inspiring quotes

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the things you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore, dream, discover". – Mark Twain

"Only those who attempt the absurd can achieve the impossible". – Robin Morgan

"You can’t change the music of your soul". – Katherine Hepburn.

"It is not by accident that the happiest people are those who make a conscious effort to live useful lives. Their happiness, of course, is not a shallow exhilaration where life is one continous intoxicated party. Rather, their happiness is a deep sense of inner peace that comes when they believe their lives have meaning and that they are one making a difference of good in the world". – Ernest Fitzgerald.

"A mind that has been stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions". – Oliver Wendelll Holmes

"Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained"- William Blake

The gods have a great sense of humor, don’t they? If you lack the iron and the fizz to take control of your own life, if you insist on leaving your fate to the gods, then the gods will repay your weakness by having a grin or two at your expense. Should you fail to pilot your own ship, don’t be surprised at what inappropriate port you find yourself docked. The dull and prosaic will be granted adventures that will dice their central nervous systems like an onion, romantic dreamers will end up in the rope yard. You may protest that it is too much to ask of an uneducated fifteen year old girl that she defy her family, her society, her weighty cultural and religious heritage in order to pursue a dream that she doesn’t really understand. Of course it is asking too much. The price of self-destiny is never cheap, and in certain situations it is unthinkable. But to achieve the marvelous, it is precisely the unthinkable that must be thought. Jitterbug Perfume, Tom Robbins.

I just said “fantasy” and “struggle” in the same sentence, and on one level, at least, I guess that’s what it’s about. That’s what it’s about for cowgirls, and maybe everybody else. A lot of life boils down to the question of whether a person is going to be able to realize his fantasies, or else end up surviving only through compromises he can’t face up to. The way I figure it, heaven and hell are right here on Earth. Heaven is living in your hopes and Hell is living in your fears. It’s up to each individual which one he chooses. Bonanza Jellybean. ECGTB, Tom Robbins

“Be careful, get comfortable, don’t make any waves”, whispers the DNA. Conversely, the yearning for freedom, the risky belief that there is nothing to lose and nothing to gain, is also in our DNA. But it’s of much more recent evolutionary origin, according to me. It has arisen during the past couple of million years, during the rapid increase in brain size and intellectual capacity associated with our becoming human. But the desire for security, the will to survive, is of much greater antiquity. For the present, the conflicting yearnings in the DNA generate a basic paradox that in turn generates the character- nothing if not contradictory- of man. To live fully, one must be free, but to be free, one must give up security. Therefore, to live one must be ready to die. How’s that for a paradox? But, since the genetic bent for freedom is comparatively recent, it may represent an evolutionary trend. We may yet outgrow our overriding obsession to survive. That’s why I encourage everyone to take chances, to court danger, to welcome anxiety, to flaunt insecurity, to rock every boat and always cut against the grain. By pushing it, goosing it along whenever possible, we may speed up the process, the process by which the need for playfulness and liberty becomes stronger than the need for comfort and security. ECGTB, Tom Robbins