You are built not to shrink down to less but to blossom into more.
—Oprah Winfrey (b.1954) American TV Personality
Still round the corner there may wait,
A new road or a secret gate.
—J. R. R. Tolkien (1892–1973) British Scholar, Author
Challenges are gifts that force us to search for a new center of gravity. Don’t fight them. Just find a different way to stand.
—Oprah Winfrey (b.1954) American TV Personality
The acorn becomes an oak by means of automatic growth; no commitment is necessary. The kitten similarly becomes a cat on the basis of instinct. Nature and being are identical in creatures like them. But a man or woman becomes fully human only by his or her choices and his or her commitment to them. People attain worth and dignity by the multitude of decisions they make from day by day. These decisions require courage.
—Rollo May (1909–94) American Philosopher
You don’t learn to hold your own in the world by standing on guard, but by attacking, and getting well-hammered yourself.
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish Playwright
A difficult time can be more readily endured if we retain the conviction that our existence holds a purpose – a cause to pursue, a person to love, a goal to achieve.
—John C. Maxwell (b.1947) American Christian Professional Speaker, Author, Clergyman
Unlimited economic growth has the marvelous quality of stilling discontent while maintaining privilege, a fact that has not gone unnoticed among liberal economists.
—Noam Chomsky (b.1928) American Linguist, Social Critic
Every positive change—every jump to a higher level of energy and awareness—involves a rite of passage. Each time to ascend to a higher rung on the ladder of personal evolution, we must go through a period of discomfort, of initiation. I have never found an exception.
—Dan Millman (b.1946) American Children’s Books Writer, Sportsperson
I don’t think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–65) American Head of State
Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.
—Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born Physicist
Some people are molded by their admirations, others by their hostilities.
—Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973) Irish Novelist, Short-story Writer
Brother stand the pain;Escape the poison of your impulses.The sky will bow to your beauty, if you do.Learn to light the candle. Rise with the sun.Turn away from the cave of your sleeping.That way a thorn expands to a rose.A particular glows with the universal.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi (1207–73) Persian Muslim Mystic
He who has always spared himself much will in the end become sickly of so much consideration. Praised be what hardens!
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German Philosopher, Scholar, Writer
Progress has not followed a straight ascending line, but a spiral with rhythms of progress and retrogression, of evolution and dissolution.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German Poet
The perfecting of one’s self is the fundamental base of all progress and all moral development.
—Confucius (551–479 BCE) Chinese Philosopher
If your knowledge of fire has been turned to certainty by words alone, then seek to be cooked by the fire itself. Don’t abide in borrowed certainty. There is no real certainty until you burn; if you wish for this, sit down in the fire.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi (1207–73) Persian Muslim Mystic
There is no growth without discontent.
—Unknown
The depth of your mythology is the extent of your effectiveness.
—John C. Maxwell (b.1947) American Christian Professional Speaker, Author, Clergyman
Remember that children, marriages, and flower gardens reflect the kind of care they get.
—H. Jackson Brown, Jr. (b.1940) American Self-Help Author
I am talking about the power within the self. This means power over your perceptions of the world, power over how you react to situations in your life, power to do what is necessary for your own self-growth, power to create joy and satisfaction in your life, power to act, and power to love.
—Susan Jeffers (1938–2012) American Psychologist, Self-Help Author
If you would attain to what you are not yet, you must always be displeased by what you are. For where you are pleased with yourself there you have remained. Keep adding, keep walking, keep advancing.
—Augustine of Hippo (354–430) Roman-African Christian Philosopher
Shedding one’s skin. The snake that cannot shed its skin perishes. So do the spirits who are prevented from changing their opinions; they cease to be spirit.
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German Philosopher, Scholar, Writer
We need to give each other the space to grow, to be ourselves, to exercise our diversity. We need to give each other space so that we may both give and receive such beautiful things as ideas, openness, dignity, joy, healing, and inclusion.
—Max De Pree (1924–2017) American Businessman
Natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience.
—Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English Philosopher
All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous, unpremeditated act without benefit of experience.
—Henry Miller (1891–1980) American Novelist
Time ripens all things; no man is born wise.
—Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) Spanish Novelist
I will grow. I will become something new and grand, but no grander than I now am. Just as the sky will be different in a few hours, its present perfection and completeness is not deficient, so am I presently perfect and not deficient because I will be different tomorrow. I will grow and I am not deficient.
—Wayne Dyer (1940–2015) American Self-Help Author
No greater thing is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig, I answer you that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.
—Epictetus (55–135) Ancient Greek Philosopher
I am a frayed and nibbled survivor in a fallen world, and I am getting along. I am aging and eaten and have done my share of eating too. I am not washed and beautiful, in control of a shining world in which everything fits, but instead am wondering awed about on a splintered wreck I’ve come to care for, whose gnawed trees breathe a delicate air, whose bloodied and scarred creatures are my dearest companions, and whose beauty bats and shines not in its imperfections but overwhelmingly in spite of them…
—Annie Dillard (b.1945) Essayist, Novelist, Poet, Naturalist, Mystic
In the end, it is important to remember that we cannot become what we need to be, by remaining what we are.
—Max De Pree (1924–2017) American Businessman