The Secret Quotes

Sometimes sorrow, sometimes joy. But beneath it all remember the innate perfection of your life unfolding. That is the secret of unreasonable happiness. ~ Dan Millman

Just when I despaired -- she was there, filling me as a melody fills a cottage. I was with her, running beside the Acis when we were a child. I knew the ancient villa moated by a dark lake, the view through the dusty windows of the belvedere, and the secret space in the odd angle between two rooms where we sat at noon to read by candlelight. I knew the life of the Autarch's court, where poison waited in a diamond cup. I learned what it was for one who had never seen a cell or felt a whip to be a prisoner of the torturers, what dying meant, and death.

I learned that I had been more to her than I had ever guessed, and at last fell into a sleep in which my dreams were all of her. Not memories merely -- memories I had possessed in plenty before. I held her poor, cold hands in mine, and I no longer wore the rags of an apprentice, nor the fuligin of a journeyman. We were one, naked and happy and clean, and we knew that she was no more and that I still lived, and we struggled against neither of those things, but with woven hair read from a single book and talked and sang of other matters. ~ Gene Wolfe

The secret of all true persuasion is to induce the person to persuade himself. ~ Harry Allen Overstreet

For years I've gathered various books, sources. When I was little it might have been Tolkien, and so I would have just four books around me. I couldn't afford many books at the time, so I'd have what I had. Maybe I'd tear out ten or twenty pictures from magazines because I couldn't afford art books. I would check out library books and try to keep them as long as I could, but I couldn't jot my notes in them. For any particular song, I can't tell you the books that were on the floor, the photographs on the floor. I don't let anybody keep a record of that. Those are the secret ingredients. ~ Tori Amos

The secret to my success is the love & support of a good bar of chocolate ~ Ray Daley

Seventh letter : Life's simplest pleasures are life's greatest joys

Most people dont discover whats most important in life untill they are too old to do anything about it. They spend many of their best years pursuing things that matter little in the end. While society invites us to fill our with material objects, the best part of us knows that the more basic pleasures are the ones that enriches and sustain us. No matter how easy or hard our conditions, we all have wealth of simple blessings around us - waiting to be continued. As we do our happiness grows. Our gratitude expands. And each day becomes a breathtaking gift. ~ Robin S. Sharma

And then there were the others, who were interested only in gold. They never found the secret. They forgot that lead, copper, and iron have their own Personal Legends to fulfill. And anyone who interferes with the Personal Legend of another thing never will discover his own." The ~ Paulo Coelho

For the next several minutes we forgot about scones and lollipops and SATs and politicians and the Secret Service and hovered in a blissful place, population of two - Max and me. When I was kissing Max, the rest of the world, and all my problems faded away. ~ Cassidy Calloway

All the vices lead to fortune when they are joined with the vilest of all
avarice. This is the secret of life. ~ Edouard Rene De Laboulaye

Just about everything you learned in school about life is wrong, but the wrongest thing might very well be this: Being well rounded is the secret to success. ~ Seth Godin

They have forgotten much of what they once knew. They have even lost the secret of their origin. But I will give it to you, and this will give you a powerful advantage over them. Do you know the legend of the Hydra? ~ Christopher Pike

Fair are the flowers and the children, but their subtle suggestion is fairer;
Rarer is the roseburst of dawn, but the secret that clasps it rarer;
Sweet the exultance of song, but the strain that precedes it is sweeter
And never was poem yet writ, but the meaning outmastered the meter. ~ Richard Realf

Here's the secret that every successful software company is based on: You can domesticate programmers the way beekeepers tame bees. You can't exactly communicate with them, but you can get them to swarm in one place and when they're not looking, you can carry off the honey. ~ Orson Scott Card

Nor is it merely that we can discern in Christ that close union of personality with perfection which forms the real distinction between the classical and romantic movement in life, but the very basis of his nature was the same as that of the nature of the artist - an intense and flamelike imagination. He realised in the entire sphere of human relations that imaginative sympathy which in the sphere of Art is the sole secret of creation. He understood the leprosy of the leper, the darkness of the blind, the fierce misery of those who live for pleasure, the strange poverty of the rich. Someone wrote to me in trouble, 'When you are not on your pedestal you are not interesting.' How remote was the writer from what Matthew Arnold calls 'the Secret of Jesus.' Either would have taught him that whatever happens to another happens to oneself, and if you want an inscription to read at dawn and at night-time, and for pleasure or for pain, write up on the walls of your house in letters for the sun to gild and the moon to silver, 'Whatever happens to oneself happens to another. ~ Oscar Wilde

She herself had told him that you can never hold onto anything. The harder you try, the more precious things slip through your fingers. The secret to life, she had said, was to find the little things, the unimportant ones that would nonetheless always remind you of the precious things they accompanied - and hold onto them. Like the fine furniture her husband had carved for her, seemingly centuries ago. ~ Karl Schroeder

We live in secret cities
And we travel unmapped roads.

