Another Onsalught of the Lovely Texts My Phone Sends Me

1. "If we did all the things we are capable of, we would literally astound ourselves."  - Thomas A. Edison
2. "You can cut all the flowers, but you cannot keep spring from coming." - Pablo Neruda
3. "Courage is fear holding on a minute longer." General George S. Patton
4. "After about three lessons, the voice teacher said 'Don't take lessons. Do it your way.'" - Johnny Cash
5. "Every one of us needs to show how much we care for each other and, in the process, care for ourselves." - Princess Diana
6. "Why not seize the pleasure at once? How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation!" - Jane Austen
7. "The roots of all goodness lie in the soil of appreciation for goodness." - The Dalai Lama
8. "I can't imagine a person becoming a success who doesn't give this game of life everything he's got." - Walter Cronkite
9. "Better to live one year as a tiger, than a hundred as a sheep." - Madonna
10. "One can be very happy without demanding that others agree with them." - Ira Gershwin
11. "I'm hoping that someday some kid, black or white, will hit more home runs than myself. Whoever it is, I'd be pulling for him." - Hank Aaron
12. "If we stopped trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time." - Edith Wharton
13. "My hope still is to leave the world a bit better than when I got here." - Jim Henson
14. "Friendship makes prosperity more brilliant, and lightens adversity by dividing and sharing it." - Cicero
15. "Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom." - Marcel Proust
16. "Never work just for money or for power. They won't save your soul or help you sleep at night." - Marian Wright Edelman
17. "If everything seems under control, you're just not going fast enough." - Mario Andretti
18. "I'm not in this world to live up to your expectations and you're not in this world to live up to mine." - Bruce Lee
19. "The true measure of an individual is how he treats a person who can do him absolutely no good." - Ann Landers
20. "If you can't get rid of the skeleton in your closet, you'd best teach it to dance." - George Bernard Shaw
21. "There is a way to look at the past. Don't hide from it. It will not catch you if you don't repeat it." - Pearl Bailey
22. "You can't win unless you learn how to lose." - Kareem Abdul-Jabaar
23. "Your work is to discover your world and then with all your heart give yourself to it." - Buddha
24. "As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them." - John F. Kennedy
25. "Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly." - Langston Hughes
26. "You cannot depend on  your eyes when your imagination is out of focus." - Mark Twain
27. "Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive." - Anais Nin
28. "There is nothing more tragic than to find an individual bogged down in the length of life, devoid of breadth." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
29. "Happiness is good health and a bad memory." - Ingrid Bergman
30. "To be without some of the things you want is an indispensible part of happiness." - Bertrand Russell
31. "I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have." - Thomas Jefferson
32. "Always do the right thing. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest." - Mark Twain
33. "There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it." - Oscar Wilde
34. "When you do the common things in life in an uncommon way, you will command the attention of the world." - George Washington Carver
35. "You are not judged by the height you have risen, but from the depth you have climbed." - Frederick Douglass
36. "Uncertainty and expectation are the joys of life." - William Congreve
37. "Destiny grants us our wishes, but in its own way, in order to give us something beyond our wishes." - Goethe
38. "Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom." - Albert Einstein
39. "Lost time is never found again." - Benjamin Franklin
40. "Live the life you've imagined. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler." - Henry David Thoreau
41. "Do not fear mistakes. There are none." - Miles Davis
42. "You are only as good as the team you have behind you." - Jim Palmer
43. "I must govern the clock, not be governed by it." - Golda Meir
44. "We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men." - Herman Melville
45. "Do not seek to follow the footsteps of the men of old. Seek what they sought." - Basho
46. "Be careful what you set your heart on, for it will surely be yours." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
47. "If you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it's your world for the moment." - Georgia O'Keefe
48. "The act of acting morally is behaving as if everything we do matters." - Gloria Steinem
49. "If everybody is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking." - George Patton
50. "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." - William Shakespeare
51. "If there is no struggle, there is no progress." - Frederick Douglass
52. "Better to do something imperfectly than to do nothing flawlessly." - Robert Schuller
53. "What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight - it's the size of the fight in the dog." - Dwight D. Eisenhower
54. "Challenges are what make life interesting. Overcoming them is what makes life beautiful." - Joshua J. Marine
55. "Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for kindness." - Seneca
56. "When you choose the lesser of two evils, always remember that it is still an evil." - Max Lerner
57. "A real friend is the one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out." - Walter Winchell
58. "Anger is never without reason, but seldom a good one." - Benjamin Franklin
59. "Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm." - Winston Churchill
60. "Bite off more than you can chew, then chew it." - Ella Williams
61. "The unselfish effort to bring cheer to others will be the beginning of a happier life for ourselves." - Helen Keller
62. "I used to think anyone doing anything weird was weird. Now I know that it is the people that call others weird that are weird." - Paul McCartney
63. "It is not what we take up, but what we give up, that makes us rich." - Henry Ward Beecher
64. "When we see men of contrary character, we should turn inwards and examine ourselves." - Confucius
65. "What I know for sure is that what you give comes back to you." - Oprah Winfrey
66. "An onion can make people cry, but there has never been a vegetable invented to make them laugh." - Will Rogers
67. "Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence." - Robert Frost
68. "Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be stong to live, as well as to think." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
69. "Everywhere is walking distance if you have the time." - Steven Wright
70. "If you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work." - Kahlil Gibran
71. "He who knows does not speak. He who speaks does not know." - Lao-tzu
72. "Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted  was once eccentric." - Bertrand Russell

