Quotation Saturday ~ Truth, Respect

Matt 6:34 “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.”

RESPECT

“Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.” 
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“I speak to everyone in the same way, whether he is the garbage man or the president of the university.” 
― Albert Einstein

“How would your life be different if…You stopped making negative judgmental assumptions about people you encounter? Let today be the day…You look for the good in everyone you meet and respect their journey.” 
― Steve Maraboli

“Attitude is a choice. Happiness is a choice. Optimism is a choice. Kindness is a choice. Giving is a choice. Respect is a choice. Whatever choice you make makes you. Choose wisely.” 
― Roy T. Bennett

ATTITUDE

“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.” 
― Marcus Aurelius

“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” 
― Kurt Vonnegut

“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.” 
― Abraham Lincoln

“True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so wants nothing. The greatest blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach. A wise man is content with his lot, whatever it may be, without wishing for what he has not.” 
― Seneca

INSTINCT

“In the name of being social, we learn to ignore our natural instinct.
Society keeps dictating do's and don'ts which we keep obeying day in and day out.” 
― Chitralekha Paul

“Man has no automatic code of survival. His particular distinction from all other living species is the necessity to act in the face of alternatives by means of volitional choice. He has no automatic knowledge of what is good for him or evil, what values his life depends on, what course of action it requires. Are you prattling about an instinct of self-preservation? An instinct of self-preservation is precisely what man does not possess. An 'instinct' in as unerring and automatic form of knowledge. A desire is not an instinct. A desire to live does not give you the knowledge required for living. And even man's desire to live is not automatic: your secret evil today is that that is the desire you do not hold. Your fear of death is not a love of life and will not give you the knowledge needed to keep it. Man must obtain his knowledge and choose his actions by a process of thinking, which nature will not force him to perform. Man has the power to act as his own destroyer--and that is the way he has acted through most of history.” 
― Ayn Rand

“If 'seeing is believing' what happened to taste, touch, sound and smell ? Did our creator really intend to favour sight over the other senses ? I don't believe so.” 
― Alex Morritt

“The Moral Law isn't any one instinct or any set of instincts: it is something which makes a kind of tune (the tune we call goodness or right conduct) by directing the instincts. (...) The most dangerous thing you can do is to take any one impulse of your own nature and set it up as the thing you ought to follow at all costs. There's not one of them which won't make us into devils if we set it up as an absolute guide. You might think love of humanity in general was safe, but it isn't. If you leave out justice you'll find yourself breaking agreements and faking evidence in trials 'for the sake of humanity,' and become in the end a cruel and treacherous man.” 
― C.S. Lewis

TRUTH

“Stop opposing the truths.The truth is truth no matter how you take it. It is not going to be changed for your inconvenience.” 
― Bikash Bhandari

“Over the years, I have come to realize that the greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity, or power, but self-rejection. Success, popularity, and power can indeed present a great temptation, but their seductive quality often comes from the way they are part of the much larger temptation to self-rejection. When we have come to believe in the voices that call us worthless and unlovable, then success, popularity, and power are easily perceived as attractive solutions. The real trap, however, is self-rejection. As soon as someone accuses me or criticizes me, as soon as I am rejected, left alone, or abandoned, I find myself thinking, "Well, that proves once again that I am a nobody." ... [My dark side says,] I am no good... I deserve to be pushed aside, forgotten, rejected, and abandoned. Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the "Beloved." Being the Beloved constitutes the core truth of our existence.” 
― Henri J.M. Nouwen

“There is nothing that is going to make people hate you more, and love you more, than telling the truth.” 
― Stefan Molyneux

“I quote others only in order the better to express myself.” 
― Michel de Montaigne

Pss. 25:5  “Lead me in thy truth, and teach me: for thou art the God of my salvation; on thee do I wait all the day.”

