GINA NOELLE DAGGETT

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
- Stewart Brand

​

Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe. 

- Abraham Lincoln

​

Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilized by education; they grow firm there, firm as weeds among stones.
- Charlotte Bronte

 

I run on the road long before I dance under the lights.
- Muhammad Ali 

 

By the time I was fourteen…the nail in my wall would no longer support the weight of the rejection slips impaled upon it. I replaced the nail with a spike and kept on writing.

- Stephen King 

 

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars... 

- Jack Kerouac 

 

The more articulate one is, the more dangerous words become.
- May Sarton

​

Even though you can't physically see it, a tree is still growing. 

- Mike Dooley

​

I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's duty is to write about these things. ... The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail. 

- William Faulkner

 

Every great work, every big accomplishment, has been brought into manifestation through holding to the vision, and often just before the big achievement, comes apparent failure and discouragement. 

- Florence Scovel Shinn 

 

Writers have to get used to launching something beautiful and watching it crash and burn. They also have to learn when to let go control, when the work takes off on its own and flies farther than they even planned or imagined, to places they didn't know they knew. All makers must leave room for the acts of the spirit. But they have to work hard and carefully, and wait patiently to deserve them.

- Ursula K. LeGuin

 

One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star. 

- Friedrich Nietzsche 

 

Out beyond the ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there.

- Rumi 

 

You see, I want a lot.

Perhaps I want everything:

the darkness that comes with every infinite fall

and the shivering blaze of every step up.

So many live on and want nothing,

and are raised to the rank of prince 

by the slippery ease of their light judgments.

But what you love to see are the faces

that do the work and feel thirst.

You love most of all those who need you

as they need a crowbar or a hoe.

You have not grown old, and it is not too late

to dive into your increasing depths

where life calmly gives out its own secret. 

- Rainer Maria Rilke 

 

Even though you may want to move forward in your life, you may have one foot on the brakes. In order to be free, we must learn how to let go. Release the hurt. Release the fear. Refuse to entertain your old pain. The energy it takes to hang onto the past is holding you back from a new life.

- Mary Manin Morrissey

 

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

- Eleanor Roosevelt 

 

I am finished when I'm finished.  

- Michelangelo 

 

The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature.  

Marcus Aurelius

 

I wish to say what I think and feel today, with the proviso that tomorrow perhaps I shall contradict it all.  

Emerson

 

Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.  

Rumi

 

The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short, but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.

- Michelangelo

The golden opportunity you are seeking is in yourself. It is not in your environment, it is not in luck or chance, or the help of others; it is in yourself . 

- Orson Swett Marden 

 

The Tao Te Ching says: When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be. When I let go of what I have, I receive what I need. Have you ever struggled to find work or love, only to find them after you have given up? This is the paradox of letting go. Let go, in order to achieve. 

- Mary Manin Morrissey 

 

It's not your work to make anything happen. It's your work to dream it and let it happen. Law of Attraction will make it happen. In your joy, you create something, and then you maintain your vibrational harmony with it, and the Universe must find a way to bring it about. That's the promise of Law of Attraction.

- Abraham Hicks 

 

On the mountains of truth you can never climb in vain: either you will reach a point higher up today, or you will be training your powers so that you will be able to climb higher tomorrow.
- Friedrich Nietzsche 

 

If I had thought about it, I wouldn't have done the experiment. The literature was full of examples that said you can't do this.

- Spencer Silver, inventor of Post-It notes 

 

On the plains of hesitation lie the blackened bones of those who stopped to rest, and resting died.

- Adlai Stevenson

​

What you think, you become. What you feel, you attract. What you imagine, you create. 

- Unknown

​

Whatever you do, do it with all your might. Work at it, early to late, in season and out of season, not leaving a stone unturned, and never deferring for a single hour that which can be done just as well now. 

- PT Barnum 

 

Few things are more powerful than a positive push.

- Unknown 

 

People support what they help create. 

- Unknown 

 

95% of achieving anything is knowing what you want and paying the price to get it. 

- Unknown 

 

Most people can do extraordinary things if they have the confidence or take the risks.  Yet most people don't.  They sit in front of the telly and treat life as if it goes on forever. 