As We Express Our Gratitude, We Must Never Forget that the Highest Appreciation is Not to Utter Words, but to Live by Them.

That title is a quote by John F. Kennedy, and I think it's brilliant. I've never been good at directly expressing gratitude verbally, so instead I try to come up with lots of other ways to say it - gifts, service, hugs, whatever else may come to mind depending on the situation. But here I'd like to verbally express some things that I've become more deeply grateful for over this year, especially in the past few months.

1. Old Friends That Never Get Old. I've managed to hold on to a lot of these. And I love it. There is nothing that makes me happier than a call or text, out of nowhere, from someone who I've been friends with for a long time. I think there is a sweet joy that comes only from a friendship that doesn't require constant attention, but is still in perfect condition when you come back to it. When you find those people with whom you know affection will never strain, you receive a peace that is unique and satisfying in a way that cannot come by any other means.

2. New Friends that Bring New Life. Lately I've made a lot of new friends that have really opened me up to a lot of experiences and perspectives, and my life has become so much richer through their influence. Especially recently, their philosophies and the experiences I've had with them have helped me figure out a lot of things I've been struggling with...for years in some cases. And I am so glad that my life crosses paths with so many interesting and wonderful people. I adore them.

3. A Quirky Family Full of Weirdos. And they are all proud of it. It is easy to discover who you are and not be afraid of it when you have a family where no one is afraid of being "the crazy one." We're all crazy on this bus. And that's what makes life fun. And we all know we are valued. YAY!

4. The Drama and Struggle that's Unavoidable in Life. Some people might think this is nuts, but having experiences in my life that are stressful and unhappy...make me happy. Like an Olympic athlete who has to train every day, who has to push themselves until their muscles, lungs, and heart are screaming - the feeling of your muscles expanding and becoming stronger keeps you going, and when your endorphines kick in your feet don't even hit the floor anymore, and the second you cross the finish line or make that point, all the pain and tediousness of the training is worth it. So it is with trials: you feel whatever part of yourself becoming stronger, at some point, the angels come down and pick you up, then suddenly, it all clicks and the pain is worth it. That is you've really achieved something...that is when you are invincible.

So I hope everyone can recognize the daily sweetness in their lives that comes from...life. I sincerely believe that everything you need to be happy in life is present before you, always. Sometimes you just have to look at a different angle, or just pick it up and dust it off. Man was made to have joy, so go have it!