“If you want better answers, ask yourself better questions.”
--Tony Robbins

"Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it".
-- Michel de Montaigne

"You must learn to be still in the midst of activity and to be vibrantly alive in repose."
-- Gandhi

" Why not go out on a limb? Isn't that where the fruit is?"
-- Fortune Cookie

"It is not so important to know everything as to appreciate what we learn."
-- Hannah More

"The 'Net is a waste of time, and that's exactly what's right about it".
-- William Gibson

"I have enough money to last me the rest of my life, unless I buy something".
-- Jackie Mason

"I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence."
-- Frederick Douglass

"Why love if losing hurts so much? We love to know that we are not alone."
-- C. S. Lewis

"Humility is the embarrassment you feel when you tell people how wonderful you are".
-- Laurence J. Peter

"Live your life as an exclamation, not an explanation."
-- Life's Little Instruction Book

"I never came upon any of my discoveries through the process of rational thinking".
-- Albert Einstein

"It is every man's obligation to put back into the world at least the equivalent of what he takes out of it."
-- Albert Einstein

"Many people are wanting to fan your flames of discomfort, because they
believe that "you're either with us or against us; if you don't stand in
the same disgust and horror that we are all standing, then you are not
with us." It's hard for people to understand that you can not agree with
them -- and not be against them. That you could be for something without
being against something else."
-- Abraham-Hicks

"If you want an average successful life, it doesn’t take much planning. Just stay out of trouble, go to school, and apply for jobs you might like. But if you want something extraordinary, you have two paths:

1. Become the best at one specific thing.
2. Become very good (top 25%) at two or more things.

The first strategy is difficult to the point of near impossibility. Few people will ever play in the NBA or make a platinum album. I don’t recommend anyone even try.

The second strategy is fairly easy. Everyone has at least a few areas in which they could be in the top 25% with some effort. In my case, I can draw better than most people, but I’m hardly an artist. And I’m not any funnier than the average standup comedian who never makes it big, but I’m funnier than most people. The magic is that few people can draw well and write jokes. It’s the combination of the two that makes what I do so rare. And when you add in my business background, suddenly I had a topic that few cartoonists could hope to understand without living it.

I always advise young people to become good public speakers (top 25%). Anyone can do it with practice. If you add that talent to any other, suddenly you’re the boss of the people who have only one skill. Or get a degree in business on top of your engineering degree, law degree, medical degree, science degree, or whatever. Suddenly you’re in charge, or maybe you’re starting your own company using your combined knowledge.

Capitalism rewards things that are both rare and valuable. You make yourself rare by combining two or more “pretty goods” until no one else has your mix. I didn’t spend much time with the script supervisor, but it was obvious that her verbal/writing skills were in the top tier as well as her people skills. I’m guessing she also has a high attention to detail, and perhaps a few other skills in the mix. Probably none of those skills are best in the world, but together they make a strong package. Apparently she’s been in high demand for decades.

At least one of the skills in your mixture should involve communication, either written or verbal. And it could be as simple as learning how to sell more effectively than 75% of the world. That’s one. Now add to that whatever your passion is, and you have two, because that’s the thing you’ll easily put enough energy into to reach the top 25%. If you have an aptitude for a third skill, perhaps business or public speaking, develop that too.

It sounds like generic advice, but you’d be hard pressed to find any successful person who didn’t have about three skills in the top 25%.

What are your three?"

-- Scott Adams, on his Dilbert Blog.

"Fear not for the future, weep not for the past."
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley,English poet

"As children, we lived our lives using the more the creative “right” side of our brain. As we got older, we had a tendency to pull away from our right side and rely more on the intellectual “left” side of our brain. Layers upon layers of life’s issues begin to attach to us, and slowly we can no longer feel our spirit as we once did. This week try doing something creative, such as taking a class where you can sketch, draw, write, paint, color, sing, or do whatever works for you. Wake up your spirit as you get back in the flow of using your creative and intuitive side once again".
-- John Holland

"When others start telling us their problems, too many of us respond instantly with what we believe would be best. Quick responses or quick fixes are not always the best way, since that person may only be venting or expressing their thoughts. Sometimes we must recognize when it’s right to be silent. Sometimes that soul needs to go through what it is they’re experiencing currently in their life. Who are we to pull them from that souls lesson? Use your intuition wisely for a more considered response — if one is really needed".
-- John Holland

"I want my funeral to be a real happy time. I want everybody laughing and remembering how crazy I was."
-- Tammy Faye Bakker, 1942-2007, as told to Larry King, and quoted in her obituary in today's New York Times.

