Your Life Being Your Own Quotes & Sayings

Outdoors, we knew, was the real terror of life. The threat of being outdoors surfaced frequently in those days. Every possibility of excess was curtailed with it. If somebody ate too much, he could end up outdoors. If somebody used too much coal, he could end up outdoors. People could gamble themselves outdoors, drink themselves outdoors. Sometimes mothers put their sons outdoors, and when that happened, regardless of what the son had done, all sympathy was with him. He was outdoors, and his own flesh had done it. To be put outdoors by a landlord was one thing - unfortunate, but an aspect of life over which you had no control, since you could not control your income. But to be slack enough to put oneself outdoors, or heartless enough to put one's own kin outdoors - that was criminal. — Toni Morrison

Only few know what righteousness is. It is righteous to suffer for your own foolishness. When you sin, it is righteous to bear the consequences of your sin without complaining. Saying what you mean and what is on your heart when you deal with other people, that is righteous. One who hungers and thirsts for righteousness will be filled-and being filled with righteousness is something very great. — Johan Oscar Smith

Nothing should be worth more to you than its value in helping you live your life. If you are willing to slough off the past, even at a loss, you are keeping yourself free, and your world continues to grow. If you insist on holding to some abstract valuation, you are being held hostage by that possession, and you are trapped in a prison of your own devising. — Kent Nerburn

Wanting to be liked means being a supporting character in your own life, using the cues of the actors around you to determine your next line rather than your own script. It means that your self-worth will always be tied to what someone else thinks about you, forever out of your control. — Jessica Valenti

Within you lies the sun, the moon, the sky and all the wonders of this universe. The intelligence that created these wonders is the same force that created you. All things around you come from the same source. We are all one.
Every being on this Earth, every object on this Earth has a
soul. All souls flow into one, this is the Soul of the Universe.
You see, John, when you nourish your own mind and your own spirit, you are really feeding the Soul of the Universe. When you improve yourself, you are improving the lives of all those around you. And when you have the courage to advance confidently in the direction of your dreams, you begin to draw upon the power of the universe. As I told you earlier, life gives you what you ask of it. It is always listening. — Robin S. Sharma

Ellie's head sinks into her hands, and she weeps for the unknown Boot, for Jennifer, for chances missed and a life wasted. She cries for herself, because nobody will ever love her like he loved Jennifer, and because she suspects that she is spoiling what might have been a perfectly good, if ordinary, life. She cries because she is drunk and in her flat and there are few advantages to living on your own except being able to sob uninhibitedly at will. — Jojo Moyes

Anyway, I think I made a bit of progress."
"How did you manage that?"
"Well, they liked that you served in the First Army, and that you saved their prince's life."
"After he risked his own life rescuing us?"
"I may have taken some liberties with the details."
"Oh, Nikolai will love that. Is there more?"
"I told them you hate herring."
"Why?"
"And that you love plum cake. And that Ana Kuya took a switch to you when you ruined your spring slippers in puddles."
I winced. "Why would you tell them all that?'
"I wanted to make you human," he said. "All they see when they look at you is the Sun Summoner. They see a threat, another powerful Grisha like the Darkling. I want them to see a daughter or a sister or a friend. I want them to see Alina."
I felt a lump rise in my throat. "Do you practice being wonderful?"
"Daily," he said with a grin. Then he winked. "But I prefer 'useful. — Leigh Bardugo

When you realize that eternity is right here now, that it is within your possibility to experience the eternity of your own truth and being, then you grasp the following: That which you are was never born and will never die ... (90) — Joseph Campbell

Being the new guy's always great because you get to go in fresh with your own choices and you get to bring new life and breath and a new energy into something that's already established. — Dustin Clare

Life is about balance. The good and the bad. The highs and the lows. The thing everyone should realize is that the key to happiness is being happy by yourself and for yourself. Happiness comes from within. You have the power to change your own mindset so that all the negative, horrible thoughts that try to invade your psyche are replaced with happy, positive, wonderful thoughts. — Ellen DeGeneres

Everybody kind of understands, Oh yeah you take drugs and it does something to your brain and then you can't stop. It's easier to describe that shame, that horrible feeling of not being able to control your own life. — Aimee Mann

Immortality: "It is impossible to be conscious of being unconscious."

It is not possible to be aware of being unconscious from your own perspective. You cannot be aware of not being aware. You can be less aware/conscious, such as when you are asleep, but not completely unconscious (dead), because time would stand still for you. A billion years could pass, and you would not know it.

How do you know you are dead? It is not possible to be aware of any gaps in life; it is continuous and never-ending from your own point of view.

Death and birth are a continuous event from your own perspective.

