Quotes

Fearlessness is like a muscle.  I know from my own life that the more I exercise it the more natural it becomes to not let my fears run me.  -Arianna Huffinton

We are not held back by the love we didn’t receive in the past, but by the love we’re not extending in the present.  -Marianne Williamson

I learned you have to trust yourself, be what you are, and do what you ought to do the way you should do it.  You have got to discover you, what you do, and trust it.  -Barbra Streisand

There are people who put their dreams in a little box and say, “Yes, I’ve got dreams, of course I’ve got dreams.”  Then they put the box away and bring it out once in awhile to look in it and yep, they’re still there.  These are great dreams, but they never even get out of the box.  It takes an uncommon amount of guts to put your dreams on the line, to hold them up and to say “how good or how bad am I?”  That’s where courage comes in.  -Erma Louise Bombeck

Peace.  It does not mean to be in a place where there is no trouble, noise or hard work.  It means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart.  -Lady Gaga

Very little grows on jagged rock.  Be ground, be crumbled, so wildflowers will come up where you are.  You’ve been stoney for too many years.  Try something different.  Surrender.  -Rumi

One day at a time – this is enough.  Do not look back and grieve over the past, for it is gone; and do not be troubled about the future, for it has not yet come.  Live in the present, and make it so beautiful that it will be worth remembering.  -Ida Scott Taylor

My religion is kindness.  – The Dalai Lama

There is something that happens in our bodies when we put in the hours.  Confidence appears, fear lifts, and we have a sense of empowerment.  One day the process becomes easy and natural, and you’ll wonder why it was so hard at first.

Don’t be discouraged if your initial efforts don’t match your vision.  Keep making art consistently; put in the hours and don’t worry about the outcome.  Do what’s necessary to make room in your life for time in the studio.  -Daniella Woolf, The Encaustic Studio

Artists don’t get down to work until the pain of working is exceeded by the pain of not working.    -Stephen DeStaebler

It takes courage to grow up and turn out to be who you really are.  EE Cummings

Just playing with no pressure.  Ingrid Petrini (www.ingridpetriniskviltarochstygn.blogspot.com

Life is short, break the rules.  Forgive quickly, kiss slowly, love truly, laugh uncontrollably and never regret anything that makes you smile.  Mark Twain

Practice only what you find to be true, not what I say.  Buddha

You’re confusing product with process.  Most people, when they criticize, whether they like it or hate it, they’re talking about product.  That’s not art, that’s the result of art.  Art, to whatever degree we can get a handle on (I’m not sure that we really can) is a process.  It begins in the heart and mind with the eyes and hands.”  Jeff Melvoin

Finish each day and be done with it.  You have done what you could.  Some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can.  Tomorrow is a new day.  You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.    Emerson

I think everybody’s weird.  We should all celebrate our individuality and not be embarrassed or ashamed of it.  Johnny Depp
Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.
—Viktor Frankl 

“May today there be peace within.
May you trust that you are exactly where you are meant to be.
May you not forget the infinite possibilities that are born of faith in yourself and others.
May you use the gifts that you have received, and pass on the love that has been given to you.
May you be content with yourself just the way you are.
Let this acknowledgement settle into your bones,
and allow your soul the freedom to sing, dance, praise, and love.
It is there for each and every one of us.”
~ Bill O’Hanlon

The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who’ll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you. If you’re sitting around trying to dream up a great art idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens. But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and something else that you reject will push you in another direction. Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that’s almost never the case.” -Chuck Close.

