Here are sources of all the quotes used in Through God’s Eyes: Finding Peace and Purpose in a Troubled World.  This section is for last names from M-R.

IMPORTANT POINTS

• When an original source can’t be found, I list a book or website that contains the quote in question. Such sources are often unreliable, so I consider them simply as placeholders until the original source—or at least the earliest known appearance of the quote—is identified.

• Virtually all quotes in the book are presented verbatim as they appeared in the original sources. In rare instances, I’ve used popular or modern paraphrasings of original quotes.

• A misattributed quote often takes on a life of its own. Even if it bears little or no resemblance to the attributed source, it is worth including (with appropriate historical notes) if it offers insight and value. I did my best to honor the authenticity of every quote, but I am ultimately more concerned with content than authorship.

FOR EASE OF READING

• If the first word in a quote was not the start of a sentence, it has been capitalized anyway.

• If the last word in a quote was not the end of sentence, a period has been added anyway.

• Certain centuries-old quotes have been “updated” using modernized language and punctuation.

• When the author of the book listed is the person being quoted, I did not include the author’s name.

I NEED YOUR HELP

• This post will be updated frequently because identifying who said what, when, and where is a never-ending project.

• Any corrections (no matter how minor), new information, or better sources would be greatly appreciated. Let me emphasize that: I want to make this listing as perfect as possible, so your suggestions are expected and welcomed. You can contact me here.

The question for each man to settle is not what he would do if he had means, time, influence and educational advantages; the question is what he will do with the things he has.
Hamilton Wright Mabie
Thoughts That Inspire, Volume 1, Personal Help Pub. Co., 1905, Google eBook, page 30

There is no security on this earth. There is only opportunity.
Douglas MacArthur
LIFE magazine, January 9, 1956, Time, Inc., page 28

The measure of a man’s real character is what he would do if he knew he never would be found out.
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Threshold: Aperture to the Light of the World by Vincent M.M. Galici, Sr., Dorrance Publishing, 2011, Google eBook, page 325

When we stop fighting the inevitable we release energy which enables us to create a richer life.
Elsie McCormick
Essay: “How Your Mind May Make You Ill”
Getting the Most Out of Life: An Anthology from The Reader’s Digest, 1948, page 112

A man is a slave to anything he cannot part with that is less than himself.
George MacDonald
Back to Virtue: Traditional Moral Wisdom for Modern Moral Confusionby Peter Kreeft, Ignatius Press, June 1, 1992, Google eBook, pages 106-107
• The closest passage I found to this quote in MacDonald’s own writings is from A Rough Shaking, CreateSpace, September 3, 2011, page 175:

When a man will have a thing, right or wrong, that man is a slave to that thing—the meanest of slaves, a willing one.

Wayfarer, the only way
is your footsteps, there is no other.
Wayfarer, there is no way,
you make the way as you go.
Antonio Machado
Antonio Machado: Selected Poems, translated by Alan S. Trueblood, Harvard University Press, March 15, 1988, page 143

All uncertainty is fruitful . . . so long as it is accompanied by the wish to understand.
Antonio Machado
Juan de Mairena, edited and translated by Ben Belitt, University of California Press, 1963, page 101

If our petitions are in accordance with His will, and if we seek His glory in the asking, the answers will come in ways that will astonish us and fill our hearts with songs of thanksgiving.
J. Kennedy Maclean
Purpose in Prayer by E. M. Bounds, Fleming H. Revell Co., 1920, page 156

My narrative:
Former triathlon champion Jim MacLaren was also grateful for the two vehicular accidents that rendered him a quadriplegic. “Even though both accidents were devastating at the time, I now view them as gifts and not tragedies,” he said in an interview.
and
MacLaren insisted he would not trade his years of paralysis for a restored, healthy body. “Having to admit to my own dependency and vulnerability actually made me more powerful,” he said. “For me, the journey has always been about going deeper and becoming more of a human being.”
• In Sixty Seconds: One Moment Changes Everything by Phil Bolsta, Atria Books/Beyond Words, April 15, 2008, pages 74-76, MacLaren states:

Even though both accidents were devastating at the time, I now view them as gifts and not tragedies. . . . Having to admit to my own dependency and vulnerability actually made me more powerful. . . . For me, the journey has always been about going deeper and becoming more of a human being.

The heart that breaks open can contain the whole universe.
Joanna Macy
Despair and Personal Power in the Nuclear Age, New Society Publishers, 1983, page 156

When we lose one we love, our bitterest tears are called forth by the memory of hours when we loved not enough.
Maurice Maeterlinck
Wisdom and Destiny, translated by Alfred Sutro, Kessinger Publishing, June 17, 2004, page 38

Forgiveness is holiness; by forgiveness the universe is held together.
Mahabharata
God Talks With Arjuna: The Bhagavad Gita by Paramahansa Yogananda, Self-Realization Fellowship, 1995; hardcover edition 2005, Chapter 16, “Embracing the Divine and Shunning the Demonic,” Verses 1-3, page 967

If you don’t invite God to be your summer Guest, He won’t come in the winter of your life.
Lahiri Mahasaya
Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda, Self-Realization Fellowship, 1946; hardcover edition 2008, “I Become a Monk of the Swami Order,” page 194

Striving, striving, one day behold! the Divine Goal.
Lahiri Mahasaya
Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda, Self-Realization Fellowship, 1946; hardcover edition 2008, “Founding a Yoga School in Ranchi,” page 221

Your duty is to be, and not to be this or that.
Sri Ramana Maharshi
The Teachings of Ramana Maharshi, edited by Arthur Osborne, Weiser Books, August 1, 1996, page 88

The degree of freedom from unwanted thoughts and the degree of concentration on a single thought are the measures to gauge [spiritual] progress.
Sri Ramana Maharshi
Be As You Are: The Teachings of Ramana Maharshi, edited by David Godman, Penguin UK, March 7, 1991, the last page of Part Five
• I substituted the word “spiritual” for the word “the” in this quote because the question put to Ramana Maharshi was, “In the process of meditation are there any signs in the realm of subjective experience which will indicate the aspirant’s progress towards Self-realisation?”

A self-realized being cannot help benefiting the world. His very existence is the highest good.
Sri Ramana Maharshi
The Vedanta Kesari, Volume 67, Issues 1-12, Sri Ramakrishna Math, 1980, page 145

Peace is our real nature. We spoil it. What is required is that we cease to spoil it. We are not going to create peace anew. There is space in a hall, for instance. We fill up the place with various articles. If we want space, all that we need do is to remove all those articles, and we get space. Similarly if we remove all the rubbish, all the thoughts, from our minds, the peace will become manifest. That which is obstructing the peace has to be removed. Peace is the only reality.
Sri Ramana Maharshi
Day by Day with Bhagavan by A. Devaraja Mudaliar, Sri Ramanasramam, 1968, page 111

It can even come about that a created will cancels out, not perhaps the exertion, but the result of divine action; for in this sense, God himself has told us that God wishes things which do not happen because man does not wish them!
Joseph de Maistre
The Generative Principle of Political Constitutions: Studies on Sovereignty, Religion, and Enlightenment, edited and translated by Jack Lively, Transaction Publishers, November 30, 2011, page 233

Self-image sets the boundaries of individual accomplishment.
Dr. Maxwell Maltz
Psycho-Cybernetics, Simon and Schuster, August 15, 1989, page ix

Accept yourself as you are. Otherwise you will never see opportunity. You will not feel free to move toward it; you will feel you are not deserving.
Dr. Maxwell Maltz
The Search for Self-Respect, Grosset & Dunlap, 1973, page 109

Beginning today, treat everyone you meet, friend or foe, loved one or stranger, as if they were going to be dead at midnight. Extend to each person, no matter how trivial the contact, all the care and kindness and understanding and love that you can muster, and do it with no thought of any reward. Your life will never be the same again.
Og Mandino
A Better Way to Live: Og Mandino’s Own Personal Story of Success Featuring 17 Rules to Live By, Random House Digital, Inc., December 1, 1990, Google eBook, page 90

We look everywhere for happiness, forgetting that it’s in our own little plot of land. We have our own acres of diamonds but we don’t know it.
Og Mandino
The Miracle of Change: The Path to Self-Discovery and Spiritual Growth by Dennis Wholey, Pocket Books, April 1, 1997, page 80
• I can not find this quote in any of Mandino’s books. If Mandino did say it, it was clearly in reference to a speech titled “Acres of Diamonds” given by Russell H. Conwell, the founder of Temple University in Philadelphia. Mandino included Conwell’s speech in more than one of his books.

He who never sacrificed a present to a future good, or a personal to a general one, can speak of happiness only as the blind do of colors.
Horace Mann
The American Friend, Volume 1, published by Timothy Harrison, Eli Jay & Mahala Jay, 1867, Google eBook, page 137

Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.
Horace Mann
Founders: Innovators in Education, 1830-1980 by Ernest Stabler, University of Alberta, January 1, 1987, page 86

It is the privilege of living to be aware of a curtain’s fold or the intonation of a human voice. To be acutely, agonizingly conscious of the moment that is always present and always passing.
Marya Mannes
Out of My Time, Doubleday, 1971, page 148

On the ocean of life let your mind be the ship and your heart be the compass.
James Manning
• Although this quote is on numerous websites, I cannot find it in any book

Faith is the fountain of prayer, and prayer should be nothing else but faith exercised.
Thomas Manton
A Practical Commentary, or an Exposition with Notes on the Epistle of James, R. Gladding, 1840, Google eBook, page 420

Desires are insatiable. They keep growing as we try to satisfy them just as the fire becomes more inflamed when oil is poured into it.
Manu Smriti
Wisdom for the Soul: Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing, compiled and arranged by Larry Chang, Gnosophia Publishers, September 30, 2006, page 218

To be ambitious for wealth and yet always expecting to be poor, to be always doubting your ability to get what you long for, is like trying to reach East by traveling West. There is no philosophy which will help a man to succeed when he is always doubting his ability to do so, and thus attracting failure. . . . No matter how hard you may work for success, if your thought is saturated with the fear of failure, it will kill your efforts, neutralize your endeavors, and make success impossible.
Orison Swett Marden
The Miracle of Right Thought, Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1910, pages 46-48

Work, love and play are the great balance wheels of man’s being.
Orison Swett Marden
Love’s Way, Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1918, page 109

All that you are, you are right now. All that you can be, begins in this moment. Now is a great place to be. For when you live it fully, with love, with gratitude, with purpose, anything is possible.
Ralph Marston

Even the cry from the depths is an affirmation: Why cry if there is no hint or hope of hearing?
Martin Marty
A Cry of Absence: Reflections for the Winter of the Heart, Harper & Row, 1983, page 120

Those who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who could not hear the music.
Peter Martyr
• This quote is commonly attributed to Angela Monet; however, no evidence has come to light that she is a real person. It’s also been attributed to John MiltonFriedrich Nietzsche, and Madame de Stael in her book, Germany. I found three instances of credible source material, each of which could be considered the origin of this quote:
• First, in The Hallam Succession by Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr, Dodd, Mead, 1884, Google eBook, page 110:

Did you ever watch a lot of men and women dancing when you could not hear the music, but could only see them bobbing up and down the room? I assure you they look just like a party of lunatics.

• Second, here is an excerpt from “Six Dramas of Calderon,” by Spanish poet and dramatist Pedro Calderón de la Barca (1600-1681), translated by Edward FitzGerald (1809-1883), an English poet and writer best known as the poet of the first and most famous English translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. This excerpt is from The Catholic University Bulletin, Volume 5, Catholic University of America., 1899, page 82:

“He who far off beholds another dancing,
Even one who dances best, and all the time
Hears not the music that he dances to,
Thinks him a madman, apprehending not
The law that rules his else eccentric action.
So he that’s in himself insensible
To love’s sweet influence, misjudges him
Who moves according to love’s melody;
And knowing not that all these sighs and tears,
Ejaculations and impatiences,
Are necessary changes of the measure.
Which the divine musician plays, may call
The lover crazy; which he would not do
If he within his own heart heard the tune
Played by the great musician of the world.”

• Third, in The Complete Works of Thomas Manton, D.D., Volume 13, J. Nisbet & Co., 1873, Google eBook, page 113, Manton relates Caelius Secundus Curio’s (1503-1569) recollection of a sermon in Naples by Italian theologian Peter Martyr (1499-1562):

Among other things, he useth this similitude, that if a man riding in an open country should see afar off men and women dancing together, and should not hear the music according to which they dance and tread out their measures, he would think them to be fools and madmen, because they appear in such various motions, and antic gestures and postures. But if he come nearer, so as to hear the musical notes, according to which they dance, and observe the regularity of the exercise, he will change his opinion of them, and will not only be delighted with the exactness thereof, but find a motion in his mind to stand still and behold them, and to join with them in the exercise.

• Conclusion: Until and unless a definitive source for Friedrich Nietzsche or Madame de Stael turns up, the nod goes to Peter Martyr for the earliest source material, with credit shared by the clever unknown writer who paraphrased Martyr’s discourse to create the pithier popular version.

A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately happy. What a man can be, he must be.
Abraham Maslow
On Dominance, Self-Esteem, and Self-Actualization, Maurice Bassett, 1973, page 162

They must find it hard to take truth for authority who have so long mistaken authority for truth.
Gerald Massey
• According to Wikiquote, this was a retort uttered by Massey during one of his lectures around 1900. It is included in his book, Natural Genesis, Part 1, or the Second Part of a Book of the Beginnings, Kessinger Publishing, 2002, page iii, as:

They needs must find it hard to take Truth for authority who have so long mistake Authority for truth.

• This quote is cited on numerous websites as: “They must find it difficult, those who have taken authority as truth, rather than truth as authority.”