- Philip Adams 

 

Be grateful for whoever comes, because each guest has been sent as a guide from beyond. 

- Rumi 

 

As I started to picture the trees in the storm, the answer began to dawn on me. The trees in the storm don't try to stand up straight and tall and erect. They allow themselves to bend and be blown with the wind. They understand the power of letting go. Those trees and those branches that try too hard to stand up strong and straight are the ones that break. Now is not the time for you to be strong, Julia, or you, too, will break. 

- Julia Butterfly Hill

 

Why should we all use our creative power...? Because there is nothing that makes people so generous, joyful, lively, bold and compassionate, so indifferent to fighting and the accumulation of objects and money.
- Brenda Ueland 

 

Muddy water let stand will clear. 

- Chinese Proverb

 

Our situation in this earth seems strange. Every one of us appears here involuntarily and uninvited, for a short stay, without knowing why. For me, it is enough to wonder on these secrets. 

- Albert Einstein 

 

What am I in the eyes of most people--a nonentity, an eccentric, or an unpleasant person--somebody who has no position in society and will never have; in short, the lowest of the low. All right, then, even if that were absolutely true, then I should one day like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody, has in his heart. That is my ambition, based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Though I am often in the depths of misery, there is still calmness, pure harmony and music inside me. I see paintings or drawings in the poorest cottages, in the dirtiest corners. And my mind is driven towards these things with an irresistible momentum.
- Van Gogh 

 

You can't really have style unless you've been someplace. I mean, you have to have been down. You have to have overcome something to have something. If you've had everything all your life, then you've never been tested and I don't think you're really the genuine article.  You have to have come through something--because that's how a sword is made. It's made from a piece of iron from the ground, and it's forged and beaten--that's the great metaphor for the human being. If you're born a sword, you aren't a real sword. But if you're forged from this iron ore, then comes this beautiful sword.
- Hector Elizondo 

 

Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors.
- Translation of African proverb 

 

I believe that it may happen that one will succeed, and one must not begin to despair, even though defeated here and there; and even though one sometimes feels a kind of decay, though things go differently from the expected, it is necessary to take heart again with new courage. For the great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together. And great things are not something accidental, but must certainly be willed. What is drawing? How does one learn it? It is working through an invisible iron wall that seems to stand between what one feels and what one can do.
- Van Gogh 

 

The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.
- Friedrich Nietzsche

 

A ship in harbor is safe, but that's not what ships are built for.

- John A. Shedd

 

Criticism polishes my mirror.

- Rumi 

 

There is only so much focus available in a given work, and it seems the more elements you take out of composition, the more focus is poured into those that remain. Cutting lines, pauses, and entire scenes sharpened the focus on the elements that were left, as if a large number of diffuse spotlights had been concentrated into a few bright beams aimed at select important points.

- Christopher Vogler 

 

Opportunities are often disguised as hard work, so most people don't recognize them.
- Ann Landers

 

Use what talents you possess. The woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang the best.
- Henry Van Dyke

 

Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the only one to get burned.
- Buddha

 

Sometimes, when you don’t know the answer to a question that keeps playing over and over again in your mind, it’s because you’re messing with the wrong question.
- the Universe

 

If you examine a butterfly according to the laws of aerodynamics, it shouldn't be able to fly. But the butterfly doesn't know that so it flies.
- Vincent Eades

 

I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man's.
- William Blake

 

I feel there is something unexplored about women that only a woman can explore.
- Georgia O'Keefe

 

Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.
- Nick Diamos

 

Security is mostly superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men, as a whole, experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.
- Helen Keller

 

Things that were hard to bear are sweet to remember.
- Seneca 

 

Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

Be strong, believe in who you are; be strong, believe in what you feel.
- Melissa Etheridge

 

By working hard, I hope to make something good one day. I haven't yet, but I am pursuing it and fighting for it.
- Van Gogh

 

The most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight but no vision.
- Helen Keller

 

Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh, and the greatness which does not bow before children.
- Kahlil Gibran

 

