There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. --Martha Graham (in Fatherland)

It is difficult to get the news from poems yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there --William Carlos Williams (in Lisa Dolby Chadwick: Letting in the Light)

To forget how to dig the earth and to tend the soil is to forget ourselves.
--Mahatma Gandhi (in Kiss the Ground: The Soil Story)

But one thing is certain:
If we merge mercy with might,
and might with right,
then love becomes our legacy --Amanda Gorman (in Amanda Gorman: The Miracle of Morning)

Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step. --Martin Luther King Jr. (in A Reset for Unprecedented Times)

Hoarding won't save us...All flourishing is mutual. --Robin Wall Kimmerer (in The Serviceberry: An Economy of Abundance)

I have been to the end of the earth, I have been to the end of the waters, I have been to the end of the sky, I have been to the end of the mountains, I have found none that are not my friends. --Navajo Proverbs (in To Walk in Beauty Once Again)

We cannot, of course, save the World because we do not have authority over its parts. We can serve the world though. That is everyone's calling, to lead a life that helps. --Barry Lopez (in Writers & Artists on the Influence of Barry Lopez)

People say that the soul, on hearing the song of creation, entered the body, but in reality the soul itself was the song. --Hafiz (in Musicians on Kindness)

The educator has the duty of not being neutral. --Paulo Freire (in 5 Tips for Teaching in Times of Civil Unrest)

we are our only relevant hope
we are our only possible medicine --adrienne maree brown (in what is unveiled? the founding wound (poem/directive))

It is easy to be bleak about the human race, but there are people who have proved to me that we can be better than we are. --Peniel Joseph (in The Sword & The Shield: The Struggle for Black Freedom )

Our genius is to understand and stand beneath the set of stars present at our birth, and from that place, to seek the hidden single star, over the night horizon, we did not know we were following. --David Whyte (in Creativity & COVID-19)

The personal life deeply lived always expands into truths beyond itself. --Anais Nin (in Matthew Fox: How Important is Truth?)

To safeguard democracy the people must have a keen sense of independence, self-respect, and their oneness. --Mahatma Gandhi (in 10 Ways & 50 Questions to Help Strengthen Democracy)

Today we acknowledge the shadows, but we lean into the light. --Carrie Newcomer (in We Must Deepen Our Capacity for Healing)

We will not end white-body supremacy-- or any form of human evil--by trying to tear it to pieces. Instead, we can offer people better ways to belong and better things to belong to. --Resmaa Menakem (in Processing What Happened at the US Capitol)

As citizens, we must prevent wrongdoing because the world in which we all live, wrong-doer, wrong sufferer and spectator, is at stake. --Hannah Arendt (in Hannah Arendt & the Politics of Truth)

We can return to the Earth that is our only home, consciously choosing sustainable ways of living with the Earth. Choose it or lose it. --Duane Elgin (in Choosing Earth: With Duane and Colleen Elgin)

Only by listening inwardly in a fresh and open way will you discern at any given time what most serves your healing and freedom. --Tara Brach (in Tara Brach: True Refuge)

It is only on the condition of humility and reverence before the world that our species will be able to remain in it.
--Wendell Berry (in To Live and Love with a Dying World)

You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith and hope. --Thomas Merton (in Virtually Together)

In the very deep darkness of this world, little pinpoints of light show up very brightly and can shine a long way. --Tenzin Palmo (in KindSpring: Top 10 Stories of 2020)

This is not a time of mere change. This is a time of transformation, and transformation comes not out of scarcity but out of the context of possibility, responsibility, and sufficiency. --https://gratefulness.org/blog/opening-to-transformation-resources-for-the-journey/ (in 2021: Resources for the Journey)

The task of breaking a bad habit is like uprooting a powerful oak within us. And the task of building a good habit is like cultivating a delicate flower one day at a time. --James Clear (in 7 Science-Based Strategies for Keeping New Year Resolutions)

Although we are in different boats you in your boat and we in our canoe we share the same river of life. --Chief Oren Lyons (in Lottie Cunningham: Dedicated to Indigenous Rights)

For grief is crowned with consolation.

--William Shakespeare (in The Clarinet in the Attic)

There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light. -- (in Barry Lopez: Lyrical Writer and Thoreau of Our Times)

Only from the heart can you touch the sky. --Rumi (in Art for the Sky)

Love is its own rescue; for we, at our supremest, are but its trembling emblems.
--Emily Dickinson (in When Love Rescued Christmas)

Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone -- we find it with another. --Thomas Merton (in Top 10 Insights from the Science of a Meaningful Life)

There will be time enough for running. For rushing. For worrying. For pushing. For now, stay. Wait. Something is on the horizon.
--Jan Richardson (in Winter Solstice: Blessing for the Longest Night)

Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing. --T.S. Eliot (in Learning to Love Winter's Night)

Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them. --Marcus Aurelius (in A Case for Wonder)

Injustices started when we began to lose our relationship to nature and treat it just as a resource to be commodified. --Cherrie Moraga (in The Land Has Memory)

I really believe we are meant to feel loved, we're meant to feel connected, we're meant to feel like we belong together. --Lydia Fairhall (in Lydia Fairhall Amplifies Love)

I love a broad margin to my life. --Henry David Thoreau (in Time Confetti and the Broken Promise of Leisure)

Le microbe n'est rien, le terrain est tout.
(The microbe is nothing, the terrain is everything.) --Louis Pasteur (in Paul Farmer on 'Fevers, Feuds and Diamonds')

Our waiting is not nothing. It is something -- a very big something -- because people tend to be shaped by whatever it is they are waiting for.
--Barbara Brown Taylor (in Wislawa Szymborska: Life-While-You-Wait)

If you look the right way, you can see that the whole world is a garden.
--Frances Hodgson Burnett (in Gazing Into The Heart of Perfection)

Without darkness, nothing comes to birth, As without light, nothing flowers. --May Sarton (in The Alchemy of Befriending Ourselves in Difficult Times)

In some mysterious way woods have never seemed to me to be static things. In physical terms, I move through them; yet in metaphysical ones, they seem to move through me. --John Fowles (in Fools and Dreamers: Regenerating a Native Forest)

You enter the forest at the darkest point,where there is no path. Where there is a way or path, it is someone else's path. --Joseph Campbell (in The Hero/Heroine's Journey: Responding to the Call of Our Times)

Words create worlds. --Pierre du Plessis (in COVID: Etymologies of the Word that Changed the World)

Study the assumptions behind your actions. Then study the assumptions behind your assumptions. --Idries Shah (in Snack Attack)

To have another language is to possess a second soul --Charlemagne (in Lessons in the Old Language)

If you look deeply into the palm of your hand, you will see your parents and all generations of your ancestors. All of them are alive in this moment. Each is present in your body. You are the continuation of each of these people. --Thich Naht Hanh (in Mark Wolynn: Healing Inherited Family Trauma)

When one is still and listens, one begins to be in touch with a mysterious element that is within each of us, which can transform and shape us and can help to transform the world. --William Segal (in William Segal: The Force of Attention)

I take a deep breath and sidestep my fear and begin speaking from the place where beauty and bravery meet--within the chambers of a quivering heart. --Terry Tempest Williams (in Six Tips For Speaking Up When Called For)

Be brave enough to start a conversation that matters. --Margaret Wheatley (in Human Library)