To be oneself is a rare thing, and a great one. ... by Ursula K. Le Guin

To be oneself is a rare thing, and a great one. ...
by Ursula K. Le Guin

I had forgotten how much light there is in the world,
'til you gave it back to me.
- Ursula K. Le Guin

It is above all by the imagination
that we achieve perception and compassion and hope.
- Ursula K. Le Guin

There's a point... when you have to choose
whether to be like everybody else the rest of your life,
or to make a virtue of your peculiarities.
- Ursula K. Le Guin

Love doesn't just sit there like a stone;
it has to be made,like bread,
remade all the time, made new.
- Ursula K. Le Guin

The only thing that makes life possible
is permanent, intolerable uncertainty;
not knowing what comes next.
- Ursula K. Le Guin

My imagination makes me human and makes me a fool;
it gives me all the world and exiles me from it.
- Ursula K. Le Guin

To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily.
Not to dare is to lose oneself.
- Soren Kierkegaard

My experience has been that work is
almost the best way to pull oneself out of the depths.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

These are the keys to a great life...
taking oneself lightly, forgiveness, and acceptance.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

One defeats a fanatic precisely by not being a fanatic oneself,
but on the contrary by using one's intelligence.
- George Orwell

To know how to free oneself is nothing;
the arduous thing is to know what to do with one's freedom.
- Andre Gide

The acceptance of oneself is
the essence of the whole moral problem
and the epitome of a whole outlook on life.
- Carl Jung

The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on.
It is never of any use to oneself.
- Oscar Wilde

Don't aim at success.
The more you aim at it and make it a target,
the more you are going to miss it.
For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued;
it must ensue, and it only does so as
the unintended side effect of one's personal dedication
to a cause greater than oneself.
- Viktor E. Frankl

A quotation is a handy thing to have about,
saving one the trouble of thinking for oneself.
- A. A. Milne (Winnie-The-Pooh)

If you are disabled, it is probably not your fault,
but it is no good blaming the world or expecting it to take pity on you.
One has to have a positive attitude
and must make the best of the situation that one finds oneself in.
If one is physically disabled,
one cannot afford to be psychologically disabled as well.
- Stephen Hawking

To accuse others for one's own misfortunes
is a sign of want of education.
To accuse oneself shows that one's education has begun.
To accuse neither oneself nor others
shows that one's education is complete.
- Epictetus

When one gets angry, it is always angry AT someone -
perhaps a friend or spouse, perhaps a stranger,
perhaps the nameless "they" - "those people at the bank wronged me,"
perhaps God, or perhaps oneself.
In any case, when one gets angry,
they want to find someone to be "responsible" for what happened.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Sometimes, indeed, there is such a discrepancy
between the genius and his human qualities
that one has to ask oneself whether
a little less talent might not have been better.
- Carl Jung

I always pass on good advice.
It is the only thing to do with it.
It is never of any use to oneself.
- Oscar Wilde

Those who are dedicated to a life of wisdom
understand that the impulse to blame
something or someone is foolishness,
that there is nothing to be gained in blaming,
whether it be others or oneself.
- Epictetus

When you are alone you are not alone,
you are simply lonely -
and there is a tremendous difference
between loneliness and aloneness.
When you are lonely you are thinking of the other,
you are missing the other.
Loneliness is a negative state.
You are feeling that it would have been
better if the other were there -
your friend, your wife, your mother,
your beloved, your husband.
It would have been good if the other
were there, but the other is not.
Loneliness is absence of the other.
Aloneness is the presence of oneself.
Aloneness is very positive.
It is a presence, overflowing presence.
You are so full of presence
that you can fill the whole universe
with your presence and there is no need for anybody.
- Osho

Toleration is the greatest gift of the mind;
it requires the same effort of the brain
that it takes to balance oneself on a bicycle.
- Helen Keller

One's own religion is after all
a matter between oneself
and one's Maker and no one else's.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

In order to be an immaculate member of a flock of sheep,
one must above all be a sheep oneself.
- Albert Einstein

Go ahead. Weep for the rare,
the never seen this way again,
the excruciating, ineffable,
unmitigated beauty of love.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

Real friendships among men are so rare
that when they occur they are famous.
- Clarence Day

However rare true love may be,
it is less so than true friendship.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Each contact with a human being is so rare, so precious,
one should preserve it.
- Anais Nin

Friends are those rare people who ask how we are
and then wait to hear the answer.
- Anonymous

Friendship without self-interest
is one of the rare and beautiful things in life.
- James Francis Byrnes

Except in cases of necessity, which are rare,
leave your friend to learn
unpleasant things from his enemies;
they are ready enough to tell them.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Time to Die:
A Zen teacher had a rare and priceless teacup.
One day, his precocious student accidentally broke the cup.
Hearing the footsteps of his teacher,
the student held the pieces of the cup behind his back.
When the master appeared, he asked: "Why do people have to die?"
"This is natural," explained the teacher.
"Everything has to die and has just so long to live."
The student showed the shattered cup, saying,
"It was time for your cup to die."
- Traditional Zen Koan

It is curious - curious that physical courage
should be so common in the world, and moral courage so rare
- Mark Twain

In individuals, insanity is rare;
but in groups, parties, nations and epochs,
it is the rule.
- Friedrich Nietzsche

If you can speak what you will never hear,
if you can write what you will never read,
you have done rare things.
- Henry David Thoreau

Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again,
but expecting different results.
- Rita Mae Brown, also attributed to Einstein

The only thing necessary for evil to triumph
is for enough good men to do nothing.
- Edmund Burke

Take time to play!
Ask for what you want.
Laugh.
Live loudly.
Be avid.
Learn a new thing.
Be Yourself!
- Mary Anne Radmacher

The truth. It is a beautiful and terrible thing,
and should be treated with caution.
- J. K. Rowling

Fear defeats more people than
any other one thing in the world.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Take your life in your own hands, and what happens?
A terrible thing: no one to blame.
- Erica Jong

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing
over and over and expecting different results.
- Albert Einstein

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men
who walked through the huts comforting others,
giving away their last piece of bread...
They offer sufficient proof that everything
can be taken from a man but one thing:
to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances,
to choose one's own way.
- Viktor E. Frankl

The important thing is not to stop questioning.
Curiosity has its own reason for existing.
- Albert Einstein

That old law about "an eye for an eye" leaves everybody blind.
The time is always right to do the right thing.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

One thing I know: the only ones among you
who will be really happy are those
who will have sought and found how to serve.
- Albert Schweitzer

Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow.
The important thing is not to stop questioning.
- Albert Einstein

I don't know what your destiny will be, but one thing I know:
the only ones among you who will be really happy
are those who will have sought and found how to serve.
- Albert Schweitzer

The thing always happens that you really believe in;
and the belief in a thing makes it happen.
- Frank Lloyd Wright

It is against everything we stand for to take a human life.
Making an exception to that code is a bleak thing.
- Sam, from Twilight saga by Stephenie Meyer

You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience
in which you really stop to look fear in the face.
You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

We're constantly striving for success, fame and comfort
when all we really need to be happy
is someone or some thing to be enthusiastic about.
- H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

Quotes and Sayings

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May the world be kind to you,
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- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

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To be oneself is a rare thing, and a great one. ...by Ursula K. Le Guin

Quotes and Sayings

To be oneself is a rare thing, and a great one. ...
by Ursula K. Le Guin