Illinois ladies facing bc

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  • illinoislady
    illinoislady Member Posts: 40,323

    You have choice. You can select joy over despair. You canselect happiness over tears. You can select action over apathy.  You can select growth over stagnation. You can select you.  And you can select life. And it's time that people tell you you're not at the mercy of forces greater than yourself. You are, indeed, the greatest force for you.

    Leo Buscaglia

  • illinoislady
    illinoislady Member Posts: 40,323

    This is the true joy in life, the being used up for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the community, and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no “brief candle” to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for a moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.     -George Bernard Shaw

  • illinoislady
    illinoislady Member Posts: 40,323

    If I keep my eyes open, I see bugs and snakes and intricate tiny flowers and cool rocks and nice smiles and beautiful architecture and gentle kindness.  If I keep my heart young I notice great places to play, nice sunsets, cool hideouts, neat ice formations, and strange and unusual birds and animals. Life is never ordinary.  We can make it seem ordinary by closing our eyes and hearts to its wonder, but that's not life's fault.  I prefer to notice the little things and then leave them be--never trying to take them with me or preserve them--because that's what life's supposed to be, and that's what makes me happy and keeps away disappointment.

    tom walsh

  • illinoislady
    illinoislady Member Posts: 40,323

    We are not human beings having a spiritual experience.  We are spiritual beings having a

    human experience.

    Teilhard de Chardin

  • illinoislady
    illinoislady Member Posts: 40,323

    When we recognize that nothing has to go right for us to be happy, that people do not have to behave for us to love them, our walk home can be surprisingly simple. We have enormous power not to manipulate the world, but to be happy and to know peace.

    Hugh Prather

  • illinoislady
    illinoislady Member Posts: 40,323

    The surface of life is also in a state of constant flux, with good days and bad, victory and defeat.  To maintain, as the ocean does, a deep inner calm, while the storms of misfortune, reverses, fears and worries lash at the surface of life, is to discover the secret of serenity.   Years ago, when Thomas Edison's factory burned down, he wasted no time bemoaning his fate.  Immediately after the disaster the reporters found a calm, quiet man already at work on plans for a new building.   When Emerson's home was destroyed by fire and his precious books were being reduced to ashes, Louisa May Alcott came to console him.  The great philosopher said, "Yes, yes, Louisa, they are all gone, but let us enjoy the blaze now.  Isn't it beautiful!"   Some people are ocean personalities.  In their inner depths they are not defeated by what happens to them.  The towering waves of circumstances cannot reach us when we go deep within to seek the peace that passes all understanding.  While the surface of life is in turmoil we can find an inner calmness to see us through.

    Wilferd A. Peterson

  • illinoislady
    illinoislady Member Posts: 40,323

    Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces up, snow is exhilarating there is no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.

    John Ruskin

  • illinoislady
    illinoislady Member Posts: 40,323

    The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers.

    M. Scott Peck

  • illinoislady
    illinoislady Member Posts: 40,323

    Happy relationships depend not on finding the right person, but on being the right person.     -Eric Butterworth

  • illinoislady
    illinoislady Member Posts: 40,323

    Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only.

    Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul.

    Henry David Thoreau

  • illinoislady
    illinoislady Member Posts: 40,323

    You have choice.  You can select joy over despair.  You can select happiness over tears.  You can select action over apathy.  You can select growth over stagnation.  You can select you.  And you can select life. And it's time that people tell you you're not at the mercy of forces greater than yourself.  You, indeed, are the greatest force for you.  Now, you can't do it for me, but you can do it for you.

    .Leo Buscaglia

  • illinoislady
    illinoislady Member Posts: 40,323


    Notice what happens when you doubt, suppress, or act contrary to
    your feelings.  You will observe decreased energy, powerless or
    helpless feelings, and physical or emotional pain.  Now notice what
    happens when you follow your intuitive feelings.  Usually the result
    is increased energy and power and a sense of natural flow.  When
    you're at one with yourself, the world feels peaceful, exciting, and magical.

    Shakti Gawain

  • illinoislady
    illinoislady Member Posts: 40,323

    The true Light is a gentle love which, rising in you, causes you to look on the world with understanding and compassion and respect.  When you respect the souls of your brother and sister, you respect their lives in every way.  This gentle spirit, this respect one for another, must come. For this is the generation of the one true Light, and this true light is that of love.

    White Eagle

  • illinoislady
    illinoislady Member Posts: 40,323

    Life is short and we never have enough time for gladdening the hearts of those who travel the way with us.  Oh, be swift to love! Make haste to be kind!

    Henri Frederic Amiel

  • illinoislady
    illinoislady Member Posts: 40,323

    If it can be verified, we don't need faith. . . . Faith is for that which lies on the other side of reason.  Faith is what makes life bearable, with all its tragedies and ambiguities and sudden, startling joys.

    Madeleine L'Engle

  • illinoislady
    illinoislady Member Posts: 40,323

    I have always been delighted at the prospect of a new day, a fresh try, one more start, with perhaps a bit of magic waiting somewhere behind the morning.

    J.B. Priestley

  • illinoislady
    illinoislady Member Posts: 40,323

    In loving others, we elevate others as well as ourselves and grow closer to our Higher Power. . . . We rise and transcend our false barriers to enjoy the Oneness that, even if long forgotten, we still crave deep down in our cores.

    Michael Goddart

  • illinoislady
    illinoislady Member Posts: 40,323

    A woman once told me that she did not feel the need to reach out to those around her because she prayed every day. Surely, this was enough. But a prayer is about our relationship to God; a blessing is about our relationship to the spark of God in one another. God may not need our attention as badly as the person next to us on the bus or behind us in line in the supermarket. Everyone in the world matters, and so do their blessings. When we bless others, we offer them refuge from an indifferent world.     -Rachel Naomi Remen

  • illinoislady
    illinoislady Member Posts: 40,323

    One day, a woman found herself standing at Heaven's gate.  The angels' only question to her was, "Zusai, why weren't you Zusai?" Within that simple question lies the heart of all our soul work.  If you are David, why aren't you fully David? If you are Susan, why aren't you completely Susan?  We are here on Earth to become who we are meant to be.

    Angeles Arrien

  • illinoislady
    illinoislady Member Posts: 40,323

    Why do we protect children from life?  It's no wonder that we become afraid to live. We're not told what life really is. We're not told that life is joy and wonder and magic and even rapture, if you can get involved enough.  We're not told that life is also pain, misery, despair, unhappiness, and tears.  I don't know about you, but I don't want to miss any of it.  I want to embrace life, and I want to find out what it's all about. I wouldn't want to go through life without knowing what it is to cry.

    Leo Buscaglia

  • illinoislady
    illinoislady Member Posts: 40,323

    Today, I choose awareness.
    I choose to be aware of the beauty of life and living.
    I choose to be aware of the simple truths in life.
    I choose to be aware of the simple pleasures in life.
    I choose awareness of joy.
    I choose awareness of peace.
    I choose awareness of love.
    I choose to see, to feel, to know,
    the presence of divine energy
    in myself and those around me.
    Today, I choose to be aware and to embrace all
    that is good, noble, and divine.
    As my awareness of joy, peace, love, and goodness
    grows in my consciousness, joy, peace, love,
    and goodness become the reality in which I live.
    For this I am so grateful!
    And So It Is!

    Iyanla Vanzant

       

  • illinoislady
    illinoislady Member Posts: 40,323

    We can stop waiting for life to become perfect and start working with what we’ve got to make it as satisfying as we can. We can accept, bless, give thanks, and get going. Today, we can begin to call forth the riches from our everyday life. Procrastination has robbed us of too many precious opportunities. Call a friend for lunch, begin to read or even write that novel, organize your papers. Try a new recipe for dinner, smile at everyone you meet, sit and dream before a blazing fire, pick up your needlepoint again, act as if you’re grateful to be alive, scatter joy. Think of one thing that would give you a genuine moment of pleasure today and do it.     -Sarah Ban Breathnach

  • illinoislady
    illinoislady Member Posts: 40,323

    There is no physician like cheerful thought for dissipating the ills of the body;
    there is no comforter to compare with good will for dispersing the shadows
    of grief and sorrow.  To live continually in thoughts of ill will, cynicism, suspicion,
    and envy, is to be confined in a self-made prison hole.  But to think well of all,
    to be cheerful with all, to patiently learn to find the good in all—such unselfish
    thoughts are the very portals of happiness; and to dwell day by day in thoughts
    of peace toward every creature will bring abounding peace to their possessor.

    James Allen

  • illinoislady
    illinoislady Member Posts: 40,323

    It is a wholesome and necessary thing for us to turn again to the earth and in contemplation of her beauties to know the sense of wonder and humility. Rachel Carson

  • illinoislady
    illinoislady Member Posts: 40,323

    Peace of mind just can't be bought. Trust me:  Even if your conscience doesn't stop you from playing dirt to get what you want, once you get it, it will keep you from enjoying it. As my mother used to say, "A good conscience is God's eye."  Which is why I always prefer a loss to an underhanded gain; the one brings pain at the moment, the other for all time.

    Patti LaBelle

  • illinoislady
    illinoislady Member Posts: 40,323

    A person's character and their garden both reflect the amount of weeding that was done during the growing season.     -unattributed

  • illinoislady
    illinoislady Member Posts: 40,323

    In a noisy world, seek the silence in your heart. And through the power of silence, the energies of chaos will be brought back to harmony--not by you, but through you, as all miracles are. When we visit this silence regularly, particularly in the morning, then the days of our lives become lit from above. Darkness and fear are cast from our midst, slowly at first, one moment at a time. Ultimately, all darkness will be gone from every heart. -Marianne Williamson

  • illinoislady
    illinoislady Member Posts: 40,323

    Happiness is a process of radiation, not absorption.  No need to seek for happiness.  Happiness is within.  Happiness is the only thing where the more you give, the more you possess. Pleasure can be bought at a price.  Happiness is priceless.

    Fred van Amburgh

  • illinoislady
    illinoislady Member Posts: 40,323


    Whether you know it or not, one of the most important relationships in
    your life is with your Soul.  Will you be kind and loving to your Soul,
    or will you be harsh and difficult?  Many of us unknowingly damage
    our Souls with our negative attitudes and actions or by simple neglect.
    By making the relationship with your Soul an important part of your
    life, however, by honoring it in your daily routine, you give your life
    greater meaning and substance.  Use your experiences--all of
    them--as opportunities to nourish your Soul!

    Elisabeth Kuebler-Ross

  • illinoislady
    illinoislady Member Posts: 40,323

    Let us be merciful in our mental judgments of our brothers and sisters,
    for, in truth, we are all one, and the more deeply they seem to err,
    the more urgent is the need for us to help them with the right thought,
    and so make it easier for them to get free.

    Emmet Fox