We speak words between us that we recognize
But which cannot be looked up.

They are our words.
They come from very far inside our mouths.

You and I, we are the secret citizens of the city
Inside us, and inside us

There go all the cars we have driven
And seen, there are all the people

We know and have known, there
Are all the places that are

But which used to be as well. This is where
They went. They did not disappear.

We each take a piece
Through the eye and through the ear.

It's loud inside us, in there, and when we speak
In the outside world

We have to hope that some of that sound
Does not come out, that an arm

Not reach out
In place of the tongue. ~ Alberto Alvaro Rios

Life can be absolutely phenomenal, and it should be, and it will be, when you start using the secret. ~ Bob Proctor

He had given each a code and procedure to follow should any kind of disaster arise, be it a siege of the city or a revolt from within. This revolt fulfilled the second contingency. He would not have to gather everyone himself. He need only contact a couple of them and they would pass along the information through their prescribed channels. All of them would follow various prepared routes to meet in the secret passageways below the palace, created for this very purpose. Down there, they could weather the danger in the city above. They even had food stores which stayed well-preserved in the cool and dry environment. ~ Brian Godawa

The secret of wisdom is to be overly curious, like a cat--to take the time to look closely, to use all your senses to see and to touch and to taste and to smell and to hear, and to die because you were overly curious. To keep on wondering...about the afterlife. That is our only mission. Only one. If we don't wonder, then we will never, ever be curious. Then, if like the cat, you wondered too far...you simply no longer will have to ever wonder again. Your mission will be fulfilled. All because of curiosity.

--from The Wise-ass Man who butchered Eve Merriam's wisdom...and Her Secret ~ Stan Sudan

The secret of leadership is simple: Do what you believe in. Paint a picture of the future. Go there.
People will follow. ~ Seth Godin

It is only into the thirst of an empty soul that the streams of living waters flow. Ever thirsting is the secret of never thirsting. ~ Andrew Murray

i see a young man with potential. A young man who is loyal. Who can do as he is asked and who wants to do something good with his life. ~ Harry Hart

The English language is mysterious. The secret of our dog is to be found in it. 'Dog' spelt backwards is 'God'. The dog, then, is the road which, if travelled backwards, from the deepest depths, from the roots of the tree of smell, touch and taste, will turn you into a God. Thus the dog is the guide of the Blind Traveller, of the Pilgrim of Immortality. It is God backwards. ~ Miguel Serrano

I like geography best, he said, because your mountains & rivers know the secret. Pay no attention to boundaries. ~ Brian Andreas

Shall I tell you the secret of the true scholar? It is this: every man I meet is my master in some point, and in that I learn of him. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Friends with spiteful hearts and thousand eyes of evil, mock not my slumbering glory. I just might be the next in line to gain access to the secret fount of good riches. ~ Darmie Orem

The secret of success is learning how to use pain and pleasure instead of having pain and pleasure use you. If you do that, you're in control of your life. If you don't, life controls you. ~ Tony Robbins

A lot of people talk about writing. The secret is to write, not talk. ~ Jackie Collins

There are three words that convey the secret of the art of living, the secret of all success and happiness. One With Life. ~ Eckhart Tolle

Wake up. Watch the beauty of the dawn and the rising sun. Appreciate the beauty and your ability to appreciate it. Without your appreciation, there is no beauty. The sun created you to see her own beauty through your eyes. Find and appreciate all of the beauty around you. Life is for appreciation, love, and happiness. We express our love through appreciation and through love our souls feel the secret touch of happiness. ~ Debasish Mridha

Most major domestic programs got more money this year, and they're used to reflect the priorities of the upcoming year. One good example is, the Secret Service is getting $268 extra dollars because it's a presidential election year and the agency's going to be under more demands. ~ Susan Davis

