Finding Our Place In Life Quotes

We who lose our footing have lost our way. ~ Anasazi Foundation

Where it Matters
Being with you today is worth all the broken hearts of yesterday. In a flash, all of the stumbling blocks of relationships gone wrong have become the stepping stones to our perfect love.
We fit. I now understand the feeling I used to think was pain that came along with love was actually the discomfort from being in a place I didn't fit.
Thank you for being you ... for sharing your love with me ... for inspiring me to accept myself ... for helping me see the unique beauty in imperfection ... for showing me that love is something you do; something not just to be said, but also to be shown.
I am not perfect; neither are you. I love that!
Our love is perfect. And even though we may not be, our love creates a bridge that spans over our imperfections and joins us where it matters.
I love you! ~ Steve Maraboli

The opacity of the mind, its inability to project itself into the realm of another's personality, goes a long way to explain the friction of life. If we would set down other people's errors to this rather than to malice prepense we should not only get more good out of life and feel more kindly toward our fellows, but doubtless the rectitude of our intellects would increase, and the justice of our judgments ... we are so shut away from one another that none tells those about him what he considers ideal treatment on their part toward him ... nothing will probe to the core of this greatest disadvantage under which we labor
that is, mutual noncomprehension
except a basis of society and government which would make it easy for each to put himself in another's place because his place is so much like another's ... we [would] need less imagination in order to do that which is just and kind to every one about us. ~ Frances E. Willard

Any place in our lives and heart where we are exerting our will and ways over God's will and ways will inevitably drain us of energy and resources. Exertion=Exhaustion. On the other hand, death to self requires only that we lay down at the foot of the cross and give up the right to run our lives. We say with Christ, "Not my will but Yours be done Father." The Crucified life is the entrance into true rest. #ComeAndDie ~ John Burton

We are only afraid of death as long as we do not know who we are, but once we know ourselves objectively to be a child of God, we are already home and our inheritance is given to us ahead of time. Then we can begin living and enjoying instead of climbing, proving, or defending. Our false self, as all religions say in one way or another, must "die before we die." Only then can we sincerely say with Francis, "Welcome, Sister Death" which he said on this day in 1226. Those who face this first death of dying to self lose nothing that is real. And so, "the second death can do them no harm," as Francis says in his "Canticle of the Creatures." Death itself will only "keep opening, and opening, and opening," which is what resurrection means.

All of this creates a very different form and shape to our spiritual life. It is no longer elitist, separatist, or competitive, but changes our deepest imagination in the direction of simplicity. Our worldview will not normally change until we place ourselves, or are placed, in new and different lifestyle situations… You do not think yourself into a new way of living, you live yourself into a new way of thinking. ~ Richard Rohr

Q. What is your view of the daily discipline of the Christian life - the need for taking time to be alone with God?
Lewis: We have our New Testament regimental orders upon the subject. I would take it for granted that everyone who becomes a Christian would undertake this practice. It is enjoined upon us by Our Lord; and since they are his commands, I believe in following them. It is always just possible that Jesus Christ meant what he said when He told us to seek the secret place and to close the door. ~ C.S. Lewis

So what's the plan?"
"I believe that our best plan is to flush them out. If we can capture them both, there will be little reason for the others to fight."
"But if they're in the midst of the army--" Bran started.
"Bait," I said, seeing the plan at once. "There has to be bait to bring them to the front." Thinking rapidly, I added, "And I know who's to be the bait. Us, right? Only, how to get them to meet us?"
"The letter," Branaric said. "They know now that we have it."
Both looked at me, but I said nothing.
"Even if we don't have it," the Marquis said easily, "it's enough to say we do to get them to meet us. If they break the truce or try anything untoward, a chosen group will grab them, and my warriors will disperse in all directions and reassemble at a certain place on my border a week later, at which time we will reassess. I can give you all the details of the plan if you wish them."
Bran snorted a laugh. "I'm in. As if we had a choice!"
"Do we have a choice?" I asked, instantly hostile.
"I am endeavoring to give you the semblance of one," Shevraeth replied in his most polite voice.
"And if we don't agree?" I demanded.
"Then you will remain here in safety until events are resolved."
"So we are prisoners, then."
Bran was chuckling and wiping his eyes. "Life, sister, how you remind me of that old spaniel of Khesot's, Skater, when he thought someone was going to pinch his favorite chew-stick. Remember him?"
Sherwood Smith

