Inspirational House Quotes & Sayings

The universe defies you to answer the following questions: What good is a high paying career if it leaves you continually stressed out and miserable? What good is owning a large stately house if the only time you spend in it is when you sleep in it? What good is having a lot of interesting possessions if you never have the free time to enjoy them? Above all, what good is having a family if you seldom see any of its members? — Ernie J Zelinski

We join spokes together in a wheel,
but it is the center hole
that makes the wagon move.
We shape clay into a pot,
but it is the emptiness inside
that holds whatever we want.
We hammer wood for a house,
but it is the inner space
that makes it livable.
We work with being,
but non-being is what we use. — Lao-Tzu

Every house needs a grandmother in it. — Louisa May Alcott

The house, the stars, the desert
what gives them their beauty is something that is invisible! — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Mountains & low hills would enclose us, & gardens & woods & green spaces would surround us - And each pretty house & its garden would hide itself in its very own corner - And the beloved & understanding people would stroll in & out just when they chose & read to each other under trees on lawns & tell stories on broad porches while the mountains & the clouds & the birds & the flowers would look & listen & delight & always understand what everybody meant because they would all belong.
-from Frances Hodgson Burnett: The unexpected life of the author of the Secret Garden — Frances Hodgson Burnett

Don't look at your current situation as a hindrance to living the way you want, because living the way you want has nothing to do with how much land you have or how much you can afford to spend on a new house. It has to do with the way you choose to live every day and how content you are with what you have. — Jenna Woginrich

We delude ourselves if we think that decency is not rewarded in other people simply because we refuse to practice it ourselves. — Sarah Scheele

Little minds instinctively seek to circumscribe the things around them, to pull in the walls to the size of their own small existence, to get everything squared off to their own scale so they can feel safe and snug. This process invariably means that a lot of the material used in their walls is from the last house they lived in, is very much what they were accustomed to before they moved, so to speak. Big minds, on the contrary, push the horizons further away, create new frontiers, leave room for growth. — Amatu'l-Baha Ruhiyyih Khanum

[...] the thought of entering that stale, tomb-like house again caused my skin to break out into braille. — Ronald Malfi

The same wind that blows down your house shakes berries from the bushes. — Marci Ridlon

I am not the person who is singing
I am the silent one inside ...
I am not my house, my car, my songs
They are only stops along my way ... — Paula Cole

Summer was on the way; Jem and I awaited it with impatience. Summer was our best season: it was sleeping on the back screened porch in cots, or trying to sleep in the tree house; summer was everything good to eat; it was a thousand colors in a parched landscape; but most of all, summer was Dill. — Harper Lee

It may be difficult, but there will be times we need to pick up our brooms and do some spiritual house cleaning. It is through this process that we find our true relationships, our true heart, our core integrity, and our life's purpose. — Molly Friedenfeld

When standing in the middle of the marvelous mountains and deep forests, in the earthy smell of all beginnings and endings, I often find myself asking what I have if all my possessions were taken away. Without money, car, house; or power and fame, if there are any, who am I?
In that very moment, being away from the external voices and left alone in nature, I find my answer. — Zi Nguyen

It's as if inside the White House the belief in Obama's inspirational charisma is still such that every time the ugliness of brute politics intrudes, it's a startling revelation. — Tina Brown

As Tim followed me up the narrow stairwell, he playfully pinched my butt with every step, a pleasant (and painful
in a black-and-blue sort of way) reminder that all I had yearned for as a student twenty-five years before had come true, even if I hadn't taken the time to notice it until now: I was happy. At twenty years old, had I articulated what I thought I needed in life, I would have probably said a big house, a successful husband, and a great career. Yet all I really needed for true happiness was the homeless, unemployed bus driver right behind me, pinching my butt every step of the way. — Doreen Orion

We look for the sense of being Home in a physical home, in a family, in a lover. But unless we can experience it in the still moments of our life, no house, family, lover, or anything else will ever satisfy our longing for Home. The feeling of being Home is never found by doing, going somewhere, having things, or thinking, but by simply stopping and just being long enough to let ourselves feel that we are Home. Our longing for Home can call it forth. Know Home, value it, and you will have it. The most precious attainment is right here in Stillness and in just being. — Gina Lake

Dealing with pain for surviving on this thirsty concrete — Kjiva

In my mother's house there is still God."
Act 1, Scene 1 ~ A Raisin in the Sun — Lorraine Hansberry

An old man in a house is a good sign. — Benjamin Franklin

With time one ages, and with age one comes closer to their end. With time one builds a family, a house, a name and with age one learns to live without them. — Mrinalini Mitra

The words make sense, but deeper than the words is the truth. She's right. If Mabel's talking about the girl who hugged her good-bye before she left for Los Angeles, who laced fingers with her at the last bonfire of the summer and accepted shells from almost-strangers, who analyzed novels for fun and lives with her grandfather in a pink, rent-controlled house in the Sunset that often smelled like cake and was often filled with elderly, gambling men - if she's talking about that girl, then yes, I dissapeared. — Nina LaCour

If your lot makes you cry and be wretched, get rid of it and take another; strike out for yourself; don't listen to the shriek of your relations ... don't be afraid of public opinion in the shape of the neighbours in the next house, when all the world is before you new and shining, and everything is possible, if you will only be energetic and independent and seize opportunity by the scruff of the neck. — Elizabeth Von Arnim

We are all bodybuilders, so build the house you want to live in. — Rodney Page

Like everyone else in the house, she suffers from dreams. — Andrew Miller

What I remember most clearly is how it felt. I'd just finished painting a red fire engine-like the one I often walked past near my grandparents' house. Suddenly the teachers, whose names I've long forgotten, closed in on my desk. They seemed unusually impressed, and my still dripping fire engine was immediately and ceremoniously pinned up. I don't know what they might have said, but their unexpected attention and having something I'd made given a place of honor on the wall created an overwhelming and totally unfamiliar sense of pride inside me. I loved that feeling, and I wanted to feel it again and again. That desire, I suppose, was the beginning of my career.
I have no idea where my fire engine painting ended up, but I never forgot the basic layout. Several decades later, it served as the inspiration for this sketch for an illustration in a book called Why the chicken crossed the Road. — David Macaulay

He looked around him wildly, as if the past were lurking here in the shadow of his house, just out of reach of his hand. — F Scott Fitzgerald

I grew up in a bookless house - my parents didn't read poetry, so if I hadn't had the chance to experience it at school I'd never have experienced it. But I loved English, and I was very lucky in that I had inspirational English teachers, Miss Scriven and Mr. Walker, and they liked us to learn poems by heart, which I found I loved doing. — Carol Ann Duffy

I've been thinking a lot about the word "everything." Whenever something horrible happens, you hear people say they "lost everything." They lost their house or their car or their stuff or whatever, and to them it feels like everything. But they have no idea what it's like to lose everything. I thought I knew, but now I realize even I haven't lost everything, because I still have that polka-dot swimsuit in my memory. I still have those ice cream nights and the scorpion that scared Marin and the Barking Bulldogs sweatshirt and the robins-egg-blue nail polish. Somehow having those things makes the other things matter less.
I'm wondering if it's even possible to lose "everything" or if you just have to keep redefining what "everything" is. — Jennifer Brown

They'd fallen into an easy routine, the three of them. Breakfast together in the morning, then Hughie would leave for work and she and Nell would get started in the house. Lil found she liked having a second shadow, enjoyed showing Nell things, explaining how they worked and why. Nell was a big one for asking why-why did the sun hide at night, why didn't the fire flames leap out of the gate, why didn't the river get bored and run the other way?-and Lil loved supplying answers, watching as understanding dawned on Nell's little face. For the first time in her life, Lil felt useful, needed, whole. — Kate Morton

In the house of God there is never ending festival; the angel choir makes eternal holiday; the presence of God's face gives joy that never fails. — Saint Augustine

