There's no chance

“There's no chance, no destiny, no fate, that can circumvent or hinder or control the firm resolve of a determined soul.”

~Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Tomorrow

"Tomorrow, you promise yourself, will be different, yet, tomorrow is too often a repetition of today."

~James T. Mccay

I discovered

I discovered, much to my surprise – and particularly if I was writing in the first person – that I could become a psychopath quite easily. I could think like one and I could devise a manner of unfortunate occurrences. So I probably gave up a flourishing, lucrative career as a mass murderer.

~Robert Bloch

I have

I have the heart of a small boy ...
and I keep it in a drawer at home.

~Robert Bloch

Don't bother

"Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself."

~William Faulkner

It is those

"It is those we live with and love and should know who elude us."

~Norman Maclean

The individual

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe."

~Friedrich Nietzsche

Other things

"Other things may change us, but we start and end with family."

~Anthony Brandt

The pessimist

"The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. The leader adjusts the sails."

~John Maxwell

Unfortunately

"Unfortunately, a super-abundance of dreams is paid for by a growing potential for nightmares."

~Sir Peter Ustinov

When you look

"When you look long into an abyss, the abyss looks into you."

~Friedrich Nietzsche

Hold on

"Hold on to what is good, even if it's a handful of earth.
Hold on to what you believe, even if it's a tree that stands by itself.
Hold on to what you must do, even if it's a long way from here.
Hold on to your life, even if it's easier to let go.
Hold on to my hand, even if someday I'll be gone away from you."

~ A Pueblo Indian Prayer

There came a time

There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud
was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.

~ Anais Nin

Life is without meaning

"Life is without meaning.
You bring the meaning to it.
The meaning of life is whatever you ascribe it to be.
Being alive is the meaning."

- Joseph Campbell

Almost all absurdity

"Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those whom we cannot resemble."

~Samuel Johnson

We Are Stardust

"In a sense, human flesh is made of stardust… Every atom in the human body, excluding only the primordial hydrogen atoms, was fashioned in stars that formed, grew old and exploded most violently before the Sun and the Earth came into being. The explosions scattered the heavy elements as a fine dust through space. By the time it made the Sun, the primordial gas of the Milky Way was sufficiently enriched with heavier elements for rocky planets like the Earth to form. And from the rocks atoms escaped for eventual incorporation in living things: carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulphur for all living tissue; calcium for bones and teeth; sodium and potassium for the workings of nerves and brains; the iron colouring blood red… and so on. No other conclusion of modern research testifies more clearly to mankind’s intimate connections with the universe at large and with the cosmic forces at work among the stars."

- Nigel Calder, "The Key to the Universe," BBC, 1977

I want

I want to learn how to purr. Abandon myself, have mistresses in maidenhair fern, own no tomorrow nor yesterday: a blank shimmering space forward and back. I want to think with my belly. I want to name all the stars animals flowers birds rocks in order to forget them, start over again. I want to wear the seasons, harlequin, become ancient and etched by weather. I want to be snow pulse, ruminating ungulate, pebble at the bottom of the abyss, candle burning darkness rather than flame. I want to peer at things shameless, observe the unfastening, that stripping of shape by dusk. I want to sit in the meadow a rotten stump pungent with slimemold, home for pupae and grubs, concentric rings collapsing into the passacaglia of time. I want to crawl inside someone and hibernate one entire night with no clocks to wake me, thighs fragrant loam. I want to melt. I want to swim naked with an otter. I want to turn inside out, exchange nuclei with the Sun. Toward the mythic kingdom of summer I want to make blind motion, using my ribs as a raft, following the spiders as they set sail on their tasseled shining silk. Sometimes even a single feather’s enough to fly."

-Robert Maclean

Tent tethered

Tent tethered among jack pine and blue-bells. Lacewings rise from rock incubators. Wild geese flying north. And I can’t remember who I’m supposed to be.