Love is like a campfire: It may be sparked quickly, and at first the kindling throws out a lot of heat, but it burns out quickly. For long lasting, steady warmth (with delightful bursts of intense heat from time to time), you must carefully tend the fire.
Molleen Matsumura
• From the April 18, 2007,”Sweet Reason” advice column that Matsumura wrote for (the now defunct) HumanistNetworkNews.org, now archived on the American Humanist Association website

Love is more than just a feeling: it’s a process requiring continual attention. Loving well takes laughter, loyalty, and wanting more to be able to say, “I understand” than to hear, “You’re right.”
Molleen Matsumura
• Although this quote is listed on numerous websites, I am still hoping to source it more definitively

Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise; seek what they sought.
Matsuo Basho
Zen Parenting: The Art of Learning What You Already Know by Judith Costello and Jurgen Haver, Gryphon House, Inc., May 1, 2004, page 21

When the outcome drives the process, we will only ever go to where we’ve already been.
Bruce Mau
Disruptive Business: Desire, Innovation and the Re-design of Businessby Alexander Manu, Gower Publishing, Ltd., August 16, 2010, page 166
• Numerous books source this quote to Mau’s book, An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth, Combination Press, 2001, although I have not yet been able to identify the page number

The sorrow which has no vent in tears may make other organs weep.
Henry Maudsley
The Pathology of Mind, Part 1, Macmillan, 1895, Google eBook, page 138

The passing moment is all we can be sure of; it is only common sense to extract its utmost value from it.
W. Somerset Maugham
The Summing Up, Heron, January 1, 1969, page 50

My will shall shape the future. Whether I fail or succeed shall be no man’s doing but my own. I am the force; I can clear any obstacle before me or I can be lost in the maze. My choice; my responsibility; win or lose, only I hold the key to my destiny.
Elaine Maxwell
How to Create the Future You Want: Getting from Where You Are to Where You Ought to Be by Daniel Ayeni, Google eBook, AuthorHouse, November 30, 2006, page 10

You can love only in proportion to your capacity for independence.
Rollo May
Man’s Search for Himself, W. W. Norton & Company, January 27, 2009, page 183

I used to pray that God would do this or that. Now I pray that God will make His will known to me.
Soong May-ling
The War Against God, H. Holt and Company, 1943, page 73
• Her name in this book is spelled Mei-ling Soong Chang; she was also known as Madame Chiang Kai-shek, wife of Chaing Kai-shek, president of the Republic of China

Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die.
Malachy McCourt
New York Times profile by Alex Witchel, July 29, 1998

There is no love without forgiveness, and there is no forgiveness without love.
Bryant H. McGill
Poem: “Love and Forgiveness,” which appeared in Hawaii’s Poet’s Journal Magazine in 1988, per the author’s colleague via e-mail
• Here is an example of the quote referenced in a book:
30 Days to a Better You: Tips for Nurturing Your Life and Blooming Into the Person You Were Meant to Be by Felicite A. Niyonsaba, AuthorHouse, June 21, 2011, Google eBook, page 41

Hope is the feeling you have that the feeling you have isn’t permanent.
Mignon McLaughlin
The Neurotic’s Notebook
As referenced in Jean Kerr’s play, Finishing Touches, Dramatists Play Service, Inc., 1973, page 57

Courage can’t see around corners, but goes around them anyway.
Mignon McLaughlin
Simplicity Lessons: A 12-Step Guide to Living Simply by Linda Breen Pierce, Gallagher Press, July 15, 2003, page 14

A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.
Mignon McLaughlin
Clinical Handbook of Couple Therapy by Alan S. Gurman, Guilford Press, June 24, 2008, page 12

Those who don’t know how to weep with their whole heart don’t know how to laugh either.
Golda Meir
According to Wikiquote, this quote was from an interview with Oriana Fallaci that appeared in the April, 1973 issue of Ms. magazine.

There’s only one reason why you’re not experiencing bliss at this present moment, and it’s because you’re thinking or focusing on what you don’t have. . . . right now you have everything you need to be in bliss.
Anthony de Mello
Awareness, Random House Digital, Inc., August 31, 2011, Google eBook, page 61

Another illusion is that external events have the power to hurt you, that other people have the power to hurt you. They don’t. It’s you who give this power to them.
Anthony de Mello
Awareness, Random House Digital, Inc., August 31, 2011, Google eBook, page 113

Ye live not for yourselves; ye cannot live for yourselves; a thousand fibers connect you with your fellow-men, and along those fibers, as along sympathetic threads, run your actions as causes, and return to you as effects.
Henry Melvill
The Golden Lectures: Forty-Five Sermons Delivered at St. Margaret’s Church, Lothbury, on Tuesday Mornings, from January 2, to December 18, 1855, by the Rev. Henry Melvill, James Paul, 1, Chapter House Court, page 454
• This quote is famously misattributed to Herman Melville. Click herefor more details, incluing facts like this: On Tuesday morning, June 12, 1855, the Rev. Henry Melvill gave a sermon on “Partaking in Other Men’s Sins” at St. Margeret’s Church, Lothbury. No. 2,365 in the “Penny Pulpit” series, Melvill’s exposition of 2 John 11 was part of his sermon on the evil consequences of setting a bad example.

To complain that life has no joys, while there is a single creature whom we can relieve by our bounty, assist by our counsels, or enliven by our presence, is to lament the loss of that which we possess, and is just as rational as to die of thirst with the cup in our hands.
William Melmoth
Fitzosborne’s Letters on Several Subjects, published by Wells and Lilly, and Cummings and Hilliard, 1815, Google eBook, page 174
• Sir Thomas Fitzosborne was a pseudonym used by Melmoth

Self-love is not opposed to the love of other people. You cannot really love yourself and really do yourself a favor without doing other people a favor, and vice versa.
Dr. Karl Menninger
A Psychiatrist’s World: The Selected Papers of Dr. Karl Menninger, Volume 1, Viking Press, 1959, page 34

Who rises from prayer a better man, his prayer is answered.
George Meredith
The Ordeal of Richard Feverel: A History of Father and Son, Volume 1, Tauchnitz, 1875, Google eBook, page 104

There is nothing the body suffers that the soul may not profit by.
George Meredith
Diana of the Crossways, Volume 1, Constable, 1915, Google eBook, page 413

Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed. . . . I suppose the big problem would be that we would fall down and worship each other.
Thomas Merton
Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, Random House Digital, Inc., 1966, Google eBook, page 155

The truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt.
Thomas Merton
The Seven Storey Mountain, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, October 4, 1999, page 91

Looking for God is like seeking a path in a field of snow; if there is no path and you are looking for one, walk across it and there is your path.
Thomas Merton
The Open Mind: Discovering the 6 Patterns of Natural Intelligence by Dawna Markova, Conari Press, November 1, 1996, page 185

We have what we seek. It is there all the time, and if we give it time, it will make itself known to us.
Thomas Merton
Receiving God’s Deeper Messages: The Pilgrimage of a Truth-Seeking Christian by John J. K. Lee, iUniverse, 2005, page 26

The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.
Thomas Merton
Soul Quest: A Spiritual Odyssey Through 40 Days & 40 Nights of Mountain Solitude by Paul Hawker, Wood Lake Publishing Inc., February 28, 2007, page 59

Love, like a river, will cut a new path whenever it meets an obstacle.
Crystal Middlemas
• From the website of Crystal Middlemas, who refers to herself as “Jitter-bug,”:

Love, like a river, when it is strong will cut a new path whenever it meets an obstacle.

God is like a mirror. The mirror never changes but everybody who looks at it sees a different face.
Midrash Tanhama
Treasury of Spiritual Wisdom: A Collection of 10,000 Inspirational Quotations by Andy Zubko, Motilal Banarsidass Publications, January 1, 2000, page 188

Do not entertain hopes for realization, but practice all your life
.
Milarepa
The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche, edited by Patrick Gaffney and Andrew Harvey, HarperCollins, March 17, 1994, page 130

Genuine forgiveness does not deny anger but faces it head-on.
Alice Miller
For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, third edition, January 1, 1990, page 248

Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly. Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil can become a source of beauty, joy and strength, if faced with open mind. Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.
Henry Miller
The World of Sex, Olympia Press, 1957, page 88

The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware. In this state of god-like awareness one sings; in this realm the world exists as poem.
Henry Miller
The Wisdom of the Heart, New Directions Publishing, 1941, Google eBook, page 2

No man is great enough or wise enough for any of us to surrender our destiny to. The only way in which any one can lead us is to restore to us the belief in our own guidance.
Henry Miller
The Wisdom of the Heart, New Directions Publishing, 1941, Google eBook, page 122

The world has not to be put in order: the world is order incarnate. It is for us to put ourselves in unison with this order.
Henry Miller
Sexus, Grove Press, 1965, Google eBook, page 213

The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnified world in itself.
Henry Miller
Plexus, Grove Press, 1965, Google eBook, page 53

There is only one great adventure and that is inward toward the self.
Henry Miller
Tropic of Capricorn, Grove Press, 1961, page 12

You don’t have a soul . . . You are a soul. You have a body, temporarily.
Walter M. Miller, Jr.
A Canticle for Leibowitz, Bantam Books, September 2, 1997, page 295

Life is not suffering; it’s just that you will suffer it, rather than enjoy it, until you let go of your mind’s attachments and just go for the ride freely, no matter what happens.
Dan Millman
Way of the Peaceful Warrior: A Book That Changes Lives, Easyread Large Edition, ReadHowYouWant.com, September 2, 2009, page 34

Within each of us lives a skeptic inclined toward reason—and a believer drawn to faith.
Dan Millman
Divine Interventions: True Stories of Mysteries and Miracles That Change Lives by Dan Millman and Doug Childers, Rodale, October 17, 2000, page xvi

This moment deserves your full attention, for it will not pass your way again.
Dan Millman
• Confirmed and approved by the author via e-mail

The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.
John Milton
The Paradise Lost, Baker and Scribner, 1851, Google eBook, page 30

Whoever approaches Me walking, I will come to him running; and he who meets Me with sins equivalent to the whole world, I will greet him with forgiveness equal to it.
Mishkat al-Masabih
The World’s Great Religions: An Anthology of Sacred Texts, compiled by Selwyn Gurney Champion and Dorothy Short, Courier Dover Publications, April 25, 2003, page 262

Barn burnt down—now I can see the moon.
Mizuta Masahide
Now I See the Moon: A Mother, A Son, A Miracle by Elaine Hall with Elizabeth Kaye, HarperCollins, June 29, 2010, front cover—inside book jacket flap

Life dances and you must dance with it.
Phillip Moffitt
Dancing with Life: Buddhist Insights for Finding Meaning and Joy in the Face of Suffering, Rodale, April 15, 2008, page xxv

My narrative: 
You begin transcending your suffering when, as author and meditation teacher Phillip Moffitt explains, you condition yourself to mindfully respond to suffering rather than emotionally react to it.
• In Dancing with Life: Buddhist Insights for Finding Meaning and Joy in the Face of Suffering, Rodale, April 15, 2008, page 4, Moffitt writes:

Instead, you’re willing to meet your suffering and view it as an opportunity for personal growth. You mindfully respondto rather than emotionally react to it.

Resentment, whether cold fury or smoldering rage, hardens your emotions . . . Tragically, you become one with anger; you are now its servant.
Phillip Moffitt
Yoga Journal, January/February 2002, “Forgiving the Unforgivable,” pages 60-61
• Moffitt reprinted the article on his website, Life Balance Institute

The resistance to change one’s life when you’re successful is incredible. It means giving up something known, to take the chance of achieving something unknown that will provide greater satisfaction. This resistance is why most people only change their life as a result of failure. That’s really unfortunate. Life is so short and offers such diversity that repeating anything for a lifetime, no matter how successful, is ultimately a failure in imagination.
Phillip Moffitt
Hindsights: The Wisdom and Breakthroughs of Remarkable People by Guy Kawasaki, Hachette Book Group, September 1, 1995, Google eBook

My narrative:
At the age of forty, to the astonishment of the New York publishing community, Phillip Moffitt honored his intuitive guidance by abandoning his professional identity as CEO and editor-in-chief of Esquire magazine to seek greater joy, meaning, and authenticity.
and
After selling Esquire, Moffitt had no idea what to do next. All he knew was that a career measured by magazine sales would leave him with more regrets than rewards.
and
As his path unfolded, Moffitt found peace and purpose as a Buddhist meditation teacher and as founder of Life Balance Institute, a nonprofit organization devoted to helping people lead more balanced, meaningful lives.
• Click here to read Phillip Moffitt’s personal story in his own words

When I was a young man, I wanted to change the world. I found it was difficult to change the world, so I tried to change my nation. When I found I couldn’t change the nation, I began to focus on my town. I couldn’t change the town, and as an older man, I tried to change my family. Now, as an old man, I realize the only thing I can change is myself, and suddenly I realize that if long ago I had changed myself, I could have made an impact on my family. My family and I could have made an impact on our town. Their impact could have changed the nation and I could indeed have changed the world.
12th century monk
Life Wide Open: Unleashing The Power Of A Passionate Life by David Jeremiah, Thomas Nelson Inc., April 30, 2005, page 15

Truth, that fair goddess who comes always with healing in her wings.
Anne Shannon Monroe
• Although this quote is on numerous websites, I cannot find it in any book

The deepest personal defeat suffered by human beings is constituted by the difference between what one was capable of becoming and what one has in fact become.
Ashley Montagu
The Cultured Man, World Pub. Co., 1958, page 13

When conscience is our friend, all is peace; but if once offended, farewell to the tranquil mind.
Mary Montagu
Wisdom for the Soul: Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing, compiled and arranged by Larry Chang, Gnosophia Publishers, September 30, 2006, page 164

If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than because he was he, and I was I.
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne: The Complete Essays, edited by William Hazlitt, translated by Charles Cotton, MobileReference, 2010, back cover

Who feareth to suffer, suffereth already, because he feareth.
Michel de Montaigne
The Essayes of Michael Lord of Montaigne, Routledge, 1886, page 563

There are truths on this side of the Pyrenees which are falsehoods on the other.
Michel de Montaigne
The Leader’s Companion: Insights on Leadership Through the Ages by J. Thomas Wren, Simon and Schuster, 1995, page 254
• According to Penses by Blaise Pascal, Hackett Publishing, 2005, Google eBook, page 19, this is what Montaigne actually wrote:

What truth is it that is bounded by these mountains, and that is falsehood in the world beyond them?

Pascal popularized Montaigne’s quote a century later by writing:

A strange justice that is bounded by a river! Truth on this side of the Pyrenees, error on the other side.