You will die physically, but you will be born into a new physical body. Being born happens, or you would not be here now. You were born into this life. It is what we know happens. There is no evidence anything else happens. True or false? — Michael Smith

Sometimes it seems' said Grok, 'that the faces exist of themselves, in a disembodied somewhere, waiting for the clown who will wear them, who will bring them to life. Faces that wait in the mirrors of unknown dressing-rooms, unseen in the depths of the glass like fish in dusty pools, fish that will rise up out of the obscure profundity when they spot the one who anxiously scrutinises his own reflection for the face it lacks, man eating fish waiting to gobble up your being and give you another instead ... — Angela Carter

Here's the best thing about being a writer: it's like having a magic wand to make whatever you want happen to imaginary people in a made-up world.

Here's the worst thing about being a writer: it makes you wish even more that you had a magic wand to make whatever you want happen to actual people in your own real life" -Autumn — Claudia Mills

A child needs to internalize a model of someone who has a life of her own. The parent whose life is centered around her children is influencing them to think that life is about either becoming a parent or being forever served by a parent. Let your child know you have interests and relationships that don't involve her. Take trips without her. Show her that you take active responsibility in meeting your own needs and solving your own problems. — Henry Cloud

Everything is more complicated than you think. You only see a tenth of what is true. There are a million little strings attached to every choice you make; you can destroy your life every time you choose. But maybe you won't know for twenty years. And you'll never ever trace it to its source. And you only get one chance to play it out. Just try and figure out your own divorce. And they say there is no fate, but there is: it's what you create. Even though the world goes on for eons and eons, you are here for a fraction of a fraction of a second. Most of your time is spent being dead or not yet born. But while alive, you wait in vain, wasting years, for a phone call or a letter or a look from someone or something to make it all right. And it never comes or it seems to but doesn't really. And so you spend your time in vague regret or vaguer hope for something good to come along. Something to make you feel connected, to make you feel whole, to make you feel loved. — Charlie Kaufman

Because you see, when you're a strong person, people often look to you to take care of them. People look to you for help. People look to you for strength.
And when your life spins out of control, it's as if their lives are tied to your own and will come crashing down with yours. — Nessie Q.

You are all talking a bit too much, said Armando, who had cautioned them from the beginning to stay out of popular culture and in their own interior worlds.
When you are caught up in the world that you did not design as support for your life and the life of earth and people, it is like being caught in someone else's dream or nightmare. Many people exist in their lives in this way. I say exist because it is not really living. It is akin to being suspended in a dream one is having at night, a dream over which one has no control. You are going here and there, seeing this and that person; you do not know or care about them usually, they are just there, on your interior screen. Humankind will not survive if we continue in this way, most of us living lives in which our own life is not the center. — Alice Walker

There's a psychological mechanism, I've come to believe, that prevents most of us from imagining the moment of our own death. For if it were possible to imagine fully that instant of passing from consciousness to nonexistence, with all the attendant fear and humiliation of absolute helplessness, it would be very hard to live. It would be unbearably obvious that death is inscribed in everything that constitutes life, that any moment of your existence may be only a breath away from being the last. We would be continuously devastated by the magnitude of that inescapable fact. Still, as we mature into our mortality, we begin to gingerly dip our horror-tingling toes into the void, hoping that our mind will somehow ease itself into dying, that God or some other soothing opiate will remain available as we venture into the darkness of non-being. — Aleksandar Hemon

And there you are
on the shore,
fitful and thoughtful, trying
to attach them to an idea
some news of your own life.
But the lilies
are slippery and wild - they are
devoid of meaning, they are
simply doing,
from the deepest
spurs of their being,
what they are impelled to do
every summer.
And so, dear sorrow, are you. — Mary Oliver

It's not being a woman I mind so much," she said slowly. "'Tis the way men seem to always order my life." She leaned earnestly toward him. "Your hand, Papa, has wielded a sword and cradled a child and held power over hundreds of men." She held up her own hand. "This one has far fewer adventures before it. — Barbara Samuel

Fidelity to the law of your own being is an act of high courage flung in the face of life. — Carl Jung

A writer is a dangerous friend. Everything you say, all of your life and experience, is fodder for our writing. We mean you no harm, but what you know and what you've done is unavoidably fascinating to us. Being friends with a writer is a bit like trying to keep a bear as a pet. They're wonderful, friendly creatures, but they play rough and they don't know their own strength or remember that they have claws. Choose the stories you tell to your writer friends carefully. — Randy Murray

The question is, are you going to grow or are you going to just stay as you are out of fear and waste your precious human life by status quo-ing instead of being willing to break the sound barrier? Break the glass ceiling, or whatever it is in your own life? Are you willing to go forward? I suggest finding the willingness to go forward instead of staying still, which is essentially going backward, particularly when you have a calling in some direction. That calling needs to be answered. And it's not necessarily going to work out the way you want it to work out, but it is taking you forward, and you are leaving the nest. And that never can be a mistake - to fly instead of staying in the nest with all the poop and everything that's in there. TS: — Pema Chodron

