When you're finished changing, you're finished.
Benjamin Franklin Making Choices : Discover the Joy in Living the Life You Want to Lead
Categories: personal growth

Liken yourself to a beautiful original part of creation -- a true work of art. Then each day ask yourself how you are living: either in ways that show gratitude for this beauty of in ways that indicate how you are defacing it.
Robert J. Wicks Soul/Body, Spirituality and Health, Summer 2002.
Categories: personal responsibility

Take your life in your own hands and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame.
Erica Jong The Artist's Way : A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity
Categories: personal responsibility

Accept that you are totally, absolutely, 100 percent, responsible for what's going on in your life-- for where you've been, for where you are, and for where you're going.
Roger Dawson The 13 Secrets of Power Performance
Categories: personal responsibility choice

Every action, thought, and feeling is motivated by an intention, and that intention is a cause that exists as one with an effect. If we participate in the cause, it is not possible for us not to participate in the effect. In this most profound way, we are held responsible for our every action, thought and feeling, which is to say, for our every intention. We, ourselves, shall partake of the fruit of our every intention. It is, therefore, wise for us to become aware of the many intentions that inform our experience, to sort out which intentions produce which effects, and to choose our intentions according to the effects that we desire to produce.
Gary Zukav The Seat of the Soul
Categories: personal responsibility choice

Responsibility is the thing people dread most of all. Yet it is the one thing in the world that develops us, that gives us fiber.
Frank Crane The 13 Secrets of Power Performance
Categories: personal responsibility character

Bartholomew looked the King square in the eye.
Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss) Bartholomew and the Oobleck
Categories: apology personal responsibility

Placing the blame is a bad habit, but taking the blame is a sure builder of character.
Dr. 0. A. Battista Words for All Occasions
Categories: blame personal responsibility

As we must account for every idle word, so we must for every idle silence.
Benjamin Franklin Words for All Occasions
Categories: integrity personal responsibility

Everyone has difficulty with the steps of inner growth, even with the outer obstacles seem easily surmountable. What's more, the prizes of our
Gail Sheehy Passages: Predictable Crises of Adult Life
Categories: personal growth self-improvement

Heroics have no place in real personality growth. Hard and consistent work do have a central and very real place, but not heroics.
Lawrence LeShan, PhD Meditating to Attain a Healthy Body Weight
Categories: personal growth self-improvement

All the best transformations are
Fay Weldon Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy
Categories: change personal growth self-improvement

The quickest way to change your attitude toward pain is to accept the fact that everything that happens to us has been designed for our spiritual growth.
M. Scott Peck Further Along the Road Less Traveled: The Unending Journey Toward Spiritual Growth
Categories: personal growth maturity attitude

We are not born all at once, but by bits. The body first, and the spirit later. Our mothers are racked with the pains of our physical birth; we ourselves suffer the longer pains of our spiritual growth.
Mary Antin Simple Abundance
Categories: personal growth self-improvement change

Acceptance is not submission; it is acknowledgement of the facts of a situation. Then deciding what you're going to do about it.
Kathleen Casey Theisen The Book of Positive Quotations
Categories: acceptance personal responsiblity decisions

I've arrived at this outermost edge of my life by my own actions. Where I am is thoroughly unacceptable. Therefore, I must stop what I've been doing.
Alice Koller The New Beacon Book of Quotations by Women
Categories: consequences actions personal responsibility

We are free up to the point of choice, then the choice controls the chooser.
Mary Crowley Treasury of Women's Quotations
Categories: choice consequences personal responsibility

...you must take responsibility for yourself if you are going to pursue success and a better life in this world.
Stedman Graham You Can Make It Happen : A Nine-Step Plan for Success
Categories: personal responsibility choices decisions

Between stimulus and response is our greatest power -- the freedom to choose.
Stephen Covey Daily Reflections for Highly Effective People: Living the Seven Habits
Categories: choice personal responsibility attitude

What most counts is not to live, but to live aright.
Socrates The Book of Positive Quotations
Categories: personal responsiblity integrity character