Pascal: PensesForgotten Books, 1966, fragment no. 294, page 78

Forgiveness is the economy of the heart. . . . Forgiveness saves the expense of anger, the cost of hatred, the waste of spirits.
Hannah Moore
The Works of Hannah More, Volume 4, Published by Harper, 1835, Google eBook, page 30

To be obsessed with some vision and to have the continuous opportunity of working to realize that vision could be looked upon as God’s greatest gift to anyone.
Henry Moore
The Life of Henry Moore by Roger Berthoud, Giles de la Mare, 2003, page 329

Pain nourishes courage. You can’t be brave if you’ve only had wonderful things happen to you.
Mary Tyler Moore
What Do You Really Want?: How to Set a Goal and Go for It! A Guide for Teens by Beverly K. Bachel, Free Spirit Publishing, January 15, 2001, Google eBook, page 94

But as in most things, it may take a bundle of mistakes to arrive at something sublime, just as it takes thousands of flowers to produce a few drops of perfume.
Thomas Moore
Original Self: Living with Paradox and Originality, HarperCollins, August 7, 2001, page 12

We may discover that we are most ourselves when we are furthest from the self we think we ought to be.
Thomas Moore
Original Self: Living with Paradox and Originality, HarperCollins, August 7, 2001, page 57

Our partner is essential to the discovery of our own calling, and in a curious way shows us what we want, or more exactly, shows us what is wanted of us from within ourselves and our world.
Thomas Moore
Soul Mates: Honoring the Mysteries of Love and Relationship, Harper Perennial, November 4, 1994, page 111

Have nothing in your houses which you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.
William Morris
William Morris: An Illustrated Life of William Morris, 1834-1896 by Richard Tames, Osprey Publishing, March 4, 2008, page 18

The religious community is essential, for alone our vision is too narrow to see all that must be seen, and our power too limited to do all that must be done. But together, our vision widens and our strength is renewed.
Mark Morrison-Reed
Black Pioneers in a White Denomination, Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, 1994, page 182

Turn your losses into opportunities. If you can’t run, then swim. Don’t be one of those people who curse and say, “I can’t do that anymore.” Be like a river. When a tree falls down in front of you, find another avenue to continue. Even if the new activity isn’t as fulfilling as the old one, you’re still engaging the world.
Father Paul Morrissey
Yoga Journal, January/February 2002, “Positive Outlook” by John Stark, page 82

Until you make peace with who you are, you’ll never be content with what you have.
Doris Mortman
Circles, Bantam Books, May 1, 1988, page 45

Wisdom is harder to do than it is to know.
Yula Moses
Peace and Plenty: Finding Your Path to Financial Serenity by Sarah Ban Breathnach, Hachette Digital, Inc., December 29, 2010, Google eBook

Healing is far more than a return to a former condition. True healing means drawing the circle of our being larger and becoming more inclusive, more capable of loving. In this sense, healing is not for the sick alone, but for all humankind. . . . In the end, healing must be a ceaseless process of relationship and rediscovery, moment by moment. The more we “know” about healing, the more we are simultaneously carried toward something unknowable. For this reason all healing is in essence spiritual.
Richard Moss
Essay: “The Mystery of Wholeness”
Healers on Healing, J.P. Tarcher, February 1, 1989, page 36

Love is a fruit in season at all times, and within reach of every hand.
Mother Teresa
A Gift for God: Prayers and Meditations, HarperCollins, August 2, 1996, page 67

We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature—trees, flowers, grass—grows in silence; see the stars, the moon, and the sun, how they move in silence.
Mother Teresa
A Gift for God: Prayers and Meditations, HarperCollins, August 2, 1996, pages 68-69

Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. Be the living expression of God’s kindness; kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile, kindness in your warm greeting.
Mother Teresa
Worldwide Laws of Life: 200 Eternal Spiritual Principles by John Marks Templeton, Templeton Foundation Press, 1998, page 449

We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.
Mother Teresa
Spiritual Gems from Mother Teresa by Gwen Costello, Twenty-Third Publications, April 1, 2008, page 30

I know God will not give me anything I can’t handle. I just wish that He didn’t trust me so much.
Mother Teresa
Experiencing the Story of Your Life by Matthew West and Terry Glaspey, Harvest House Publishers, April 1, 2012, page 23

If we really want to love, we must learn how to forgive.
Mother Teresa
Healing Immune Disorders: Natural Defense-Building Solutions by Andrew Gaeddert, North Atlantic Books, November 8, 2005, page 48

It is not how much we do, but how much love we put into the doing. And it is not how much we give, but how much love we put into the giving. To God, there is nothing small.
Mother Teresa
Mastering Life’s Energies: Simple Steps to a Luminous Life at Work and Play by Maria Nemeth, New World Library, February 23, 2007, page 196
• Although Mother Teresa did say these three sentences, she may not have said them together in this way.
— The first sentence was on a poster in Mother Teresa’s Mother House in Kolkata (Calcutta), according to A Simple Path by Mother Teresa, compiled by Lucinda Vardey, Random House Digital, Inc., October 31, 1995, Google eBook, page 138
— The second sentence can be found in a different context in Messages from the Masters: Tapping Into the Power of Love by Brian Weiss, Hachette Digital, Inc., November 16, 2008, Google eBook
— The third sentence is often quoted apart from the first two sentences, such as in The Principle of Excellence: A Framework for Social Ethics by Nimi Wariboko, Rowman & Littlefield, October 28, 2009, Google eBook, page 67
— Further, the first (almost worded the same) sentence and third sentences together can be found in Strangers on the Shore: The Beatitudes in World Religions by Albert B. Randall, Peter Lang, 2006, page 166
Then again, if Mother Teresa spoke or wrote these thoughts often, she very well may have spoken or written these words together in this way at one time or another

Like two golden birds perched on the selfsame tree,
Intimate friends, the ego and the Self
Dwell in the same body. The former eats
The sweet and sour fruits of the tree of life
While the latter looks on in detachment.
The Mundaka Upanishad
The Upanishads by Eknath Easwaran, Nilgiri Press, August 28, 2007, Google eBook, page 192

There is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way.
William H. Murray
The Scottish Himalayan Expedition, Dent, 1951, page 7

There is no way to peace; peace is the way.
A. J. Muste
• According to Wikiquote, this quote first appeared in “Debasing Dissent” in The New York Times, November 16, 1967
• Later quoted as “There is no way to peace. Peace is the only way.” in The Peasants Revolt: McCarthy 1968 by William P. McDonald, Noe-Bixby Publications, 1969, page 69
• This quote is often misattributed to Mahatama Gandhi

My narrative:
Caroline Myss urges her readers to develop “symbolic sight,” to probe beneath the surface of experiences so they can better understand how life events are woven into the tapestry of Divine design.
• In Anatomy of the Spirit: The Seven Stages of Power and Healing, Random House Digital, Inc., August 26, 1997, page 57, Myss writes:

Make yourself the subject of your first intuitive evaluation. In the process, you will find yourself becoming more aware of the extraordinary world that lies behind your eyes. Ultimately, you will learn symbolic sight, the ability to use your intuition to interpret the power symbols in your life.

My narrative:
Regrettably, there are those who use the authenticity of their suffering as an excuse for not healing. Caroline Myss coined the term “woundology” to describe how some people define themselves by their physical, emotional, or social wounds.
• In Why People Don’t Heal and How They Can, Random House Digital, Inc., September 23, 1998, page 3, Myss tells the story of how she became aware of, and coined the term, woundology

My narrative:
In Why People Don’t Heal and How They Can, Myss wrote that many people hoping to heal “are striving to confront their wounds, valiantly working to bring meaning to terrible past experiences and traumas, and exercising compassionate understanding of others who share their wounds. But they are not healing. They have redefined their lives around their wounds and the process of accepting them. They are not working to get beyond their wounds. In fact, they are stuck in their wounds.”
Why People Don’t Heal and How They Can, Random House Digital, Inc., September 23, 1998, page 7

Your biography becomes your biology.
Caroline Myss
Why People Don’t Heal and How They Can, Three Rivers Press, September 23, 1998, page 111

So it is that an illness can come into our lives not because of negativity but because Heaven is demanding more of us.
Caroline Myss
Sacred Contracts, 2001, page 354

Forgiveness defies your mind. You have to break through your mind to forgive. Without forgiveness, a genuine healing cannot happen.
Caroline Myss
Healing and the Mystery of Grace, lecture at the Omega conference in New York City, April 2008

You have to be able to do what your mind would give you logical reasons to not do. You have to be everything your soul beckons you to be and everything your mind tells you to be cautious about.
Caroline Myss
Healing and the Mystery of Grace, lecture at the Omega conference in New York City, April 2008

There is a point where destiny and chaos walk hand in hand, when ego and soul force become one, when your ego becomes a servant of the soul.
Caroline Myss
• Confirmed and approved by the author via e-mail

To replace human order with divine chaos in a trusting way is called surrender.
Caroline Myss
• Confirmed and approved by the author via e-mail

When we look ahead, we see only chaos. When we look behind, we see only order.
Caroline Myss
• Confirmed and approved by the author via e-mail

Your job is to say yes, not how. Once you say yes, the universe takes care of the how.
Caroline Myss
• Confirmed and approved by the author via e-mail

Just because you can’t see what you’re looking for doesn’t mean what you’re looking at isn’t what you should see.
Caroline Myss
• Confirmed and approved by the author via e-mail

My narrative:
Instead of passing judgment on what comes your way and, as author and medical intuitive Caroline Myss says, “mourning the absence of perfection in your life,” challenge yourself to view unexpected incidents as necessary steps toward fulfilling your life’s purpose.
• I heard Myss say this during a lecture

Yesterday and tomorrow are humanity’s downfall. Today you may be aroused toward God. But yesterday and tomorrow pull you back.
Rebbe Nachman of Breslov
Wisdom for the Soul: Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing, compiled and arranged by Larry Chang, Gnosophia Publishers, September 30, 2006, page 711
• Many translations of this quote can be found

As human beings,
our greatness lies not so much
in being able to remake the world outside us
. . . as in being able to remake ourselves.
Michael N. Nagler
Gandhi the Man: The Story of His Transformation by Eknath Easwaran, ReadHowYouWant, large-print paperback edition, December 6, 2010, page 8
• This quote is commonly attributed to Gandhi himself, but the passage can be found in Nagler’s Foreword to this book about Gandhi

Love is the Law of God. You live that you may learn to love. You love that you may learn to live. No other lesson is required of Man.
Mikhail Naimy
The Book of Mirdad, Duncan Baird Publishers, first published in 1948, chapter 11

With courage you will dare to take risks, have the strength to be compassionate and the wisdom to be humble. Courage is essential for integrity.
Keshavan Nair
Beyond Winning: The Handbook for the Leadership Revolution, Paradox Press, 1990

Love of the truth puts you on the spot.
Naropa Institute motto
When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chödrön, Shambhala, September 17, 2002, hardcover, page 9

Sometimes being a friend means mastering the art of timing. There is a time for silence. A time to let go and allow people to hurl themselves into their own destiny. And a time to prepare to pick up the pieces when it’s all over.
Gloria Naylor
The Women of Brewster Place, Penguin Books, 1988, page 70

Life is like a game of cards. The hand that is dealt you represents determinism; the way you play it is free will.
Jawaharlal Nehru
Ignite the Fire Within! by Arthur J. Johnson II, Xulon Press, 2004, page 166

As far as the Buddha Nature is concerned, there is no difference between sinner and sage . . .One enlightened thought and one is a Buddha, one foolish thought and one is again an ordinary person.
Hui Neng
Solitude: Seeking Wisdom in Extremes: A Year Alone in the Patagonia Wilderness by Robert Kul, New World Library, August 4, 2009, Google eBook, page 288

There are always two voices sounding in our ears, the voice of fear and the voice of confidence. One is the clamor of the senses, the other is the whispering of the higher self.
Charles B. Newcomb
Discovery of a Lost Trail, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co., 1900, Google eBook, page 250

I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
Isaac Newton
Memoirs of the Life, Writings, and Discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton, Volume 2 by Sir David Brewster, T. Constable and Co., 1855, Google eBook, page 407

People are lonely because they build walls instead of bridges.
Joseph Fort Newton
Night Light: A Book of Nighttime Meditations by Amy E. Dean, Hazelden Publishing, February 1, 1986, February 15 entry

God’s promises are like the stars; the darker the night, the brighter they shine.
David Nicholas
God Always Keeps His Promises by Tim LaHaye, Harvest House Publishers, 2003, page 7

Our destiny exercises its influence over us even when, as yet, we have not learned its nature: it is our future that lays down the law to our today.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Human, All Too Human, translated by Alexander Harvey, C. H. Kerr, 1908, Google eBook, page 16

In the mountains of truth you will never climb in vain: either you will get up higher today or you will exercise your strength so as to be able to get up higher tomorrow.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Human, All Too Human, translated by R. J. Hollingdale, no. 358, Cambridge University Press, November 7, 1996, Insight 358, page 293

That which does not kill me, makes me stronger.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Twilight of the Idols, Wordsworth Editions, June 10, 2007, Insight 8, page 5

If a man has a great deal to put in them, a day will have a hundred pockets.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Works of Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, MobileReference, 2008, Google eBook, insight 529

You must wish to consume yourself in your own flame: how could you wish to become new unless you had first become ashes!
Friedrich Nietzsche
The Portable Nietzsche, edited and translated by Walter Kaufmann, Penguin, 1954, page 176

A very popular error: having the courage of one’s convictions; rather it is a matter of having the courage for an attack on one’s convictions!!!
Friedrich Nietzsche
Basic Writings of Nietzsche, edited by Walter Kaufmann, Random House Digital, Inc., 2000, Google eBook, page 226

Virtues are as dangerous as vices in so far as one lets them rule over one as authorities and laws from without and does not first produce them out of oneself.
Friedrich Nietzsche
The Wil to Power, translated by Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale, edited by Walter Kaufmann, Random House Digital, Inc., 1968, Google eBook, Insight 326, page 178
• Commonly paraphrased as: “Virtues are as dangerous as vices in so far as they are allowed to rule over one as authorities and not as qualities one develops oneself.”