You cannot live sheltered forever without being exposed, and at the same time be a spiritual adventurer. Be audacious. Be crazy in your own way, with that madness in the eyes of man that is wisdom in the eyes of God. Take risks, search and search again, search everywhere, in every way, do not let a single opportunity or chance that life offers pass you by, and do not be petty and mean, trying to drive a hard bargain. — Arnaud Desjardins

The secret of the creative life is how to feel at ease with your own embarrassment. We're all in the dirty laundry business and we're being paid to take risks and look silly. Race car drivers get paid to risk their lives in a more concrete way; we get paid to risk our lives in an emotional way. — Paul Schrader

The truth is that you are more than you think you are, and it is your responsibility to become more than you are! It is your own growth and development that is the Great Game of Life, the fulfillment of the Great Plan that is the purpose of our being, and it is likewise the Greatest Adventure you can ever undertake for it leads not merely toward the infinity of the physical universe but more toward the infinity of consciousness wherein you become truly crowned with Glory. There are no lesser words that can be used to inspire you to take this Great Journey that is opened before you with the information and the techniques of this book. — Carl Llewellyn Weschcke

Has given it life? Why do you allow some of the earliest images to which your child is exposed to be images of violence? Who told you this was good for your children? And why do you hide images of love? Why do you teach your children to be ashamed and embarrassed of their own bodies and their functions by shielding your own body from them, and telling them not to ever touch themselves in ways which pleasure them? What message do you send them about pleasure? And what lessons about the body? Why do you place your children in schools where competition is allowed and encouraged, where being the "best" and learning the "most" is rewarded, where "performance" is graded, and moving at one's own pace is barely tolerated? What does your child understand from this? — Neale Donald Walsch

it is important to seek godly counsel and the peace of the Spirit. But too often we believe Mr. or Ms. Right will miraculously fill all the gaping holes in our lives. No human being is up for that task. It's a role only God can fill. And you can't manage the condition of anyone else, reforming them into exactly what you think you need. What you can do is embrace God's process of refinement and become a man or woman who selflessly lays down your life for your current or future spouse. In the process of laying down your life, you will discover more fulfillment than if you'd sought your own interests. — John Bevere

Look at your life. Look at the ways in which you define who you are and what you're capable of achieving. Look at your goals. Look at the pressures applied by the people around you and the culture in which you were raised. Look again. And again. Keep looking until you realize, within your own experience, that you're so much more than who you believe you are. Keep looking until you discover the wondrous heart, the marvelous mind, that is the very basis of your being. — Tsoknyi Rinpoche

All the great masters in the world have been saying only one thing down the centuries, "Have your own mind and have your own individuality. Don't be a part of the crowd; don't be a wheel in the whole mechanism of a vast society. Be individual, on your own. Live life with your own eyes; listen to music with your own ears." But we are not doing anything with our own ears, with our own eyes, with our own minds; everything is being taught, and we are following it. — Rajneesh

As I focus on diligent joy, I also keep remembering a simple idea my friend Darcey told me once
that all the sorrow and trouble of this world is caused by unhappy people. Not only in the big global Hitler-'n'-Stalin picture, but also on the smallest personal level. Even in my own life, I can see exactly where my episodes of unhappiness have brought suffering or distress or (at the very least) inconvenience to those around me. The search for contentment is, therefore, not merely a self-preserving and self-benefiting act, but also a generous gift to the world. Clearing out all your misery gets you out of the way. You cease being an obstacle, not only to yourself but to anyone else. Only then are you free to serve and enjoy other people. — Elizabeth Gilbert

That there was no God was a given, as far as Hope was concerned, and being nice to people and making the most of your life struck her as a reasonable enough conclusion to draw from it, and in any case what she wanted to do. But besides the spires of theology and the watch-towers of ideology, it seemed a very shaky hut indeed, and not one that offered her much shelter or would stand up in court.
She couldn't see a way to make her objection to the fix a deduction from any body of thought. It came from a body of flesh, her own, and that was enough for her. She doubted that this would be enough for anyone else. — Ken MacLeod

When you open yourself to the continually changing, impermanent, dynamic nature of your own being and of reality, you increase your capacity to love and care about other people and your capacity to not be afraid. You're able to keep your eyes open, your heart open, and your mind open. And you notice when you get caught up in prejudice, bias, and aggression. You develop an enthusiasm for no longer watering those negative seeds, from now until the day you die. And, you begin to think of your life as offering endless opportunities to start to do things differently. — Pema Chodron

I moved here when I was 20 to go to college. After I moved here, I became much more aware of the importance of the culture and literature to my life. Sometimes when you're immersed in something, you just don't notice it very much. Moving away makes you appreciate your culture. Living here, I've thought more and more about India, and what being Indian-American means to me. And it's made me incorporate things from Indian literature into my own writing. — Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

You've invented your own way of being, and perhaps it might be 'odd' to one who has no idea of the life you've led, but to one who does ... " Brayden paused, shrugged. "To one who does, it's ... it's ... I haven't got a word. It's astounding — Carole Cummings

Think of your own body, and see that it is strong and healthy; it is the best instrument you have. Think of it as being as strong as adamant, and that with the help of this body you will cross the ocean of life. Freedom is never to be reached by the weak. Throw away all weakness. Tell your body that it is strong, tell your mind that it is strong, and have unbounded faith and hope in yourself. (I. 146) A — Swami Vivekananda

Do you remember? Do you remember being solid? Do you remember life before the hole? Before you were empty and needed to be filled? There was a time when everything was enough. There was a time you didn't try to get out of your own skin. Remember? — Amy Reed

I think they call that parallas: being able to know the distance of something because you're seeing it from two separate points - and the farther apart those two points are, the more accurate you can be. Put one eye here and one eye fourteen feet away, and you know a whole lot more about the world you're seeing.
The thing is, if you go through life with just your own point of view, you're like that kid with glass eye. If there's something that's right up in your face, it looks really big - overwhelming even. But if you've got that parallax - if you've got that other point of view - you realize that there are bigger, much more important things that are far off toward the horizon. Once you focus on those things rather than the way up close, that close-up stuff becomes nothing more than a nuisance blocking the view. — Neal Shusterman

We hope to help you discover Your Self; inspire you to live more passionate and sensitive life; helping you listen to your Soul, finding your-own space in this matrix of life, making a genuine contribution to humanity. — Natasa Nuit Pantovic

No matter what your background, no matter how low your station in life, there must be no limit on your ability to reach for the stars, to go as far as your God-given talents will take you. Trust the people; believe every human being is capable of greatness, capable of self-government ... only when people are free to worship, create, and build, only when they are given a personal stake in deciding their destiny and benefiting from their own risks, only then do societies become dynamic, prosperous, progressive, and free. — Ronald Reagan

If only seeing your own life
The way you should
Were easy,
But it's not.
I wouldn't have spent
So much time
Wishing
Things were different.
I wouldn't have spent
So much time
Worrying
About not being normal.
I wouldn't have spent
So much time
Writing
About wanting something new.
I wanted....
To somehow change
"Something,"
But the only thing
That really needed to change
Was
The way
I thought
About
Me..... — Nancy J Cavanaugh

Back in the day for me was a great time in my life - I was in my 20s. Most people refer to their experiences in their twenties as being a highlight in their life. It's a period of time where you often develop your own way, your own sound, your own identity, and that happened with me, when I was with a great teacher - Miles Davis. — Herbie Hancock

1. Live now. Be concerned with the present rather than with past or future.
2. Live here. Deal with what is present rather than with what is absent.
3. Stop imagining. Experience the real.
4. Stop unnecessary thinking. Rather, taste and see.
5. Express rather than manipulate, explain, justify, or judge.
6. Give in to unpleasantness and pain just as to pleasure. Do not restrict your awareness.
7. Accept no should or ought other than your own. Adore no graven image.
8. Take full responsibility for your actions, feelings, and thoughts.
9. Surrender to being as you are. — Claudio Naranjo

Watching life grow, even if it isn't your own; watching time pass; and being able to be there for people, even if they don't know it. Now that's happiness. Dead or alive, that's true living — Renee Wolfe

Love of God thus becomes the dominant passion of life; like every other worth-while love, it demands and inspires sacrifice. But love of God and man, as an ideal, has lately been replaced by the new ideal of tolerance which inspires no sacrifice. Why should any human being in the world be merely tolerated? What man has ever made a sacrifice in the name of tolerance? It leads men, instead, to express their own egotism in a book or a lecture that patronizes the downtrodden group. One of the cruelest things that can happen to a human being is to be tolerated. Never once did Our Lord say, "Tolerate your enemies!" But He did say, "Love your enemies; do good to them that hate you" (Matt. 5:44). Such love can be achieved only if we deliberately curb our fallen nature's animosities. — Fulton J. Sheen

Sonnet: Political Greatness
Nor happiness, nor majesty, nor fame,
Nor peace, nor strength, nor skill in arms or arts,
Shepherd those herds whom tyranny makes tame;
Verse echoes not one beating of their hearts,
History is but the shadow of their shame,
Art veils her glass, or from the pageant starts
As to oblivion their blind millions fleet,
Staining that Heaven with obscene imagery
Of their own likeness. What are numbers knit
By force or custom? Man who man would be,
Must rule the empire of himself; in it
Must be supreme, establishing his throne
On vanquished will, quelling the anarchy
Of hopes and fears, being himself alone. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Happiness is being at home your own skin and being able to occupy your life. — Lisa Cypers Kamen

If you want to change the world, then be your own focus for a celebration of life. Really, fundamentally, at the very core of your being, be thankful you are alive, that you've got this opportunity, with these molecules, at this moment. Be thankful! Be a celebrant! Be thankful that you are alive and then look around to see who else is at the party! — Patch Adams

When you have learned, through discipline, to simplify your life, and so practiced the mindfulness of meditation, and through it loosened the hold of aggression, clinging, and negativity on your whole being, the wisdom of insight can slowly dawn. And in the all-revealing clarity of its sunlight, this insight can show you, distinctly and directly, both the subtlest workings of your own mind and the nature of reality. — Sogyal Rinpoche

When you conform to the monoculture's version of who you are and what the world is like, you lose your freedom along with your ability to be truly innovative in terms of your own life. Being able to draw on many different stories, not just the economic one, allows you to creatively and authentically meet the challenges that face you in your life. The monoculture, determinedly single-minded, insists that economic values and assumptions can be used to solve your problems, whether those problems are spiritual, political, intellectual, or relational. — F.S. Michaels

Life, death, preservation, loss, failure, success, poverty, riches, worthiness, unworthiness, slander, fame, hunger, thirst, cold, heat - these are the alternations of the world, the workings of fate. Day and night they change place before us, and wisdom cannot spy out their source. Therefore, they should not be enough to destroy your harmony; they should not be allowed to enter the storehouse of the spirit. If you can harmonize and delight in them, master them and never be at a loss for joy; if you can do this day and night without break and make it be spring with everything, mingling with all and creating the moment within your own mind - this is what I call being whole in power. — Zhuangzi

There have been setbacks, illnesses and other obstacles, so inevitably I've had disappointments. But once you realise that things can't always go your own way, you're on the right track to being able to handle your own life. — Diana Quick

When you look back at your own life, you see ... the sufferings you went through, each time you would have avoided it if you possibly could. And yet, when you look at the depth of your character now, isn't a part of that a product of those experiences? Weren't those experiences part of what created the depth of your inner being? — Ram Dass

But I have thought of you often during these holidays and imagined how quiet you must be in your lonely fort among the empty hills, upon which those big southerly winds precipitate themselves as though they would devour them in great pieces.

The stillness must be immense in which such sounds and movements have room, and when one thinks that to it all the presence of the far-off sea comes chiming in as well, perhaps as the inmost tone in that prehistoric harmony, then one can only wish for you that you are confidently and patiently letting that lofty solitude work upon you which is no more to be stricken out of your life; which in everything there is ahead of you to experience and to do will work as an anonymous influence, continuously and gently decisive, much as in us blood of ancestors ceaselessly stirs and mingles with our own into that unique, not repeatable being which at every turning of our life we are. — Rainer Maria Rilke

Being an Arab leader has its rewards: the suite at the Waldorf-Astoria during the United Nations General Assembly, travel in your own plane, plenty of cash, even job security - whether kings, sheiks or presidents, with or without elections, most serve for life. — Elliott Abrams

You always know more than you think you know without being aware of it. You always remember best what has hurt most.
Memory is a reflex of the pain. Knowledge is the memory of the pain combined with the unconsciousness which we 'rationalize' via dreams or by means of reading literature. It is impossible to learn from someone else's experience unless we don't assume this experience as our own's, which we can achieve only by living it anew and from scratch. We can not live our lives at someone else's expense. Only life fraught with dangers and risks and lived as your own's deserves its name. Only selfish people do not live their lives as if they do not belong entirely to them. Cowardice equals a life that you refuse to live at its fullest and at its most dangerous. — Martin Walser

Do not chase another human being. Instead, chase your curiosity. Chase your development and your goals. Chase your passion. Strive to work for something bigger than yourself, and instead of trying to convince someone that you fit within their world, strive to build your own. — Bianca Sparacino

I believe that you become yourself every single day of your life through your choices and how you think. And that's constantly changing every day ... You are constantly changing, evolving through your experiences, how you interpret your experiences, and how you choose to do things in the future based on those experiences ... Being yourself means you think with your own mind, and you make your own choices and that makes you you. — Jenna Marbles

Forgive others, forgive yourself, forgive yourself for not being perfect, and accept responsibility for your own life. — Leo Buscaglia

Being in your twenties has changed a lot since I was in my twenties, but it is still a time everything awful that happens is awful in a romantic way, even if you don't admit it (and you can't admit it because then you would be less important in the tragedy you're starring in, your own life) ... because in your twenties you know, even if you don't admit this either, even if this is buried deep in your subconscious, that you can waste an entire decade and still have a life. — Delia Ephron

Choose food, clothing, and shelter that accords with nature.Rely on your own body for transportation. Allow your work and your recreation to be one and the same. Do exercise that develops your whole being and not just your body. Listen to music that bridges the three spheres of your being. Choose leaders for their virtue rather than their wealth or power. Serve others and cultivate yourself simultaneously. Understand that true growth comes from meeting and solving problems of life in a way that is harmonizing to yourself and to others. If you can follow these simple old ways, you will be continually renewed. — Lao-Tzu

Being a pacifist to save your own life is normal, being a pacifist for the lives of others is true pacifism. — Ammon Hennacy

What material success does is provide you with the ability to concentrate on other things that really matter. And that is being able to make a difference, not only in your own life, but in other people's lives. — Oprah Winfrey

He swore by all that he ever had loved and reverenced that he would try, try with all his might in the short time that might remain to him ... he would forget himself, he would put his own pain and chagrin and disappointment, his own feeling of defeat and uselessness, his own craving for love and intellectual companionship in the background, and he would see if the more than six feet of bone and muscle that contained his being could do any small service that might come his way for God and his fellow man before he went. Maybe if he could accomplish some little thing, something that would ease the ache of even one heart that ached as his was aching at that minute, just maybe that knowledge would be the secret that he might carry in his breast that would set the stamp of an indelible smile on his face, so that even a child could discern the majesty of the impulse and he would not be ashamed when the end came. — Gene Stratton-Porter

We never know the battles others are facing. We don't know the demons they are hiding. Everyone you have ever met is fighting something. You may have thought no one could've had the kind of raw deal you were dealt in life, being ailed with a mental illness, yet the truth is, many have the same or worse problems than that of your own. — Kathryn Perez

Softly and kindly remind yourself, 'I cannot own anything.' It is a valuable thought to keep in mind as you struggle to improve your financial picture, worry about investments, and plan how to acquire more and more. It is a universal principle which you are part of. You must release everything when you truly awaken. Are you letting your life go by in frustration and worry over not having enough? If so, relax and remember that you only get what you have for a short period of time. When you awaken you will see the folly of being attached to anything. — Wayne Dyer

When there is mist on the mountains, it is beautiful, and when there is no mist, it is also beautiful. All four seasons are beautiful. [...] There is nothing to stop you from being in touch with life in the present moment. The question is, Do you have eyes that can see the sunset, feet that can touch the earth? [...]
Don't think that happiness will be possible only when conditions around you become perfect. Happiness lies in your own heart. — Thich Nhat Hanh

I like acting, alright, and it can be fun sometimes, but the process of it, of not being - not being the author of your own life, I can't take that anymore. — Todd Louiso

No one wants to go through life alone, fighting battles single-handedly their whole life. Not even the hardiest of heroes. That's just a miserable existence. Everyone needs someone in their corner, right? ... Even if you could," I wrinkled my brow, "would you really want to? By all accounts, it gets lonely being your own hero. — J.M. Richards

It's one thing to love someone so completely that their loss causes you unfathomable grief, agony that rips at your very being. It's another thing to love someone so completely that you can no longer go on with your own life. — Tess Oliver

There's a very real possibility in this industry of going out and leading your life and then going home and being a voyeur of your own life. You can literally go watch yourself - where you went last night, what you did, what the things that people presuppose about you. It's kind of crazy. — Ryan Reynolds

When I am wrong, I will learn the lesson and move on to face other challenges. For me, that's what creating your own life is. Doing your best work while being your best self. — Jennifer Lopez

It is quite surreal having a film made about your life. The whole process of turning real life into drama is interesting in itself, but even more so when it is your own life being put into the narrative forge. — Heather Brooke

A particularly poignant moment for me today was after being given two quotes which caused me to spend time reflecting on the path that my own life has taken so far, and might take in the future: "Whatever does not make your heart sing was not meant for you in this life" "Whatever you lose time doing, you should be doing in life — Rachel Stainer

We have given you, O Adam, no visage proper to yourself, nor endowment properly your own, in order that whatever place, whatever form, whatever gifts you may, with premeditation, select, these same you may have and possess through your own judgement and decision. The nature of all other creatures is defined and restricted within laws which We have laid down; you, by contrast, impeded by no such restrictions, may, by your own free will, to whose custody We have assigned you, trace for yourself the lineaments of your own nature [ ... ]. We have made you a creature neither of heaven nor of earth, neither mortal nor immortal, in order that you may, as the free and proud shaper of your own being, fashion yourself in the form you may prefer. It will be in your power to descend to the lower, brutish forms of life; you will be able, through your own decision, to rise again to the superior orders whose life is divine. — Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola

There is no list of rules. There is one rule. The rule is: there are no rules. Happiness comes from living as you need to, as you want to. As your inner voice tells you to. Happiness comes from being who you actually are instead of who you think you are supposed to be. Being traditional is not traditional anymore. It's funny that we still think of it that way. Normalize your lives, people. You don't want a baby? Don't have one. I don't want to get married? I won't. You want to live alone? Enjoy it. You want to love someone? Love someone. Don't apologize. Don't explain. Don't ever feel less than. When you feel the need to apologize or explain who you are, it means the voice in your head is telling you the wrong story. Wipe the slate clean. And rewrite it. No fairy tales. Be your own narrator. And go for a happy ending. One foot in front of the other. You will make it. — Shonda Rhimes

You have to have the service mentality in the sense that you subjugate your own ego, and you subjugate a large part of your own life to really helping other people, being successful on their behalf. — Herb Kelleher

When you've spent your whole life not being good enough, it takes time to let yourself believe that you finally are. Self-worth isn't a switch that flips inside you. It's a daily struggle not to sabotage your own success. Not to cave into the voices inside your head that whisper you're not good enough, or you'll fuck things up, or that someone else could do things better than you. — Julie Johnson

Beware of being obsessed with consistency to your own convictions instead of being devoted to God. The important consistency in a saint is not to a principle but to the divine life. It is easier to be an excessive fanatic than it is to be consistently faithful, because God causes an amazing humbling of our religious conceit when we are faithful to Him. — Oswald Chambers

Inner peace - you need to know who you are, what you want out of life. You have to do your own thinking, and for that you better know who you are, and not just know but be secure in it, comfortable with yourself. Plus you gotta have discipline. Stamina. And luck sure helps. A little luck counts for a lot, including our great good luck of being born into the greatest economic system ever devised. It's not a perfect system by any means, but overall it's responsible for tremendous human progress. In just the past century alone, we've seen something like a seven-to-one improvement in the standard of living. I'm not saying we don't have problems, we've got a helluva lot of problems, but that's where the genius of the free market comes in, all the drive and talent and energy that goes into solving those problems. — Ben Fountain

Waiting to live life is not worth it. Waiting for someone to figure out how to live with you is not worth waiting for. When you start living your own life, life brings you someone worth being with ... — Sadiqua Hamdan

You are the God-being that is here to create life, to breathe soul into your body, to walk this world as your own source of power, love, worth and life. — Joy Page

whole. I can't imagine anything more terrifying than losing Sophie. When you're pregnant, you can think of nothing but having your own body to yourself again; yet after giving birth you realize that the biggest part of you is now somehow external, subject to all sorts of dangers and disappearance, so you spend the rest of your life trying to figure out how to keep her close enough for comfort. That's the strange thing about being a mother: Until you have a baby, you don't even realize how much you were missing one. It doesn't — Jodi Picoult

Within our core self is an indelible blueprint of unrivaled individuality - the singular being that each of us exists to express. In this three-dimensional movie called "Life" there are no stand-ins, body doubles, or understudies - no one can fill in for us by proxy! Realization of this truth alone eliminates the need to imitate, conform, limit, or betray our loyalty to the originality of Self. Imagine the relief of removing your carefully crafted masks fashioned by societal forms of conditioning and instead responding to what comes into your experience directly from your Authentic Self. One of the first principles to honor in your relationship with yourself is to respect and trust your own inner voice. This form of trust is the way of the heart, the epitome of well-being. — Michael Bernard Beckwith

Up here [in space], you're free. Really free, for the first time in your life. All the laws and rules and prejudices they've been dumping on you all your life ... they're all down there. Up here it's a new start. You can be yourself and do your own thing ... and nobody can tell you different. — Ben Bova

Unfortunately, the simplest things - such as thinking for myself, creating my own reality and being whatever the hell I want to be each day of my life - are a sin. To be a good Christian basically means to give up the reigns of your life and let some unseen force do it for you. — Brandon Boyd

We respect your learning, Dr Einstein; but there is one thing you do not seem to have learned: that God is a spirit and cannot be found through the telescope or microscope, no more than human thought or emotion can be found by analyzing the brain. As everyone knows, religion is based on Faith, not knowledge. Every thinking person, perhaps, is assailed at times with religious doubt. My own faith has wavered many a time. But I never told anyone of my spiritual aberrations for two reasons: (1) I feared that I might, by mere suggestion, disturb and damage the life and hopes of some fellow being; (2) because I agree with the writer who said, 'There is a mean streak in anyone who will destroy another's faith.' . . . I hope, Dr Einstein, that you were misquoted and that you will yet say something more pleasing to the vast number of the American people who delight to do you honor. — Richard Dawkins

If you have been a slave all your life, used to being ordered about and abused from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to sleep, it's impossible to adjust to normal life overnight. I had never been free to make my own decisions before and had no idea how to do it. I was like a bird that has been bred in captivity suddenly being released into the wild: I fell apart. — Jane Elliott

Human skin is porous; the world flows through you. Your senses are large pores that let the world in. By being attuned to the wisdom of your senses, you will never become an exile in your own life, an outsider lost in an external spiritual place that your will and intellect, have constructed. — John O'Donohue

Be your own master, and look at things as a man, as a human being, as a citizen, as a mortal creature. — Marcus Aurelius

You are fortunate to be an Aquarius because you are known as the humanitarian zodiac sign. You are progressive in your thinking, which is reflected in every aspect of your life. You do not like being told how to live your life, and you will make your decisions clear to anyone who dares question them. You are energetic, with a zest for life. Unfortunately, society's boundaries can still be insurmountable, even for an Aquarian such as yourself. You are very much in charge of your own destiny and, if something or someone gets in the way of your aspirations, you won't give up on your goals easily. This perseverance earns you respect from others, even if they disagree with what you are hoping to accomplish. — Rosemary Breen

Sometimes you can just step into the character, and you get all your feelings and emotions just from sympathizing with her and being her. But then, other times, you just have to resort back to anything that you've been through in your own life and try to play that. — Charity Shea

And when I die all the memories of my own life will go to the grave with me, God willing, and Dick will never have to look back at them. And his children will never even know what my life was like. They'll know nothing of grinding stones and being hungry and ashamed all day and being beaten by a teacher who couldn't write himself and being sure you kept your mind so empty that you had no thoughts at all. And that's what I've done for them, that's my gift to them and to all their children ever after, so don't talk to me about being hard. — Sebastian Faulks

Being a hangman requires you to take someone else's life based on someone else's judgment, and carry it out on someone else's schedule. The job does not provide the same satisfaction that an ordinary murderer gets from smashing a skull. It robs them of the fulfillment of plunging a knife into someone's throat. In the world of capital punishment, the prisoner's crimes have been sanitized by years of sitting on death row. By then, the execution is a cold and impersonal affair. There is prayer, a noose, and a few last words. The prisoner then experiences a sudden rush of blood to the head. At the end of it all, you have a broken neck and a dead body swinging from the end of a rope. That is it. You don't get to manhandle them with your own hands. That's why the brutes you mention will never be hired. So you see, Vaida, this is not a job for a murderer. It is a job for a humanitarian. — Taona Dumisani Chiveneko

Fame never interested me. I could have exhibited more of my own works in the 1970s, but I didn't want to. It's sort of like being a child. When you're finished with school, you have only one thing on your mind: to get out and experience life. Did I want to spend all my time working on a painting? No, I wanted to have fun, travel, meet women and live life. — Wolfgang Beltracchi

I thought that you would bring everything into my life. I thought you are my Jesus. You are my priest, my light. So I always believed you are my only home here. I feel so insecure because I am so scared of losing you. That's why I want to control you. I want you are in my view always and I want cut off your extension to the world and your extension to the others.
I think of those days when I travelled in Europe on my own. I met many people and finally I wasn't so afraid of being alone. Maybe I should let my life open, like a flower; maybe I should fly, like a lonely bird. I shouldn't be blocked by a tree, and I shouldn't be scared about losing one tree, instead of seeing a whole forest. — Xiaolu Guo

1. Ask God for light.
I want to look at my day with God's eyes, not merely my own.
2. Give thanks.
The day I have just lived is a gift from God. Be grateful for it.
3. Review the day.
I carefully look back on the day just completed, being guided by the Holy Spirit.
4. Face your shortcomings.
I face up to what is wrong-in my life and in me.
5. Look toward the day to come.
I ask where I need God in the day to — Jim Manney

How did you act when all was not good? Did you rise to the challenge? Did you display grit, resilience, and integrity in your response? Character isn't about being perfect or always doing the right thing. Character is how you respond to your own failures. It's when you screw up and life hits you in the mouth that you have an opportunity to reveal your inner strength. — Bill Courtney

My mom believed that you make your own luck. Over the stove she had hung these old, maroon painted letters that spell out, "MANIFEST." The idea being if you thought and dreamed about the way you wanted your life to be
if you just envisioned it long enough, it would come into being.
But as hard as I had manifested Astrid Heyman with her hand in mine, her blue eyes gazing into mine, her lips whispering something wild and funny and outrageous in my ear, she had remained totally unaware of my existence. Truly, to even dream of dreaming about Astrid, for a guy like me, in my relatively low position on the social ladder of Cheyenne Mountain High, was idiotic. And with her a senior and me a junior? Forget it.
Astrid was just lit up with beauty: shining blonde ringlets, June sky blue eyes, slightly furrowed brow, always biting back a smile, champion diver on the swim team. Olympic level.
Hell, Astrid was Olympic level in every possible way. — Emmy Laybourne