We need a god who bleeds now
a god whose wounds are not
some small male vengeance
some pitiful concession to humility
a desert swept with dryin marrow in honor of the lord
we need a god who bleeds
spreads her lunar vulva & showers us in shades of scarlet
thick & warm like the breath of her
our mothers tearing to let us in
this place breaks open
like our mothers bleeding
the planet is heaving mourning our ignorance
the moon tugs the seas
to hold her/to hold her
embrace swelling hills/i am
not wounded i am bleeding to life
we need a god who bleeds now
whose wounds are not the end of anything ~ Ntozake Shange

Changing our behavior purely for the sake of appearances may seem to conflict with the need to be authentic and consistent, but in many ways it is actually a result of those needs. After all, resolving the tension between standing out from the crowd and becoming isolated requires finding our niche in the world. But what would happen if we weren't accepted in the place where we felt we belonged? For others to see us as a "poseur" or as "delusional" would be painful. Even worse, what if they were right? The social consequences and self-doubt that follow when our self-perceptions conflict with how others see us can be just as destabilizing to our identity as conflicts between our own self-perceptions and actions. ~ Sheena Iyengar

Be alive, vital
Ride the waves of turbulence
Embrace Earth's sacred ground
Listen to vehicles carrying souls
between forgotten dreams
and the promise of a place warm and secure
Perpetual motion
Our lives' treadmill, crushing experiences into sweet soul nectar
Culminating in love's powerful fulfilment and peace ~ Ramon Ravenswood

Homosexuality is the most beautiful aspect of humanity. For its existence is proof that altruism is natural; it is to demonstrate that the theory of the "survival of the fittest" can only apply to the species as a whole, and that reproduction is insufficient to secure our place in the great jungle of life, which means being nice is a more stable evolutionary strategy than making kids; and if the homosexual is attracted to religion or to art - or, in smaller societies, to shamanism or caring for other people's children - is this not due to his or her search for purpose? If so, then what we call purpose must be something that encompasses all modes of life. What we call love must be greater than child rearing or caring for a mate. ~ Anthony Marais

We want to be special. We want our place in the cosmos to be central. We want evolution-even godless evolution-to have been directed toward us so that we stand at the pinnacle of nature's ladder of progress. Rewind the tape of life and we want to believe that we (Homo Sapiens) would appear again and again. Would we? Probably not. ~ Michael Shermer

I saw her reflection behind me, in the mirror. I was speechless. Somehow I knew I wasn't allowed to turn around - it was against the rules, whatever the rules of the place were - but we could see each other, our eyes could meet in the mirror, and she was just as glad to see me as I was to see her. She was herself. An embodied presence. There was psychic reality to her, there was depth and information. She was between me and whatever place she had stepped from, what landscape beyond. And it was all about the moment when our eyes touched in the glass, surprise and amusement, her beautiful blue eyes with the dark rings around the irises, pale blue eyes with a lot of light in them: hello! Fondness, intelligence, sadness, humor. There was motion and stillness, stillness and modulation, and all the charge and magic of a great painting. Ten seconds, eternity. It was all a circle back to her. You could grasp it in an instant, you could live in it forever: she existed only in the mirror, inside the space of the frame, and though she wasn't alive, not exactly, she wasn't dead either because she wasn't yet born, and yet never not born - as somehow, oddly, neither was I. And I knew that she could tell me anything I wanted to know (life, death, past, future) even though it was already there, in her smile, the answer to all questions ~ Donna Tartt

This is where these writers placed their bets, striking a dangerous balance between silence and art. How do writers and readers find each other under such dangerous circumstances? Reading, like writing, under these conditions is disobedience to a directive in which the reader, our Eve, already knows the possible consequences of eating that apple but takes a bold bite anyway. How does that reader find the courage to take this bite, open that book?
After an arrest, an execution? Of course he or she may find it in the power of the hushed chorus of other readers, but she can also find it in the writer's courage in having stepped forward, in having written, or rewritten, in the fi rst place. Create dangerously, for people who read dangerously. Th is is what I've always thought it meant to be a writer. Writing, knowing in part that no matter how trivial your words may seem, someday, somewhere, someone may risk his or her life to read them. Coming from where I come from, with the history I have - having spent the first twelve years of my life under both dictatorships of Papa Doc and his son, JeanClaude - this is what I've always seen as the unifying principle among all writers.
This is what, among other things, might join Albert Camus and Sophocles to Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Osip Mandelstam, and Ralph Waldo Emerson to Ralph Waldo Ellison. Somewhere, if not now, then maybe years in the future, a future that we may have yet to dream of, someone may risk his or her lif ~ Edwidge Danticat