If we possess our why of life we can put up with almost any how.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Nietzsche’s Philosophy of Religion by Julian Young, Cambridge University Press, April 6, 2006, page 32

The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery.
Anaïs Nin
The Diary Of Anaïs Nin, Volume 1 (1931-1934), Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1966, page 155

Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.
Anaïs Nin
The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Volume 2 (1934-1939), Swallow Press, March 25, 1970, page 193

There are very few human beings who receive the truth, complete and staggering, by instant illumination. Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cellularly, like a laborious mosaic.
Anaïs Nin
The Diary Of Anaïs Nin, Volume 3 (1939-1944), Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, March 24, 1971, page 294

When one is pretending the entire body revolts.
Anaïs Nin
Anaïs Nin Reader, edited by Philip K. Jason, Swallow Press, 1973, page 92

It takes courage to push yourself to places that you have never been before . . . to test your limits . . . to break through barriers. 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.
Anaïs Nin
Back to Williamsburg by Kerry A. O’Brien, Lulu.com, February 21, 2008, page 272
• Although this quote appears in various forms in hundreds of sources, I have not been able to source it directly to Nin’s own writings

We say that we cannot bear our troubles but when we get to them we bear them.
Ning Lao T’ai-t’ ai
A Daughter of Han: The Autobiography of a Chinese Working Womanby Ida Pruitt, Stanford University Press, 1967, page 245
• Ning Lao T’ai-t’ ai, a Chinese peasant woman in her late sixties or early seventies, was interviewed by Ida Pruitt in the 1930s for this nonfiction autobiography

The real world is beyond the mind’s understanding; we see it through the net of our desires, divided into pleasure and pain, right and wrong, inner and outer. To see the universe as it is, you must step beyond the net. It is not hard to do so, for the net is full of holes.
Nisargadatta Maharaj
I Am That: Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, The Acorn Press, first published in the U.S. in 1982; this edition 2012, page 10
• I Am That does not offer previews online. Click here to see this quote mentioned in another book.

Spiritual maturity lies in the readiness to let go of everything. The giving up is the first step. But the real giving up is in realizing that there is nothing to give up, for nothing is your own.
Nisargadatta Maharaj
Excuses Begone!: How to Change Lifelong, Self-Defeating Thinking Habits by Wayne W. Dyer, Hay House, Inc., May 26, 2009, page 114

You do not suffer, only the person you imagine yourself to be suffers. You cannot suffer.
Nisargadatta Maharaj
Wisdom of the Ages: A Modern Master Brings Eternal Truths Into Everyday Life by Wayne W. Dyer, HarperCollins, April 30, 2002, Google eBook, page 224

A man who works with his hands is a laborer; a man who works with his hands and his brain is a craftsman; but a man who works with his hands and his brain and his heart is an artist.
Louis Nizer
Human: The Science Behind What Makes Your Brain Unique by Michael S. Gazzaniga, HarperCollins, June 30, 2009, page 203

If I have been of service, if I have glimpsed more of the nature and essence of ultimate good, if I am inspired to reach wider horizons of thought and action, if I am at peace with myself, it has been a successful day.
Alex Noble
Powerful People Have a Powerful Big “I”: Your Daily Guide to a More Meaningful Life by Peter Biadasz and Richard Possett, iUniverse, December 1, 2008, Google eBook, page 36

Prayer is not asking for what you think you want but asking to be changed in ways you can’t imagine.
Kathleen Norris
Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith, Penguin, April 1, 1999, Google eBook, chapter entitled “Prayer”

When we honestly ask ourselves which persons in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving much advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a gentle and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not-knowing, not-curing, not-healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is the friend who cares.
Henri Nouwen
Out of Solitude: Three Meditations on the Christian Life, Ave Maria Press, revised edition, April 16, 2004, page 38

Our desire for God is the desire that should guide all other desires. Otherwise our bodies, minds, hearts, and souls become one another’s enemies and our inner lives become chaotic, leading us to despair and self-destruction. Spiritual disciplines are not ways to eradicate all our desires but ways to order them so that they can serve one another and together serve God.
Henri Nouwen
Bread for the Journey: A Daybook of Wisdom and Faith, HarperCollins, November 21, 2006, Google eBook, April 21 entry

Every thought you think reverberates across the universe touching everyone and everything.
Kate Nowak
Video: “May You Be Blessed,”
• Words and music created by Kate Nowak and Live More Abundantly Productions

May every wound bring wisdom and may every trial bring triumph.
Kate Nowak
Video: “May You Be Blessed,”
• Words and music created by Kate Nowak and Live More Abundantly Productions

The day the child realizes that all adults are imperfect, he becomes an adolescent; the day he forgives them, he becomes an adult; the day he forgives himself, he becomes wise.
Alden Nowlan
The Heart Revolution: Experience the Power of a Turned Heart by Sergio De La Mora, Baker Books, January 1, 2011, Google eBook, page 104

I am willing to put myself through anything; temporary pain or discomfort means nothing to me as long as I can see that the experience will take me to a new level. I am interested in the unknown, and the only path to the unknown is through breaking barriers, an often-painful process.
Diana Nyad
Other Shores, Random House, 1978, pages 71-72

God doesn’t want us merely to “get” through our problems. He wants us to “grow” through them.
Gary Oliver
Article by Gary Oliver and Carrie Oliver on The Center for Relationship Enrichment website

Chase your passion, not your pension.
Edward James Olmos
Empires of the Mind: Lessons to Lead and Succeed in a Knowledge-Based World by Denis Waitley, HarperCollins, August 16, 1996, page 131
• Waitley describes how Olmos used this phrase in a college commencement address that Waitley and his wife attended when their youngest daughter, Lisa, graduated

The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance: The wise grows it under his feet.
James Oppenheim
Wit and Laughter, The Century Co., 1916, page 77

What you resist sticks to you like glue.
Judith Orloff
Dr. Judith Orloff’s Guide to Intuitive Healing: Five Steps to Physical, Emotional, and Sexual Wellness, Three Rivers Press, March 6, 2001, page 105

Whenever I expect something in return, then my inner peace gets disturbed. And I expect something in return only when I’ve forgotten that peace comes from within.
Dean Ornish
Dr. Dean Ornish’s Program for Reversing Heart Disease >by Dean Ornish, Random House Digital, Inc., December 30, 1995, Google eBook, page 213

Meditation will bring you sensitivity, a great sense of belonging to the world. It is our world—the stars are ours, and we are not foreigners here. We belong intrinsically to existence. We are part of it, we are the heart of it.
Osho
Meditation: The First and Last Freedom, Macmillan, November 28, 1997, page 7

All the buddhas of all the ages have been telling you a very simple fact: Be—don’t try to become. Within these two words, be and becoming, your whole life is contained. Being is enlightenment, becoming is ignorance.
Osho
The Book of Wisdom: Discourses on Atisha’s Seven Points of Mind Training, Osho International, 1983, page 176

The best way is to simply surrender to existence and allow it to take you wherever it takes you; it has never taken anybody into any wrong space. It always takes you back home.
Osho
The Soulful 7, by Beth Golden, AuthorHouse, April 17, 2012, page 164

If past to future is on a horizontal line, then the present moment is not in time, but a vertical movement transcending time.
Osho
• Although this quote is listed on a handful of websites, I am still hoping to source it more definitively

My narrative:
A powerful way to begin an affirmation is with the words, “I am.” As Joel Osteen, pastor of Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas, put it, “What follows the ‘I am’ will always come looking for you. . . . When you say, ‘I am healthy,’ health starts heading your way. When you say, ‘I am strong,’ strength starts tracking you down.” Indeed, the Universe does not judge, it simply responds. “Okay,” says the Universe, “if that is what you are, I will give you experiences that support that statement.” Hence, the affirmation, “I am thoughtful and considerate,” is more potent than “I will be thoughtful and considerate” or “I want to be thoughtful and considerate.”
In a DVD sermon entitled, “I Am,” Osteen said:

What follows the “I am” will always come looking for you. . . . Whatever you follow the “I am” with, you’re handing it an invitation, opening the door, giving it permission to be in your life. Now the good news is, you get to choose what follows the “I am.” When you go through the day saying, “I am blessed,” blessings come looking for you. “I am talented,” talent comes looking for you. You may not feel up to par, but when you say, “I am healthy,” health starts heading your way. When you say, “I am strong,” strength starts tracking you down.

When you walk to the edge of all the light you have and take that first step into the darkness of the unknown, you must believe that one of two things will happen: There will be something solid for you to stand upon, or, you will be taught how to fly.
Patrick Overton
Poem: “Faith”
• Confirmed and approved by the author via e-mail

To be loved, be worthy to be loved.
Ovid
The Art of Love, Kessinger Publishing, December 30, 2004, page 54

He who can believe himself well, will be well.
Ovid
Exuberant Animal: The Power of Health, Play and Joyful Movement by Frank Forencich, AuthorHouse, August 30, 2006, page 136

However many generations in your mortal ancestry, no matter what race or people you represent, the pedigree of your spirit can be written on a single line. You are a child of God!
Boyd K. Packer
Parables of Redemption: The Restored Doctrine of the Atonement as Taught in the Parables of Jesus Christ by C. Robert Line, Ronald E. Bartholomew, R. Scott Burton, Robert England Lee, Craig Frogley, and Andrew C. Skinner, Cedar Fort, October 1, 2007, page 19

When we know love matters more than anything, and we know that nothing else really matters, we move into the state of surrender. Surrender does not diminish our power, it enhances it.
Sara Paddison
The New Rebellion Handbook: A Holy Uprising Making Real the Extraordinary in Everyday Life, edited by Lilia Empson, Thomas Nelson Inc., May 30, 2006

Sincere forgiveness isn’t colored with expectations that the other person apologize or change. Don’t worry whether or not they finally understand you. Love them and release them. Life feeds back truth to people in its own way and time.
Sara Paddison
The Sacred Art of Forgiveness: Forgiving Ourselves and Others Through God’s Grace by Marcia Ford, SkyLight Paths Publishing, 2006, page 107

The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.
Thomas Paine
The Crisis No. 1, written December 19, 1776, published December 23, 1776; part of The American Crisis, a series of pamphlets that Paine published in London from 1776-1783, focusing on the American colonies’ increasing difficulties with Great Britain—difficulties which ultimately led to an open breach in the form of the American Revolution

Truth, like the burgeoning of a bulb under the soil, however deeply sown, will make its way to the light.
Edith Pargeter
• Although this quote is listed on many websites, I could not find it in any book; the quote is commonly attributed to Pargeter’s pen name, Ellis Peters

Look at the facts of the world. You see a continual and progressive triumph of the right. I do not pretend to understand the moral universe, the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways. I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. But from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice. Things refuse to be mismanaged long.
Theodore Parker
Ten Sermons of Religion, Crosby, Nichols, and Company, 1853, Google eBook, pages 84-85

If a man can reach the latter days of his life with his soul intact, he has mastered life.
Gordon Parks
The Crisis, March 1986, page 21

A soulmate is someone who has locks that fit our keys, and keys to fit our locks. When we feel safe enough to open the locks, our truest selves step out and we can be completely and honestly who we are; we can be loved for who we are and not for who we’re pretending to be. Each unveils the best part of the other. No matter what else goes wrong around us, with that one person we’re safe in our own paradise. Our soulmate is someone who shares our deepest longings, our sense of direction. When we’re two balloons, and together our direction is up, chances are we’ve found the right person. Our soulmate is the one who makes life come to life.
Leslie Parrish
The Bridge Across Forever, Harper Paperbacks, November 21, 2006, page 388

Love vanquishes time. To lovers, a moment can be eternity, eternity can be the tick of a clock.
Mary Parrish
The Lovers’ Book by Kate Gribble, Macmillan, February 3, 2009, Google eBook, page 125

If you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.
Dolly Parton
Zap! Blink! Taste! Think!: Exciting Life Science for Curious Minds by Janet Parks Chahrour, Barron’s Educational Series, March 1, 2003, page 148

All man’s miseries derive from not being able to sit quietly in a room alone.
Blaise Pascal
Wisdom of the Ages: A Modern Master Brings Eternal Truths Into Everyday Life by Wayne W. Dyer, HarperCollins, April 30, 2002, page 2
• This quote is a modern translation of the following passage from Pascal’s Penses:

I have discovered that all the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber.

Pensees, translated by W. F. Trotter, MobileReference, 2010, Google eBook, fragment no. 139
• Pascal’s complete Penses can be read here

We do not rest satisfied with the present. We anticipate the future as too slow in coming, as if in order to hasten its course; or we recall the past, to stop its too rapid flight. So imprudent are we that we wander in the times which are not ours, and do not think of the only one which belongs to us; and so idle are we that we dream of those times which are no more, and thoughtlessly overlook that which alone exists. . . . The present is never our end. The past and the present are our means; the future alone is our end. So we never live, but we hope to live; and, as we are always preparing to be happy, it is inevitable we should never be so.
Pensees, translated by W. F. Trotter, MobileReference, 2010, Google eBook, fragment no. 172
• Pascal’s complete Penses can be read here

Faith is a sounder guide than reason. Reason can go only so far, but faith has no limits.
Blaise Pascal
Become Who You Were Born to Be: We All Have a Gift . . . Have You Discovered Yours? by Brian Souza, Random House Digital, Inc., April 10, 2007, page 240
• The closest variation I can find in Pascal’s own writings is this passage from Penses:

We know then the existence and nature of the finite, because we also are finite and have extension. We know the existence of the infinite, and are ignorant of its nature, because it has extension like us, but not limits like us. But we know neither the existence nor the nature of God, because He has neither extension nor limits.

Pensees, translated by W. F. Trotter, MobileReference, 2010, Google eBook, fragment no. 233
• Pascal’s complete Penses can be read here

The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.
Blaise Pascal
The Yale Book of Quotations, compiled and edited by Fred Shapiro, Yale University Press, October 30, 2006, page 584
• This is a more poetic translation than the following passage from Pascal’s Penses:

The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know.

Pensees, translated by W. F. Trotter, MobileReference, 2010, Google eBook, fragment no. 277
• Pascal’s complete Penses can be read here

It has pleased God that divine verities should not enter the heart through the understanding, but the understanding through the heart.
Blaise Pascal
J. I. Packer and the Evangelical Future: The Impact of His Life and Thought by Timothy George, Baker Academic, October 1, 2009, page 49
• The closest variation I can find in Pascal’s own writings is this passage from Penses:

It is the heart which experiences God, and not the reason. This, then, is faith: God felt by the heart, not by the reason.

