Being healthy means a wholeness in the living of one's life -- a dynamic and constantly changing balance that acknowledges the soundness of our physical state, the wholesomeness of lifestyle, the values that define our behavior, our intimate and collective relationships, the meaning and purpose of our work in the world, and the spiritual dimension of our existence. --William B. Stewart (in Seven Simple Health Habits)

If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on the solution, I would spend the first 55 minutes determining the proper question to ask, for once I know the proper question, I could solve the problem in less than five minutes. --Albert Einstein (in The Art of Powerful Questions)

Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life. --Hermann Hesse (in Guardian of Earth's Trees)

I expect to pass through life but once. If therefore, there be any kindness I can show, or any good thing I can do to any fellow being, let me do it now, and not defer or neglect it, as I shall not pass this way again. --William Penn (in Kindness Meters)

Don't seek to merely get rid of the negative things in your life. Instead, transform their energy into something of real positive value. --Ralph Marston (in Transforming a Village on $3 a Month)

When we make music we don't do it in order to reach a certain point, such as the end of the composition. If that were the purpose of music then obviously the fastest players would be the best. Also, when we are dancing we are not aiming to arrive at a particular place on the floor as in a journey. When we dance, the journey itself is the point, as when we play music the playing itself is the point. And exactly the same thing is true in meditation. Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment. --Alan Watts (in Commuting to Inner Peace)

Rhythm and harmony are essential to the whole of life. --Plato (in Music As A Tool For Learning)

The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit. --Nelson Henderson (in Small Farmer, Big Benefactor)

My goal in life is to be as good of a person my dog already thinks I am. --Author Unknown (in Dogs Think More Than We Know)

Life has meaning only if one barters it day by day for something other than itself. --Antoine de Saint-Exupery (in The Time Bank: Better Than Barter)

I believe it to be perfectly possible for an individual to adopt the way of life of the future. . . without having to wait for others to do so. --Mahatma Gandhi (in Making Cars Not Garbage)

We generate our own environment. We get exactly what we deserve. How can we resent a life we've created ourselves? Who's to blame, who's to credit but us? Who can change it, anytime we wish, but us? --Richard Bach (in The New French Revolution)

If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps life moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of it all. And so today I still have a dream. --Martin Luther King Jr. (in Triple Amputee Earns Medical Degree)

A man must be able to cut a knot, for everything cannot be untied; he must know how to disengage what is essential from the detail in which it is enwrapped, for everything cannot be equally considered; in a word, he must be able to simplify his duties, his business and his life. --Henri Frederic Amiel (in The Year Without Toilet Paper)

Money is only useful when it is moving and flowing, contributed and shared, directed and invested in that which is life affirming. --Lynne Twist (in Neurosurgeon Gives $20 Million for Village)

I have found life an enjoyable, enchanting, active, and sometime terrifying experience, and I've enjoyed it completely. A lament in one ear, maybe, but always a song in the other. --Sean O'Casey (in Your Stories Of The Good Life)

The greatest discovery of my generation is that man can alter his life simply by altering his attitude of mind. --William James (in The Brain Is A Muscle)

The very idea of a bird is a symbol and a suggestion to the poet. A bird seems to be at the top of the scale, so vehement and intense his life. . . . The beautiful vagabonds, endowed with every grace, masters of all climes, and knowing no bounds -- how many human aspirations are realised in their free, holiday-lives -- and how many suggestions to the poet in their flight and song! --John Burroughs (in The Generosity of Birds)

Take your needle, my child, and work at your pattern; it will come out a rose by and by. Life is like that - one stitch at a time taken patiently and the pattern will come out all right like the embroidery. --Oliver Wendell Holmes (in Sewing For Hope In The Favela)

Gratitude bestows reverence, allowing us to encounter everyday epiphanies, those transcendent moments of awe that change forever how we experience life and the world. --John Milton (in Message in a Wallet)

Gratitude is something of which none of us can give too much. For on the smiles, the thanks we give, our little gestures of appreciation, our neighbors build their philosophy of life. --A.J. Cronin (in Secrets of a Successful Relationship)

So often in time it happens, we all live our life in chains, and we never even know we have the key. --The Eagles (in Around the World and Bach)

Life is eternal, and love is immortal, and death is only a horizon; and a horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight. --Rossiter Worthington Raymond (in A 9 Year-Old Writes of Loss)

People are hungry for messages of hope and life. --Morgan Brittany (in Know a Word? Then, Donate Rice.)

It is worth reminding ourselves that what brings us the greatest joy and satisfaction in life are those actions we undertake out of concern for others. Indeed we can go further. For whereas the fundamental questions of human existence, such as why we are here, where we are going, and whether the universe had a beginning, have each elicited different responses in different philosophical traditions, it is self-evident that a generous heart and wholesome actions lead to greater peace. --Dalai Lama (in What Makes Us Moral?)