The second sort was waking up alone. That was characterised by an awareness that he was alone in bed, alone in life, alone in the world, and it could sometimes fill him with a sweet sensation of freedom, and at other times with a melancholy that could perhaps be called loneliness, but which was perhaps just a glimpse of what anyone's life really is: a journey from the attachment of the umbilical cord to a death where we are finally separated from everything and everyone. A brief glimpse at the moment of awakening before all our defence mechanisms and comforting illusions slot into place again and we can face life in all its unreal glory. Then ~ Jo Nesbo

The reason we recoil from this is that we have in our day started by getting the whole picture upside down. Starting with the doctrine that every individuality is 'of infinite value,' we then picture God as a kind of employment committee whose business it is to find suitable careers for souls, square holes for square pegs. In fact, however, the value of the individual does not lie in him. He is capable of receiving value. He receives it by union with Christ. There is no question of finding for him a place in the living temple which will do justice to his inherent value and give scope to his natural idiosyncrasy. The place was there first. The man was created for it. He will not be himself till he is there. We shall be true and everlasting and really divine persons only in Heaven, just as we are, even now, coloured bodies only in the light. ~ C.S. Lewis

We have, each of us, a story that is uniquely ours, a narrative arc that we can walk with purpose once we figure out what it is. It's the opposite to living our lives episodically, where each day is only tangentially connected to the next, where we are ourselves the only constants linking yesterday to tomorrow. There is nothing wrong with that, and I don't want to imply that there is by saying how much this shocked me
just that it felt so suddenly, painfully right to think that I have tapped into my Long Tale, that I have set my feet on the path I want to walk the rest of my life, and that it is a path of stories and writing and that no matter how many oceans I cross or how transient I feel in any given place, I am still on my Tale's Road, because having tapped it, having found it, the following is inevitable ... ~ Amal El-Mohtar

'Years of Living Dangerously' is a wonderful opportunity to reach a lot of people with the story and importance of climate change in our lives; in recent history, there's no bigger threat to the quality of human life than what is taking place right now in respect of climate change. ~ Harrison Ford

Much of our understanding of God's action in our lives in achieved in hindsight. When a particular crisis or event in our life has passed we cry out in astonishment like Jacob, 'The Lord is in this place and I never knew it. ~ Sheila Cassidy

We've always used stories as a way to pass on our history, as a way to explain things in life that we don't understand. We use them to make us feel connected to everything around us, and to help us escape to another time or place.
Bookshops across the world are full of these stories.
From travelling booksellers and undercover bookshops, to pop-up stalls and community hubs, walking into a good bookshop is like walking into another zone.These places are time machines, spaceships, story-makers, secret-keepers. They are dragon-tamers, dream-catchers, fact-finders and safe places. They are full of infinite possibilities, and tales worth taking home.
Because whether we're in the middle of the desert or in the heart of a city, on the top of a mountain or on an underground train: having good stories to keep us company can mean the whole world. ~ Jen Campbell

Life is a journey, not a destination. As we start a new year, let's not forget that our journey continues every moment of our existence. We just continue to evolve and transform through all our choices. Accomplishing a goal may be wonderful yet it is but a resting place while we choose our next fork in the road. For 2013 and beyond, make sure you enjoy the journey and keep on growing. ~ Don Shapiro

Right on the other side of our fears resides hope and happiness. We get stuck in our lives afraid to walk over there when it's a much kinder place. ~ Ron Baratono

I wish our country could be a free and happy one. Every citizen need not go against their conscience and can find their own place by their virtue and talents; a simple and happy society, where the goodness of humanity is expanded to the maximum, and the evilness of humanity is constrained to the minimum; honesty, trust, kindness, and helping each other are everyday occurrences in life; there is not so much anger and anxiety, a pure smile on everyone's face. ~ Xu Zhiyong