Don’t cry because it’s over; smile because it happened.  Dr. Seuss

For whatever harm I have caused others, may they forgive me.  For whatever harm others have caused me, may I forgive them.  For whatever harm I have caused myself, I forgive myself.  ?-The Buddha

Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.   – The Buddha

No one saves us but ourselves.  No one can and no one may.  We ourselves must walk the walk.  -The Buddha

Peace comes from within.  Do not seek it without.  -The Buddha

Forgiveness is an act of creation.
You can choose from many ways to do it. You can forgive for now, forgive till then, forgive till the next time, forgive but give no more chances it’s a whole new game if there is another incident. You can give one more chance, give several more chances, give many chances, give chances only if.
You can forgive part, all, or half of the offense. You can devise a blanket of forgiveness. You decide.
-Clarissa Pinkola Estés

Our past is a story existing only in our minds. Look, analyze, understand, and forgive. Then, as quickly as possible, chuck it. -Marianne Williamson

There’s a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” — Leonard Cohen

Maya Angelou says, “When you know better, you do better.

To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.  -Oscar Wilde

You always have time for the things [or people] you put first.

I don’t forgive people because I’m weak; I forgive them because I’m strong enough to know that people make mistakes.’ – Marilyn Monroe

South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu walked by a construction site on a temporary sidewalk the width of one person. A white man appeared at the other end, recognized Tutu, and said, “I don’t make way for gorillas.” At which Tutu stepped aside, made a deep sweeping gesture, and said, “Ah, yes, but I do.”
—Walter Wink 

Healing may not be so much about getting better, as about letting go of everything that isn’t you – all of the expectations, all of the beliefs – and becoming who you are. -Rachel Naomi Remen

When despair for the world grows in me
And I wake in the night at the least sound
In fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
…I come into the peace of wild things
Who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

-Wendell Berry

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.  Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.  it is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.  We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?  Actually, who are you not to be?  -Marianne Williamson

You can’t use up creativity.  The more you use, the more you have.  -Maya Angelou

We know what we are, but know not what we may be.  -William Shakespeare

Artists don’t show you their failures, only their successes.  -Lyric Kinard

If you really want to develop as an artist, you need to be willing to give yourself time to learn and grow from your efforts, and to acquire the techniques you need to make your vision come to life.  If you’re saying “I can’t” because you gave it one try and compared your failure to the success of someone who has put a lot of effort into learning what they do, then you are lying to yourself.  Lyric Kinard

If you’re not doing what you love you’re wasting your time.  Billy Joel

True happiness is not out there.  True happiness lies within.  -author unknown

Don’t wait for inspiration.  It comes while working.  -Henri Matisse

Even though it may only take one hour to produce a great work of art, there are years of nurtured vision and feeling in every stroke.  -Susan Easton Burns

As I’ve aged, I’ve become kinder to myself, and less critical of myself.  I’ve become my own friend.  I have seen too many dear friends leave this world too soon; before they understood the great freedom that comes with aging.  Whose business is it if I choose to read or play on the computer until 4AM or sleep until noon?  I will dance with myself to those wonderful tunes of the 60’s and 70’s and if I, at the same time, wish to weep over a lost love – I will.  I will walk the beach in a swim suit that is stretched over a bulging body, and will dive into the waves with abandon if I choose to, despite the pitying glances from the jet set.  They, too, will get old.  I know I am sometimes forgetful.  But there again, some of life is just as well forgotten.  And I eventually remember the important things.  Sure, over the years my heart has been broken.  How can your heart not break when you lose a loved one, or when a child suffers or even when somebody’s beloved pet gets hit by a car?  But broken hearts are what give us strength and understanding and compassion.  A heart never broken is pristine and sterile and will never know the joy of being imperfect.  I am so blessed to have lived long enough to have my hair turning grey, and to have my youthful laughs be forever etched into deep grooves on my face.  So many have never laughed, and so many have died before their hair could turn silver.  As you get older, it is easier to be positive.  You care less about what other people think.  I don’t question myself anymore.  I’ve even earned the right to be wrong.  So, to answer your question, I like being old. It has set me free. I like the person I have become. I am not going to live forever, but while I am still here, I will not waste time lamenting what could have been, or worrying about what will be. And I shall eat dessert every single day (if I feel like it).    -from an email sent my a friend