Never again will I do anything for anyone that I do not feel directly from my heart. I will not attend a meeting, make a phone call, write a letter, sponsor or participate in any activity in which every fiber of my being does not resound yes. I will act with intent and be true to myself.
- Oprah

 

It is very dangerous to go into eternity with possibilities which one has oneself prevented from becoming realities. A possibility is a hint from God. One must follow it.
- Soren Kierkegaard

 

It is weak and despicable to go on wanting things and not trying to get them.
- Joanna Field

 

One of the biggest factors in success is the courage to undertake something.
- James A. Worsham

 

The difference between getting somewhere and nowhere is the courage to make an early start.
- Charles M. Schwab

 

We ought to face our destiny with courage.
- Friedrich Nietzsche

 

You can surmount the obstacles in your path if you are determined, courageous and hardworking… Do not fear pioneer, to venture down new paths of endeavor.
- Ralph J. Bunche

 

What you can do, or dream you can do, begin it; boldness has genius, power and magic in it.
- Johann von Goethe

 

Sometimes we look so intently toward the pinnacle that we stumble over the steps leading to it. Development begins just where you are.
- Mrs. Herman Stanley

 

I expect to pass through this world but once, any good thing, therefore, that I can do,
let me do it now…for I shall not pass this way again.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

When shall we live, if not now?
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

 

If we don't change, we don't grow. If we don't grow, we are not really living.
Growth demands a temporary surrender of security. It may mean giving up of familiar but limiting patterns, safe unrewarding work, values no longer believed in, relationships that have lost their meaning. As Dostoevsky put it: 'Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.'
The real fear should be the opposite course.
- Gail Sheehy

 

Forget safety. Live where you fear to live. Destroy your reputation. Be notorious.
- Rumi

 

When I was on Star Search, one of the producers told the other contestants, 'She'll never be famous; she's too tough, she's too NY, and she's too heavy.'
I remember thinking, Gosh, he's gonna feel like a jerk when I'm famous. Through the negativity I learned to hear myself quite loudly.
- Rosie O'Donnell

 

Believe those who seek the truth, but doubt those who find it.
- Andre Gide

 

You can pick your nose, and you can pick your friends, but you can't wipe your friends on the couch.
- Unknown

 

If we listened to our intellect, we’d never have a love affair. We’d never have a friendship. We’d never go into business because we’d be cynical: ‘It’s gonna go wrong.’ Or ‘she’s going to hurt me.’ Or ‘I’ve had a couple bad love affairs, so therefore...’ Well, that’s nonsense. You’re going to miss life. You’ve got to jump off the cliff all the time and build your wings on the way down.
- Ray Bradbury

 

Knowledge is Power.
- Francis Bacon

 

Here are two ways to put ourselves in control of our lives immediately: we can make a promise and keep it; or we can set a goal and work to achieve it. As we make and keep commitments, even small commitments, we begin to establish an inner integrity that gives us the awareness of self-control and the courage and strength to accept more of the responsibility for our own lives. By making and keeping promises to ourselves and others, little-by-little, our honor becomes greater than our moods.
- The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

 

Bombing for peace is like fucking for virginity.
- Protester at anti-war march

 

Stop for a moment, cease your work, and look around you.
- Thomas Carlyle

 

Creativity is contagious. You can catch it by being around other creative people.
- Thomas Kinkade

 

To know that even one life has breathed easier because you have lived; that is to have succeeded.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

No one gets out of this world alive, so the time to live, learn, care, share, celebrate and love is now.
- Leo Buscaglia

 

No man who is occupied in doing a very difficult thing, and doing it very well, ever loses his self respect.
- George Bernard Shaw

 

Any person who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves. 

