When we recognize the wholeness and strength within ourselves, and act from that place of deep inner knowing, our lives naturally get better. --Scott Lennox (in How to Help Your Loved Ones Stick to Their Goals)

Libraries are not about books, they’re about people. --Skye Patrick (in How One Library Is Filling the Gaps in Homeless Services)

When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” --Fred Rogers (in The algorithm says crisis. The social worker says trust.)

And now let us believe in a long year that is given to us, new, untouched, full of things that have never been, full of work that has never been done… --Rainer Maria Rilke (in Glimpses of Hope in 2024)

When you commit an act of violence, you are basically disconnecting yourself. You are putting yourself outside the circle. --John Malloy (in All Life is Sacred: A Conversation with John Malloy)

There is no better exercise for your heart than reaching down and helping to lift someone up. --Bernard Meltzer (in When kindness becomes a habit, it improves our health)

Grief is just love with no place to go. --Jamie Anderson (in How a Group's Ornament Exchange Helps with Grief During Holidays)

Sing, sing a song. Make it simple to last your whole life long. Don't worry that it's not good enough for anyone else to hear. Just sing, sing a song. --Joe Raposo (in Researchers Study the Impact of Singing on Wellbeing)

Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty. --Albert Einstein (in Do We Need to Love Ourselves Before We Love Others?)

...it must be one of the tasks of poets to make visible all the invisible connected threads that draw us together, to disclose the intricate web of life as a sentient whole. --Peter Abbs (in The World Longs for More Poets of the Everyday)

If you look at zero, you see nothing; but look through it, and you will see the world. --Robert Kaplan (in The Value of Nothing)

The human is a territory. --Bayo Akomolafe (in Ancestors in Focus)

Find out who you are and do it on purpose. --Dolly Parton (in Can Purpose Affect Your Lifespan?)

... What lies beyond our comfort zone is really extraordinary. --Anne Veh (in Responding to Parkinson's ... with Rock Climbing?!)

Sometimes the bad things that happen in our lives put us directly on the path to the best things that will ever happen to us. --Nicole Reed (in Canoeist Paddles the 6,000 Mile Great Loop Out of Gratitude )

Conflict is the primary engine of creativity and innovation. People don't learn by staring into a mirror; people learn by encountering difference. --Ronald A. Heifetz (in Divisions Bring Some Together in this US County)

Diversity is not about how we differ. Diversity is about embracing one another’s uniqueness. --Ola Joseph (in Matchmakers Spark Friendships Between Teens and Elders)

Happiness is not given to us, nor is misery imposed. At every moment we are at a crossroads and must choose the direction we will take. --Matthieu Ricard (in Conversation with the 'World's Happiest Man')

There is no small act of kindness. Every compassionate act makes large the world. --Mary Anne Radmacher (in Caught in Political Divide, Church Runs Kindness Campaign)

The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another. --William James (in Eight Questions That Can Help You Survive Election Stress)

To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you. --Lewis B. Smedes (in Forgiving the Unforgivable)

If you miss the present moment, you miss your appointment with life. --Thich Nhat Hanh (in Tracy Cochran: Coming Home to Yourself)

A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on. --Winston Churchill (in Conversation with Paul Van Slambrouck: Reflections on Journalism)

Words are windows, or they're walls, They sentence us, or set us free. When I speak and when I hear, Let the love light shine through me. --Ruth Bebermeyer (in How To Turn Down The Tension in a Conversation)

The longer I live, the more deeply I learn that love — whether we call it friendship, or family, or romance — is the work of mirroring and magnifying each other’s light. --Maria Popova (in What Does Love Mean? How 4-8 Year-Old Kids Describe Love)

Life is the dancer and you are the dance. --Eckhart Tolle (in The Giant Study Showing How Dancing Affects the Brain)

Maybe there is no such thing as time; there are only moments, each with its own story. --Robin Wall Kimmerer (in Why Children Perceive Time Slower Than Adults)

A birdsong can even, for a moment, make the whole world into a sky within us, because we feel that the bird does not distinguish between its heart and the world's. --Rainer Maria Rilke (in When Nature Co-Authors a Song)

Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around. --Leo Buscaglia (in Four Stories of Mercy)

I define connection as the energy that exists between people when they feel seen, heard, and valued; when they can give and receive without judgment; and when they derive sustenance and strength from the relationship. --Brené Brown (in I See You)

Slowing down is accompanied by space for noticing. --Krista Tippett (in Why This Grocery Store Embraces a Slower Checkout)

The need for connection and community is primal, as fundamental as the need for air, water, and food. --Dean Ornish (in Building Connections Beat by Beat)

There is something quite magical in watching a family of elephants, gorillas or giant forest hogs emerge from the forest edge and bask in sunlight and social opportunities before slipping back into the cool shade of the forest interior. --Vicki Fishlock (in The Hidden Playgrounds of Elephants and Gorillas)

Are languages then just a collection of words, syntax, and semantics? I’d like to sometimes see them as seeds and sometimes as fields – alive as the minds, tongues, throats, bodies, and air they pass through; germinating, growing roots, bearing fruit, evolving like beings. --M. Yuvan (in Can Social Media Keep Indigenous Languages Alive?)

Everything that slows us down and forces patience, everything that sets us back into the slow circles of nature, is a help. Gardening is an instrument of grace. --May Sarton (in From Vacant Lots To Edible Green Spaces -- and Community)

There's a song that wants to sing itself through us. We’ve just got to be available. --Joanna Macy (in Rachelle Jeanty: Finding Spirit in Pain)

Happiness is like a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you. --Nathaniel Hawthorne (in How to Stop Overthinking Your Happiness)

To see things in the seed, that is genius. --Lao Tzu (in A Sparrow's Song To Lift Up the Sky)

Gratitude is the memory of the heart. --Jean-Baptiste Massieu (in 15 Year-old's Letter to the Yard Across the Street)

We have to cross the boundary between knowing and not knowing many times before we achieve understanding. --David Hawkins (in Dr. Frederick Sontag: A Time of Searching)

Listening well is the most eloquent sign of caring. --Deborah Tannen (in How to Embrace Your Political Enemy)

Be impeccable with your word. --Don Miguel Ruiz (in Responsibility of Rocking the Boat)

In times such as these, it is no failure to fall short of realizing all that we might dream -- the failure is to fall short of dreaming all that we might realize. --Dee Hock (in Finishing First: What It Really Means to Win)

Become the kind of person whom nobody fears. --Arun Bhatt (in Arun-dada: I Just Love Thy Silently)

Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of listening when you'd have preferred to talk. --Doug Larson (in What Makes Someone Wise? A Global Study Explores.)

Traveler, there is no path. The path is made by walking. --Antonio Machado (in The Londoners Walking Their Way to Better Mental Health)

Art is not what you see, but what you make others see. --Edgar Degas (in How ‘Pollinator Pathmaker’ Can Help Us See Like a Bee)

To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow. So do it. --Kurt Vonnegut (in Crafting Gives Greater Life Satisfaction, Survey Finds)

At the deepest level, the creative process and the healing process arise from a single source. --Rachel Naomi Remen (in The Art of Healing: How Creativity is Changing NHS Mental Health)

According to Plato, two people, by challenging and responding to each other, can come closer to the truth than either one could by himself… It is something which neither of them knew before, and which neither would have been capable of knowing by himself. --Ervin Laszlo (in Five Ways to Tap Into Other People’s Wisdom)