I meet many a man, working ridiculous house for a wage that merely adds to their happiness, and if man can be so pre-occupied in waking for another's dream; than my experience has taught me one thing, the magic of our world exists in those who create alchemy from the dirt they have been shoved upon. — Nikki Rowe

I had a very wise mother. She always kept books that were my grade level in our house. — Beverly Cleary

I leave his house feeling blissed. It is not the same feeling like when you get a present from someone, you buy things you desire, or you receive good news. It is something intrinsic that stems from solicitude, which triggers your conscience to carry out something good - in my case, helping Mr Mario. That is how righteousness works. It does not only give pleasure to the receiver (of good action), but to the giver as well. — Aishah Madadiy

You can't make someone do something they don't want to, but if you are kind about it, you can convince them to do the right thing, even if they are uncertain what that is.
--Jala, Healer to the House of Soris — D.G. Novak

Remember that when you throw a pebble into any pond, it will disturb the surface. Always be sure of your reason for casting the stone, for those ripples will come back to you eventually.
-- Jala, Healer to the Royal House of Soris — D.G. Novak

Walking under Dusk, Moonlit leaf shadows were cast on my skin from the trees above, every step I took was taking a step deeper into magic. Silent whispers of mystical mouthes pulling me in deeper. Then the lights from inside the house turned on. A few seconds later, the fence lights went on. Just like that, the leafy ghosts on my skin ran away and the faery voices ran home. It seems like the creations of man kill magic in so many ways - even the light bulb does this! Oh to be a race of people designing magical things, if someone could capture pieces of Moonlight and place it in a jar; or other things like that, then we could stop killing the magic and be filled with it instead. Or maybe we are already always filled with it. It's the bringing out that we have trouble with. Stop being a doorknob, darling! Be magical, instead! — C. JoyBell C.

Were I a Roman Catholic, perhaps I should on this occasion vow to build a chapel to some saint, but as I am not, if I were to vow at all, it should be to build a light-house.
[Letter to his wife, 17 July 1757, after narrowly avoiding a shipwreck; often misquoted as "Lighthouses are more helpful than churches."] — Benjamin Franklin

The day when you find your true love, the day when you loose your virginity, the day when you buy a car or a house are often consider as the most important day of ones life but for me the most important day is when you find why you were born. — Mayank Kashyap

We don't want to eliminate the ego completely. Otherwise we'd be wandering around the house each morning, drinking coffee for hours, saying, 'Who the hell am I?' We need the ego to sustain a sense of identity. — Stuart Wilde

How we're brought in to this world determines where we begin on life's starting line. Are we born on the first row or in the back of the line? Do we have to stand in the back because of our gender, race or color? Do we have enough food in the house to eat breakfast this morning? Do we own a pair of running shoes? Do we wake up with a view of the mountains or with metal bars on our doors? Do we need permission before leaving the house? How long is it going to take us to realize the structure we're born into? — Sadiqua Hamdan

Prayer is the mortar that holds our house together. — Mother Teresa

The world isn't always what's right in front of you, you know? It's below, it's above, it's out there somewhere. Every burn of every light inside every house I see when I look down from the rooftop has a story. Sometimes we just need to change our perspective.
And when I look down at everything, I remember that there's more out there than just what's going on in my house - the bullshit with my dad, school, my future. I look at all those full houses, and I remember, I'm just one of many. It's not to say we're not special or important, but it's comforting, I guess. You don't feel so alone. — Penelope Douglas

Big house, big car, big breast, big life, big this and big that; what is so big about living big? Live on KISS principle not BIG principle. — Santosh Kalwar

Rogerson," I asked him sweetly as we sat watching a video in the pool house, "where would I find the pelagic zone?"
"In the open sea," he said. "Now shut up and eat your Junior Mints. — Sarah Dessen

The shepherd looked in his direction.
Gone to the wrong house, thought Gamache, not altogether surprised. While Henri had a huge heart, he had quite a modest brain. His head was taken up almost entirely by his ears. In fact, his head seemed simply a sort of mount for those ears. Fortunately Henri didn't really need his head. He kept all the important things in his heart. — Louise Penny

Life is too short to drink the house wine. — Helen Thomas

You have not truly loved, until you have learned to love yourself. — Treka L. House

Who's going to take care of it? You? ... Son, you came in the house yesterday with sh*t on your hands. Humansh*t. I don't know how that happened, but if someone has shit on their hands, it's an indicator that maybe the whole responsibility thing isn't for them. -Dad — Justin Halpern

I was out there with the White House press squad, and after his helicopter took off, and the carpet rolled up ... This wasn't a photograph that others were taking, but I continued to take pictures. — Annie Leibovitz

When I was alive, I believed - as you do - that time was at least as real and solid as myself, and probably more so. I said 'one o'clock' as though I could see it, and 'Monday' as though I could find it on the map; and I let myself be hurried along from minute to minute, day to day, year to year, as though I were actually moving from one place to another. Like everyone else, I lived in a house bricked up with seconds and minutes, weekends and New Year's Days, and I never went outside until I died, because there was no other door. Now I know that I could have walked through the walls. ( ... ) You can strike your own time, and start the count anywhere. When you understand that - then any time at all will be the right time for you. — Peter S. Beagle

Wood is an endlessly adaptive material. You can plane, chisel, saw, carve, sand, and bend it, and when the pieces are the shape you want you can use dovetail joints, tenpenny nails, pegs or glue; you can use lamination or inlay or marquetry; and then you can beautify it with French polish or plain linseed oil or subtle stains. And when you go to dinner at a friend's house, the candlelight will pick out the contours of grain and line, and when you take your seat you will be reminded that what you are sitting on grew from the dirt, stretched towards the sun, weathered rain and wind, and sheltered animals; it was not extruded by faceless machines lined on a cold cement floor and fed from metal vats. Wood reminds us where we come from. — Nicola Griffith

She could see the name Fukamachi on a shiny name-plate by the door of the house, but it was a name that meant nothing to Kazuko. And at that moment, in her heart, she began to dream of meeting someone. Someone special who would one day walk into her life. Someone she would instantly feel she had known for years. Someone who would feel the same about her. — Yasutaka Tsutsui

When our ancestors were attacked at Pearl Harbor, they called it a day that would live in infamy. The day the Partials attacked us with the RM Virus will not live in anything, because there will be none of us left to remember it.
-President David R. Cregan, March 21, 2065, in a press conference at the White House. Three hours later he hanged himself. — Dan Wells

A negro in the White House? Oh no! Some people thought we'd never set foot in the White House again since we built it!!!! — Stacy-Deanne

Not having children makes less work-but it makes a quiet house. — Susan Glaspell

People say time changes things, but it's not true. Doing things changes things. Not doing things leaves things exactly as they were. — House

It doesn't matter who you are, there are stars in every city, in every house, and on every street. — Ray Davies

My lovely shining fragile broken house is filled with flowers and founded on a rock. — Madeleine L'Engle

Sometimes, in a summer morning,
having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise
till noon, rapt in a revery, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs,
in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sing around or
flitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling in at
my west window, or the noise of some traveller's wagon on the distant
highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time. I grew in those seasons
like corn in the night, and they were far better than any work of the
hands would have been. They were not time subtracted from my life, but
so much over and above my usual allowance. I realized what the Orientals
mean by contemplation and the forsaking of works. For the most part, I
minded not how the hours went. The day advanced as if to light some
work of mine; it was morning, and lo, now it is evening, and nothing
memorable is accomplished. — Henry David Thoreau

Our father came to sleep in our house that night. He carried a small suitcase with a black mourning suit and a pair of polished shoes. Corrigan stopped him as he made his way up the stairs. 'Where d'you think you're going?'Our father gripped the bannister. His hands were liverspotted and I could see him trembling in his pause. 'That's not your room,' sad Corrigan. Our father tottered on the stairs. He took another step up. 'Don't,' said my brother. His voice was clear, full, confidant. Our father stood stunned. He climbed one more step and then turned, descended, looked around, lost.
'My own sons,' he said.
We made a bed for him on a sofa in the living room, but even then Corrigan refused to stay under the same roof; he went walking in the direction of the city center and I wondered what alley he might be found in later that night, what fist he might walk into, whose bottle he might climb down inside. — Colum McCann

