Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death. Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending. One day your life will flash before your eyes, make sure it’s worth watching. Our attitude towards life determines life’s attitude towards us.
Dream as if you’ll live forever, live as if you’ll die today. Aim for the moon, that way if you miss, you’ll still be amongst the stars. We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. If you think you are beaten, you are; if you think you dare not, you don’t; if you’d like to win, but think you can’t, it’s almost a cinch you won’t. Act as if it is impossible to fail. Failure is a detour, not a dead-end street.
If we could first know where we are and whither we are tending, we could better judge what we do and how we do it. To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the need for thought. Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes. If you wait to do everything until you’re sure it’s right, you’ll probably never do much of anything. Don’t wait for the storm to pass, learn to dance in the rain. Sometimes you have to jump and grow your wings on the way down.
By the inch, life’s a cinch. By the yard, life is hard. The miracle isn’t that I finished, the miracle is I had the courage to start. When we long for life without difficulties, remind us that oaks grow strong in contrary winds and diamonds are made under pressure.
Love bites, love bleeds and it’s bringing me to my knees. If you don’t heal the wounds of the past, you’ll continue to bleed. Love is the enchanted dawn of every heart.
When things go wrong, don’t go with them. If there’s no light at the end of the tunnel, march down there and turn it on yourself!
Laugh as much as you breathe and love as long as you live. Laughter is the brush that sweeps away the cobwebs of the heart. Blessed are we who can laugh at ourselves, for we shall never cease to be amused.
It’s not a ramp, it’s a doorway to independence. Reason can answer questions but imagination has to ask them. Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens. Wisdom is the right application of knowledge. In order to be old and wise, you have to be young and stupid.
I cried because I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet. Be kind, everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. Keep your words sweet-you may have to eat them.
We do not quit playing because we grow old; we grow old because we quit playing. It’s not the length of the life, it’s the depth. The present is what slips by us when we are pondering about the past and worrying about the future. Don’t deny the fact of growing old; it’s a privilege denied to many.
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You've definitely absorbed the lessons of the Shield's piece here--the groupings of lines by subject, the overall movement toward the subject of growing old. Nicely done. I'm curious about your reaction to the piece, and how others will read it. Lines like these, like the bumperstickers in Shield's piece, are not designed to be read en masse like this, and I find that the overwhelming affect is to wash away their inspirational quality. In the end, for this reader, grouping them together like this makes them a bit superficial. I wonder if most readers read them that way or if, as one reads them all together, some readers find themselves 'more inspired'
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