The personal life deeply lived always expands into truths beyond itself. --Anais Nin (in Live Like Andrew)

We are all too much inclined to walk through life with our eyes shut. There are things all around us, and right at our very feet, that we have never seen; because we have never really looked. --Alexander Graham Bell (in Unleashing Creativity)

Life is a celebration of awakenings, of new beginnings, and wonderful surprises that enlighten the soul. --Cielo (in The Mystery Muffin Giver)

When I look back, I am so impressed again with the life-giving power of literature. If I were a young person today, trying to gain a sense of myself in the world, I would do that again by reading, just as I did when I was young. --Maya Angelou (in World's Fastest Literacy Program)

To maintain a skillful balance between the inner and outer aspects of our lives is an enormously challenging and continuously changing process. The objective is not to dogmatically live with less, but is a more demanding intention of living with balance in order to find a life of greater purpose, fulfillment and satisfaction. --Duane Elgin (in The Story of Stuff)

A flower's appeal is in its contradictions -- so delicate in form yet strong in fragrance, so small in size yet big in beauty, so short in life yet long on effect. --Adabella Radici (in Kindness In Full Bloom)

I have been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened. --Mark Twain (in 10 Ways We Get the Odds Wrong)

Essentially, a story expresses how and why life changes. --Robert McKee (in Storytelling That Moves People)

If you observe a really happy man you will find him building a boat, writing a symphony, educating his son, growing double dahlias in his garden, or looking for dinosaur eggs in the Gobi desert. He will not be searching for happiness as if it were a collar button that has rolled under the radiator. He will not be striving for it as a goal in itself. He will have become aware that he is happy in the course of living life twenty-four crowded hours of the day. --W. Beran Wolfe (in The Geography of Bliss)

It does not seem to be true that work necessarily needs to be unpleasant. It may always have to be hard, or at least harder than doing nothing at all. But there is ample evidence that work can be enjoyable, and that indeed, it is often the most enjoyable part of life. --Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (in The 7 Keys To Joy at Work)

The joy is that we can take back our bodies, reclaim our health, and restore ourselves to balance. We can take power over what and how we eat. We can rejuvenate and recharge ourselves, bringing healing to the wounds we carry inside us, and bringing to fuller life the wonderful person that each of us can be. --John Robbins (in What The World Eats In A Week)

Life is short and we have never too much time for gladdening the hearts of those who are travelling the dark journey with us. Oh be swift to love, make haste to be kind. --Henri-Frederic Amiel (in For the Homeless From the Heart)

Opportunities to find deeper powers within ourselves come when life seems most challenging. --Joseph Campbell (in 14 Engineering Challenges)

When we are motivated by goals that have deep meaning, by dreams that need completion, by pure love that needs expressing -- then we truly live life. --Greg Anderson (in Relying on Kindness & A Donkey)

Some people give time, some money, some their skills and connections, some literally give their life's blood. But everyone has something to give. --Barbara Bush (in Donor Match Over Coffee)

A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience. --Oliver Wendell Holmes (in The Power of Mindsight)

As a monk, you get more and more used to the serendipity of good things in life. And you become comfortable with that joyful serendipity of things happening -- like people that show up at the right time. And you just accept it. It shouldn't be strange. --Bernard McCoy (in Laser Monks)

Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music. Your days are your sonnets. --Oscar Wilde (in The Day So Far)

Fulfilling the four needs [spiritual, mental, physical, social] in an integrated way is like combining elements in chemistry. When we reach a "critical mass" of integration, we experience spontaneous combustion--an explosion of inner synergy that ignites the fire within and gives vision, passion, and a spirit of adventure to life. --Stephen Covey (in Be A Better Leader, Lead a Richer Life)

Choose your intention carefully and then practice holding your consciousness to it, so it becomes the guiding light in your life. --John Roger (in Being the Change & Singing It)

Nearly all the best things that came to me in life have been unexpected, unplanned by me. --Carl Sandburg (in The Security Guard's Idea)

This is the beginning of a new day. You have been given this day to use as you will. You can waste it or use it for good. What you do today is important because you are exchanging a day of your life for it. When tomorrow comes, this day will be gone forever; in its place is something that you have left behind...let it be something good. --Author Unknown (in Doing Good, While Wearing Tuxedos!)

Soon silence will have passed into legend. Man has turned his back on silence. Day after day he invents machines and devices that increase noise and distract humanity from the essence of life. --Jean Arp (in Man-Made Noise)

If in our daily life we can smile, if we can be peaceful and happy, not only we, but everyone will profit from it. This is the most basic kind of peace work. --Thich Nhat Hanh (in Measuring Success With A Smile)

When we are motivated by goals that have deep meaning, by dreams that need completion, by pure love that needs expressing, then we truly live life. --Greg Anderson (in First Woman To Walk Lost Arrow)