"Hate is too great a burden to bear. It injures the hater more than it injures the hated."
-- Coretta Scott King

"I think the one lesson I have learned is that there is no substitute for paying attention."
-- Diane Sawyer

"When someone does something good, applaud! You will make two people happy."
-- Samuel Goldwyn

"You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club."
-- Jack London

"Whether or not you write well, write bravely."
-- Bill Stout

"A dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more than he loves himself."
-- Josh Billings

"Do you have a purpose? Do you have a calling? Do you have a vocation?...I want to suggest to you that whether or not you have a job, everyone has a vocation, and that vocation is to live a life that is worth living. The best advice I can give is that which St. Paul gives us in Romans 12, where he says to the likes of you, who all look alike from here, ''Be not conformed to this world.'' Do not join the throng. Don't get lost in the crowd. Don't be a part of the cookie-manufactured college generation, but stake out for yourselves some extraordinary, maybe even eccentric, piece and place of the world, and make it your own".
-- Rev. Peter J. Gomes 

"Lesson No. 1: You cannot plan the rest of your life". 
-- John Grisham 

"I was a songwriter, I was struggling, and I loved it. I wanted to be the greatest songwriter. I was writing about everything -- everything I saw. But I was not making money, and I finally agreed with everyone I ever talked to who knew me, who said, ''Boy, you need to get a job -- a real one.'' So I got a job on the Ford assembly line. And every day I watched how a bare metal frame rolling down the line would come off the other end a spanking brand-new car. Wow, I thought. What a great idea. Maybe I can do the same thing with my music -- create a place where a kid off the street can walk in one door an unknown and come out another door a star. That little thought that came to me while running up and down that assembly line at Ford Motor Company became a reality you now know as Motown."
-- Berry Gordy

"It has been a wonderful life. I feel like a jug into which wine is
poured until it overflows."
-- Lady Bird Johnson, 1912-2007

"Inspiration comes forth from within. It's what the light burning within
you is about, as opposed to motivation, which is doing it because if you
don't do it, there will be negative repercussions. Motivation is making
myself do something that I don't really want to do. Inspiration is
having the clear picture of what I am wanting -- and letting Universal
forces come into play to get the outcome".
-- Abraham-Hicks

"A dream becomes a goal when action is taken toward its achievement".
-- Bo Bennett

"The vision that you glorify in your mind, the ideal that you enthrone in your heart - this you will build your life by, and this you will become".
-- James Allen

"I am an optimist. I am short, and short people can only see the glass as half full. So optimize who you are and what you are. Optimize your experiences and what you have learned. Optimize others. Optimize your opportunities. Seize them and do meaningful things".  -- Shirley Ann Jackson

"We all have things that oftentimes we're upset about, or ashamed of, or
feel guilty over, and so many people carry these enormous burdens
around. One of the great gifts of faith is to let it go."
-- Hillary Rodham Clinton

"Every time you say, 'I appreciate that. I really like that. I applaud that. I acknowledge the value in that.' Every time you do that, you spend some of your Energy, and it is the spending of the Energy that creates a vacuum, so to speak, or an attraction, so to speak, that draws more and more and more and more".
-- Abraham-Hicks

"If you want your life to be a magnificent story, then begin by
realizing that you are the author and every day you have the opportunity
to write a new page."
-- Mark Houlahan, on the chalkboard at Giorgio's Grill this morning.

"This is a working day in the rest of the world, and, for that matter, a working day in the middle of the working week. The Fourth of July, a day that is central to our sense of our own history, will pass uncapitalized around the rest of the globe. It’s a local holiday, after all, nevermind how large our idea of local may be.

"But the idea of freedom is not local. It is universal. Even in these very difficult times, four years deep into a war that has turned much of the world against this country, when some political leaders seek to arrogate the idea of freedom as their own political preserve, the universal freedom described in the Declaration of Independence remains a fundamental truth.

"Our own domestic history has made it clear how deeply acculturated that original idea of freedom really was, but also how difficult it has been, and still is, to win political and economic freedom for every American. The desire for freedom is part of human nature. But what matters as much as the principle of freedom is the practice of it.