The secret to battling cancer, then, is to find means to prevent these mutations from occurring in susceptible cells, or to find means to eliminate the mutated cells without compromising normal growth. The conciseness of that statement belies the enormity of the task. Malignant growth and normal growth are so genetically intertwined that unbraiding the two might be one of the most significant scientific challenges faced by our species. Cancer is built into our genomes: the genes that unmoor normal cell division are not foreign to our bodies, but rather mutated, distorted versions of the very genes that perform vital cellular functions. And cancer is imprinted in our society: as we extend our life span as a species, we inevitably unleash malignant growth (mutations in cancer genes accumulate with aging; cancer is thus intrinsically related to age). If we seek immortality, then so, too, in a rather perverse sense, does the cancer cell. ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee

The secret of what anything means to us depends on how we've connected it to all the other things we know. That's why it's almost always wrong to seek the "real meaning" of anything. A thing with just one meaning has scarcely any meaning at all. ~ Marvin Minsky

The secret of domestic happiness is to let God, the party of the third part in the marriage contract, have His rightful place in the home. Make peace with Him and then you can be a real peacemaker in the home. ~ Billy Graham

Hey," she whispered to Malachi. "When are Irin considered adults?"

He was following what looked to be a quiet argument between Sari and Mala. "Full adults? Around sixty to seventy-five years. When we're finished with our training. Why?"

She flushed. Wow.

"So, you're quite the cradle robber, aren't you?"

Malachi turned to her abruptly. "What? No, I'm not."

"I'm not even thirty. That's like... a teenager to you guys."

She could see the flush crawl up his neck, even behind the beard. "You're human. You mature differently."

"But I'm not really human."

His shoulders were stiff and his posture screamed his discomfort. It was really a shame Ava found teasing him to be so amusing.

"I mean, what would your mom say if she found out you were mated-and I mean well and thoroughly mated- to what she would basically consider a kid?"

He wiped a hand over his forehead. "Heaven above, please stop talking."

"So are we going to stop fooling around now?"

He groaned. "Ava."

"I'm just yanking your chain."

"You're going to have to speak up, because the mental lecture my mother's memory is giving me right now is rather loud. ~ Elizabeth Hunter

Everything that happens to you is your teacher. The secret is to learn to sit at the feet of your own life and be taught by it.
Polly B. Berends ~ Polly Berrien Berends

I'd spent my whole life feeling like that. Like everybody else was onto something that I couldn't seem to find, that I didn't even know existed.I wanted to figure it out, the secret to having the easy life that everyone else seemed to have, where they fit in and were good at everything they tried. Year after year, I waited for it all to fall into place--every September I told myself, This year will be different--but year after year, it was all just the same. ~ Cristina Henriquez

(Heinrich von) Kleist would not be a Prussian if his first thought would not have been orderlinessand he would not be a German if he had not placed all his hopes of developing this inner orderliness into education. Education is the secret of life for him as for every German: studying, learning a lot from books, sitting in lectures, keeping notebooks, listening intently to professors ... ~ Stefan Zweig

Maybe the secret to fulfillment is to stop wondering what we're lacking; to stop seeking love and instead to start accepting ourselves and loving the people we encounter. ~ Kristine Gasbarre

There are places on the face of earth where rules - all rules, without exception - are suspended until further notice. Places where evil prospers, unobstructed, and the secret nature of men can be let loose without limitations. In these deserts of egotism, life and death have a relative value and another person's suffering becomes a bargaining chip. ~ Donato Carrisi

Hope is not an idle term. Hope is the reality that can and does reveal itself to us at God's choice hour. To hope is to know the secret of achievement. ~ Sri Chinmoy

I see by your eagerness, and the wonder and hope which your eyes express, my friend, that you expect to be in formed of the secret with which I am acquainted. That cannot be. ~ Mary Shelley

When we see the secret beauty of anyone, including ourselves, we see past our judgment and fear into the core of who we truly are - not an entrapped self but the radiance of goodness. ~ Tara Brach

You are young. No hungry generations tread you down. The past does not mock you with the ruins of a beauty the secret of whose creation you have lost ~ Oscar Wilde

The secret to life is to put yourself in the right lighting. For some, it's a Broadway spotlight; for others, a lamplit desk. Use your natural powers
of persistence, concentration, and insight
to do work you love and work that matters. Solve problems. make art, think deeply. ~ Susan Cain

Your problem, it is not here' - he pointed the pen at Max-Ernest's throat - 'it is here' - he pointed the pen at Max-Ernest's chest. 'My heart is heavy, too. But you must be strong. This situation, it is very serious. It is not only Cass's life that is at stake. If she dies, the Secret, it will die too. ~ Pseudonymous Bosch