It is obvious enough for the reader to conclude, "She loves young Emerson." A reader in Lucy's place would not find it obvious. Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice, and we welcome "nerves" or any other shibboleth that will cloak our personal desire. She loved Cecil; George made her nervous; will the reader explain to her that the phrases should have been reversed? ~ E. M. Forster

If we try every day to find that place inside us that can see a little more light and give a little more love, the quality of our life will improve significantly. We all long for love. It is the human inheritance to have such a longing. However, we must discover that in order to find it, we must give it. And when we learn to give it, we find that it is, quite amazingly, everywhere around us. ~ Donna Goddard

Who knows? Life may just be a Positive Conspiracy bent on putting us in the right place at the right time every living, breathing moment of the day. It just takes a certain kind of perspective to see this. Realizing this can put our "analyzer" on hold, our interpretive mind on "ga-ga" and our hearts on breathless. ~ Antero Alli

The mold we give to our lives is so that there will be no cataclysms. The order we seek we are willing to surrender to the flow of life at any time, but it is there as a brake on a car, and our health is a brake. We put brakes on, against our temperament. he said, Even a room, arranged in a certain manner, prevents certain things from taking place in it. ~ Anais Nin

We are meaning-seeking creatures. Dogs, as far as we know, do not agonise about the canine condition, worry about the plight of dogs in other parts of the world, or try to see their lives from a different perspective. But human beings fall easily into despair, and from the very beginning we invented stories that enabled us to place our lives in a larger setting, that revealed an underlying pattern, and gave us a sense that, against all the depressing and chaotic evidence to the contrary, life had meaning and value ~ Karen Armstrong

The worst denial of all is being in denial that we're in denial in the first place. And I would wonder if that's not exactly where most of us live out most of our lives. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

Because we convince ourselves that people won't accept our testimony about God's work in our lives, we're not usually ready to share it. We might prejudge their reactions or simply lack confidence. Soon, staying silent becomes a way of life. We become accustomed to the monotony and forget our calling in the world...We are called to action. Verbalizing, with humility, what God has done for us is an important part of faith. We shouldn't shy away from it or doubt that He will use it to bring others to Himself. This should bring us to a place of confidence and humility. And it should compel us to speak. ~ Rebecca Van Noord

I don't trust you."
He stepped back, wounded. "Has your judgment become so compromised? If you truly do not believe the truth in my words, then you have no place here."
We stared at one another, fury swelling between us. The silence expanded, solidifying our words like manacles.
"Once, I thought you loved me," I said in a broken voice. "I refuse to live in your shadow for the rest of eternity."
His eyes widened, obsidian eyes searching and disbelieving.
"Then leave!" he said, gesturing to the door angrily.


So I did.
I stepped into the reincarnation pool, letting the waters tease my life apart, inflicting upon myself the same curse that had forced me to undergo the agni pariksha. In the distance, Amar's voice roared for me. Pleading. But it was too little. And far too late. ~ Roshani Chokshi

We welcome you to this moment in your lives and to the place you have come to in each other's hearts. We join with you on this day, as you commit before God and humanity that from this point forward you shall live as one. I remind all of our guests that you have been invited here for a holy purpose, not just to witness, but to participate fully with your thoughts and prayers, asking God to bless this couple and their married life. You are here because this couple feels close to you and asks that you join with them in this dedication of sacred purpose. You represent symbolically all the people in the world who will be touched in any way by the life of this couple. You represent their friends and family, now and forever. They have chosen this act of marriage and this public, holy ceremony in which to proclaim it. Together we all thank God who brought them together and ask Him always to guide their way. ~ Marianne Williamson

In our young minds houses belonged to women were their special domain, not as property, but as places where all that truly mattered in life took place - the warmth and comfort of shelter, the feeding of our bodies, the nurturing of our souls. There we learned dignity, integrity of being; there we learned to have faith. The folks who made this life possible, who were our primary guides and teachers, were black women. ~ Bell Hooks

I think it's important to reiterate here that I didn't start out wanting to be a gardener, or a designer for that matter. It was all trial and error and figuring things out. And sometimes you've got to try something outside of your comfort zone to figure out what it is that you truly love.

Well, you could say that about you and me right from the start. You were never looking for the loud guy, and I certainly wasn't looking for the quiet girl.

Now I look back and go, "If I would've ended up with that quiet guy or that stable guy or that safe guy, I would never have been able to pursue any of these dreams, because no one would have pushed me to these new places I discovered in myself." Those other types of guys might have allowed me to stay in that safe place.

They wouldn't have drawn you out. That's interesting. And if I had wound up with some cheerleader who was always the life of the party, I don't think I would have found my way, either. I needed you for that.

Nowadays when I think about the name Magnolia, I think about it in terms that refer to much more than the blossoming of our business. I think about the buds on the three, and how they really are just the tightest buds--they look like rocks, almost. And I feel like when Chip and I met, that tight little bud was me. I was risk averse, and in some ways, I don't think I saw the beauty or the potential in myself. Then I wound up with Chip Gaines and--

You bloomed?
Joanna Gaines

Fate is a woman, I said to them. In fact, she is three women. Young, like us, so that they will have the courage to be cruel, having no weight of memory to teach temperance. Young, but so old, older than any stone. Their hair is silver, but full and long. Their eyes are black. But when they are at their work they become dogs, wolves, for they are hounds of death, and also hounds of joy. They take the strands of life in their jaws, and sometimes they are careful with their jagged teeth, and sometimes they are not. They gallop around a great monolith, the stone that pierces our Sphere where the meridians meet, that turns the Earth and pins it in place in the world. It is called the Spindle of Necessity, and all round it the wolves of fate run, and run, and run, and the patterns of their winding are the patterns of the world. Nothing can occur without them, but they take no sides.
I could also say that there is such a stone, such a place, but the dogs who are women died long ago, and left the strands to fall, and we have been helpless ever since. That in a wolfless world we must find our own way. That is more comforting to me. I want my own way, I want to falter; I want to fail, and I want to be redeemed. All these things I want to spool out from the spindle that is me, not the spindle of the world. But I have heard both tales. ~ Catherynne M. Valente

So we had better call upon our lawyers, politicians, philosophers and even poets to turn their attention to this conundrum: how do you regulate the ownership of data? This may well be the most important political question of our era. If we cannot answer this question soon, our sociopolitical system might collapse. People are already sensing the coming cataclysm. Perhaps this is why citizens all over the world are losing faith in the liberal story, which just a decade ago seemed irresistible.
How, then, do we go forward from here, and how do we cope with the immense challenges of the biotech and infotech revolutions? Perhaps the very same scientists and entrepreneurs who disrupted the world in the first place could engineer some technological solution? For example, might networked algorithms form the scaffolding for a global human community that could collectively own all the data and oversee the future development of life? As global inequality rises and social tensions increase around the world, perhaps Mark Zuckerberg could call upon his 2 billion friends to join forces and do something together? ~ Yuval Noah Harari

Standing at the edge of our city, a man could feel that we had made this place of streets and dwellings in the stillness of the desert, and that we had done a brave thing ... Or a man could feel that we had made this city in the desert and that it was a fake thing and that our lives were empty lives, and that we were the contemporaries of the jack rabbits. ~ William, Saroyan

I don't know why we live - the gift of life comes to us from I don't know what source or for what purpose; but I believe we can go on living for the reason that (always of course up to a certain point) life is the most valuable thing we know anything about and it is therefore presumptively a great mistake to surrender it while there is any yet left in the cup. In other words consciousness is an illimitable power, and though at times it may seem to be all consciousness of misery, yet in the way it propagates itself from wave to wave, so that we never cease to feel, though at moments we appear to, try to, pray to, there is something that holds one in one's place, makes it a standpoint in the universe which it is probably good not to forsake. You are right in your consciousness that we are all echoes and reverberations of the same, and you are noble when your interest and pity as to everything that surrounds you, appears to have a sustaining and harmonizing power. Only don't, I beseech you, generalize too much in these sympathies and tendernesses - remember that every life is a special problem which is not yours but another's, and content yourself with the terrible algebra of your own. Don't melt too much into the universe, but be as solid and dense and fixed as you can. We all live together, and those of us who love and know, live so most. We help each other - even unconsciously, each in our own effort, we lighten the effort of others, we contribute to the sum of success, make ~ Henry James

