“… the human body is much stronger than we think. It seems to laugh at the cobwebs of despair that the heart weaves before our eyes in order to blind us to our fate. The body walks and goes on walking.” --Consuelo De Saint-Exupery was a Salvadoran-French writer and artist, and wife of the famous writer and aviator Antoine de Saint Exupéry. Quote from "The Tale of the Rose: The Love Story Behind The Little Prince."
“Who will tell whether one happy moment of love or the joy of breathing or walking on a bright morning and smelling the fresh air, is not worth all the suffering and effort which life implies.” —Erich Fromm
“My faith is in the unknown, in all that we do not understand by reason; I believe that what is beyond our comprehension is a simple fact in other dimensions, and that in the realm of the unknown there is an infinite power for good.” --Charlie Chaplin, "My Autobiography."
"Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself." --Charlie Chaplin. born in London, England, on April 16th 1889.
“That’s a popular notion—that it is exclusively suffering that produces good work or insightful work. I don’t think that’s the case. I think in a certain sense it’s a trigger or a leaver…but I think that good work is produced in spite of suffering and as a response—as a victory over suffering.” --Leonard Cohen, Canadian singer-songwriter, musician, poet and novelist.
"Sometimes our light goes out, but is blown again into flame by an encounter with another human being. Each of us owes the deepest thanks to those who have rekindled this inner light." - Albert Schweitzer
"When you walk into a rainforest you are overwhelmed by the palpable sensation of all-encompassing vitality. It is a place where life can be seen and heard and felt, dripping and breathing and twitching and growing on nearly every single surface; and through the air, beneath the ground, inside stems and trunks and along the edges of leaves." --Jerry Toth, "The Life and Death of the Rainforest," PARABO
"You do not have to be good. | You do not have to walk on your knees | For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. | You only have to let the soft animal of your body | love what it loves." --Mary Oliver from "Wild Geese."
"But in truth, the inner life is not a private or personal thing; it's very much a social issue. The mind is a result of collective human effort. There is not your mind and my mind; it's a human mind." --Vimala Thakar.
"When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be." --Lao Tsu
"I would say that the thrust of my life has been initially about getting free, and then realizing that my freedom is not independent of everybody else. Then I am arriving at that circle where one works on oneself as a gift to other people so that one doesn't create more suffering. I help people as a work on myself and I work on myself to help people." --Ram Dass, Love Serve Remember.
"Rabbi Simcha Bunim of Peshicha (1765-1827) used to say that everyone should keep a piece of paper with “for my sake the world was created” in one pocket, and a piece of paper with “I am but dust and ashes” in another. The Rabbi was expressing an existential truth: each individual being is important, but not self-important." --Seth Segall, Ph.D.
"Human suffering anywhere concerns men and women everywhere." —Elie Wiesel is a Romanian-born Jewish-American writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor. This quotation comes from his novel "Night," a work based on his experiences as a prisoner in the Auschwitz, Buna, and Buchenwald concentration camps.
"What I wear is pants. What I do is live. How I pray is breathe." - Thomas Merton.
"Accept loss forever." --Jack Kerouac: "Belief & Technique For Modern Prose: List of Essentials" in a letter to Don Allen (1958); published in "Heaven & Other Poems" (1977).