The "why not" of youth, the secret desire to know his luck, to try his strength all on his own without the support of another, eventually won through. ~ Ivan Turgenev

It was as if an invisible band started playing the sound track to a new life. I heard you. I wondered if this was how May felt when she was in high school. It must have been because it was her music. All the songs we'd listened to together, playing at once. The world she'd disappeared into was here. I looked up from my blush, away from Sky, whose eyes were still on me, and turned to Natalie and Hannah. I laughed out loud, full of the secret someone I could become. Hello, hello, hello. ~ Ava Dellaira

Whatever Yasu loves, I love too.
That's the secret of love. ~ Ai Yazawa

The secret of ugliness consists not in irregularity, but in being uninteresting. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The secret of happiness is: Find something more important than you are and dedicate your life to it. ~ Daniel Dennett

The secret of successful retailing is to give your customers what they want. And really, if you think about it from the point of view of the customer, you want everything: a wide assortment of good quality merchandise; the lowest possible prices; guaranteed satisfaction with what you buy; friendly, knowledgeable service; convenient hours; free parking; a pleasant shopping experience. ~ Sam Walton

Communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that. In consequence I'm inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men. Most of the confidences were unsought - frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

What if at the core, if you dug deep enough, uncovered every truth ... what if at the heart of it all.. there was a lie, like a worm at the centre of the apple, coiled like Oroborus, just as the secret of men hides coiled at the centre of each piece of you, no matter how fine you slice? Wouldn't that be a fine joke now? ~ Mark Lawrence

Reading good literature is an experience of pleasure ... but it is also an experience of learning what and how we are, in our human integrity and our human imperfection, with our actions, our dreams, and our ghosts, alone and in relationships that link us to others, in our public image and in the secret recesses of our consciousness. ~ Tim Gillespie

Life is a struggle to elevate ourselves from nobody to somebody, not ever knowing the secret beauties of being nobody! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

People who live at subsistence level want first things to be put first. They are not particularly interested in freedom of religion, freedom of the press, free enterprise as we understand it, or the secret ballot. Their needs are more basic: land, tools, fertilizers, something better than rags for their children, houses to replace their shacks, freedom from police oppression, medical attention, primary schools. ~ Mao Zedong

It's fine to have talent, but talent is the last of it. In an acting career, as in an acting performance, you've got to have vitality. The secret of successful acting is identical with a woman's beauty secret: joy in living. ~ Rosalind Russell

THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS
The secret of happiness is to 'see great' in everything. ~ Sirshree

The saint and poet seek privacy to ends the most public and universal: and it is the secret of culture, to interest the man more in his public, than in his private quality. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

1. The Engineering Question Can you create breakthrough technology instead of incremental improvements? 2. The Timing Question Is now the right time to start your particular business? 3. The Monopoly Question Are you starting with a big share of a small market? 4. The People Question Do you have the right team? 5. The Distribution Question Do you have a way to not just create but deliver your product? 6. The Durability Question Will your market position be defensible 10 and 20 years into the future? 7. The Secret Question Have you identified a unique opportunity that others don't see? ~ Peter Thiel

The secret to peace is forgiveness. ~ Grace Lin

Systems awareness and systems design are important for health professionals, but they are not enough. They are enabling mechanisms only. It is the ethical dimensions of individuals that are essential to a system's success. Ultimately, the secret of quality is love. You have to love your patient, you have to love your profession, you have to love your God. If you have love, you can then work backward to monitor and improve the system. ~ Avedis Donabedian

Here's the secret of writing: there is no secret. ~ Ralph Fletcher

How confusing the beams from memory's lamp are; One day a bachelor, the next a grampa. What is the secret of the trick? How did I get so old so quick? ~ Ogden Nash

Everybody knows from his own experience that after laughter, good laughter, a belly laugh, you almost feel that you have taken an ice-cold shower; a peace, a silence, a freshness ... The same is true about crying, but very few people know the secret of crying because it is more repressed than laughter. ~ Rajneesh

Putin was a former KGB intelligence officer who'd been stationed in East Germany at the Dresden headquarters of the Soviet secret service. Putin has said in interviews that he dreamed as a child of becoming a spy for the communist party in foreign lands, and his time in Dresden exceeded his imagination. Not only was he living out his boyhood fantasy, he and his then-wife also enjoyed the perks of a borderline-European existence. Even in communist East Germany, the standard of living was far more comfortable than life in Russia, and the young Putins were climbing KGB social circles, making influential connections, networking a power base.