Albert Einstein

 

Don't make the same mistake twice.
- Life's Little Instruction Book

 

As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

 

All men’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.
- Blaise Pascal

 

Never retreat to a defensive position. If attacked for your ideas, counter good-humoredly but with faith in them. Make no excuses for your sincere beliefs.
- Life's Little Instruction Book

 

It is only by following your deepest instinct that you can lead a rich life, and if you let your fear of consequence prevent you from following that instinct, then your life will be safe, expedient and thin.
- Katherine Butler Hathaway

 

The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.
- Dolly Parton

 

Do more than is expected.
- Life's Little Instruction Book

 

Watch out for the squeaky wheel.
- Byrd Baggett

 

If you want to move people, it has to be toward a vision that's positive for them that taps important values, that gets them something they desire, and it has to be presented in a compelling way. That way, they feel inspired to follow.
- Martin Luther King

 

Luck is a matter of preparation meeting opportunity.
- Oprah

 

If you really want something, you can figure out how to make it happen.
- Cher

 

Obstacles don't have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don't turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it or walk around.
- Michael Jordan

 

It's kind of fun to do the impossible.
- Walt Disney

 

Then give the world the best you have and the best will come back to you.
- Madeline Bridges

 

If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change.
- Buddha

 

Choose a job you love and you'll never have to work another day in your life.
- Confucius

 

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.
- Carl Jung

 

Life's under no obligation to gives us what we expect.
- Margaret Mitchell

 

Remember, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but she did it backward and in high heels.
- Faith Whittlesey

 

Never be ashamed of honest tears.
- Life's Little Instruction Book

 

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's own courage.
- Anais Nin

 

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

 

There are only two ways to meet life. You may refuse to care until indifference becomes a habit, a defensive armor, and you are safe, but bored. Or, you can live greatly, and live greatly until life breaks you on its wheel.
- Dorothy Canfield Fisher

 

You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm.
- Colette

 

It takes more courage to reveal insecurities than to hide them, more strength to relate to people than to dominate them, more manhood to abide by thought-out principles rather than blind reflex. Toughness is in the soul and spirit, not in muscles and an immature mind.
- Alex Karras

 

At the end of our lives, we'll regret the things we didn't do much more than the ones we did.
- Life's Little Instruction Book

 

We must reject not only the stereotypes that others hold of us, but also the stereotypes we hold of ourselves.
- Shirley Chisholm

 

To find a honey tree, first catch a bee.
- Annie Dillard

 

The purposes that writers serve must be their own.  What you write is yours and nobody else's.  Take your talent as far as you can and guard it with your life.  Only you know how far that is; no editor knows.  Writing well means believing in your writing and believing in yourself, taking risks, daring to be different, pushing yourself to excel.  You will write only as well as you make yourself write.
- William Zinsser

 

If you feel that sitting blankly and staring out the window is sinful, then you will never write.
- Joyce Carol Oates

 

It's time to discover that we can be strong without sacrificing feminine traits; softness and strength can coexist.
- Kathy Smith

 

Since there is no place large enough to contain so much happiness, you shrug, you raise your hands, and it flows out of you into everything you touch. You are not responsible. You take no credit, as the night sky takes no credit for the moon, but continues to hold it, and share it, and that way, be known. 

- Naomi Shihab Nye

 

We probably wouldn't worry about what people think of us if we could know how seldom they do. 

- Olin Miller 

 

Always have a plan, and believe in it.  Nothing happens by accident. 

- Chuck Knox 

 

Always plan ahead.  It wasn’t raining when Noah built the arc. 

- Richard K. Cushing 

 

Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.

- Louise Erdich

​

The critical ingredient is getting off your butt and doing something. It's as simple as that. A lot of people have ideas, but there are few who decide to do something about them now. Not tomorrow. Not next week. But today. The true entrepreneur is a doer, not a dreamer." 

- Nolan Bushnell, found of Atari and Chuck E. Cheese

​

Sometimes walking away has nothing to do with weakness, and everything to do with strength. We walk away not because we want others to realize our worth and value, but because we finally realize our own

- Unknown

 

People are often unreasonable and self-centered. Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives. Be kind anyway. 

If you are honest, people may cheat you. Be honest anyway.

If you find happiness, people may be jealous. Be happy anyway.

The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway.

Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough. Give your best anyway. 

For you see, in the end, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.

- Mother Theresa

​

Successful relationships are built upon the foundation of bringing committed love to the table every day, communicating your feelings, receiving your partner's feelings and setting healthy boundaries to maintain a sense of independence within the relationship. This allows for love to be given and received, proper adjustments to be made if the line of communication gets fuzzy and still gives each of you the freedom to be yourself and bring forth your unique creative expression.
This combination will manifest the strongest and healthiest relationships in your life.
And remember, the purpose of relationships is to be happy, to learn and to CO-create a life together

- Jackson Kiddard

 

If there is anything that we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves.

- Carl Jung

 

Never believe that a few caring people can't change the world. For, indeed, that's all who ever have.

- Margaret Mead

 

Writing a novel is like heading out over the open sea in a small boat. It helps, if you have a plan and a course laid out.

- John Gardiner

 

Holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. Let it go.

- Felice Dumas

 

Every thought you think today either opens the gates of heaven (increases connection between you and others) or stokes the fires of hell (adds to your anxiety, tension, feelings of separation). 

Marianne Williamson

 

Religion is for people who are scared to go to hell.  Spirituality is for people who have already been there. 

- Bonnie Raitt

 

Every worthwhile accomplishment, big or little, has its stages of drudgery and triumph; a beginning, a struggle, and a victory.

- Ghandi

 

A belief is only a thought you continue to think. A belief is nothing more than a chronic pattern of thought, and you have the ability -if you try even a little bit- to begin a new pattern, to tell a new story, to achieve a different vibration, to change your point of attraction.

- Ester Hicks

 

What angers us in another person is more often than not an unhealed aspect of ourselves. If we had already resolved that particular issue, we would not be irritated by its reflection back to us.

- Simon Peter Fuller

 

By continually holding an intention, quantum probability becomes less and less random and eventually there is a collapse into reality of the intention.

- Paradigm Shift

 

I am a galley slave to pen and ink.

- Honore de Balzac

 

I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again. 

- Oscar Wilde

 

I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear. 

- Joan Didion

 

Authors who never give you something to disagree with never give you anything to think about.

- Michael LaRocca

 

We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection. 

- Anais Nin

 

I write for the same reason I breathe - because if I didn't, I would die.

- Isaac Asimov

 

The time has come to turn your heart into a temple of fire.

- Rumi

 

 

The Journey

 

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice--

though the whole house

began to tremble

and you felt the old tug

at your ankles.

"Mend my life!"

each voice cried.

But you didn't stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations,

though their melancholy

was terrible.

It was already late

enough, and a wild night,

and the road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice

which you slowly

recognized as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world,

determined to do

the only thing you could do--

determined to save

the only life you could save. 

- Mary Oliver

 

Slow down. Calm down. Don’t worry. Don’t hurry. Trust the process.

- Alexandra Stoddard

 

Anything I’ve ever done that was ultimately worthwhile…initially scared me to death.

- Betty Bender

 

When you start to crack open, don’t waste a moment gathering your old self into something like you knew before. Let your new self splash like sunlight into every dark space and laugh and cry and make sounds you never made and thank all that is holy for the gift, because now you have no choice but to let all your love spill out into the world. 

- Brian Andreas

 

Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase. Just take the first step.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

 

What most people don’t understand is that passion is the result of action, not the cause of it. 

- Mark Manson

​

Until your knees finally hit the floor you're just playing at life, and on some level you're scared because you know you're just playing. The moment of surrender is not when life is over. It's when it begin.

- Marianne Williamson

​

The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure, the process is its own reward.

- Amelia Earhart

​

Love is what we are born with. Fear is what we learn. The spiritual journey is the unlearning of fear and prejudices and the acceptance of love back in our hearts. Love is the essential reality and our purpose on earth. To be consciously aware of it, to experience love in ourselves and others, is the meaning of life. Meaning does not lie in things. Meaning lies in us.

- Marrianne Williamson

​

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye. 

- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

​

A human being is part of the whole called by us “the universe,” a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening the circle of understanding and compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of human nature in its beauty.

- Albert Einstein

 

When you want to do a big thing, get the mental pattern, make it perfect, know just what it means, enlarge your thought, keep it to yourself, pass it over to the creative power behind all things, wait and listen, and when the impression comes, follow it with assurance. Don’t talk to anyone about it. Never listen to negative talk or pay attention to it and you will succeed where all others fail.

- Ernest Holmes

 

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened. Don't open the door to the study and begin reading. Take down the dulcimer.  Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

- Rumi

​