The first rule of holes:when you're in one, stop digging.

-- Molly Ivins

Arrange whatever pieces come your way.

-- Virginia Woolf

. . . you don't get to choose how you're going to die, or when.You can only decide how you're going to live
now.

-- Joan Baez

I choose not to be a common man. Me, it's my right to be uncommon if I can. I'll seek opportunity, not security. I do not wish to be a kept citizen--humbled and dulled by having the state look after me. I want to take the calculated risk, to dream and to build, to fail and to succeed. I'll refuse to live from hand to mouth. I'll prefer the challenges of life to the guaranteed existence. The thrill of fulfillment to the stale calm of Utopia. I will never cower before any master nor bend to any friend. It is my heritage to stand erect, proud and unafraid, to think and act for myself and face the world boldly and say, "This I have done."

-- Theodore Roosevelt

The mistake we make is to turn upon our past with angry wholesale negation . . . The way of wisdom is to treat it airily, lightly, wantonly, and in a spirit of poetry; and above all to use its symbols, which are its spiritual essence, giving them a new connotation, a fresh meaning.

-- John Cowper Powys

You may believe that you are responsible for what you do, but not for what you think. The truth is that you are responsible for what you think, because it is only at this
level that you can exercise choice. What you do comes from what you think.

-- A Course in Miracles

Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss it you will land among the stars.

-- Les Brown

Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength;
mastering yourself is true power.

-- Lao-tzu

Life can only be understood backwards; it has to be lived forwards.

-- Sren Kierkegaard

Listen to the exhortation of the dawn

Look to this day!
For it is life, the very life of life. In its brief course lie all the Verities and realities of your existence;
The bliss of growth,
The glory of action,
The splendor of beauty; For yesterday is but a dream,
And tomorrow is only a vision;
But today, well lived, makes
Every yesterday a dream of happiness, And every tomorrow a vision of hope. Look well therefore to this day!

-- Passage from the Sanskrit

Life is a mission. Every other definition is false, and leads all who accept it astray.

-- Guiseppe Mazzini

You ought to be afraid to die until you've contributed something great back to humanity.

-- Oliver Wendell Holmes

Lecturer, entrepreneur and MBA business consultant, John Harricharan is the author of the award-winning book, "When You Can Walk on Water, Take the Boat." Spiritual Simplicity The Real Secret http://www.spiritual-simplicity.com/