Pensees, translated by W. F. Trotter, MobileReference, 2010, Google eBook, fragment no. 278
• Pascal’s complete Penses can be read here

Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the want of contradiction a sign of truth.
Blaise Pascal
Pensees, translated by W. F. Trotter, MobileReference, 2010, Google eBook, fragment no. 384
• Pascal’s complete Penses can be read here

There is a God-shaped vacuum in every heart.
Blaise Pascal
The Yale Book of Quotations, compiled and edited by Fred Shapiro, Yale University Press, October 30, 2006, page 584
• This is a popular (and liberal) paraphrasing of the following passage from Pascal’s Penses:

What is it then that this desire and this inability proclaim to us, but that there was once in man a true happiness of which there now remain to him only the mark and empty trace, which he in vain tries to fill from all his surroundings, seeking from things absent the help he does not obtain in things present? But these are all inadequate, because the infinite abyss can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object, that is to say, only by God Himself.

Pensees, translated by W. F. Trotter, MobileReference, 2010, Google eBook, fragment no. 425
• Pascal’s complete Penses can be read here

What can be seen on earth points to neither the total absence nor the obvious presence of divinity, but to the presence of a hidden God. Everything bears this mark.
Blaise Pascal
The Christian Theology Reader by Alister E. McGrath, Wiley-Blackwell, September 22, 2006, page 34
• This is a more eloquent translation than the following passage from Pascal’s Penses:

All appearance indicates neither a total exclusion nor a manifest presence of divinity, but the presence of a God who hides Himself. Everything bears this character.

Pensees, translated by W. F. Trotter, MobileReference, 2010, Google eBook, fragment no. 555
• Pascal’s complete Penses can be read here

Aversion, also, is a form of bondage. We are tied to what we hate or fear. That is why, in our lives, the same problem, the same danger or difficulty, will present itself over and over again in various aspects, as long as we continue to resist or run away from it instead of examining and solving it.
Patanjali
How to Know God: The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali, translated by Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood, Vedanta Press, 1983, page 116

When we are firmly established in nonviolence, all beings around us cease to feel hostility.
Patanjali
The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, translated by Alistair Shearer, Harmony, January 8, 2002, sutra II.35, page 109

When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break their bonds. Your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction, and you find yourself in a new, great, and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties, and talents become alive; and you discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be.
Patanjali
Wisdom from World Religions: Pathways Toward Heaven on Earth by John Templeton, Templeton Foundation Press, March 1, 2002, Google eBook, page 107

If you genuinely have something to say, there is someone who genuinely needs to hear it.
Arnold Patent
A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of “A Course in Miracles” by Marianne Williamson, HarperCollins, February 1, 1992, page 190

When a deep injury is done us, we never recover until we forgive.
Alan Paton
Who Stole My Soul?: A Dialogue with the Devil on the Meaning of Lifeby Vishwa Prakash, BookPros, LLC, November 1, 2009, page 198

Pain makes man think. Thought makes man wise. Wisdom makes life endurable.
John Patrick
The Teahouse of the August Moon by John Patrick, adapted from the novel by Vern Sneider, Dramatists Play Service, Inc., 1957, Act I, Scene 1, dialogue spoken by the interpreter Sakini, page 6

Remove the rock from your shoe rather than learn to limp comfortably.
Stephen C. Paul
Inneractions: Visions to Bring Your Inner and Outer Worlds into Harmony, HarperOne, June 11, 1992

We do not remember days, we remember moments.
Cesare Pavese
This Business of Living: Diaries, 1935-1950, Transaction Publishers, March 31, 2009, page 172

There is a criterion by which you can judge whether the thoughts you are thinking and the things you are doing are right for you. The criterion is: Have they brought you inner peace? If they have not, there is something wrong with them.
Peace Pilgrim
Peace Pilgrim: Her Life and Work in Her Own Words, Ocean Tree Books, April 1992, page 132

Prayerize, picturize, actualize.
Norman Vincent Peale
The Power of Positive Thinking, Touchstone, March 4, 2003, page 45
• Peale gives full credit to the unnamed man who originated this phrase and shared it with him

Change your thoughts and you change your world.
Norman Vincent Peale
Discovering The Power Of Positive Thinking, Orient Paperbacks, October 1, 2006

You are not what you think you are, but what you think, you are.
Norman Vincent Peale
A Guide to Confident Living, Ballantine Books, 1982, page 180

Throw your heart over the fence and the rest will follow.
Norman Vincent Peale
Hope in the Age of Anxiety by Anthony Scioli and Henry B. Biller, Oxford University Press, September 3, 2009, Google eBook, page 12

Man’s mind is a mirror of a universe that mirrors man’s mind.
Joseph Chilton Pearce
The Crack in the Cosmic Egg, Simon & Schuster, July 1, 1980, page 85

Ultimately, there is no way to avoid the hero’s quest. It comes and finds us if we do not move out bravely to meet it.
Carol Pearson
The Hero Within: Six Archetypes We Live By, Harper & Row, December 1, 1986, page 24

The healthy life consists of meeting and resolving crises as early as possible so that we can get on to the next one.
M. Scott Peck
The Different Drum: Community Making and Peace, Simon and Schuster, January 2, 1998, Google eBook, page 80

One of the secrets of life is to make stepping stones out of stumbling blocks.
Jack Penn
Your Daily Walk with the Great Minds: Wisdom and Enlightenment of the Past and Present by Richard A. Singer, Jr., Loving Healing Press, November 18, 2006, Google eBook, page 8

The ultimate test of a relationship is to disagree but hold hands.
Alexandra Penney
Powerful People Have Powerful Relationships: Your Daily Guide to Creating People Connections by Peter Biadasz and Marilyn S. Possett, iUniverse, December 11, 2006, page 42

Our wedding was many years ago. The celebration continues to this day.
Gene Perret
The Bells! the Bells! by Mark Stibbe, Monarch Books, January 23, 2009, page 15

Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.
Ted Perry
The Great Penguin Rescue: 40,000 Penguins, a Devastating Oil Spill, and the Inspiring Story of the World’s Largest Animal Rescue by Dyan deNapoli, Simon and Schuster, October 26, 2010, Google eBook, page 239
• This quote is often attributed to a letter supposedly written by Chief Seattle

A rut is a grave with the ends knocked out.
Laurence J. Peter
Peter’s Quotations: Ideas for Our Times, HarperCollins, March 29, 1993, page 127

Not what we have, but what we enjoy, constitutes our abundance.
John Petit-Senn
The Little Book of Abundance: Abundance is Simply a Choice by Julia Lindsey, Our Little Books, 2008, page 1

The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.
Eden Phillpotts
A Shadow Passes, Macmillan, 1919, page 17

I am always doing something I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it.
Pablo Picasso
Civilization’s Quotations: Life’s Ideal by Richard Alan Krieger, Algora Publishing, July 1, 2002, Google eBook, page 132

If you have made mistakes, even serious mistakes, there is always another chance for you. And supposing you have tried and failed again and again, 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
Why Not Try God?, St. Petersburg Times, January 25, 1936, section 2, page 3, chapter 6 of a newspaper serial

The regret that comes down
like a fine ash
year after year
is the shadow of what
we did not dare.
Marge Piercy
Poem: “Never-Never
Circles on the Water: Selected Poems of Marge Piercy, Knopf, May 12, 1982

Never doubt that you can change history. You already have.
Marge Piercy
Permission to Play: Taking Time to Renew Your Smile by Jill Murphy Long, Sourcebooks, Inc., May 1, 2003, page 135

The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.
Marge Piercy
Poem: “To Be of Use”
Fooling with Words: A Celebration of Poets and Their Craft by Bill Moyers, HarperCollins, December 26, 2000, page 178

Life is what we make it, and the world is what we make it. The eyes of the cheerful and of the melancholy man are fixed upon the same creation; but very different are the aspects which it bears to them.
Albert Pike
Morals and Dogma: Of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, NuVision Publications, LLC, March 28, 2004, Google eBook, pages 151-152

Then that which caused us trial shall yield us triumph; and that which made our heart ache shall fill us with gladness; and we shall then feel that there, as here, the only true happiness is to learn, to advance, and to improve; which could not happen unless we had commenced with error, ignorance, and imperfection. We must pass through the darkness, to reach the light.
Albert Pike
Morals and Dogma: Of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, NuVision Publications, LLC, March 28, 2004, Google eBook, page 185

Faith isn’t faith until it’s all you’re holding on to.
P. B. S. Pinchback
What Makes the Great Great: Strategies for Extraordinary Achievementby Dennis Paul Kimbro, Random House Digital, Inc., January 20, 1998, Google eBook
• This quote is attributed to Pinchback on many websites, but this is the only book I can find that attributes the quote to him
• The passage from Kimbro’s book reads:

“Steady, men,” shouted P. B. S. Pinchback, a Union army captain fighting for freedom in the all-black Corps d’Afrique. Though outmanned and outnumbered, his last words were: “Before we offer our lives, let’s bring back the colors. Faith isn’t faith until it’s all you’re holding on to!”

• This passage makes it sound like Pinchback died in battle. He did not. He died in 1921 at the age of eighty-four. As for his wartime exploits, Pinchback’s Wikipedia page states:

The Civil War began the following year, and Pinchback decided to fight on the side of the Union. In 1862 he furtively made his way into New Orleans, which had just been captured by the Union Army. He raised several companies for the Union’s all black 1st Louisiana Native Guards Regiment. Commissioned a captain, he was one of the Union Army’s few commissioned officers of African American ancestry. He became Company Commander of Company A, 2nd Louisiana Regiment Native Guard Infantry (later reformed as the 74th US Colored Infantry Regiment. Passed over twice for promotion and tired of the prejudice he encountered from white officers, Pinchback resigned his commission in 1863.

• The reference to the Corps d’Afrique suggest that the battle in question took place in the latter half of 1863 since that group was not formed until then. Pinchback resigned his commission sometime in 1863, The May 18, 1863 edition of the New York Times states:

GENERAL ORDERS No. 40. — The Major-General com manding the Department proposes the organization of a Corps d’Armee of colored troops, to be designated as the “Corps d’Afrique.” It will consist ultimately of eighteen regiments, representing all arms — infantry, artillery, cavalry — making nine brigades of two regiments each, and three divisions of three brigades each, with appropriate corps of engineers, and flying hospitals for each division. Appropriate uniforms, and the graduation of pay to correspond with the value of services, will be hereafter awarded.

The future is only the past again, entered through another gate.
Arthur Wing Pinero
The Second Mrs. Tanqueray: A Play in Four Acts, W. Heinemann, 1903, Google eBook, dialogue spoken by Paula, page 188

To live only for some future goal is shallow. It’s the sides of the mountain which sustain life, not the top.
Robert M. Pirsig
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values, HarperCollins, August 2, 2005, Google eBook, page 205

Never discourage anyone who continually makes progress, no matter how slow.
Plato
The Sum of You: The Six Forces That Shape Your Personality by Alan Graham, Hodder & Stoughton, August 31, 2011, page xiv

Never to suffer would never to have been blessed.
Edgar Allan Poe
The Elements: Love, Truth, Knowledge, and Inspiration by Quincy Smith, AuthorHouse, 2011, Acknowledgements

It’s okay to glance backward, just don’t stare.
Stephen M. Pollan and Mark Levine
It’s All in Your Head: Thinking Your Way To Happiness by Stephen M. Pollan and Mark Levine, HarperCollins, December 27, 2005, page 165

All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
Whose body Nature is, and God the soul.
Alexander Pope
The Works of Alexander Pope, Esq., Volume 4, 1847, page 265

Before I travelled my road I was my road.
Antonio Porchia
Voices, Copper Canyon Press, bilingual edition, April 1, 2003, page 3

He who foresees calamities suffers them twice over.
Beilby Porteus
Day’s Collacon: An Encyclopaedia of Prose Quotations, International Printing and Publishing Office, 1884, Google eBook, page 85

The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.
John Powell
Fully Human, Fully Alive: A New Life Through a New Vision, RCL Benziger, October 1, 1976, page 111

To live my life for the outcome is to sentence myself to continuous frustration. . . . My only sure reward is in my actions, not from them.
Hugh Prather
Notes to Myself: My Struggle to Become a Person, Bantam, October 10, 1983, page 13

Fear is static that prevents me from hearing my intuition.
Hugh Prather
Notes to Myself: My Struggle to Become a Person, Bantam, October 10, 1983, page 54

Live as if everything you do will eventually be known.
Hugh Prather
Love and Courage, Conari Press, October 1, 2001, page 68

Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace.
Where there is hatred let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light; and
Where there is sadness, joy.
Oh divine Master, grant that I may not so much
Seek to be consoled as to console;
To be understood as to understand;
To be loved as to love.
Prayer of Saint Francis
Dr. Dean Ornish’s Program for Reversing Heart Disease by Dean Ornish, Random House Digital, Inc., December 30, 1995, Google eBook, page 191
• Wikipedia states:

Attributed to the thirteenth-century saint Francis of Assisi, the prayer in its present form cannot be traced back further than 1912, when it was printed in Paris in French, in a small spiritual magazine called La Clochette (The Little Bell), published by La Ligue de la Sainte-Messe (The Holy Mass League). The author’s name was not given, although it may have been the founder of La Ligue, Fr. Esther Bouquerel.
The prayer has been known in the United States since 1927 when its first known translation in English appeared in January of that year in the Quaker magazine Friends’ Intelligencer (Philadelphia), where it was attributed to St. Francis of Assisi.

