Quotes that are inspiring, thought-provoking, smile-inducing . . .  with links to the original post in which the quotes were featured.

Animals

• “Until one has loved an animal a part of one’s soul remains unawakened.” ~ Anatole France
• “Such short little lives our pets have to spend with us, and they spend most of it waiting for us to come home each day.  It is amazing how much love and laughter they bring into our lives and even how much closer we become with each other because of them.” ~ John Grogan, author, Marley and Me: Life and Love With the World’s Worst Dog
• “A dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more than he loves himself.” ~ Josh Billings
• “Dogs are not our whole life, but they make our lives whole.” ~ Roger Caras

Believe in Yourself

• “The power of one is above all things the power to believe in yourself, often well beyond any latent ability you may have previously demonstrated. The mind is the athlete, the body is simply the means it uses to run faster or longer, jump higher, shoot straighter, kick better, swim harder, hit further, or box better.”  ~ Bryce Courtenay, The Power of One

Books and Reading

• “I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.” ~ Anna Quindlen
• “There is not such a cradle of democracy upon the Earth as the Free Public Library — this republic of letters, where neither rank, office, nor wealth receives the slightest consideration.” ~ Andrew Carnegie

Children, Family and Parenting

• “A child is not a vase to be filled, but a fire to be lit.” ~ Francois Rabelais
• “. . . besides love, independence of thought is the greatest gift an adult can give a child.” ~ Bryce Courtenay, The Power of One
• “If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder without any such gift from the fairies, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in.” ~ Rachel Carson
• “Raising a kid is part joy and part guerilla warfare.” ~ Ed Asner
• “Teaching children about the natural world should be treated as one of the most important events in their lives.”   ~ Thomas Berry
• “When your children are teenagers, it’s important to have a dog so that someone in the house is happy to see you.”  ~ Nora Ephron
• “It’s not our job to toughen our children up to face a cruel and heartless world. It’s our job to raise children who will make the world a little less cruel and heartless.” ~ L.R. Knost
• “Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.” ~ Margaret Mead
• “A child’s world is fresh and new and beautiful, full or wonder and excitement. It is our misfortune that for most of us that clear-eyed vision, that true instinct for what is beautiful and awe-inspiring, is dimmed and even lost before we reach adulthood. If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children, I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantment of later year…the alienation from the sources of our strength.” ~ Rachel Carson, The Sense of Wonder

Christmas

• “And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice cold in the snow, stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so?  It came without ribbons.  It came without tags.  It came without packages, boxes or bags.  And he puzzled and puzzled ’till his puzzler was sore.  Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before.  What if Christmas, he thought, doesn’t come from a store.  What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more.” ~ Dr. Seuss, “How the Grinch Stole Christmas”
• Christmas is forever, not for just one day, for loving, sharing, giving, are not to put away like bells and lights and tinsel, in some box upon a shelf.  The good you do for others is good you do yourself…  ~Norman Wesley Brooks, ”Let Every Day Be Christmas”

Civility, Compassion and Kindness

• “So let us begin anew—remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof. Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.” ~ John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 35th President of the United States, from his 1961 Inaugural Address
• “The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
• We have a whole new year ahead of us. . . Could we all be a little more gentle with each other and a little more loving, have a little more empathy, and maybe – next year at this time – we’d like each other a little more. ~ Judy Garland
• “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed individuals can change the world; indeed it’s the only thing that ever has.” ~ Margaret Mead
• “It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”  ~ Robert F. Kennedy

• “Dining with one’s friends and beloved family is certainly one of life’s primal and most innocent delights, one that is both soul-satisfying and eternal.” ~ Julia Child
• “I cook with wine, sometimes I even add it to the food.” ~ W. C. Fields
• “If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a much merrier world.”  ~ J.R.R. Tolkien
• “The only time to eat diet food is while you’re waiting for the steak to cook.”  ~ Julia Child

Friendship

• “Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” ~ Marcel Proust
• “Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: “What! You too? I thought I was the only one.” ~ C.S. Lewis
• “Kindred spirits are not so scarce as I used to think. It’s splendid to find out there are so many of them in the world.” ~ L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