It is vain to speak of approaching judgment when finding our place, our portion, and our enjoyment in the very scene which is to be judged. ~ Charles Henry Mackintosh

The beauty parlor is where everything interesting in life, everything alluring, is experienced firsthand, physically, rather than through the spectrum of some screen or another. It's so emotional in there! And all these people are stroking your hair. The atmosphere is centuries old, yet very now too. Elba is not bound to our technological era. Were armageddon to befall us tomorrow and wipe our electricity and organized delivery systems, elba would still have a job. Her gossip would take the place of associated press wire services. Instead of using bleach in a bottle, she'd squeeze the juice out of an unfortunate iguana directly onto her customer's hair. A woman like elba finds a way. ~ Lisa Crystal Carver

Why Do We Have Expectations? An expectation is simply an unexpressed need or hope. You have expectations because you are born with needs and desires. In a perfect world, you would not need to ask for anything as a child; loving adults would have taken care of it all. In our imperfect world, your hopes to have all that you need and desire are dashed - and you are left to figure out how you will acquire them in a healthy way. From this place, you begin to develop expectations that other people will be able to help out in your life to give you what you need. ~ Mark R. Laaser

Saying a prayer can be as simple as thinking positive thoughts about someone - it's not an act that needs to be tied to any particular religion or system of beliefs. I can say a prayer just by saying "I wish you peace" after someone becomes angry with me for something trivial; I can say a prayer for the woman who is always cheerful (or gloomy) at the store where I shop by thinking "I wish you all the best in life - good health, good relationships, and all of your true needs fulfilled." Of course, if you want to pray to God in the form in which you conceive of God, that's fine, too - and your prayer will not be wasted. Think about it. Is the world a better place when you walk away from someone either forgetting them immediately or thinking negative thoughts about them? This world of ours can use all the positive thoughts we can contribute to it, and our simple and heartfelt prayers are some of the most positive thoughts we can create and share. And they affect us as much as, if not more than, they affect the objects of our prayers. ~ Tom Walsh

To All My Mariners in One

Forget the many who talk much, say little, mean less and matter least
Forget we live in times when broadcasts of Tchaikovsky's 5th
precede announcements of the death of tyrants.
Forget that life for governments is priced war cheap but kidnap high
Our seamanship is not with such.
From port to port we learn that "depths last longer than heights",
that years are meant to disappear like wakes,
that nothing but the sun stands still.
We share the sweeter alphabets of laughter and the slower languages of pain.
Common as coal, we find in one another's eyes
the quiet diamonds that are worth the world.
Drawn by the song of our keel, who are we but horizons coming true?
Let others wear their memories like jewelry
We're of the few who work apart so well,
together when we must.
We speak cathedrals when we speak and
trust no promise but the pure supremacy of tears.
What more can we expect?
The sea's blue mischief may be waiting for its time and place,
but still we have the stars to guide us,
we have the winds for company.
We have ourselves.
We have the sailor's faith that not even dying can divide us. ~ Samuel Hazo

Many social justice or social activist movements have been rooted in a position. A position is usually against something. Any position will call up its opposition. If I say up, it generates down. If I say right, it really creates left. If I say good, it creates bad. So a position creates its opposition. A stand is something quite distinct from that.

There are synonyms for "stand" such as "declaration" or "commitment," but let me talk for just a few moments about the power of a stand. A stand comes from the heart, from the soul. A stand is always life affirming. A stand is always trustworthy. A stand is natural to who you are. When we use the phrase "take a stand" I'm really inviting you to un-cover, or "unconceal," or recognize, or affirm, or claim the stand that you already are.

Stand-takers are the people who actually change the course of history and are the source of causing an idea's time to come. Mahatma Gandhi was a stand-taker. He took a stand so powerful that it mobilized millions of people in a way that the completely unpredictable outcome of the British walking out of India did happen. And India became an independent nation. The stand that he took… or the stand that Martin Luther King, Jr. took or the stand that Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony took for women's rights - those stands changed our lives today. The changes that have taken place in history as a result of the stand-takers are permanent changes, not temporary changes. The ~ Lynne Twist