"Ideas have a way of recommending themselves by the behavior of the men and women who hold them, and this is no less true of nations. The question isn’t simply whether we can project our ideal of freedom around the world. The question is whether, by who we are and how we behave, we can make the freedom that animates us compelling to others.

"The country looks inward on the Fourth of July — not in introspection, but in an easy, comfortable sense of historical gratification. Yet this is a good day to look outward as well.

"It is a day to ask how good a job — from the world’s perspective — we are doing living up to the principles enunciated in the Declaration of Independence, whether we have done enough to make those sonorous old rights seem like more than a limited case in a limited argument. The answer is more equivocal than we like to believe. But the ideal is one that must drive us all."

-- Editorial, The New York Times.

"The bridge from challenge to reality is built with inspiration."
-- Deb Siber

"Maturity begins to grow when you can sense your concern for others outweighing your concern for yourself." 
-- John Macnaughton

"The tragedy of life does not lie, young folk, in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach. It is not a calamity to die with dreams unfulfilled, but it is a calamity not to dream. It is not a disaster to not be able to capture your ideals, but it is a disaster to have no ideals to capture. It is not a disgrace to not be able to reach all the stars, but it is a disgrace to have no stars to reach for".
-- Tavis Smiley

" Part of noticing intuitive signs, signals, and those gentle nudges is becoming more conscious of what you’re doing in your everyday life. This week, if you’re having a cup of tea, then just drink your tea. If you’re enjoying a meal, then just eat your meal. If you’re walking, just walk. Appreciate, focus, and be in the moment. By doing so, you’ll remain in the powerful present, and that way, your intuition has a better chance of getting your attention".
-- John Holland

"It is never too late -- in fiction or in life -- to revise."
-- Nancy Thayer 

"The bridge from challenge to reality is built with inspiration."
-- Deb Siber, on the chalkboard at Giorgio's Country Grill this morning.

"When you come to the end of all the light you know, and it's time to step into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing that one of two things shall happen: Either you will be given something solid to stand on or you will be taught to fly."
-- Edward Teller

"Your happiness is the most significant contribution that you could make. In your reaching for happiness, you are opening a vortex which makes you an avenue for the Well-being to flow through you. And anything that is your object of attention under those conditions, benefits by the infusion of your Well-being".
-- Abraham-Hicks

"Whatever you're thinking about is literally like planning a future event. When you're worrying, you are planning. When you're appreciating you are planning...What are you planning?"
-- Abraham-Hicks

"You can't hold a man down without staying down with him." -- Booker T. Washington,

"Determination is the wake-up call to the human will."
-- Fortune Cookie

“Like a shark that forces water through its gills to breathe, I believed that if I kept moving, I could stay cool.” -- Anderson Cooper, Details Magazine (Sept. ‘03)

"The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own. You don't blame them on your mother, the ecology, or the President. You realize that you control your own destiny."
-- Albert Ellis

"Give a man a mask and he'll tell you the truth."
-- Oscar Wilde

"No man is a failure who is enjoying life."
-- William Feather

"I have discovered photography. Now I can kill myself. I have nothing else to learn."
-- Pablo Picasso

"Courage is being scared to death - But saddling up anyway."
-- John Wayne, on the board at Giorgio's this morning.

"The most effective way to do it, is to do it."
-- Amelia Earhart

"If you don't like the way the world is, you can change it. Just do it one step at a time."
-- Marian Wright Edelman

"I made the decision. I'm accountable."
-- Janet Reno

"Before beginning a hunt, it is wise to ask someone what you are looking for before you begin looking for it."
-- Winnie the Pooh, as quoted today by dAAve.

"Those old habits don't have to be erased, they just become replaced by a new habit that is more in vibrational harmony with who you are and what you want".
-- Abraham-Hicks

"Contrary to general belief, I do not believe that friends are necessarily the people you like best, they are merely the people who got there first".
-- Peter Ustinov

"Defeat is not defeat unless accepted as reality in your own mind."
-- Bruce Lee, (on the board at Giorgio's this morning).

"There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered."
-- Nelson Mandela

"Happiness is an imaginary condition, formerly attributed by the living to the dead, now usually attributed by adults to children, and by children to adults".
-- Thomas Szasz

"The mind is its own kind of dance floor. What this generation could do from our rocking chairs could literally rock the world. Having slowed down physically, we’re in a better space to rev up psychically. We are shifting from the outer to the inner not in order to begin our demise, but to reseed and regreen the consciousness of the planet. And that is what is happening now: we are going slower in order to go deeper in order to go faster in the direction of urgently needed change. The conscious midlife is not an end but a new beginning."
-- Marianne Williamson

"I cannot give you a sure-fire formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure, which is: Try to please everybody."
-- Herbert B. Swope 

"There are three positive words that can help you anytime you’re feeling stressed or disconnected from your intuition. They are: “FIND YOUR CENTER.” When you say or think these three words, it immediately draws you back to your inner self. You’ll find yourself back at that place of calmness where your intuition has a clearer channel to communicate with you. Try repeating these words frequently throughout the day and you’ll remain in check with yourself as well as your spirit."
-- John Holland

"Your sacred space is where you can find yourself again and again."
-- Joseph Campbell 

"Those who bring sunshine into the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves".
-- James M. Barrie

"If I knew I was going to live this long, I'd have taken better care of myself".
-- Mickey Mantle

"The Universe does not know whether the vibration that you're offering is because of something you're observing or something you're remembering or something that you are imagining. It just receives the vibration and answers it with things that match it".
-- Abraham-Hicks.

"It's never crowded along the extra mile".
-- Wayne Dyer

"Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy."
-- Anne Frank 

"No is a complete sentence."
-- Unknown

"since we cannot change reality, let us change the eyes which see
reality"
-- nikos kazantzakis, on the chalkboard at giorgio's grill this morning.

"Never face facts; if you do, you'll never get up in the morning".
-- Marlo Thomas

"Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear -- not absence of fear."
-- Mark Twain

"Do what you feel in your heart to be right -- for you'll be criticized
anyway. You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't."
-- Eleanor Roosevelt

"You cannot run away from yourself. You're always right behind you".
-- fortune cookie

"The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity."
--Dorothy Parker

"Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts."
-- Daniel Patrick Moynihan

"Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over, it became a
butterfly."
-- Proverb, on the chalkboard at Giorgio's Grill this morning.

"Is there life before death?"
-- Graffito

"Priorities are not written in granite. They need to be flexible and change as we do…It takes peace of mind and clarity to recognize and reorder meaningful, personal priorities. Maybe that is why so many of us procrastinate."
-- Sarah Ban Breathnach

"I think hell's a real place where real people spend a real eternity".
-- Jerry Falwell, 1933-2007

"You don't stop laughing because you grow old. You grow old because you stop laughing."
-- Michael Pritchard

"Sometimes I worry about being a success in a mediocre world".
-- Lily Tomlin

"Why is it that our memory is good enough to retain the least triviality that happens to us, and yet not good enough to recollect how often we have told it to the same person?"
-- Francois de La Rochefoucauld

"A walking meditation is a beneficial alternative when sitting meditations are getting too repetitive. With each step, begin to count from one to ten. Then count from ten down to one, and start again from one up to ten. As you walk and count, keep your focus on the sole of each foot as it hits the ground. What's happening as you count one, two, three, four, and so on to your steps is that you're bringing your awareness and focus back to the powerful present."
-- John Holland

"There are two types of people -- those who come into a room and say, 'Well, here I am!' and those who come in and say, 'Ah, there you are.'"
-- Frederick Collin

"Learning from experience is a faculty almost never practiced."
-- Barbara Tuchman 

"To know the road ahead, ask those coming back".
-- Chinese proverb

"I cannot give you a sure-fire formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure, which is: Try to please everybody."
-- Herbert B. Swope 

"It's choices who make us who we are... And we can always choose to do the right thing."
-- Spiderman 3

"To do just the opposite is also a form of imitation".
-- Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

"You aren't wealthy until you have something money can't buy."
-- Garth Brooks, (on the board at Giorgio's Grill this morning).

"Never play a thing the same way twice."
-- Louis Armstrong

"There are two kinds of light -- the glow that illuminates and the glare that obscures."
-- James Thurber

"don't ever slam a door; you might want to go back".
-- fortune cookie

"He who angers you conquers you."
-- Elizabeth Kenny