Giving and Charity

• “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” ~ Theodore Roosevelt
• “Each of us as human beings has a responsibility to reach out to help our brothers and sisters affected by disasters. One day it may be us or our loved ones needing someone to reach out and help.” ~ Michael W. Hawkins, American Red Cross
• “We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.” ~ Winston Churchill

Gratitude

• “We need much less than we think we need.” ~ Maya Angelou
• “He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has.” ~ Epictetus
• “Reflect upon your present blessings of which every man has many — not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.”   ~ Charles Dickens

History and the Past

• History balances the frustration of “how far we have to go” with the satisfaction of “how far we have come.”  It teaches us tolerance for the human shortcomings and imperfections which are not uniquely of our generation, but of all time.   ~ Lewis F. Powell, Jr.

Individuality

• “When you are content to be simply yourself and don’t compare or compete, everybody will respect you.” ~ Lao Tzu
• “Always in life an idea starts small, it is only a sapling idea, but the vines will come and they will try to choke your idea so it cannot grow and it will die and you will never know you had a big idea, an idea so big it could have grown thirty meters through the dark canopy of leaves and touched the face of the sky.’ He looked at me and continued. ‘The vines are people who are afraid of originality, of new thinking. Most people you encounter will be vines; when you are a young plant they are very dangerous.’ His piercing blue eyes looked into mine.’ Always listen to yourself, Peekay. It is better to be wrong than simply to follow convention. If you are wrong, no matter, you have learned something and you grow stronger. If you are right, you have taken another step toward a fulfilling life.” ~ Bryce Courtenay, The Power of One
• “The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.” ~ Anna Quindlen
• “To be nobody but yourself — in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you like everybody else — means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting.” ~ e.e. cummings

Joy

• “When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.” ― Rumi

Life and Mindfulness

• “Be glad of life because it gives you a chance to love and to work and to play and to look up at the stars.”  ~ Henry Van Dyke
• It’s good to have an end to journey toward; but it’s the journey that matters, in the end.  ~ Ursula K. LeGuin
• “La vita e breve” ~ “life is short”
• Ring the bells that still can ring; Forget your perfect offering; There is a crack, a crack in everything; That’s how the light gets in.  ~ Leonard Cohen, “Anthem”
• “There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.” ~ Albert Einstein
• “I could not, at any age, be content to take my place by the fireside and simply look on. Life was meant to be lived. Curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.” ~ Eleanor Roosevelt
• “Life is made up of moments, small pieces of glittering mica in a long stretch of gray cement. It would be wonderful if they came to us unsummoned, but particularly in lives as busy as the ones most of us lead now, that won’t happen. We have to teach ourselves how to make room for them, to love them, and to live, really live.” ~ Anna Quindlen, A Short Guide to a Happy Life
• “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop to look around once in a while you could miss it.”  ~ Ferris Bueller (From the movie, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off)
• “We’re so busy watching out for what’s just ahead of us that we don’t take time to enjoy where we are.” ~ Bill Watterson
• “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” ~ John Lennon
• “Sometimes the slightest things change the directions of our lives, the merest breath of a circumstance, a random moment that connects like a meteorite striking the earth. Lives have swiveled and changed direction on the strength of a chance remark.” ~ Bryce Courtenay, The Power of One
• “Instructions for living a life: Pay attention.  Be astonished.  Tell about it.”  ~ Mary Oliver
• “Make your choice, adventurous Stranger, Strike the bell and bide the danger, Or wonder, till it drives you mad, What would have followed if you had.” ~C. S. Lewis
• “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” ~ J.R.R. Tolkien
• “’Dear old world’, she murmured, ‘you are very lovely, and I am glad to be alive in you.’” ~ L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables
• “We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.” – Thornton Wilder
• “For it is only framed in space that beauty blooms.  Only in space are events and objects and people unique and significant — and therefore beautiful.  A tree has significance if one sees it against the empty face of sky.  A note in music gains significance from the silences on either side.  A candle flowers in the space of night.  Even small and casual things take on significance if they are washed in space, like a few autumn grasses in one corner of an Oriental painting, the rest of the page bare.” ~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh, from A Gift From the Sea
• “Tell me, what is it you plan to do
  with your one wild and precious life?”
  ~ Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems
• “What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.” ~ Crowfoot, Blackfoot warrior and orator
• “If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.” ~ E.B. White
• “She felt an enveloping happiness to be alive, a joy made stronger by the certainty that someday it would all come to an end. Afterward she felt a little foolish, and never spoke to anyone about it. Now, however, she knows she wasn’t being foolish. She realizes that for no particular reason she stumbled into the core of what it is to be human. It’s a rare gift to understand that your life is wondrous, and that it won’t last forever. ” ~ Steven Galloway, The Cellist of Sarajevo