...until a person can say deeply and honestly, "I am what I am today because of the choices I made yesterday," that person cannot say, "I choose otherwise."
Stephen Covey The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change
Categories: choice personal responsibility decisions

A man without decision can never be said to belong to himself.
John Foster Alexandra Stoddard's Book of Days
Categories: choice personal responsibility decisiveness

One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself.
Leonardo da Vinci Leonardo: Discovering the Life of Leornardo da Vinci: A Biography by Serge Bramley
Categories: self-control choices personal responsibility

You are your choices.
John-Paul Sartre Making Choices : Discover the Joy in Living the Life You Want to Lead
Categories: choices personal responsibility character

...the whole of our life's experience is but the outer expression of inner thought.
Emmet Fox The Sermon on the Mount: The Key to Success in Life
Categories: thought choice personal responsibility

Intellect deteriorates after every
Jacques Barzun The Penguin Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Quotations
Categories: personal responsibility choice decisions

If I should fail you, do not sorrow;

Ogden Nash I'm a Stranger Here Myself by Ogden Nash
Categories: change personal growth failure

Too often in our lives accomplishment and doing overshadow growth and becoming.
Linda Dillow Calm My Anxious Heart : A Woman's Guide to Contentment
Categories: focus priorities personal growth

Growth is an erratic forward movement: two steps forward, one step back. Remember that and be very gentle with yourself.
Julia Cameron The Artist's Way : A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity
Categories: personal growth character development

Nothing really sets human nature free but self-control.
Paul Bottome Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations
Categories: freedom self-control will personal responsibility

Courage begins with the decision to face the ultimate truth about existence: the dirty little secret that we are free. It requires an understanding of free will at the archetypal level -- an understanding that we are free to define who we are at every moment. We are not what society and randomness have made us; we are what we have chosen to be from the depth of our being. We are product of our will. We are self-made in the deepest sense.
Peter Koestenbaum "Do you have the will to lead" by Polly LaBarre, Fast Company, March 2000
Categories: courage personal responsibility freedom

Like a fence, character cannot be strengthened by whitewash.
American proverb The Oxford Dictionary of Phrase, Saying, and Quotation
Categories: character change personal responsibility

With each decision, we should be convinced that we're doing the best we can under the circumstances -- best for ourselves, best for our family, best for our loved ones, and, possibly, best for society as well.
Alexandra Stoddard Making Choices : Discover the Joy in Living the Life You Want to Lead
Categories: decisions choices personal responsibility

Life, as I see it is not a location, but a journey. Everything is in flux, and is meant to be. Life flows. We may live at the same number of the street, but it is never the same man who lives there.
Henry Ford Business Lessons for All by Peter Krass, Bottom Line Personal, Jan 1, 1998
Categories: personal growth change self-improvement

The first step toward change is acceptance. Once you accept yourself, you open the door to change. That's all you have to do. Change is not something you do, it's something you allow.
Will Garcia The Book of Positive Quotations
Categories: change personal growth self-improvement

What can be said but not practiced is better not said. What can be practiced but not spoken of is better not done.
Baiyun Zen Lessons: The Art of Leadership
Categories: personal responsibility choice wisdom

No limits are set to the ascent of man, and to each and everyone the highest stands open. Here it is only your personal choice that decides.
Martin Buber Thoughts on Leadership
Categories: personal growth spirituality character

It looks as if there were a single ultimate goal for mankind, a far goal toward which all persons strive. This is called variously by different authors self-actualization, self-realization, integration, psychological health, individuation, autonomy, creativity, productivity, but they all agree that this amounts to realizing the potentialities of the person, that is to say, becoming fully human, everything that person can be.
Abraham Maslow Thoughts on Leadership
Categories: personal growth self-improvement creativity becoming

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.
George Bernard Shaw The Book of Positive Quotations
Categories: flexibility change personal growth circumstances

The voice of conscience is so delicate that it is easy to stifle it; but it is also so clear that it is impossible to mistake it.
Mme. de Stael Treasury of Women's Quotations
Categories: choice personal responsibility actions decisions

More people would learn from their mistakes if they weren't so busy denying them.
J. Harold Smith Words for All Occasions
Categories: mistakes growth self-improvement personal responsibility

Any change, any loss, does not make us victims. Others can shake you, suprise you, disappoint you, but they can't prevent you from acting, from taking the situation you're presented with and moving on. No matter where you are in life, no matter what your situation, you can always do something. You always have a choice and the choice can be power.
Blaine Lee The Power Principle
Categories: personal responsibility choice power self-determination

A mature man is his own judge. In the end, his only form of support is being faithful to his own convictions. The advice of others may be welcomed invaluable, but it does not free him from responsibility.
Dag Hammarskjold Thoughts on Leadership: A Treasury of Quotations
Categories: advice ideals integrity personal responsibility

The doctor and the pastor ask about your health, but eternity makes you responsible for your condition.
Soren Kierkegaard Thoughts on Leadership: A Treasury of Quotations
Categories: spirituality growth personal responsibility self-improvement

One day... the thought occurred to me that being unhappy was easy -- in fact, the easy way out -- and that it took no courage, effort, or greatness to be unhappy. Anyone could be unhappy. True achievement, I realized at an early age, lay in struggling to be happy. To this day, when I am unhappy I tell myself that I am taking the easy way out, that happiness is a battle to be waged and not a feeling to be awaited.
Dennis Prager Happiness is a Serious Problem: A Human Nature Repair Manual
Categories: happiness feelings emotion personal responsibility

We always have some responsibility in choosing love or isolation... The older we are, the more responsibility we bear. We need to embrace that responsibility and not be afraid of the task. How we conduct our lives is our
Dr John Townsend and Dr Henry Cloud The Mom Factor
Categories: choice relationships personal responsibility reconciliation

How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it.
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus The Forbes Book of Business Quotations: 14,266 Thoughts on the Business of Life
Categories: anger emotions feelings personal responsibility

Let me entreat you, gentlemen, on your part not to take any measures which, viewed in the calm light of reason, will lessen the dignity and sully the glory you have hitherto maintained.
George Washington Our Sacred Honor: Words of Advice from the Founders in Stories, Letters, Poems and Speeches
Categories: dignity actions reputation personal responsibility

Ignorance is not innocence but sin.
Elizabeth Barret Browning The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations
Categories: personal responsibility blame excuses rationalization

If we are wise, we discover that our answers come only when we work them out for ourselves. Others may contribute to our understanding, but the acquiring of personal wisdom is always an inside job. No one can do it for us.
Leo Buscaglia Born for Love: Reflections on Loving
Categories: personal growth education learning self-improvement

Emotional maturity is ability to stick to a job and to struggle through until it is finished; to endure unpleasantness, discomfort, and frustration; to give more than is asked for or required; to size things up and make independent decisions; to work under authority and to cooperate with others; to defer to time, other persons, and to circumstances.
Edward A. Strecker The Forbes Book of Business Quotations: 14,266 Thoughts on the Business of Life
Categories: maturity personal responsibility character self-control

We owe it to our husband or wife, our fellow workers, our children, our friends, indeed to everyone who comes into our lives, to be as happy as we can be. This does not mean acting unreal, and it certainly does not mean refraining from honest and intimate expression of our feelings to those closest to us. But it does mean that we owe it to others to work on our happiness.
Dennis Prager Happiness is a Serious Problem: A Human Nature Repair Manual
Categories: happiness personal responsibility relationships honesty

Whenever your present situation, I
Stephen Covey The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People : Powerful Lessons in Personal Change
Categories: habits change self-improvement personal growth

Ninety-nine percent of the failures come from people who have the habit of making excuses.
George Washington Carver The 13 Secrets of Power Performance
Categories: failure blame excuses personal responsibility

It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent
C.S. Lewis Mere Christianity
Categories: change personal growth self-improvement renewal

Freedom is man's capacity to take a hand in his own development. It is our capacity to mold ourselves.
Rollo May Thoughts on Leadership
Categories: freedom free will self-improvement personal growth

Conduct is three-fourths of our life and its largest concern.
Matthew Arnold The Oxford Dictionary of Phrase, Saying, and Quotation
Categories: actions habits character personal responsibility

But we cannot avoid conflict, conflict with society, other individuals and with oneself. Conflicts may be the sources of defeat, lost life and a limitation of our potentiality but they may also lead to greater depth of living and the birth of more far-reaching unities, which flourish in the tensions that engender them.
Karl Jaspers Thoughts on Leadership
Categories: conflict personal growth relationships marriage

A leaf that is destined to grow large is full of grooves and wrinkles at the start. Now if one has no patience and wants it smooth offhand like a willow leaf, there is trouble ahead.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe The Forbes Book of Business Quotations
Categories: personal growth imperfections adversity character

In order to develop love -- universal love, cosmic love, whatever you would like to call it -- one must accept the whole situation of life as it is, both the light and the dark, the good and the bad. One must open oneself to life, communicate with it.
Chogyam Trungpa The Spirit of Loving
Categories: love life mystery personal growth

He who sows brambles reaps thorns.
Spanish proverb The Prentice-Hall Encyclopedia of World Proverbs
Categories: actions personal responsibility consequences karma reap

The most self-destructive thought that any person can have is thinking that he or she is not in total control of his or her life. That's when, "Why me?" becomes a theme song.
Roger Dawson The 13 Secrets of Power Performance
Categories: choice personal responsibility decisions blame unhappiness

The chief pang of most trials is not so much the actual suffering itself as our own spirt of resistance to it.
Jean Nicolas Grou Light from Many Lamps
Categories: suffering adversity challenges difficulties personal growth

Like the winds of the sea are the ways of fate;
As the voyage along thru life;
'Tis the will of the soul
That decides its goal,
And not the calm or the strife.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox Treasury of Women's Quotations
Categories: choice personal responsibility circumstances courage strength

Our lives can be powerfully shaped by what we long to
Greg Anderson The 22 Non-Negotiable Laws of Wellness: Feel, Think, and Live Better Than You Ever Thought Possible
Categories: vision ideal personal growth self-improvement potential

In an active life is sown the seed of wisdom, but he who reflects not, never reaps; has no harvest from it, but carries the burden of age without the wages of experience; nor knows himself old, but from his infirmities, the parish register, and the contempt of mankind. And age, if it has not esteem, has nothing.
Edward Young The Forbes Book of Business Quotations
Categories: age aging wisdom self-awareness thought personal growth

It's what you learn after you know it all that counts.
John Wooden Lessons from the Art of Juggling
Categories: learning personal growth mentoring stretching excellence

We are all given a choice each day. We can react negatively to the demands made on us or we can choose to live abundantly, to transform the negative into the meaningful. Attitude is all. If I do not endow my life and my work with meaning, no one will ever be able to do it for me.
Sarah Ban Breathnach Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy
Categories: personal responsibility choice attitude meaning purpose

One of the false dichotomies of modern life is that between work and personal time. It is widely held that there is a set of skills that we need for one and quite a different set that we need for the other. But this is not true. The skills of problem-solving, for example are of great value in our personal lives, and overcoming stress and anxiety is a key skill in our work. Being fair to yourself, and to others, helps both personal and work relationships. Low mood is a major cause of unhappiness and also reduces effectiveness at work.
Gillian Butler, PhD and Tony Hope, MD Managing Your Mind
Categories: balance life skills happiness personal effectiveness

When you have to make a choice and don't make it, that in itself is a choice.
William James The 13 Secrets of Power Performance
Categories: choose choice personal responsibility procrastination decisions

The path is smooth that leadeth on to danger.
William Shakespeare Bartlett's Familiar Quotations
Categories: hard choices personal responsibility integrity character