’Tis the motive exalts the action.
’Tis the doing, not the deed.
Margaret Junkin Preston
Poem: The First Proclamation of Miles Standish”
The Quotable Woman
, compiled and edited by Elaine Bernstein Partnow, Facts on Files, Inc., 2011, page 137

Although we talk so much about coincidence, we do not really believe in it. In our heart of hearts we think better of the universe; we are secretly convinced that it is not such a slipshod, haphazard affair, that everything in it has meaning.
J. B. Priestly
Essays of Five Decades, Little, Brown, 1968, page 27

Fear is that little darkroom where negatives are developed.
Michael Pritchard
Fear and Wake Up Your Subconscious by Robert K. Benson and Dian Benson, Trafford Publishing, October 1, 2001, page 26

We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can make for us, which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world.
Marcel Proust
Remembrance of Things Past, Volume 1: Swann’s Way Within a Budding Grove, translated by C. K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, Random House Digital, Inc., August 12, 1982, pages 923-924

The only true voyage of discovery, the only really rejuvenating experience, would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes.
Marcel Proust
Remembrance of Things Past: The Captive. The Fugitive. Time Regained, Vintage Books, August 12, 1982, page 260

We are healed of a suffering only by experiencing it to the full.
Marcel Proust
The Sweet Cheat Gone, Modern Library, 1957, page 165

If you plant turnips you will not harvest grapes.
Akan (West African) proverb
Acts of Faith: Meditations For People of Color by Iyanla Vanzant, Simon and Schuster, November 28, 2001, Google eBook, February 2 entry

God makes three requests of his children: Do the best you can, where you are, with what you have, now.
African-American proverb
Acts of Faith: Meditations For People of Color by Iyanla Vanzant, Simon and Schuster, November 28, 2001, Google eBook, March 22 entry

Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors.
African proverb
When All Else Fails…Stand by Amy Brady, Xulon Press, April 19, 2011, page 69

However long the night, the dawn will break.
African proverb
When Good Wishes Go Bad by Mindy Klasky, MIRA, April 1, 2010, Google eBook, page 21

The one who throws the stone forgets; the one who is hit remembers forever.
Angolan proverb
Handbook of Global and Multicultural Negotiation by Christopher W. Moore and Peter J. Woodrow, John Wiley & Sons, March 8, 2010, Google eBook, page 283

If you have much, give of your wealth; if you have little, give of your heart.
Arab proverb
Building Great Relationships: All About Emotional Intelligence by B. K. Trehan and Indu Trehan, Sterling Publishers Private Limited, June 29, 2010, page 35

You must act as if it is impossible to fail.
Ashanti (West African) proverb
Boys Into Men: Raising Our African-American Teenage Sons by Nancy Boyd-Franklin and Anderson J. Franklin with Pamela Toussaint, Plume, May 1, 2001, page 6

Work is good provided you do not forget to live.
Bantu proverb
A Minute of Margin: Restoring Balance to Busy Lives by Richard A. Swenson, NavPress, November 1, 2003, Google eBook, Reflection 30

If we are facing in the right direction, all we have to do is keep on walking.
Buddhist proverb
Tibet: A Writer’s Journal by Mary Elizabeth Gillilan, iUniverse, March 31, 2007, Google eBook, page 88

You are neither the child you were, nor the old person you will become.
Buddhist proverb
• I read or heard this quote somewhere, somewhen, but now I can find no evidence of its existence

Be not afraid of growing slowly, be afraid only of standing still.
Chinese proverb
Be Your Best! a Roadmap to Living a Healthy, Balanced and Fulfilling Life by Jeff Thibodeau, Dog Ear Publishing, January 31, 2007, Google eBook, page 150

Hesitate in a moment of anger and prevent a year of grief.
Chinese proverb
How to Father a Successful Daughter by Nicky Marone, McGraw-Hill, 1987, page 180

The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it.
Chinese proverb
How Can You Not Laugh at a Time Like This?: Reclaim Your Health With Humor by Carla Ulbrich, Tell Me Press LLC, February 1, 2011, Google eBook, page 210

Blame yourself if you have no branches or leaves; don’t accuse the sun of partiality.
Chinese proverb
Night Light: A Book of Nighttime Meditations by Amy E. Dean, Hazelden Publishing, February 1, 1986, June 25 entry

You can only go halfway into the darkest forest; then you are coming out the other side.
Chinese proverb
The Healing Spirit Of Haiku by David Rosen and Joel Weishaus, North Atlantic Books, October 13, 2004, page 7

The man who opts for revenge should dig two graves.
Chinese proverb
Keeping Your Cool… When Your Anger Is Hot!: Practical Steps to Temper Fiery Emotions by June Hunt, Harvest House Publishers, October 1, 2009, Google eBook, page 26

Laws control the lesser man. Right conduct controls the greater one.
Chinese proverb
Investment Leadership and Portfolio Management: The Path to Successful Stewardship for Investment Firms by Brian Singer, Greg Fedorinchik, John Wiley & Sons, October 26, 2009, Google eBook, page 54

When the sun rises, it rises for everyone.
Cuban proverb
Passport Series: Central & South America by Deborah Kopka, Lorenz Educational Press, January 12, 2011, page 79

A good example is like a bell that calls many to church.
Danish proverb
Learning Styles by Marlene LeFever, David C Cook, June 1, 1995, Google eBook, page 77

He who would leap high must take a long run.
Danish proverb
Wisdom From World Religions: Pathways Toward Heaven On Earth by John Templeton, Templeton Foundation Press, March 1, 2002, Google eBook, page 102

One of these days is none of these days.
English proverb
The Facts on File Dictionary of Proverbs, edited by Martin H. Manser, Infobase Publishing, March 1, 2007, pages 214-215
• This proverb is also on page 133 in the 1969 book English Proverbs Explained
• This proverb has been mistakenly attributed to H. G. Bohn because Bohn included it in a book of proverbs he compiled called A Hand-book of Proverbs, edited by Henry George Bohn and John Ray, G. Bell & Sons, 1875, page 470

Love is blind; friendship closes its eyes.
French proverb
The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, edited by Elizabeth M. Knowles, Oxford University Press, 1999, page 20

There is no pillow so soft as a clear conscience.
French proverb
The Routledge Book of World Proverbs by Jon R. Stone, Taylor & Francis, 2006, Google eBook, page 74

You have to take it as it happens, but you should try to make it happen the way you want to take it.
German proverb
The Book of Positive Quotations, compiled and arranged by John Cook, Fairview Press, October 25, 2007, page 255

He who suffers much will know much.
Greek proverb
A World Treasury of Proverbs form Twenty-Five Languages, Random House, 1946, page 409

There is no tree that the wind has not shaken.
Hindu proverb
• This proverb is listed on numerous websites

Call on God, but row away from the rocks.
Indian proverb
Night Light: A Book of Nighttime Meditations by Amy E. Dean, Hazelden Publishing, February 1, 1986, October 29 entry

Once the game is over, the king and the pawn go back in the same box.
Italian proverb
Manifesting Magnificence: Consciously Creating the Life You Choose to Live by Andrew Lutts, Xlibris Corporation, December 1, 2008, Google eBook, page 183

Love rules without rules.
Italian proverb
The Portable Italian Mamma: Guilt, Pasta, and When Are You Giving Me Grandchildren? by Laura Mosiello and Susan Reynolds, Adams Media, Mar 18, 2009, Google eBook, page 3

The work praises the man.
Irish proverb
Heart-Mates: A Sammi Mitchel Mystery by Shoshana Barer, iUniverse, September 20, 2011, Google eBook, page 11

Belief kills and belief cures.
Jamaican proverb
Caribbean Quarterly, Volume 43, Extra Mural Department of the University College of the West Indies, 1997, page 88

The reputation of a thousand years may be determined by the conduct of one hour.
Japanese proverb
The Winners Manual For the Game of Life by Jim Tressel with Chris Fabry, Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., July 15, 2008, Google eBook, page 194

Where there is sunshine, there is also shade.
Kashmiri proverb
Call Of The Wild: Quotes From The Great Outdoors, Running Press, November 28, 2002, page 76

Let your love be like the misty rains, coming softly, but flooding the river.
Malagasy proverb
Moon Over Manila: A Contemporary Romance by Joe Race, Trafford Publishing, January 1, 2008, Google eBook, page 1

If you want to see what your body will look like tomorrow, look at your thoughts today.
Navajo proverb
Book of Peoples of the World: A Guide to Cultures, edited by Wade Davis and K. David Harrison with Catherine Herbert Howell, National Geographic Books, 2007, page 275

If we look at the path, we do not see the sky.
Native American proverb
Moonlight & Vines by Charles De Lint, Macmillan, December 27, 2005, Google eBook, page 148

Going slowly does not prevent arriving.
Nigerian proverb
Keep on Growing!: Learning to Live Abundantly by Amy-Terese Smith, Trafford Publishing, 2006, page 32

Hold a true friend with both your hands.
Nigerian proverb
Always And Forever by Betty Neels, Harlequin, February 10, 2009, Google eBook page 85

Yesterday is but a dream, tomorrow is only a vision. But today, well lived, makes every yesterday a dream of happiness, and every tomorrow a vision of hope. Look well, therefore, to this day, for it is life, the very life of life.
Sanskrit proverb
One Life to Give: A Path to Finding Yourself by Helping Others by Andrew Bienkowski with Mary Akers, Workman Publishing, January 12, 2010, Google eBook

Take what you want, said God, and pay for it.
Spanish proverb
Strategy in the Sex War by Pat Milsom, Ashford-Kent, 1973, page 68

Where there is love, there is pain.
Spanish proverb
Voices From the Heights by Mark Williams, Lulu.com, April 30, 2008, Google eBook

Worry gives small things a big shadow.
Swedish proverb
Body & Soul Escapes by Caroline Sylge, Footprint Travel Guides, May 1, 2007, page 64

You cannot prevent the birds of sadness from passing over your head, but you can prevent them from nesting in your hair.
Swedish proverb
Make Each Day Your Masterpiece: Practical Wisdom for Living an Exceptional Life by Michael Lynberg, Andrews McMeel Publishing, September 18, 2001, page 65

If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans.
Yiddish proverb
The Little Book of Humorous Quotes by Malcolm Kushner, Little Quote Books, August 6, 2011, page 29

God gave burdens, also shoulders.
Yiddish proverb
You Are Not Your Illness: Seven Principles for Meeting the Challenge by Linda Noble Topf with Hal Zina Bennett, Simon and Schuster, May 8, 1995, Google eBook, page 85

Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.
Zen proverb
Work the System: The Simple Mechanics of Making More and Working Less by Sam Carpenter, Greenleaf Book Group, October 4, 2011, page 194

Those in a hurry do not arrive.
Zen proverb
No Barrier: Unlocking the Zen Koan, translated by Thomas Cleary, Bantam Books, February 1, 1993, page xxiii

Paths cannot be taught, they can only be taken.
Zen proverb
Reflections on Human Potential: Bridging the Person-Centered Approach and Positive Psychology, PCCS Books, 2008, page 215

Leap and the net will appear.
Zen proverb
Look at the Bees by Joe Rukin, Lulu.com, Google eBook

If you understand, things are just as they are; if you do not understand, things are just as they are.
Zen proverb
Talking to Eating Disorders: Simple Ways to Support Someone who Has Anorexia, Bulimia, Binge Eating, or Body Image Issues by Jeanne Albronda Heaton and Claudia J. Strauss, Penguin, July 1, 2005, Google eBook

The snow falls, each flake in its appropriate place.
Zen proverb
A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose by Eckhart Tolle, Penguin, August 29, 2006, Google eBook

You’ve gotta dance like there’s nobody watching,
Love like you’ll never be hurt.
Sing like there’s nobody listening,
And live like it’s heaven on earth.
William Purkey
The Dancer’s Book of Ballet Crafts: Dancewear, Accessories, and Keepsakes by Christina Aleta Haskin, Creative Homeowner, August 15, 2007, page 152
• According to this website, which lists a number of potential attributions for this quote, Purkey replied to an inquiry about it by writing:

It is obvious that the theme has worked its way through many minds. I certainly want to give credit to those who have tinkered with this beautiful concept. My version follows. I am sure that most of the words are mine.

The way to be safe, is never to be secure.
Francis Quarles
The Complete Works in Prose and Verse of Francis Quarles, Volume 3, printed for private circulation by T. and A. Constable, 1880, Google eBook, page 45
• This quote is often misattributed to Benjamin Franklin because it apparently appeared in his Poor Richard’s Almanac

That friendship will not continue to the end that is begun for an end.
Francis Quarles
The Complete Works in Prose and Verse of Francis Quarles, Volume 3, Printed for private circulation by T. and A. Constable, 1880, Google eBook, page 48

If you can’t pray a door open, don’t pry it open.
Lyell Rader
When You Don’t Know What to Pray: How to Talk to God about Anything by Linda Evans Shepherd, Revell, February 1, 2010, page 144

The oldest wisdom in the world tells us that we can consciously unite with the divine while in this body, for this is man really born. If he misses his destiny, Nature is not in a hurry; she will catch him some day and compel him to fulfill her secret purpose.
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan
Radhakrishnan Reader, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1969, page 405
• This book lists the original source of Radhakrishnan’s quote as Eastern Religions and Western Thought, page 26

People in the West don’t understand that a path of spirituality is not the same as professing a religion. One is built on experience, the other is accepted on faith.
Swami Rama
Walking with a Himalayan Master: An American’s Odyssey by Justin O’Brien, Yes International Publishers, April 6, 2006, page 179

Jesus, like Krishna and Buddha, symbolizes what human nature can become. Are we only to adore them? They are showing us what we can be. We are not to worship them; we are to become them, and then go farther.
Swami Rama
Walking with a Himalayan Master: An American’s Odyssey by Justin O’Brien, Yes International Publishers, April 6, 2006, page 296

Do not seek illumination unless you seek it as a man whose hair is on fire seeks a pond.
Sri Ramakrishna
A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living, Joseph Campbell Foundation, 2011, Google eBook

The most exquisite paradox
as soon as you give it all up
you can have it all
How about that one?
As long as you want power
You can’t have it.
The minute you don’t want power
you’ll have more than you ever dreamed
possible.
Ram Dass
Be Here Now, HarperCollins, November 2, 2010, Google eBook

To become free of attachment means to break the link identifying you with your desires. The desires continue; they are part of the dance of nature. But a renunciate no longer thinks that he is his desires.
Ram Dass
Remember: Be Here Now, Hanuman Foundation, October 12, 1971, page 9

Our strength often increases in proportion to the obstacles imposed upon it.
Paul De Rapin-Thoyras
A Dictionary of Thoughts, edited by Tryon Edwards, F. B. Dickerson Co., 1908, Google eBook, page 142

What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.
Otto Rank
The Life You Were Born to Live: A Guide to Finding Your Life Purposeby Dan Millman, H J Kramer, February 8, 1995, page 23

Only as high as I reach can I grow, only as far as I seek can I go, only as deep as I look can I see, only as much as I dream can I be.
Karen Ravn
• Ravn wrote this while she worked for Hallmark Cards; confirmed and approved by the author via e-mail

A person does not have to be behind bars to be a prisoner. People can be prisoners of their own concepts and ideas. They can be slaves to their own selves.
Prem Rawat (Maharaji)
Coach Yourself: A Motivational Guide for Coaches and Leaders by Dan Spainhour, Lulu.com, 2007, page 23

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.
Marie Beynon Rayr
Forbes, Volume 72, Forbes Inc., 1953, page 42

When love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece.
Charles Reade
Put Yourself in His Place, Volume 1, B. Tauchnitz, 1870, Google eBook, page 55
• This quote is commonly attributed to John Ruskin (1819-1900), but unless Reade plagiarized the line, it appears that he is the author, not Ruskin. The earliest reference I found for Reade’s authorship of this quote is from 1869.

Before we can pray, “Lord, Thy Kingdom come,” we must be willing to pray, “My Kingdom go.”
Alan Redpath
The Westminster Collection of Christian Quotations by Martin H. Manser, Westminster John Knox Press, June 1, 2001, page 220

If error is corrected whenever it is recognized as such, the path of error is the path of truth.
Hans Reichenbach
The Rise of Scientific Philosophy, University of California Press, 1973, page 326

The lover is a monotheist who knows that other people worship different gods but cannot himself imagine that there could be other gods.
Theodor Reik
Love & Lust: On the Psychoanalysis of Romantic and Sexual Emotions, Transaction Publishers, 1949, page 100

Grieving is not about forgetting. Grieving allows us to heal, to remember with love rather than pain.
Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen
My Grandfather’s Blessings: Stories of Strength, Refuge, and Belonging, Riverhead Books, April 1, 2001, page 38

What is necessary is never a risk.
Cardinal de Retz
Step By Step, Random House Digital, Inc., December 17, 1991, Google eBook, Day 22 entry

Let no one be deluded that a knowledge of the path can substitute for putting one foot in front of the other.
Mary Caroline Richards
Centering: In Pottery, Poetry, and the Person, Wesleyan University Press, August 1, 1989. Google eBook, page 8

The burden of suffering seems a tombstone hung about our necks, while in reality it is only the weight which is necessary to keep down the diver while he is hunting for pearls.
Johann Richter
The Unitarian Register, Volume 78, American Unitarian Association, 1899, Google eBook, page 1145

The more sand has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it.
Johann Richter
Treasury of Thought, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1894, Google eBook, page 387
• This quote is also commonly attributed to Jean Paul Sartre and Niccolo Machiavelli. Since this 1894 source predates Sartre’s birth, the quote is obviously not his.

Let the stronger man give to the man whose need is greater; let him gaze upon the lengthening path. For riches roll like the wheels of a chariot, turning from one to another.
Rig Veda
The Rig Veda: An Anthology: One Hundred and Eight Hymns, Selected, Translated, and Annotated, edited by Wendy Doniger, Penguin, 1981, page 69

Truth is one, sages call it by different names.
Rig Veda
Race, Nation, & Empire in American History, edited by James T. Campbell, Matthew Pratt Guterl, and Robert G. Lee, Easyread Large Bold Edition, Read HowYouWant.com, August 31, 2009, page 267
• This book sources the quote to the Rig Veda verse 1.164.46

If your everyday life seems poor, don’t blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Letters to a Young Poet, translated by Stephen Mitchell, Modern Library, 2001, pages 7-8

I can’t give you any advice but this: to go into yourself and see how deep the place is from which your life flows.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Letters to a Young Poet, translated by Stephen Mitchell, Modern Library, 2001, page 9

Fate itself is like a wonderful wide fabric in which every thread is guided by an infinitely tender hand and laid alongside another thread and is held and supported by a hundred others.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Letters to a Young Poet, translated by Stephen Mitchell, Modern Library, 2001, page 20

I would like to beg you, dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try and love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Letters to a Young Poet, translated by Stephen Mitchell, Modern Library, 2001, pages 34-35

But your solitude will be a support and a home for you, even in the midst of very unfamiliar circumstances, and from it you will find all your paths.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Letters to a Young Poet, translated by Stephen Mitchell, Modern Library, 2001, page 44

What is necessary, after all, is only this: solitude, vast inner solitude. To walk inside yourself and meet no one for hours—that is what you must be able to attain.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Letters to a Young Poet, translated by Stephen Mitchell, Modern Library, 2001, page 54

For one human being to love another human being: that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been entrusted to us, the ultimate task, the final test and proof, the work for which all other work is merely preparation. That is why young people, who are beginners in everything, are not yet capable of love: it is something they must learn.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Letters to a Young Poet, translated by Stephen Mitchell, Modern Library, 2001, pages 68-69

Loving does not at first mean merging, surrendering, and uniting with another person (for what would a union be of two people who are unclarified, unfinished, and still incoherent—?), it is a high inducement for the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become world, to become world in himself for the sake of another person; it is a great, demanding claim on him, something that chooses him and calls him to vast distances.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Letters to a Young Poet, translated by Stephen Mitchell, Modern Library, 2001, pages 69-70

That is why the sadness passes: the new presence inside us, the presence that has been added, has entered our heart, has gone into its innermost chamber and is no longer even there,—is already in our bloodstream. And we don’t know what it was. We could easily be made to believe that nothing happened, and yet we have changed, as a house that a guest has entered changes. We can’t say who has come, perhaps we will never know, but many signs indicate that the future enters us in this way in order to be transformed in us, long before it happens.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Letters to a Young Poet, translated by Stephen Mitchell, Modern Library, 2001, page 84

Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Letters to a Young Poet, translated by Stephen Mitchell, Modern Library, 2001, page 92

Don’t think that the person who is trying to comfort you now lives untroubled among the simple and quiet words that sometimes give you pleasure. His life has much trouble and sadness, and remains far behind
yours. If it were otherwise, he would never have been able to find those words.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Letters to a Young Poet, translated by Stephen Mitchell, Modern Library, 2001, page 97

But, once the realization is accepted that even between the closesthuman beings infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole and against a wide sky!
Rainer Maria Rilke
Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke, Volume 1: 1892-1910, Jane Bannard Greene, W. W. Norton, 1945, pages 57-58

I hold this to be the highest task of a bond between two people: that each should stand guard over the solitude of the other.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke, Volume 1: 1892-1910, Jane Bannard Greene, W. W. Norton, 1945, page 65

What is required of us is that we love the difficult and learn to deal with it. In the difficult are the friendly forces, the hands that work on us.
Rainier Maria Rilke
Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke, Volume 1: 1892-1910, Jane Bannard Greene, W. W. Norton, 1945, page 181

Now you will daily give and give, and the great stores of your love will not lessen thereby: for this is the miracle that happens every time to those who really love: the more they give, the more they possess of that precious nourishing love from which flowers and children have their strength and which could help all human beings if they would take it without doubting.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke, Volume 1: 1892-1910, Jane Bannard Greene, W. W. Norton, 1945, pag 297

I live my life in widening circles
that reach out across the world.
I may not ever complete the last one,
but I give myself to it.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God, translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy, Penguin, 2005, Google eBook, Preface

I feel it now: there’s a power in me to grasp and give shape to my world. I know that nothing has ever been real without my beholding it. All becoming has needed me. My looking ripens things and they come toward me, to meet and be met.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God, translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy, Penguin, 2005, Google eBook

The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things.
Rainer Maria Rilke
The Waking Dream: Unlocking the Symbolic Language of Our Lives by Ray Grasse, Quest Books, March 15, 1996, page 133
• The closest passage I could find in Rilke’s own work is on pages74-75 of Letters to a Young Poet, translated by Stephen Mitchell, Modern Library, 2001:

But in the same measure in which we begin to test life as individuals, these great Things will come to meet us, the individuals, with greater intimacy.

The defining factor is never resources, it’s resourcefulness.
Anthony Robbins
“Why We Do What We Do and How We Can Do It Better” talk at annual TED conference in Monterey, California, in February 2006

I’ve continued to recognize the power individuals have to change virtually anything and everything in their lives in an instant. I’ve learned that the resources we need to turn our dreams into reality are within us, merely waiting for the day when we decide to wake up and claim our birthright.
Anthony Robbins
Awaken the Giant Within: How to Take Immediate Control of Your Mental, Emotional, Physical and Financial Destiny!, Simon & Schuster, November 1, 1992, page 22

Goals are a means to an end, not the ultimate purpose of our lives. They are simply a tool to concentrate our focus and move us in a direction. The only reason we really pursue goals is to cause ourselves to expand and grow. Achieving goals by themselves will never make us happy in the long term; it’s who you become, as you overcome the obstacles necessary to achieve your goals, that can give you the deepest and most long-lasting sense of fulfillment.
Anthony Robbins
Awaken the Giant Within: How to Take Immediate Control of Your Mental, Emotional, Physical and Financial Destiny!, Simon & Schuster, November 1, 1992, page 303

In reality, the only way a relationship will last is if you see your relationship as a place that you go to give, and not a place that you go to take.
Anthony Robbins
Awaken the Giant Within: How to Take Immediate Control of Your Mental, Emotional, Physical and Financial Destiny!, Simon & Schuster, November 1, 1992, page 451

What you can’t do you must do; what you must do, you can do.
Anthony Robbins
• This website is the only place I could find this quote. I suspect I heard Robbins say this in one of his many lectures; I just can’t remember which one.

The level of structure that people seek always is in direct ratio to the amount of chaos they have inside.
Tom Robbins
Skinny Legs and All, Random House Digital, Inc., November 1, 1995, Google eBook

Suffering is not good for the soul, unless it teaches you how to stop suffering.
Jane Roberts (Seth)
Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the Soul, New World Library, June 1, 1994, page 302

When you affirm your own rightness in the universe, then you cooperate with others easily and automatically as a part of your own nature. You, being yourself, helps others be themselves. . . . Because you recognize your own uniqueness you will not need to dominate others, nor cringe before them.
Jane Roberts (Seth)
The Nature of Personal Reality: A Seth Book, Prentice-Hall, 1974, page 505

On earth we have nothing to do with success or with results, but only with being true to God, and for God. . . . Defeat in doing right is nevertheless victory.
Frederick William Robertson
Expository Lectures on St. Paul’s Epistles to the Corinthians, Henry S. King, 1872, Google eBook, pages 289-290

The world is a kind of spiritual kindergarten where millions of bewildered infants are trying to spell God with the wrong blocks.
Edwin Arlington Robinson
Catholic World, Volume 139, Paulist Fathers, 1934, page 171

Worry is a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind. If encouraged, it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are drained.
Arthur Somers Roche
Hearst’s International Combined with Cosmopolitan, Volume 98, International Magazine Company, inc., 1935, page 80

Give yourselves permission,
at this very moment,
to touch the world of spirit.
All it takes is your permission. . . .
Your mind does not know the way.
Your heart has already been there.
And your soul has never left it.
Welcome home.
Pat Rodegast (Emmanuel)
Emmanuel’s Book: A Manual for Living Comfortably in the Cosmos, compiled by Pat Rodegast and Judith Stanton, Random House Digital, Inc., February 1, 1987, Google eBook, page 71

There are no guarantees.
From the viewpoint of fear
none are strong enough.
From the viewpoint of love
none are necessary.
Pat Rodegast (Emmanuel)
Emmanuel’s Book II: The Choice for Love, compiled by Pat Rodegast and Judith Stanton, Random House Digital, Inc., January 21, 1997, Google eBook, page 14

You’ve got to go out on a limb sometimes, because that’s where the fruit is.
Will Rogers
Steps to the Top by Zig Ziglar, Pelican Publishing, June 1, 1985, page 102

We must all suffer one of two things: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret or disappointment.
Jim Rohn
Learning to Jump Again: A Memoir of Grief and Hope by Anthony Weber, WestBow Press, August 8, 2011, page 105

If you don’t like where you are, change it! You’re not a tree.
Jim Rohn
The Athlete’s Way: Sweat and the Biology of Bliss by Christopher Bergland, Macmillan, June 12, 2007, page 134

Success is not to be pursued; it is to be attracted by the person you become.
Jim Rohn
101 Global Leadership Lessons for Nurses: Shared Legacies from Leaders and Their Mentors by Nancy Rollins Gantz, Sigma Theta Tau, October 9, 2009, page 253

Love all of what you call your “imperfections.” You don’t change them by denying or hating them. You change them by loving them. As you love your negative feelings they can evolve into their positive expressions. Love all your thoughts, even those that are limited or fearful. Think of them as small children needing your love and reassurance.
Sanaya Roman
Spiritual Growth: Being Your Higher Self, HJ Kramer, first edition, December 28, 1992, pages 79-80

Every time you meet a situation, though you may think at the time it is an impossibility and you go through the tortures of the damned, once you have met it and lived through it you find that forever after you are freer than you ever were before.
Eleanor Roosevelt
You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life, Harper Perennial, 50th anniversary edition, April 26, 2011, page 29

You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, “I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.” . . . You must do the thing you think you cannot do.
Eleanor Roosevelt
You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life, Harper Perennial, 50th anniversary edition, April 26, 2011, pages 29-30

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, 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 valiantly; who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.
Theodore Roosevelt
The Wisdom of Theodore Roosevelt, edited by Donald J. Davidson, Citadel Press, April 1, 2003, page 48
• Speech given at the Sorbonne in Paris, April 23, 1910
• Originally published in Roosevelt’s 1910 book, Citizenship in a Republic
• The sources for this speech are like snowflakes: no two seem to be alike; minor variations abound. I hope to obtain a copy of this 1910 book so I can replicate the quote perfectly.

Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.
Theodore Roosevelt
Labor Day address—”National Unity versus Class Cleavage”—at the New York State Fair in Syracuse, New York, September 7, 1903
The Wisdom of Theodore Roosevelt, edited by Donald J. Davidson, Citadel Press, April 1, 2003, page 90

The highest form of spiritual work is the realization of the essence of man. . . . You never learn the answer; you can only become the answer.
Richard Rose
Home page of the TAT Foundation, an organization founded by Richard Rose
• TAT stands for Truth and Transmission

It takes time to succeed because success is merely the natural reward for taking time to do anything well.
Joseph Ross
Ignite the Fire Within! by Arthur J. Johnson II, Xulon Press, 2004, page 121

Were there no God, we would be in this glorious world with grateful hearts and no one to thank.
Christina Rossetti
Good News for Bad Times by Frederick Keller Stamm, Harper & Brothers, 1941, page 146

Conscience is the voice of the soul, the passions are the voice of the body. Is it surprising that these two voices should sometimes contradict each other, or can it be doubted, when they do, which ought to be obeyed?
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Profession of Faith of a Savoyard Vicar, translated by Olive Schreiner, Peter Eckler, 1889, pages 55-56

If God exists, he is perfect; if he is perfect, he is wise, powerful and just; if he is wise and powerful, all is well.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Rousseau: The Discourses and Other Early Political Writings, compiled by Victor Gourevitch, Cambridge University Press, July 13, 1997, letter dated August 18, 1756, to Voltaire, page 242

Another world is not only possible, she’s on her way. Maybe many of us won’t be here to greet her, but on a quiet day, if I listen very carefully, I can hear her breathing.
Arundhati Roy
The Guardian, article by Arundhati Roy entitled “Not Again,” September 30, 2002

Someone may have stolen your dream when it was young and fresh and you were innocent. If someone has stolen the innocence of your dreams,
Anger is natural.
Grief is appropriate.
Healing is mandatory.
Restoration is possible.
Jane Rubietta
Quiet Places: A Woman’s Guide to Personal Retreats, Bethany House Publishers, 1997; Abounding Publishing, 2008, page 142
• Confirmed and approved by the author via e-mail

The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem.
Theodore Isaac Rubin
One to One: Understanding Personal Relationships, Viking Press, March 14, 1983, page 211

Happiness does not come from doing easy work but from the afterglow of satisfaction that comes after the achievement of a difficult task that demanded our best.
Theodore Isaac Rubin
Happiness 101: 18 Lessons for Latter-Day Saints on How to Live a Happier Life! by Gregory R. Wille, Cedar Fort, August 15, 2008, page 35

Kindness is more important than wisdom, and the recognition of this is the beginning of wisdom.
Theodore Isaac Rubin
The Circles by Kerry Armstrong, Simon and Schuster, May 6, 2008, Google eBook, page 51

The deepest rivers flow with the least sound.
Quintus Curtius Rufus
Quintus Curtius, Volume 2, Harvard University Press, 1946, page 155
• From what I can see of this excerpt, this quote may have been a proverb of the Bactriani, the ancient name of a historical region located south of the Amu Darya and west of Gandhara; it was a part of the eastern periphery of the Iranian world, now part of Afghanistan.

We must forgive those we feel have wronged us, not because they deserve to be forgiven, but because we love ourselves so much we don’t want to keep paying for the injustice. Forgiveness is the only way to heal.
Don Miguel Ruiz
The Four Agreements, Amber-Allen Publishing, November 7, 1997, page 121

Once you get hold of selflessness, you’ll be dragged from your ego and freed from many traps.
Come, return to the root of the root of your self.
Rumi
Poem: “The Root of the Root of Yourself”
The Pocket Rumi, edited by Kabir Helminski, Shambhala Publications, November 11, 2008, Google eBook, pages 25-26

Everyone is so afraid of death, but the real Sufis just laugh: nothing tyrannizes their hearts.
What strikes the oyster shell doesn’t damage the pearl.
Rumi
Poem: “The Pearl”
The Pocket Rumi, edited by Kabir Helminski, Shambhala Publications, November 11, 2008, Google eBook, page 128

But gentle flames are not enough for iron;
it eagerly draws to itself the fiery dragon’s breath.
That iron is the dervish who bears hardship:
under the hammer and fire, he happily glows red.
Rumi
Poem: “The Fire the Dervish Needs”
The Pocket Rumi, edited by Kabir Helminski, Shambhala Publications, November 11, 2008, Google eBook, page 135

By God, don’t linger
in any spiritual benefit you have gained,
but yearn for more—like one suffering from illness
whose thirst for water is never quenched.
This Divine Court is the Plane of the Infinite.
Leave the seat of honor behind;
let the Way be your seat of honor.
Rumi
Poem: “Don’t Linger”
The Pocket Rumi, edited by Kabir Helminski, Shambhala Publications, November 11, 2008, Google eBook, page 170

That which God said to the rose,
and caused it to laugh in full-blown beauty,
He said to my heart,
and made it a hundred times more beautiful.
Rumi
Poem: The Bloom”
The Pocket Rumi, edited by Kabir Helminski, Shambhala Publications, November 11, 2008, Google eBook, page 198

My friend, the sufi is the son of the present moment:
to say “tomorrow” is not our way.
Rumi
Rumi Daylight: A Daybook of Spiritual Guidance, translated by Camille and Kabir Helminski, Shambhala, October 19, 1999, page 19

No prayer is complete without Presence.
Rumi
Rumi Daylight: A Daybook of Spiritual Guidancetranslated by Camille and Kabir Helminski, Shambhala, October 19, 1999, page 24

It is God’s kindness to terrify you in order to lead you to safety.
Rumi
Rumi Daylight: A Daybook of Spiritual Guidance, translated by Camille and Kabir Helminski, Shambhala, October 19, 1999, page 38

There is no worse sickness for the soul,
O you who are proud, than this pretense of perfection.
Rumi
Rumi Daylight: A Daybook of Spiritual Guidance, translated by Camille and Kabir Helminski, Shambhala, October 19, 1999, page 76

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.
Rumi
Rumi Daylight: A Daybook of Spiritual Guidance, translated by Camille and Kabir Helminski, Shambhala, October 19, 1999, page 118

Travelers, it is late.
Life’s sun is going to set.
During these brief dasy that you have strength,
be quick and spare no effort of your wings.
Rumi
Rumi Daylight: A Daybook of Spiritual Guidance, translated by Camille and Kabir Helminski, Shambhala, October 19, 1999, page 133

God turns you from one feeling to another and teaches by means of opposites, so that you will have two wings to fly, not one.
Rumi
Rumi Daylight: A Daybook of Spiritual Guidance, translated by Camille and Kabir Helminski, Shambhala, October 19, 1999, page 143

Paradise is surrounded by what we dislike;
the fires of hell are surrounded by what we desire.
Rumi
Rumi Daylight: A Daybook of Spiritual Guidancetranslated by Camille and Kabir Helminski, Shambhala, October 19, 1999, page 147

Looking up gives light, though at first it makes you dizzy.
Rumi
Rumi Daylight: A Daybook of Spiritual Guidance, translated by Camille and Kabir Helminski, Shambhala, October 19, 1999, page 151

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
Rumi
The Essential Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks, HarperCollins, June 9, 1995, page 36

Let the beauty we love be what we do.
Rumi
The Essential Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks, HarperCollins, June 9, 1995, page 36

Let yourself be silently drawn
by the stronger pull of what you really love.
Rumi
Poem: “An Empty Garlic”
The Essential Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks, HarperCollins, June 9, 1995, page 51

Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere.
They’re in each other all along.
Rumi
Poem: “Music Master”
The Essential Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks, HarperCollins, June 9, 1995, page 106

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
Rumi
Poem: “The Guest House”
The Essential Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks, HarperCollins, June 9, 1995, page 109

“The wound is the place where the light enters you.” is a popular paraphrasing of a few lines from the end of the following poem:

Trust your wound to a teacher’s surgery.
Flies collect on a wound. They cover it,
those flies of your self-protecting feelings,
your love for what you think is yours.

Let a teacher wave away the flies
and put a plaster on the wound.

Don’t turn your head. Keep looking
at the bandaged place. That’s where
the light enters you.
And don’t believe for a moment
that you’re healing yourself.
Rumi
Poem: “Childhood Friends”
The Essential Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks, HarperCollins, June 9, 1995, page 142

Every object and being in the universe is
a jar overfilled with wisdom and beauty.
Rumi
Poem: “The Gift of Water”
The Essential Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks, HarperCollins, June 9, 1995, page 200

There is a basket of fresh bread on your head,
and yet you go door to door asking for crusts.
Knock on your inner door. No other.
Rumi
Poem: “A Basket of Fresh Bread”
The Essential Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks, HarperCollins, June 9, 1995, page 255

Take someone who does not keep score,
who is not looking to be richer, or afraid of losing,
who has not the slightest interest even
in his own personality. He is free.
Rumi
Rumi: The Big Red Book: The Great Masterpiece Celebrating Mystical Love and Friendship, translated by Coleman Barks, HarperCollins, October 12, 2010, page 367

I saw grief drinking a cup of sorrow,
and I called out,
It tastes sweet, does it not?
You have caught me, grief answered,
and you have ruined my business.
How can I sell sorrow
when you know it is a blessing?
Rumi
Rumi: The Big Red Book: The Great Masterpiece Celebrating Mystical Love and Friendship, translated by Coleman Barks, HarperCollins, October 12, 2010, page 439

Live in the nowhere that you came from,
even though you have an address here.
Rumi
Poem: “Tending Two Shops”
Feeling the Shoulder of the Lion: Poetry and Teaching Stories of Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks, Shambhala Publications, February 1, 2000, page 72

If in thirst you drink water from a cup, you see God in it. Those who are not in love with God will see only their own faces in it.
Rumi
Essential Sufism by James Fadiman and Robert Frager, HaperCollins, 1997, page 97

Whoever travels without a guide
needs two hundred years for a two-day journey.
Rumi
Essential Sufism by James Fadiman and Robert Frager, HaperCollins, 1997, page 145

Everything you see has its roots in the Unseen world.
The forms may change, yet the essence remains the same.
Every wondrous sight will vanish, every sweet word will fade.
But do not be disheartened,
The Source they come from is eternal—
Growing, branching out, giving new life and new joy.
Why do you weep?—
That Source is within you.
And this whole world is springing up from it.
Rumi
Poem: “A Garden Beyond Paradise”
God Makes the Rivers to Flow: An Anthology of the World’s Sacred Poetry and Prose by Eknath Easwaran, Nilgiri Press, fourth edition, December 1, 2009, page 246

If God said,
“Rumi, pay homage to everything that has helped you enter my arms,”
there would not be one experience of my life, not one thought, not one feeling, not any act,
I would not bow to.
Rumi
Poem: “Rumi, Pay Homage”
Love Poems From God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West, translated by Daniel Ladinsky, Penguin, October 1, 2002, Google eBook

Let the water settle; you will see the moon and stars mirrored in your being.
Rumi
Voices from Earth: A Book of Gentle Wisdom, by James R. Miller, Trafford Publishing, April 30, 2004, page 120

You were born with wings. Why prefer to crawl through life?
Rumi
Gateway of the Gods: An Investigation of Fallen Angels, the the Nephilim, Alchemy, Climate Change, and the Secret Destiny of the Human Race by Craig Hines, Numina Media Arts, December 30, 2006, page 45

For those who realize that everything is from God, everything is the same.
Rumi
Iran: The Culture by Joanne Richter, Crabtree Publishing Company, January 15, 2010, page 28

If you are irritated by every rub, how will you be polished?
Rumi
Rumi & Self Psychology (Psychology of Tranquility): Two Astonishing Perspectives for the Discipline and Science of Self Transformation: Rumi’s Poetic Language Vs. Carl Jung’s Psychological Language by Roya R. Rad, Self Knowledge Base, February 1, 2010, page 45

Intellect, in its effort to explain Love, got stuck in the mud like an ass. Love alone could explain love and loving.
Rumi
Abounding Love: A Treasury of Wisdom by M. Scott Peck, Andrews McMeel Publishing, December 2, 2002, page 102

Only from the heart can you touch the sky.
Rumi
Sufi Light: The Secret of Meditation by Ahmad Javid, Balboa Press, December 7, 2011, page 129

Go on a journey from self to Self, my friend . . .
Such a journey transforms the earth into a mine of gold.
Rumi
Teachings of Rumi, translated by Andrew Harvey, Shambhala Publications, July 6, 1999, page 1

The fault is in the one who blames.
Spirit sees nothing to criticize.
Rumi
The Heart of Islam by Timothy Freke, Barron’s Educational Series, April 30, 2002, page 48

Sell your cleverness, and purchase bewilderment.
Rumi
Heart Prints: Walking on Holy Ground by Julie Ireland Keene, AuthorHouse, October 17, 2011

Blessed is the poem that comes
through me
but not of me because the sound of my own music
will drown the song of Love.
Rumi
Poem: “Thieves Who Steal Hearts”
• According to this excerpt, this poem is included in Rumi: Hidden Music, translated by Azima Melita Kolin and Maryam Mafi, Thorsons, January 1, 2002

Happiness is not a station you arrive at, but a manner of traveling.
Margaret Lee Runbeck
Time for Each Other, D. Appleton-Century Company, incorporated, 1944, pages 135-136

I believe the first test of a truly great man is his humility. I do not mean, by humility, doubt of his own power, or hesitation in speaking of his opinions; but a right understanding of the relation between what he can do and say, and the rest of the world’s sayings and doings. All great men . . . have a curious undersense of powerlessness, feeling that the greatness is not in them, but through them.
John Ruskin
The True and the Beautiful in Nature, Art, Morals and Religion, Volume 2, J. Wiley, 1890, Google eBook, pages 183-184

The weakest among us has a gift, however seemingly trivial, which is peculiar to him, and which, worthily used, will be a gift also to his race for ever.
John Ruskin
The True and the Beautiful in Nature, Art, Morals and Religion, Volume 2, J. Wiley, 1890, Google eBook, page 277

If a great thing can be done at all, it can be done easily. But it is in that kind of ease with which a tree blossoms after long years of gathered strength.
John Ruskin
The Complete Works: Ethics of the Dust, Elements of Drawing, Bryan, Taylor & Company, 1894, Google eBook, pages 171-172

Life is a magic vase filled to the brim; so made that you cannot dip into it nor draw from it; but it overflows into the hand that drops treasures into it—drop in malice and it overflows hate; drop in charity and it overflows love.
John Ruskin
Forbes, Volume 72, Forbes Inc., 1953, page 164

The highest reward for a man’s toil is not what he gets for it, but what he becomes by it.
John Ruskin
Creative Writing: For People Who Can’t Not Write by Kathryn Ann Lindskoog, Zondervan, September 3, 1989, page 140

Physics is mathematical, not because we know so much about the physical world, but because we know so little: it is only its mathematical properties that we can discover.
Bertrand Russell
An Outline of Philosophy, Taylor & Francis, March 2, 2009, Google eBook, page 171

To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.
Bertrand Russell
The Conquest of Happiness, Liveright, March 17, 1996, page 27