The present was bright, and the future looked downright luminous.

Then, the Berlin wall fell, and down with it crashed Putin's world. A few days after the fall, a group of East German protestors gathered at the door of the secret service headquarters building. Putin, fearing the headquarters would be overrun, dialed up a Red Army tank unit stationed nearby to ask for protection. A voice on the other end of the line told him the unit could not do anything without orders from Moscow. And, "Moscow is silent," the man told Putin.

Putin's boyhood dream was dissolving before his eyes, and his country was impotent or unwilling to stop it. Putin despised his government's weakness in the face of threat. It taught him a lesson that would inform his own rule: Power is easily lost when those in power allow it to be tak ~ Matt Szajer

Potential is the good of life
action the secret key. ~ Deron Williams

My soul is full of longing for the secret of the sea, and the heart of the great ocean sends a thrilling pulse through me. ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The secret of concentration is to shut down the other windows. ~ Amit Ray

I really like knowing secrets, and once I do know that secret, I can keep it. But if I'm on the outside and I don't know the secret, that's a different story. I will try with all my power to get the secret out of the person who knows. ~ Ryan Lee

You cannot pass," he said. The orcs stood still, and a dead silence fell. "I am a servant of the Secret Fire, wielder of the flame of Anor. You cannot pass. The dark fire will not avail you, flame of Udûn. Go back to the Shadow! You cannot pass. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

Exercise is the most awful illusion. The secret is a lot of aspirin and marrons glaces. ~ Noel Coward

FORM IS ECSTATIC

There is a shimmering excitement in being sentient and shaped. The

caravan master sees his camels lost in it, nose to tail, as he himself is,

his friend, and the stranger coming toward them. A gardener watches the

sky break into song, cloud wobbly with what it is. Bud, thorn, the same.

Wind, water, wandering this essential state. Fire, ground, gone. That's

how it is with the outside. Form is ecstatic. Now imagine the inner:

soul, intelligence, the secret worlds!
And don't think the garden loses its

ecstasy in winter. It's quiet, but the roots are down there rioutous.

If someone bumps you in the street, don't be angry. Everyone careens

about in this surprise. Respond in kind. Let the knots untie, turbans

be given away. Someone drunk on this could drink a donkeyload a night.

Believer, unbeliever, cynic, lover, all combine in the spirit-form we are,

but no one yet is awake like Shams. ~ Rumi

That's the secret to life ... replace one worry with another. ~ Charles M. Schulz

The secret to good writing is to use small words for big ideas, not to use big words for small ideas. ~ Oliver Markus Malloy

They are sacred, modest rendezvous between maidens," she said. "Being a library, it's quiet and only certain people come here, so there aren't many interruptions. They say that ever since before anyone can remember, it's been a popular rendezvous spot for girls who long to see each other. People started calling it 'The Secret Garden.' Although the meetings are called 'rendezvous,' that doesn't necessarily mean that anything particularly 'big' happens. ~ Anonymous

From the sacred center of the world streams forth an irrepressible desire to overcome the silence between things. Art, the ever flowing fountain, reveals the secret of life through word and gesture, color and sound. The ~ Hermann Hesse

The secret of good architecture is having more than meets the eye. ~ Annabelle Selldorf

The secret of success in life is time rightly used. ~ Swami Sivananda Saraswati

No doubt it often happens that a child possesses qualities of his ancestors which were perhaps missing in his parents, or even two or three generations back; however, this is another heritage, a heritage which is known to us as such. I might express this by saying that a soul borrows a property from the spheres of the jinn, and a more concrete property from the physical world; and as it borrows this property, together with this transaction it takes upon itself the taxation and the obligations as well as the responsibilities which are attached to the property. Very often the property is not in proper repair, and damage has been done to it, and it falls to his lot to repair it; and if there be a mortgage on that property that becomes his due. Together with the property he becomes the owner of the records and the contracts of the property which he owns. In this is to be found the secret of what is called Karma. ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan

In whatever wink of consciousness that remained to me I felt I understood the secret grandeur of dying, all the knowledge held back from all humankind until the very end: no pain, no fear, magnificent detachment, lying in state upon the death barge and receding into the grand immensities like an emperor, gone, gone, observing all the distant scurryers on shore, freed from all the old human pettiness of love and fear and grief and death. ~ Donna Tartt

