A few favorite quotations for life

If you love something, set it free.
If it comes back to you, it is yours.
If it doesn't, it never was.

On my home front, I've been concentrating on getting rid of debris in my life, editing a fiction manuscript from over 10 years back, to see if it has worth for today (not to mention the difficulty of bringing it to date for things like technology. Stories based in another time period avoid this problem), doing a daily drawing practice, all mingled together with regular responsibilities

As I was cleaning out a drawer of my desk-- a job that took me most of a morning due to the meaningless odds and ends that had been shoved into it (by someone, not sure who)-- I came across a pile of small post-it notes on which I had written some of my favorite, inspiring-to-me quotes. I liked rereading them and thought someone here might also. I combined them with some of my favorite photos from 2010 which were taken by either me or Farm Boss. It's often hard to tell who took what, but they came from what we were doing last year.

If I knew the author, I included it. Some are by well-recognized names. Some words have many who claim authorship. The one above, which is actually a magnet on my refrigerator, is said to be anonymous as might be some of the following. If I have one without an author and you believe you know who wrote it, I'll be happy to add that.

Also if you have a life quote that is especially meaningful to your life, please add it in comments. The following are in no order of importance to me but just as the little papers came out of my desk.

Hold fast to dreams for if dreams die, life is a winged bird that cannot fly. --Langston Hughes

Knowledge is awareness, and to it are many paths, not all of them paved with logic. But sometimes one is guided through the maze by intuition. One is led by something felt on the wind, something seen in the stars, something that calls from the wasteland to the spirit. -- Louis L'Amour


Don't we all die someday and someday comes all too soon? What will you do with your own wild, glorious chance at this thing we call life. -- Mary Oliver

Don't lose hold of your dreams! Dreams are birds in flight, oceans at high tide. Dreams give life wings and let us fly high. -- although this resembles what Langston Hughes said, it's slightly different, might still be his, but I am not sure where I got it. I liked its additional imagery.

Go confidently in the direction of your dream. Live the life you have imagined. If one advances confidently in the direction of one's dreams, and endeavors to live the life one has imagined, one will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. --Henry David Thoreau


And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight inside the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. --Anais Nin


What would it be like if you lived each day, each breath, as a work of art in progress? Imagine that you are a masterpiece unfolding each second of every day, a work of art taking form with every breath. --Thomas Crum


Life and death are of supreme importance. Time swiftly passes by and opportunity is lost. Each of us should strive to awaken! Take heed-- do not squander your life. --Zen night chant


Don't let someone else create your happiness. Your joy lies within you.

Feel your feelings. Stand out in the rain-- naked and let the rain wash your soul.

Begin doing what you want to do now. We are not living in eternity. We have only this moment sparkling like a star in our hand -- and melting like a snowflake. --Sir Francis Bacon

I hope I have found myself, my work, my happiness -- under the light of the western skies. --Zane Grey


Dreams are necessary to life. --Anais Nin

I do not unmarry ____. But I marry myself. I take my fate as within. --Sena Jeter Naslund


Where we choose to be-- we have that power to determine our lives. We cannot reel time backward or forward, but we can take ourselves to the place that defines our being. --Sena Jeter Naslund

The final piece of paper that was in my desk is a bit different. I think now its meaning has changed for me and what it means is surrendering to the power of life, letting it take me wherever it might go. It is surrendering to the experience of life and our own place in the creating of it. Grace is the fact that we were gifted with life at all.

Om Namaha Shivia

Surrendering to God. The power of God is within me. The grace of God surrounds me.

There is one more that stays in my memory, after many years on a paper in my wallet that finally disintegrated but not before I had memorized it. It was particularly important to me during the child rearing years.

Let my love like sunlight surround you and yet give you illumined freedom. -- Tagore