Love

• “Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.” ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Moments and Memories

• “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” ~ Albert Einstein
• “Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things.” ~ Robert Brault
• “Sooner or later we all discover that the important moments in life are not the advertised ones, not the birthdays, the graduations, the weddings, not the great goals achieved. The real milestones are less prepossessing. They come to the door of memory unannounced, stray dogs that amble in, sniff around a bit and simply never leave. Our lives are measured by these.” ~ Susan B. Anthony
• “The simple things are also the most extraordinary things, and only the wise can see them.” ~ Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
• The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough. ~ Rabindranath Tagore

Music

• “After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is  music.” ~ Aldous Huxley
• “Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything.”  ~ Plato
• Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.  ~ Berthold Auerbach
• “Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life.”  ~ Ludwig van Beethoven

Nature

• “In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.” ~ John Muir
• “Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.” ~ John Muir
• “Keep close to Nature’s heart… and break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean.” ~ John Muir
• “Nature is not a place to visit.  It is home.” ~ Gary Snyder
• “Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.” ~ Albert Einstein
• I experience a period of frightening clarity in those moments when nature is so beautiful. ~ Vincent Van Gogh
• “When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.” ~ John Muir
• “We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.” ~ Native American Proverb
• “In wildness is the preservation of the world.” ~  Henry David Thoreau
• “If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change.” ~ Buddha
• “Mountains inspire awe in any human person who has a soul. They remind us of our frailty, our unimportance, of the briefness of our span on this earth. They touch the heavens, and sail serenely at an altitude beyond even the imaginings of a mere mortal.” ~ Elizabeth Aston
• “There is nothing more musical than a sunset.” ~ Claude Debussy

Peace

• Imagine all the people living life in peace. You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you’ll join us, and the world will be as one. ~ John Lennon

Perseverance

• “If you are going through hell, keep going.” ~ Winston S. Churchill

Running

• “I always loved running…it was something you could do by yourself, and under your own power. You could go in any direction, fast or slow as you wanted, fighting the wind if you felt like it, seeking out new sights just on the strength of your feet and the courage of your lungs.” ~ Jesse Owens
• “It was being a runner that mattered, not how fast or how far I could run. The joy was in the act of running and in the journey, not in the destination.” ~ John Bingham 

Seasons

• “No winter lasts forever; no spring skips its turn.” ~ Hal Borland
• “The first day of spring is one thing, and the first spring day is another.  The difference between them is sometimes as great as a month.”  ~ Henry Van Dyke
• “Spring is sooner recognized by plants than by men.”  ~ Chinese Proverb

Travel

• He who has seen one cathedral ten times has seen something; he who has seen ten cathedrals once has seen but little; and he who has spent half an hour in each of a hundred cathedrals has seen nothing at all. ~ Sinclair Lewis

Voting and Democracy

• “Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.” ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt (32nd U.S. President)
• “Elections belong to the people. It’s their decision. If they decide to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will just have to sit on their blisters.” ~ Abraham Lincoln (16th U.S. President)
• “The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” ~ Alice Walker
• “Those who stay away from the election think that one vote will do no good: ‘Tis but one step more to think one vote will do no harm.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
• “There is not such a cradle of democracy upon the Earth as the Free Public Library — this republic of letters, where neither rank, office, nor wealth receives the slightest consideration.” ~ Andrew Carnegie

Women (and Men)

• “Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then.” ~ Katharine Hepburn