Quotes to live by

I've been doing some deep cleaning in the house. Very deep cleaning. Every photo and every knicknac is studied and either organized, given away or tossed out. Yesterday I found a handful of 3 by 5 cards with various quotes written on them. I started writing down quotes in 1978 and it looks like I wrote the last one in 1995. I remember writing down quotes that supported my own philosophy...quotes that made an impression. I wrote them down and even had many of them memorized (back when I could remember anything)

Very often when you get a chance to revisit the past and you are introduced to who you used to be, you don't always recognize that person. People change, ideas evolve, truths expand. And although I have changed and hopefully grown over the past 30 years, I discovered that I like these sayings and recognize their truth as much as I originally did. I don't think I intended to collect quotes that were so similar to each other but now I can see that there is a definite theme running through them. Perhaps among them is my own philosophy of life that these wise men and women have expressed much better than I ever could. Here they are.

The purpose of life, after all, is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience. - Eleanor Roosevelt

There is only one success... to be able to spend your life in your own way.

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you've imagined. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler. - Henry David Thoreau

Live each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each. Henry David Thoreau

That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest. Henry David Thoreau

The determined man finds a way, the other finds an excuse.

Everything can be taken from man but one thing, the last of human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances - to choose ones own way. Dr. Victor Frankl

Success is a journey, not a destination. We cannot direct the wind, but we can adjust the sails.

I finally figured out that the only reason to be alive is to enjoy it. - Rita Mae Brown

Change occurs when we take responsibility for our own thoughts, decisions and actions. - C. Palladino

The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness. - Eric Hoffer

There is more to lfe than increasing its speed. - Mahatma Gandhi

Death is not the enemy; living in constant fear of it is. - Norman Cousins

A man may fail many times, but he isn't a failure until he blames someone else.

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to ones courage. - Anais Nin

People do not lack strength, they lack will. - Victor Hugo

Action is eloquence - Shakespere

It is only those who do nothing that make no mistakes. - Joseph Conrad

It is not only what we do but what we do not do for which we are accountable. - Moliere

Go as far as you can see, and when you get there you will see farther. - Orison Sweet Marden

You may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing we call failure is not the falling down, but the staying down. - Mary Pickford

And finally here is the quote that started it all. I actually memorized this in high school. It's still my favorite.

It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiently, who errs and comes up short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who, at the worst, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat. - Theodore Roosevelt