You're not behind in life. There's no schedule or timetable that we all must follow. It's all made up. Wherever you are right now is exactly where you need to be. Seven billion people can't do everything in exactly the same scheduled order. We are all different with a variety of needs and goals. Some get married early, some get married late, while others don't get married at all. What is early? What is late? Compared with whom? Compared with what? Some want children, others don't. Some want a career; others enjoy taking care of a house and children. Your life is not on anyone else's schedule. Don't beat yourself up for where you are right now. It's YOUR timeline, not anyone else's, and nothing is off schedule. — Emily Maroutian

True friendship is a house where we can take off our masks. — Debasish Mridha

Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder. Help someone's soul heal. Walk out of your house like a shepherd. — Rumi

Get out from your house, from your cave, from your car, from the place you feel safe, from the place that you are. Get out and go running, go funning, go wild, get out from your head and get growing, dear child. — Dallas Clayton

We put thirty spokes together and call it a wheel,
But it is on the space where there is nothing that the usefulness of the wheels depends.
We turn clay to make vessel,
But it is on the space where there is nothing that the usefulness of the vessel depends.
We pierce doors and windows to make a house,
And it is on these spaces where there is nothing that the usefulness of the house depends.
Therefore just as we take advantage of what is, we should recognize the usefulness of what is not. — Lao-Tzu

Let us make this world a house of love and peace.
Let us forget and forgive all hate and prejudice.
Let us break all the walls of pride and prejudice.
Let us open our door to welcome joy and peace. — Debasish Mridha

We can but stand aside, and let them Rush upon their Fate! There is scarcely anything of yours, upon which it is so dangerous to Rush, as your Fate. You may Rush upon your Potato-beds, or your Strawberry-beds, without doing much harm: you may even Rush upon your Balcony (unless it is a new house, built by contract, and with no clerk of the works) and may survive the foolhardy enterprise: but if you once Rush upon your FATE
why, you must take the consequences! — Lewis Carroll

If you want to write a fantasy story with Norse gods, sentient robots, and telepathic dinosaurs, you can do just that. Want to throw in a vampire and a lesbian unicorn while you're at it? Go ahead. Nothing's off limits. But the endless possibility of the genre is a trap. It's easy to get distracted by the glittering props available to you and forget what you're supposed to be doing: telling a good story. Don't get me wrong, magic is cool. But a nervous mother singing to her child at night while something moves quietly through the dark outside her house? That's a story. Handled properly, it's more dramatic than any apocalypse or goblin army could ever be. — Patrick Rothfuss

Our first night in the house, my wife and I were lying in bed. I was thanking God for my blessings. Thanking God for not having to pull aside a dining room curain to have my children near - that they were right down the hall, asleep in their Superman underwear, their little chests rising and falling to the pulse of their dreams.
I thought how some blessings are fickle guests. Just when we think they're here to stay, they pack their bags and move. When we're in the midst of blessing, we think it's our due - that blessing lasts forever. Next thing you know we're sitting helpless beside a hospital bed. All we're left with is a name on a wall, a toy in a desk, and memories that haunt our sleep.
Sometimes we come to gratitute too late. It's only after blessing has passed on that we realize what we had.
- chapter 2 — Philip Gulley

Your house is not your home.
My world is not your world.
Your thoughts are your home
where you're dwelling all along. — Debasish Mridha

The Scientist must set in order. Science is built up with facts, as a house is with stones. But a collection of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house. — Henri Poincare

I like being president because i get a cool house — Barack Obama

Hello. It is Monday. I live in Sun City. Sun City is a city that is entirely contained inside an enormous concrete building in the shape of a sun. Its rays house our living quarters; its circular centre is where we work and shop. No one has ever been outside of the city; it is generally suspected that the environment outside of the city is uninhabitable. — Mike Russell

He could start a row in an empty house. — Alex Ferguson

May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house. — George Carlin

There are those who say that spiritual enlightenment is achieved through the denial of oneself; you must deny yourself many things, go and live in a mountaintop, never mingle with other people, talk to the birds..but I say to you, why should you dismantle your home? Where is the meaning in removing the bricks from your walls one by one? What is the purpose in uprooting your floors? Is there any significance in only allowing yourself a tin roof and a muddy bed? Why deny your house its structure? A truly enlightened soul is strong enough, is bright enough to live and shine through, even in a beautiful house! There is no need to ransack the house in order to see an inner beauty etched against a distraught surrounding. A bright and beautiful soul can shine forth even from inside an equally beautiful surrounding. — C. JoyBell C.

You shouldn't throw stones if you live in a glass house and if you got a glass jaw, you should watch yo mouth: cause I'll break yo face. — 50 Cent

Depression is like being under house arrest, only there is no house. — Lisa Eley

These days I live in a magical little village on Dartmoor in Devon, England, and my "special spot" is a moss-covered rock in a circle of trees in the woods behind my house.
I often go into the woods, or walk through the fields and hills nearby, when I need inspiration, or to work out a plot problem, or come up with an idea. I think better on my feet, particularly when there is beautiful countryside around me and a dog at my side.
When I was younger and lived in big cities, I had special places there too. There's magic everywhere, if you look. — Terri Windling

We get so involved with the latest craze or having the latest car or the most high-powered house that we lose touch with that which makes us happy - what makes us happy are quiet states of mind. — Frederick Lenz

A man woke up at midnight and wanted to smoke. Therefore he looked for some fire, for which he went to a neighbor's house and knocked at the door. The neighbor opened the door and asked him what he wanted. The man said, I wish to smoke. Can you give me a little fire? The neighbor replied, O.M.G.! What the heck is wrong with you? You have taken so much trouble to come and wake us up at the middle of the night, while in your own hand you have a lantern! The God that human beings so keenly seek, lives within the human biology, yet they wander hitherto searching for it. — Abhijit Naskar

You are only as powerful as that for which you stand. Do you stand for more money in the bank and a bigger house? Do you stand for an attractive mate? Do you stand for imposing your way of thinking upon others? These are the stands of the personality seeking to satisfy its wants. Do you stand for perfection, for the beauty and compassion of each soul? Do you stand for forgiveness and humbleness? These are the stands of the personality that has aligned itself with its soul. This is the position of a truly powerful Personality. — Gary Zukav

Whatever you think your shortcomings are ... you can't just lock yourself in the house so no one can notice or comment. We all have to take ourselves out into the world, flaws and all. And find a way to make the adjustment. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

What you have learned from experience is worth much more than gold. If you have a house it may burn down. Any kind of possession can be lost, but your experience is yours forever. Keep it and find a way to use it. — Somaly Mam

Do not neglect this body. This is the house of God; take care of it, only in this body can God be realized. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

So what makes me happy? I was really happy to build this house. That's it; building things. The trouble with software is that it's very hard to show your aunt in Florida what you've done. — Larry Ellison

It was clear that the house was run on a certain system, of either great pomposity or great denial - it was too early for her to make up her mind about which one it was. — Noorilhuda

I do not understand when a person is more concerned with the appearance of their house than the state of their home. — Gillian Duce

Celebration is the sparkle in the eye of the one who glows. It is the song that plays in the house of freedom. Celebration is the dance of life, it's the one dancing to the drumbeat of the heart, it's your birthday cake, it's you blowing out the trick candles, it's you delighting in the fire of life. — Tehya Sky

The Howeitat spread out along the cliffs to return the peasants' fire. This manner of going displeased Auda, the old lion, who raged that a mercenary village folk should dare to resist their secular masters, the Abu Tayi. So he jerked his halter, cantered his mare down the path, and rode out plain to view beneath the easternmost houses of the village. There he reined in, and shook a hand at them, booming in his wonderful voice: 'Dogs, do you not know Auda?' When they realized it was that implacable son of war their hearts failed them, and an hour later Sherif Nasir in the town-house was sipping tea with his guest the Turkish Governor, trying to console him for the sudden change of fortune. — T.E. Lawrence

I have known both of you all your lives, have carried your Daddy in my arms and on my shoulders, kissed and spanked him and watched him learn to walk. I don't know if you've known anybody from that far back; if you've loved anybody that long, first as an infant, then as a child, then as a man, you gain a strange perspective on time and human pain and effort. Other people cannot see what I see whenever I look into your father's face, for behind your father's face as it is today are all those other faces which were his. Let him laugh and I see a cellar your father does not remember and a house he does not remember and I hear in his present laughter his laughter as a child. Let him curse and I remember him falling down the cellar steps, and howling, and I remember, with pain, his tears, which my hand or your grandmother's so easily wiped away. But no one's hand can wipe away those tears he sheds invisibly today, which one hears in his laughter and in his speech and in his songs. — James Baldwin

Now there are many, many people in the world, but relatively few with whom we interact, and even fewer who cause us problems. So when you come across such a chance for practicing patience and tolerance, you should treat it with gratitude. It is rare. Just as having unexpectedly found a treasure in your own house, you should be happy and grateful toward your enemy for providing you that precious opportunity. Because if you are ever to be successful in your practice of patience and tolerance, which are critical factors in counteracting negative emotions, it is due to your own efforts and also the opportunity provided by your enemy. — Dalai Lama XIV

The times today are too dangerous for the young and the smart to be not bothered. Know the truth. Remember, "We can deny the truth. But, we can't avoid it." We have been there; we have all been there. Ask a female friend who is fighting for a better pay scale, ask the father of an immigrant who is nervous about the future of his daughter, ask a gay friend who is fighting for the right to marry, ask an African-American friend who wants her younger brother to be unafraid and proud, ask a homeless worker in Bangladesh whose house just got swept by rising sea levels, ask a young child in Beijing who breathes an air polluted by fossil fuels, ask a child labor in India who works ten hours and twelve hours to get two square meals a day. And, when you ask, you will know. You will know why we need to take it personally. — Sharad Vivek Sagar

What are you doing?"
"Playing house" said Felix
"Do you want to come and pour the tea?"
Ella's not stupid. "You are not. — Sally Nicholls

One day you may make wake up and think your all alone.
One day you may feel this house is not my home.
One day you may find that things around you have change.
But one thing for sure God still knows your first and last name. — E.R. Turner

Nature we have always with us, an in exhaustible store-house of that which moves the heart, appeals to the mind and fires the imagination -- health to the body, a stimulus to the intellect, and joy to the soul. — John Burroughs

The little house is not too small
To shelter friends who come to call.
Though low the roof and small its space
It holds the Lord's abounding grace,
And every simple room may be
Endowed with happy memory.
The little house, severly plain,
A wealth of beauty may contain.
Within it those who dwell may find
High faith which makes for peace of mind,
And that sweet understanding which
Can make the poorest cottage rich.
The little house can hold all things
From which the soul's contentment springs.
'Tis not too small for love to grow,
For all the joys that mortals know,
For mirth and song and that delight
Which make the humblest dwelling bright. — Edgar A. Guest

Life isn't about having, it's about being. You could surround yourself with all that money can buy, and you'd still be as miserable as a human can be. I know people with perfect bodies who don't have half the happiness I've found. On my journeys I've seen more joy in the slums of Mumbai and the orphanages of Africa than in wealthy gated communities and on sprawling estates worth millions. Why is that? You'll find contentment when your talents and passion are completely engaged, in full force. Recognise instant self-gratification for what it is. Resist the temptation to grab for material objects like the perfect house, the coolest clothes or the hottest car. The if I just had X, I would be happy syndrome is a mass delusion. When you look for happiness in mere objects, they are never enough. Look around. Look within. — Nick Vujicic

The heart must be renewed by divine grace, or it will be in vain to seek for purity of life. He who attempts to build up a noble, virtuous character independent of the grace of Christ is building his house upon the shifting sand. — Ellen G. White