Quotation Saturday

FEAR

You block your dream when you allow your fear to grow bigger than your faith.
~Mary Manin Morrissey

Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.
 ~Marie Curie
 

Keep your fears to yourself but share your courage with others.
~Robert Louis Stevenson


The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear - fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants above everything else is safety.
 ~Henry Louis Mencken

Panic at the thought of doing a thing is a challenge to do it.
~Henry S. Haskins


FATE

Sometimes, perhaps, we are allowed to get lost that we may find the right person to ask directions of. ~Robert Brault

A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it. ~Jean de La Fontaine

We cannot bear to regard ourselves simply as playthings of blind chance; we cannot admit to feeling ourselves abandoned. ~Ugo Betti, Struggle till Dawn, 1949

You know that saying, that when God closes a door he opens a window, well, sometimes out of nowhere he'll do you one better and he'll kick a whole wall down. ~Ryan Murphy

FAITH
 

Faith is not without worry or care, but faith is fear that has said a prayer.
~Author Unknown
 

Faith is like radar that sees through the fog.
~Corrie Ten Boom
 

Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens.
~J.R.R. Tolkien

Faith is putting all your eggs in God's basket, then counting your blessings before they hatch.
~Ramona C. Carroll


FRIENDSHIP
 

A single rose can be my garden... a single friend, my world.
~Leo Buscaglia

In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.
~Albert Schweitzer

If a friend is in trouble, don't annoy him by asking if there is anything you can do. Think up something appropriate and do it. ~Edgar Watson Howe

A friend knows the song in my heart and sings it to me when my memory fails.
~Donna Roberts
 

Thank you Miss Carol. For relieving my fears, making sure I keep my faith, and being  what a real friend is, a true blessing!
~Love Joni

Mere Coincidence

Coincidence? Serendipity? Fate?

Is it coincidence that we write what we know? I always find myself writing about subjects that I’m familiar with. Whether it is spirituality, the cosmic world or plants and animals; I’m always writing what is familiar to me.

Even names for my characters are chosen because I find myself accustomed to them. Places I’ve been and explored all come out in my writing. But I have to say, some of my writing has had a psychic aura to them.

I’ve written a story (which I’m revising but not changing any of the premonitory factors.) My character winds up in Broken Bow Nebraska after her husband passes away. I wrote this story, all thirty three chapters of it, three years ago. I’m finding so many similarities now in my present life, I’m wondering if it was all coincidence or a precognitive thought that I relayed into a story.

I was living in Texas (after separating from my husband), but now I’m in Nebraska, extremely close to Broken Bow. (you’ll have to read the haunting story of Angel when it gets published.) I was going to title it Mere Coincidence but changed my mind and I think I’m going with Crossroads. But after realizing how much coincidence lies within the pages, it might just be titled Mere Coincidence.

When we write, we do our research, we create new characters and we forge ahead with a story. It can become quite ironic when your story begins to correlate to your real life. I try not to write too much of my real life in a fictional tale but little slithers of my life will filter through into my characters or incidence's in my life will weave their way in and out of my story like a car in traffic.

I envy people who can write about pioneer times when they have no concrete physical knowledge of the times; only what was read about or learned. I read these tales with great interest and I’m always wondering what experience the author had with the story they wrote. Sometimes it’s a story handed down from generation to generation and sometimes it’s just a matter of really good researching.

Stephen King, as you may have already guessed is one of my favorite author’s, is also a writer whose life slips into his stories. He may deny it, but when I read “On Writing”, I saw the similarities of many of his characters well defined in people and places in his life. Even though Castle Rock Maine is a fictional town, it is no coincidence it is in Maine, his home state!

My point in all this being, write what you know and what you don’t know. Someday, what you thought you didn’t know may become an experience that you’re all too familiar with and you’ve written about it before hand and are now “in the know.”

Did that make sense?

Of course it did. If it didn’t, it will one day. :-)

Poetry Sunday ~ Fate

Fate

Crescent moon

fell too soon.

Liquid beam,

moonlight's stream.

Only seen in midnight's dream.

Blissful love,

morning's dove.

All thought of,

from up above.

Rays sent down, without a sound.

Sanctioned here,

never clear.

Crippled tear,

always near.

All I crave, all I gave.

Lift me somehow,

raise my brow.

Forever now,

made to bow.

Heavens gate, my looming fate.

Copyright ©joni zipp