When we discover the secret of being inwardly at worship while outwardly at work, we find that the soul's silence brings us to God and God to us. Silence takes us beyond the limits of consciousness and into the heart and mind and will of God. ~ J. Brent Bill

The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time. ~ James Taylor

Journeys end in lovers' meeting.' ... But the real journey - the journey of adventure itself - is frequently another matter: often gray, often loverless, often demanding from the secret soul of the adventurer spirit and inspiration, lest the blood turn cold in sick dismay, and the brain cloud under its weight of nostalgia. ~ Katherine Cecil Thurston

True love is a discipline in which each divines the secret self of the other and refuses to believe in the mere daily self. ~ William Butler Yeats

I owe my sucess in one per cent to my talent, in ten per cent to luck, and in ninety per cent to hard word. Work, work, and more work is the secret to success. ~ Ignacy Jan Paderewski

I don't understand it. What can there be in a simple little story like that to make people praise it so?" she said, quite bewildered. "There is truth in it, Jo, that's the secret. ~ Louisa May Alcott

Then he led her to sit by him on a fallen gum trunk, smooth and white, and he leaned to whisper in her ear. Transferred the secret he and her mother had kept for seventeen years. Waited for the flicker of recognition, the minute shift in expression as she registered what he was telling her. Watched as the bottom fell out of her world and the person she had been vanished in an instant. ~ Kate Morton

Don't ya wanna hear the secret?' his eyes were narrow and mean, despite the glaze of rum. Louer drained his glass and slammed it to the bar. 'You get happy by learnin' to say 'yes' to what life offers you, but stay happy by rememberin' when to start sayin' 'no'. ~ T.B. McKenzie

Retire from the world each day to some private spot. Stay in the secret place till the surrounding noises begin to fade out of your heart and a sense of God's presence envelops you. Deliberately tune out the unpleasant sounds and come out of your closet determined not to hear them. Listen for the inward voice till you learn to recognize it. ~ Aiden Wilson Tozer

But correspondents are a wily bunch. Having stashed their typewriters, crossed the border, changed their clothes, and counted to ten, they began slipping back into the country one by one. So in 1928, the Foreign Press Office was opened anew on the top floor of a six-story walk-up conveniently located halfway between the Kremlin and the offices of the secret police - a spot that just happened to be across the street from the Metropol. Thus, ~ Amor Towles

I am a big foodie, so much so that I eat in every half an hour. This is the secret of my glowing skin. ~ Deepika Padukone

If you don't know your purpose, discover it, now.
The core of your life is your purpose. Everything in your life, from your diet to your career, must be aligned with your purpose if you are to act with coherence and integrity in the world. If you know your purpose, your deepest desire, then the secret of success is to discipline your life so that you support your deepest purpose and minimize distractions and detours. ~ David Deida

True influence over another comes not from a moments eloquence nor from any happily chosen word, but from the accumulation of a lifetime's thoughts stored up in the eyes ... the secret smile in the eyes of a friend ~ Thornton Wilder

The secret to enlightenment is kindness and selfless giving. Without that, it's just words, isn't it? ~ Frederick Lenz

Please always remember, the secret of survival is to embrace change, and to adapt. To quote, All things fall and are built again, and those that build them are gay. ~ Rohinton Mistry

In each century since the beginning of the world wonderful things have been discovered. In the last century more amazing things were found out than in any other century before. In this new century hundreds of things still more astounding will be brought to light. At first people refuse to believe that a strange new thing can be done, then they see it can be done- then it is done and all the world wonders why it was not done centuries ago. One of these things people began to find out in the last century was that thoughts- just mere thoughts- are as powerful as electric batteries- as good for one as sunlight is, or as bad for one as poison. To let a sad thought or a bad one get into your mind is as dangerous as letting a scarlet fever germ get into your body. If you let it stay there after it has got in you may never get over it as long as you live.
The Secret Garden
Frances Hodgson Burnett
1911 ~ Frances Hodgson Burnett

It couldn't be an all-bad world, could it, not with birds who warble and call? Maybe that was the secret - to find the few things that made life just a fraction better, and to focus on those. Bird warbles. Peach fuzz. Puppies barking as if they're full grown dogs. Nothing great, certainly nothing to justify the rest of it, but enough to keep you going. ~ Shalom Auslander

Eager souls, mystics and revolutionaries, may propose to refashion the world in accordance with their dreams; but evil remains, and so long as it lurks in the secret places of the heart, utopia is only the shadow of a dream ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne