Meditative Quotations for a Sunday Afternoon

A train of thought, in quotations...

"One of the hardest things in life is having words in your heart that you can't utter." ~ James Earl Jones

"The thought manifests as the word. The word manifests as the deed. The deed develops into habit. And the habit hardens into character. So watch the thought and its ways with care. And let it spring from love, born out of concern for all beings." ~ The Buddha

"Every beginning, after all, is nothing but a sequel, and the book of events is always open in the middle." ~ Wislawa Szymborska

"Once you have loved, You will always love. For what's in your mind may escape, but what's in your heart will remain forever. There is no instinct like that of the heart." ~ Lord Byron.

"Talk not of wasted affection; affection never was wasted." ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"Have a heart that never hardens, a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts." ~ Charles Dickens

"In those whom I like, I can find no common denominator; in those whom I love I can: they all make me laugh." ~ W. H. Auden

"Do what you feel in your heart to be right, for you'll be criticized anyway." ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

"Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet." ~ Plato

"Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius." ~ Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

"Behind all this, some great happiness is hiding." ~ Yehuda Amichai

"Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground." ~ Rumi

"Those who are willing to be vulnerable move among mysteries." ~ Theodore Roethke

Be Yourself

Oscar Wilde beams me on. Always.

I'm so happy to have rediscovered a quote today via my buddy Todd's And I Quote Blog:

Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken.
~ Oscar Wilde

That's as pithy as you get, but consider it within its trinity. Hold that counterpoise!

To be natural is such a very difficult pose to keep up.
~ Oscar Wilde

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
~ Oscar Wilde

Nobody does it better than Wilde.

On the general theme, here are a few variations:

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.
~ Kurt Vonnegut

We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others that in the end we become disguised to ourselves.
~ François Duc de La Rochefoucauld

It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for something you are not.
~ Andre Gide

If God had wanted me otherwise, He would have created me otherwise.
~ Johann von Goethe

Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else.
~ Judy Garland

Every time you don't follow your inner guidance, you feel a loss of energy, loss of power, a sense of spiritual deadness.
~ Shakti Gawain

At bottom every man knows well enough that he is a unique being, only once on this earth; and by no extraordinary chance will such a marvelously picturesque piece of diversity in unity as he is, ever be put together a second time.
~ Friedrich Nietzsche

It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.
~ e.e. cummings

Rabbi Zusya said that on the Day of Judgment, God would ask him, not why he had not been Moses, but why he had not been Zusya.
~ Walter Kaufmann