. . . An ethical person ought to do more than he's required to do and less than he's allowed to do.
Michael Josephson A World of Ideas; Conversations with Thoughtful Men and Women about American Life Today and the Ideas Shaping Our Future
Categories: ethics morality freedom personal responsibility actions

...the spiritual life consists only in part in striving for the ideal. The spiritual life is also, and perhaps more profoundly, about wrestling with the real. Perhaps the dance of holiness really occurs on the narrow apron of life's stage where we find ourselves poised between what we want to be and what we are.
Wendy M. Wright "Making Things New: Thoughts on Being Stripped, Naked, and Clothed," Weavings, Jan/Feb 1996
Categories: spirituality balance choices personal growth self-improvement

Self-observation is the groundwork for self-knowledge, and it is self-knowledge that effects change.
Elizabeth O'Connor Our Many Selves: A Handbook for Self-Discovery
Categories: self-awareness introspection meditation self-improvement personal growth

If you play it safe in life you've decided that you don't want to grow anymore.
Shirley Hufstedler Treasury of Women's Quotations
Categories: risk courage personal growth stagnation self-improvement

I believe we are solely responsible for our choices, and we have to accept the consequences of every deed, word, and thought throughout our lifetime.
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross Treasury of Women's Quotations
Categories: personal responsibility growth choices actions speech

We are free up to the point of choice; then choice controls chooser.
Mary Crowley Words for All Occasions
Categories: choice decisions personal responsibility fate free will

Be patient with everyone, but above all with yourself. I mean, do not be disheartened by your imperfections, but always rise up with fresh courage. How are we to be patient in dealing with our neighbor's faults if we are impatient in dealing with our own? He who is fretted by his own failings will not correct them. All profitable correction comes from a calm, peaceful mind.
St. Francis de Sales Living in Balance: A Dynamic Approach for Creating Harmony & Wholeness in a Chaotic World
Categories: patience self-improvement perfectionism relationships personal growth

The people we are in relationship with are always a mirror, reflecting our own beliefs, and simultaneously we are mirrors reflecting their beliefs. So relationship is one of the most powerful tools for growth... if we look honestly at our relationships we can see so much about how we have created them.
Shakti Gawain Love and Relationships: Inspirations for Meditation and Spiritual Growth
Categories: relationships marriage love friendship personal growth

One can spend a lifetime assigning blame, find the cause 'out there' for all the troubles that exist. Contrast this with the 'responsible attitude' of confronting the situation, bad or good, and instead of asking, 'What caused the trouble? Who was to blame?' asking 'How can I handle this present situation to make the most of it? What can I salvage here?'
Abraham Maslow Thoughts on Leadership
Categories: blame responsibility choice personal growth self-improvement change

Growth in personality occurs as a consequence of meeting conflicts and impasses head on, and reconciling them. Interpersonal conflicts and impasses constitute problems which require solutions so that a satisfying relationship may be maintained. Whenever a person encounters a problem in his everyday living, he is obliged to vary his behavior until he discovers some mode of responding which is successful in achieving a solution.
Sidney Jourard Thoughts on Leadership
Categories: personal growth conflicts relationships marriage change self-improvement

Forgiveness is the key to every aspect of spiritual growth.
Charles F. Stanley "The Victorious Pursuit: Winning Over Life's Struggles" by Charles F. Stanley, InTouch, March 1999.
Categories: forgiving forgiveness grief personal growth spirituality maturity

There is nothing wrong with making mistakes and not having all the answers, so long as we are willing to admit this and strive for personal betterment. Those who think they know it all have no way of finding out that they don't.
Leo Buscaglia Born for Love: Reflections on Loving
Categories: mistakes errors failure responsibility personal growth self-improvement

It is impossible for us to break the law. We can only break ourselves against the law.
Cecil B. deMille The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Categories: true north principles choices personal responsibility actions

In this country, every man is the architect of his own ambitions.
Horton Bain The Forbes Book of Business Quotations: 14,266 Thoughts on the Business of Life
Categories: personal responsibility ambition goals success achievement vision

The leader wonders about everything, wants to learn as much as he can, is willing to take risks, experiment, try new things. He does not worry about failure, but embraces errors, knowing he will learn from them.
Warren G. Bennis On Becoming a Leader
Categories: curiosity leadership personal growth courage strength mistakes

We have produced a world of contented bodies and discontented minds.
Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Power Quotes
Categories: laziness complaints gripes blame personal responsibility discontent

The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.
Mark Twain 1911 Best Things Anybody Ever Said
Categories: reading education personal growth self-improvement knowledge literacy

The aims and ideals that move us are generated by imagination. But they are not made out of imaginary stuff. They are made out of the hard stuff of the world of physical and social experience.
John Dewey Thoughts on Leadership
Categories: ideals morals vision mission experience personal growth self-improvement

In order to grasp the reality, we must see the possibilities. In the present, a formulation of the possibilities is the area in which I gain uncertainty concerning what I decide; without a vision of the possibilities, I act blindly; only a knowledge of the possibilities enables me to know what I am actually doing.
Karl Jaspers Thoughts on Leadership
Categories: possibilities potential personal growth dreams vision mission self-improvement

Destiny is no matter of chance. It is a matter of choice: It is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.
William Jennings Bryan The 13 Secrets of Power Performance
Categories: fate destiny effort success work vision personal responsibility

The choices that make a significant difference in our lives are the tough ones. They're not often fun or easy, but they're the ones we have to make, and each is a deliberate step toward better understanding who we really are.
Alexandra Stoddard Making Choices : Discover the Joy in Living the Life You Want to Lead
Categories: choices personal responsibility adversity challenges problems identity character

It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
Adlai Stevenson Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations
Categories: principles morals morality ethics personal responsibility choice code of honor

From Freud we learned that the past exists now in the person. Now we must learn, from growth theory and self-actualization theory that the future also now exists in the person in the form of ideals, hopes, duties, tasks, plans, goals, unrealized potentials, mission, fate, destiny, etc. One for whom no future exists is reduced to the concrete, to hopelessness, to emptiness.
Abraham Maslow Thoughts on Leadership
Categories: personal growth self-improvement potential vision dreams goals mission future

There are plenty of recommendations on how to get out of trouble cheaply and fast. Most of them come down to this: Deny your responsibility.
Lyndon B. Johnson Power Quotes
Categories: character integrity honesty personal responsibility choices problems mistakes errors

Some tension is necessary for the soul
Joan Borysenko, Ph.D. Handbook for the Soul
Categories: personal growth change soul love healing forgiveness service serve self-nurture

One cannot get through life without pain... What we can do is choose how to use the pain life presents to us.
Bernie S. Siegel, MD The Book of Positive Quotations
Categories: pain disability illness adversity challenges difficulties problems growth circumstances personal responsibility

It is never too late to be what you might have been.
George Eliot The Thinker's Way: 8 Steps to a Richer Life
Categories: purpose goal fulfillment aging regret future choices regrets change self-improvement personal growth

Failure is just part of the culture of innovation. Accept it and become stronger.
Albert Yu Fast Company magazine, December 1998, p. 132.
Categories: mistakes errors failure success personal growth self-improvement creativity innovate creation creative process

Growth of the soul is our goal, and
Joan Borysenko, Ph.D. Handbook for the Soul
Categories: personal growth self-improvement change love nature forgiveness service volunteerism love action

The best genius is that which absorbs and assimilates everything without doing the least violence to its fundamental destiny--that which we call character--but rather improving it and enhancing it as far as possible...Through training, instruction, contemplation, success, failure, advancement, hindrance, and ever more contemplation, the organs of man, in their instinctive, free activity, unite the acquired with the innate to produce a harmonious unity that astonished the world.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe The Permanent Goethe Edited, Selected and with an Introduction by Thomas Mann
Categories: change introspection learning meditation personal growth failure mistakes success meditation achievement genius brilliance creativity