~Robert Maclean

Some stories

“Some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity…”

– Gilda Radner

It's hard

“It's hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your head.”

~Sally Kempton

The irrationality of a thing

"The irrationality of a thing is not an argument against its existence, rather, a condition of it."

~Friedrich Nietzsche

No man chooses evil

"No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks."

~Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Nothing is so common

"Nothing is so common as the wish to be remarkable."

~William Shakespeare

Can't

Can’t is the cancer of happen.

~Charlie Sheen

We have a few rules

We have a few rules here. Nobody panics. There’s no judgment. You park your judgment at the door. Nobody dies. And — enjoy every moment. What did I miss? Drink chocolate milk. We just have fun. There’s a ton of laughter in this house. A ton of love in this house. There’s a ton of nobility in this house.

~Charlie Sheen

I earn

I earn two million an episode. I’m underpaid!

~Charlie Sheen

I just don't do it

“I just don’t do it. I will not believe that if I do something then I have to follow a certain path because it was written for normal people. People who aren’t special. People who don’t have tiger blood and Adonis DNA.”

~Charlie Sheen

I'm here

I’m here and I’m ready. They’re not. Bring it.

~Charlie Sheen

Did you say Cancun

"Did you say Cancun or caboose? I don't know, I was in a blackout, man."

~Charlie Sheen

I'm grandiose

"I'm grandiose. I have a grandiose life and I'm embracing it. ... It doesn't fit into their model and their model sucks."

~Charlie Sheen

You have the right

“You have the right to kill me, but you do not have the right to judge me. Boom. That’s the whole movie. That’s life”

~Charlie Sheen

If you borrowed

If you borrowed my brain for five seconds, you’d be like, ‘Dude! Can’t handle it, unplug this bastard!’ It fires in a way that’s maybe not from, uh… this terrestrial realm.

- Charlie Sheen

She's not there now

She’s not there now and we are and I don’t know, winning, anyone? Rhymes with winning? Anyone? Yeah, that would be us.

~Charlie Sheen

When I step

When I step between the lines it’s on, I’m there to show others how it’s done, it’s not really rocket science you know.

~Charlie Sheen

You could not

You could not make this shit up. Holy-Crap-Balls. Talk about your career suicide! At least he is doing it so publicly for our amusement.

~ Unknown

(Either it was Charlie Sheen or was it someone else referring to Charlie Sheen.)

I'm a winner

"I'm a winner and their lives look like they're - you know, ruled by losers."

~Charlie Sheen

I'm here

I’m here to collect. They’re going to lose.

- Charlie Sheen

I'm dealing with

“I’m dealing with fools and trolls. I’m dealing with soft targets, and it’s just strafing runs in my underwear before my first cup of coffee … they lay down with their ugly wives and their ugly children and just look at their loser lives and then they look at me and say, ‘I can’t process it.’

~Charlie Sheen

You're either

"You're either in Sheen's corner or you're with the trolls."

~Charlie Sheen

Stay off the crack

"Stay off the crack.
Drink a chocolate milk."

~Charlie Sheen

We're definitely at war

"We're definitely at war. They're trying to destroy my family. I take great umbrage with that. Defeat is not an option. They picked a fight with a warlock."

~Charlie Sheen

I'm on a drug

I am on a drug. It’s called Charlie Sheen. It’s not available, because if you try it once, you will die and your children will weep over your exploded body. Too much?

~Charlie Sheen

Your face

Your face will melt off and your children will weep over your exploded body.

~Charlie Sheen

I'm tired of pretending

I’m tired of pretending I’m not special. I’m tired of pretending I’m not a total bitchin’ rock star from Mars.

~Charlie Sheen

I'm so tired

“I’m so tired of pretending like my life isn’t just perfect and just winning every second, and I’m not just perfect and bitchin’ and just delivering the goods at every frickin’ turn.”

~Charlie Sheen

These resentments

These resentments, they are the rocket fuel that lives in the tip of my sabre.

~Charlie Sheen

I'm extremely old-fashioned

I’m extremely old-fashioned, I’m a nobleman, I’m chivalrous.

~Charlie Sheen

Clearly, I have defeated

Clearly, I have defeated this earthworm with my words – imagine what I would have done with my fire-breathing fists.

~Charlie Sheen

You can't

You can’t process me with a normal brain.

~Charlie Sheen

Lead by example

"Lead by example and teach your kids right and wrong. If my right and wrong is a little bit different than anybody else, then my kids will be different too."

~Charlie Sheen

We are so accustomed

"We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others, that in the end, we become disguised to ourselves."

~François de la Rochefoucauld

Well

"Well, life all comes down to a few moments. This is one of them."

~Charlie Sheen

Every plan

"Every plan I have is the best plan in the room."

~Charlie Sheen

The run I was on

The run I was on made Sinatra, Jagger, Richards, look like droopy-eyed, armless children. [...] I expose people to magic. I expose them to something they’re never going to see in their otherwise boring lives. And I gave that to them. I may forget about them tomorrow, but they’ll live with that memory for the rest of their lives, and that’s a gift, man.

~Charlie Sheen

I am grandiose

“I am grandiose because I live a grandiose life; what's wrong with that?”

~Charlie Sheen

I think

“I think people misinterpret my passion for anger.”

~Charlie Sheen

The basis of shame

"The basis of shame is not some personal mistake of ours, but that this humiliation is seen by everyone."

~Milan Kundera

Political language

"Political language ... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."

~George Orwell

Those who make

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible
Will make violent revolution inevitable.

~John F. Kennedy

Whoever undertakes

"Whoever undertakes to set himself up as judge in the field of truth and knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods."

~Albert Einstein

Ideologies

"Ideologies separate us.
Dreams and anguish bring us together."

~Eugene Ionesco

Birds sing

"Birds sing after a storm. Why shouldn't people feel as free to delight in whatever sunlight remains to them?"

~Rose Kennedy

Yesterday is ashes

Yesterday is ashes.
Tomorrow is green wood.
Only today does the fire burn brightly.

- Eskimo Saying

If

If your inner energy is misdirected, so will your whole life be.

~C. Astrid Weber

If we don't change

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.

~ Gail Sheehy

Don't forget

"Don't forget that I cannot see myself -- that my role is limited to being the one who looks in the mirror."

~Jacques Rigaut

Life is

"Life is either daring adventure or nothing at all."

~Helen Keller

There is

"There is no opponent."

~ Bruce Lee

Empty your mind

"Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water my friend."

~ Bruce Lee

Faith is

"Faith is a state of mind that can be conditioned through self-discipline. Faith will accomplish."

~ Bruce Lee

to experience oneself

To experience oneself honestly, not lying to oneself, and to express myself honestly, now that is very hard to do."

~ Bruce Lee

To be

To be is to be related.
To isolate is death.

~Bruce Lee

Knowledge in martial arts

"Knowledge in martial arts actually means self-knowledge. A martial artist has to take responsibility for himself and accept the consequences of his own doing. The understanding of Jeet Kune Do is through personal feeling from movement to movement in the mirror of the relationship and not through a process of isolation. To be is to be related. To isolate is death. To me, ultimately, martial arts means honestly expressing yourself. Now, it is very difficult to do. It has always been very easy for me to put on a show and be cocky, and be flooded with a cocky feeling and feel pretty cool and all that. I can make all kinds of phoney things. Blinded by it. Or I can show some really fancy movement. But to experience oneself honestly, not lying to oneself, and to express myself honestly, now that is very hard to do."

~ Bruce Lee

Forget about winning

"Forget about winning and losing; forget about pride and pain. Let your opponent graze your skin and you smash into his flesh; let him smash into your flesh and you fracture his bones; let him fracture your bones and you take his life. Do not be concerned with escaping safely - lay your life before him."

~ Bruce Lee

Learn the principle

"Learn the principle, abide by the principle, and dissolve the principle. In short, enter a mold without being caged in it. Obey the principle without being bound by it. LEARN, MASTER AND ACHIEVE!!!"

~ Bruce Lee

A fight

"A fight is not won by one punch or kick. Either learn to endure or hire a bodyguard."

~ Bruce Lee

Either

Either you understand, or you don't. And that is that.

~Bruce Lee

Any technique

Any technique, however worthy and desirable, becomes a disease when the mind is obsessed with it.

~ Bruce Lee

Just be ready

"Do not be tense, just be ready, not thinking but not dreaming, not being set but being flexible. It is being "wholly" and quietly alive, aware and alert, ready for whatever may come."

~ Bruce Lee

A Good teacher

A good teacher can never be fixed in a routine... each moment requires a sensitive mind that is constantly changing and constantly adapting. A teacher must never impose this student to fit his favourite pattern; a good teacher functions as a pointer, exposing his student's vulnerability (and) causing him to explore both internally and finally integrating himself with his being.

~Bruce Lee

Do not be tense

"Do not be tense, just be ready, not thinking but not dreaming, not being set but being flexible. It is being "wholly" and quietly alive, aware and alert, ready for whatever may come. The danger of training with the heavy bag is that it doesn't react to one’s attack and sometimes there is a tendency to thoughtlessness. One will punch the bag carelessly, and would be vulnerable in a real situation if this became a habit."

~ Bruce Lee

A good fight

"A good fight should be like a small play...but played seriously. When the opponent expands, l contract. When he contracts, l expand. And when there is an opportunity... l do not hit...it hits all by itself (shows his fist). Any technique, however worthy and desirable, becomes a disease when the mind is obsessed with it."

~ Bruce Lee

I believe

"I believe in having a few pupils at one time as it requires a constant alert observation of each individual in order to establish a direct relationship. A good teacher can never be fixed in a routine... each moment requires a sensitive mind that is constantly changing and constantly adapting. A teacher must never impose this student to fit his favourite pattern; a good teacher functions as a pointer, exposing his student's vulnerability (and) causing him to explore both internally and finally integrating himself with his being. Martial art should not be passed out indiscriminately.

~ Bruce Lee

Let me give you

"Let me give you a bit of warning: just because you get very good at your training it should not go to your head that you are an expert. Remember, actual sparring is the ultimate, and the training is, only a means toward this. Besides running, one should also do exercises for the stomach - sit-ups, leg raises, etc. Too often one of those big-belly masters will tell you that his internal power has sunk to his stomach; he's not kidding, it is sunk and gone! To put it bluntly, he is nothing but fat and ugly."

~ Bruce Lee

Jeet Kune Do

"Jeet Kune Do is training and discipline towards the ultimate reality in combat."

~ Bruce Lee

Jeet Kune-Do

"Jeet Kune-Do is the only non-classical style of Chinese Kung Fu in existence today. It is simple in its execution, although not so simple to explain. Jeet means 'to stop, to stem, to intercept,' while Kune means 'fist' or 'style,' and Do means 'the way' or 'the ultimate reality.' In other words--'The Way of the Intercepting Fist.'"

~ Bruce Lee

If I tell you

"If I tell you I'm good, you would probably think I'm boasting. If I tell you I'm no good, you know I'm lying."

~Bruce Lee

The main characteristic

"The main characteristic Jeet Kune-Do is the absence of the usual classical passive blocking. Blocking is the least efficient. Jeet Kune-Do is offensive; it's alive and it's free."

~ Bruce Lee

I have not

"I have not invented a "new style," composite, modified or otherwise that is set within distinct form as apart from "this" method or "that" method. On the contrary, I hope to free my followers from clinging to styles, patterns, or molds. Remember that Jeet Kune Do is merely a name used, a mirror in which to see "ourselves". . . Jeet Kune Do is not an organized institution that one can be a member of. Either you understand or you don't, and that is that."

~ Bruce Lee

Colors pursue me

“Colors pursue me like a constant worry.
They even worry me in my sleep.”

~Claude Monet

Colour is

“Colour is my day-long obsession, joy and torment.”

~Claude Monet

I'm colour-blind

“I'm colour-blind.
I can see colours dogs can't even hear!”

~Murray Tinkelman

The only color

"The only color I don't have is navy brown."

~Yogi Berra

I advise students

“I advise students on the subject of color as follows: 'If it looks good enough to eat, use it.'”

~Abe Ajay

I love

“I love to study the many things that grow below the corn stalks and bring them back to the studio to study the color. If one could only catch that true color of nature – the very thought of it drives me mad.”

~Andrew Wyeth

Painting is

"Painting is something that takes place among the colors, and ... one has to leave them alone completely, so that they can settle the matter among themselves. Their intercourse: this is the whole of painting. Whoever meddles, arranges, injects his human deliberation, his wit, his advocacy, his intellectual agility in any way, is already disturbing and clouding their activity."

~Rainer Maria Rilke

If one says

"If one says 'Red' – the name of color – and there are fifty people listening, it can be expected that there will be fifty reds in their minds. And one can be sure that all these reds will be very different."

~Josef Albers

He had

"He had that curious love of green, which in individuals is always the sign of a subtle artistic temperament, and in nations is said to denote a laxity, if not a decadence of morals."

~Oscar Wilde

Color is

"Color is but a sensation and has no existence outside the nervous system of living beings."

~Nicholas Ogden Rood

Sometimes when

Sometimes when I'm having a colour moment I think to myself, okay what would be the most disgusting colour to add here? Sometimes that 'disgusting' can turn out to be 'surprising' and 'completely gorgeous'.

~Angela A'Court

How do you paint

“How do you paint yellow wheat against a yellow sky?
You paint it jet black.”

~Ben Shahn

My mother

“My mother warned me to avoid things coloured red.”

~Claes Oldenburg

Oh yes!

"Oh yes! He loved yellow, did good Vincent... When the two of us were together in Arles, both of us insane, and constantly at war over beautiful colors, I adored red; where could I find a perfect vermilion?"

~Paul Gauguin

Color which

"Color which, like music, is a matter of vibrations, reaches what is most general and therefore most indefinable in nature: its inner power…."

~Paul Gauguin

Each colour

"Each colour is applied to the canvas in relation to the colours next to it. The painting becomes a living thing and calls out for the colour it wants."

~Neil Patterson

You really

"You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world."

~Lucille Ball

I want

“I want to know one thing”

~Pablo Picasso

No pressure

"No pressure,
no diamonds."

~Mary Case

The farther backward

"The farther backward you can look,
the farther forward you will see."

~Winston Churchill

Ecstasy

"Ecstasy is what everyone craves — not love or sex, but a hot-blooded, soaring intensity, in which being alive is a joy and a thrill. That enravishment doesn’t give meaning to life, and yet without it life seems meaningless."

– Diane Ackerman

Try not

"Try not.
Do or do not."

~Yoda

This is what you shall do

“This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body…”

– Walt Whitman

Try again

"Try again,
fail again.
Fail better."

~Samuel Beckett

Often

Often people attempt to live their lives backwards:
they try to have more things, or more money,
in order to do more of what they want so they will be happier.
The way it actually works is the reverse.
You must first be who you really are, then, do what you need to do,
in order to have what you want.

~ Margaret Young

All is a riddle

"All is a riddle,
and the key to a riddle...
is another riddle."

~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Love is

Love is your safety. Fear does not exist. Identify with love, and you are safe. Identify with love, and you are home. Identify with love, and find your Self. Love is your power.

~A Course in Miracles

The belief

"The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary. Men alone are quite capable of every wickedness."

~Joseph Conrad

We find

“We find what we expect to find,
and we receive what we ask for.”

- Elbert Hubbard

The people

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

It is only

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

~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry