy is all around. I'm soaking it up and letting it permeate my heart and life. I find I am happiest when I'm focusing on joyful things. -Me, July 2010

How many more idols must you find before your realize that you are the one you have been searching for?

-  Dan Fogelberg

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." -Thoreau

We must all draw our own boundaries so our heart does not bleed out and the hearts of others do not bleed in. -Unknown

Sisters are different flowers from the same garden.
-- Author Unknown

Bless you, my darling, and remember you are always in the heart - oh tucked so close there is no chance of escape - of your sister.  
- Katherine Mansfield

Is solace anywhere more comforting than in the arms of a sister. -Alice Walker

"A true sister is a friend who listens with her heart." 
- Author Unknown

‎"You can either practice being right or practice being kind." — Anne Lamott

"The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time." Mary Oliver

“The purpose of life is to live it, to taste and experience the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.” ~Eleanor Roosevelt

"If we could look into the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each person's life, sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostilities."  -Longfellow

"You will find life a whole lot easier
if you can keep in mind
that most people are just trying to do the best they can..." - Jen Gray

To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not, rich; to listen to stars and birds, babes and sages, with open heart; to study hard; to think quietly, act frankly, talk gently, await occasions, hurry never; in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common--this is my symphony. - William Henry Channing

It’s a lifetime’s journey to relate honestly to the immediacy of our experience and to respect ourselves enough not to judge it.

-Pema Chödrön, 

"You do not have to be good...You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves." - Mary Oliver

The Seven Advices of Rumi

In generosity and helping others be like a river. 
In compassion and grace be like the sun. 
In concealing others’ faults be like the night. 
In anger and fury be like the dead.
In modesty and humility be like the earth.
In tolerance be like the sea.
Either exist as you are or be as you look.

Think excitement, talk excitement, act out excitement, and you are bound to become an excited person. Life will take on a new nest, deeper interest and greater meaning. You can think, talk and act yourself into dullness or into monotony or into unhappiness. By the same process you can build up inspiration, excitement and surging depth of joy. - Norman Vincent Peale

"Instructions for living a life. 
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it."
-Mary Oliver

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue.  Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them.  And the point is, to live everything.  Live the questions now.  Perhaps you will find them gradually, without noticing it, and live along some distant day into the answer.  ~Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

"Joy is not in things; it is in us."

- Richard Wagner

"There are no blocks to creativity.  Only distractions."

  -Alan Cohen

“To be reborn again means first to be reborn in your children. Your children are a continuation of yourself. You are reborn in them.” - Thich Nhat Hanh

"I am lingering in uncertainty, in the beauty of what has yet to be revealed, in the magic of what I can’t yet see." Christine Mason Miller

"You don't have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body."  -C. S. Lewis 

‎"owning our story and loving ourselves through the process is the bravest thing that we will ever do" ~ Brene Brown