Color and Light

Colors are the smiles of nature.
- Leigh Hunt

All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of a single candle.
- St. Francis of Assisi

Paint your life in bright bold colors,
and shine your light into the darkness.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: The Canvas Of Life

Create Light for Others

A Light from Within

Calm During Storms

Walking Your Path

There's a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.
- the character Morpheus in the movie The Matrix

Travelers, there is no path.
Paths are made by walking.
- Antonio Machado

Everywhere is within walking distance if you have the time.
- Steven Wright

If you don't like the road you're walking,
start paving another one.
- Dolly Parton

Remember: Always walk in the light.
And if you feel like you're not walking in it,
go find it.
Love the light.
- Roberta Flack

Further reading: Pragmatism

Accepting the Fear of Change

Working Toward a Better World

Be Boldly Decisive

True Measure of a Successful Life

To leave the world a bit better ...
to know that one life has breathed easier because you have lived.
This is to have succeeded.
- Bessie A. Stanley (commonly attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson)

What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult for each other?
- George Eliot

What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us;
what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal.
- Albert Pike

Believe in yourself,
in your vision for your future,
and in your ability to take a small step
each day toward achieving your vision.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: Stand Together

Pay It Forward

Turn Crisis into Progress

Plant Trees For Your Grandchildren

March On

True Understanding

There is a great difference between knowing and understanding:
you can know a lot about something and not really understand it.
- Charles Kettering

To be surprised, to wonder, is to begin to understand.
- Jose Ortega Y Gasset

If you understand, things are just as they are;
if you do not understand, things are just as they are.
- Zen Proverb

I hear and I forget.
I see and I remember.
I do and I understand.
- Chinese proverb

The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it.
- Mark Twain

Not until we are lost
do we begin to understand ourselves.
- Henry David Thoreau

The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.
- Robertson Davies

Further reading: Listen, Really Listen to Understand

Open Minds

Understand More, Fear Less

Knowledge is Soon Changed

Seek the Truth

The Price of Anger

Anger is like a thorn in the heart.
- Yiddish Proverb

There was never an angry man that thought his anger unjust.
- Saint Francis de Sales

When you are offended at any man's fault,
turn to yourself and study your own failings.
Then you will forget your anger.
- Epictetus

Being angry is as close as a human being
can come to experiencing hell on earth.
Pause. Breathe deeply. Step back and look at the issue from a new perspective.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: Stop Anger Before It Stops You

De-Stress Your Life

Overcoming Anger

Never Speak while Angry

Anger is a Killing Thing

Familiarity

What is it about sameness that so draws me,
and how could I begin to have
that same kind of attraction to change?
- Mary Anne Radmacher

Familiarity breeds contempt.
- Aesop

Although we love the idea of choice
(our culture almost worships it),
we seek refuge in the familiar and the comfortable.
- Hugh Mackay

It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure,
to embrace the new.
But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful.
There is more security in the adventurous and exciting,
for in movement there is life, and in change there is power.
- Alan Cohen

Sadly, there is comfort in what we find familiar,
even when it causes us pain and suffering.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: Beneath the Face of the Familiar

Be an Instrument of Change

Dangers of Familiarity

Our Habits

Sharing Happiness

Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle,
and the life of the candle will not be shortened.
Happiness never decreases by being shared.
- The Buddha

We are not cisterns made for hoarding,
we are channels made for sharing.
- Billy Graham

The happiness of one's own heart alone
cannot satisfy the soul;
one must try to include,
as necessary to one's own happiness,
the happiness of others.
- Paramahansa Yogananda

It's about sharing.
You just give what you have to give
wherever you go,
and you let God handle the rest.
- Lindsay Wagner

The miracle is this: the more we share the more we have.
- Leonard Nimoy

You can't live a perfect day without doing something
for someone who will never be able to repay you.
- John Wooden

A bone to the dog is not charity.
Charity is the bone shared with the dog,
when you are just as hungry as the dog.
- Jack London

Whatever you do or don't do in your lifetime,
your best contribution to those around you
and to future generations
will be in the happiness and joy
you generated and radiated to those around you.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: As you sow, so shall you reap

Being an Open Channel

Love Tenderly

Radiate Your Happiness to the World

Our Shared Humanity

Watch What You Pray For

If God listened to the prayers of men,
all men would quickly have perished:
for they are forever praying for evil against one another.
- Epicurus

Never pray for justice, because you might get some.
- Margaret Atwood
[Consider how often the word "justice" really means "revenge."]

Our prayers should be for blessings in general,
for God knows best what is good for us.
- Socrates

I have lived to thank God that all my prayers have not been answered.
- Jean Ingelow

The only time my prayers are never answered is on the golf course.
- Billy Graham

Who rises from prayer a better man, his prayer is answered.
- George Meredith

Further reading: Thank You Prayer

Your Own Darkness

Love even those who hate you

Categorizing People

Choose To Be Fearless

Giving Thanks for the Commonplace

The enlightened give thanks for what most people take for granted.
- Michael Beckwith

A thankful heart is the greatest virtue.
- Cicero

The invariable mark of wisdom is to
see the miraculous in the common.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Today's affirmation:
I find joy and inspiration in the commonplace
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: Beauty is Everywhere

Appreciating Today

The Commonplace

Simple Pleasures

Daily Renewal

Heaven on Earth

Heaven is within us, and we experience it
to the degree that we become conscious of it.
- Ernest Holmes

Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.
- Henry David Thoreau

Heaven means to be one with God.
- Confucius

Affirmation:
I am one with Spirit. Spirit is within me.
Spirit permeates me and surrounds me.
Spirit is my comfort and my strength.
I am one with Spirit.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: Serving Others (pathway to Heaven)

Being at Peace

An Attitude of Gratitude

Happiness in Cheering Others

Welcome to Our Family

How Hard?

Life is as easy or as hard as you think it is.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Your success and happiness lies in you.
Resolve to keep happy, and your joy and you
shall form an invincible host against difficulties.
- Helen Keller

When I hear somebody sigh, "Life is hard,"
I am always tempted to ask, Compared to what?
- Sydney Harris

In the midst of difficulty lies opportunity.
- Albert Einstein

What if we just acted like everything was easy?
- Mary Anne Radmacher

Adversity can crush our spirit - or strengthen it - it is our choice.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Whenever you say or even think, "This is hard," that task or challenge becomes difficult. Dread it, and it becomes terrifying.

When you choose to move past fear - fear of failure, fear of embarrassment, fear of "looking bad," fear of losing respect - life becomes much lighter, and most any task becomes possible - perhaps even enjoyable. Most any challenge can become an adventure of discovery.

Further reading: Do not rail against life

Life is Really Simple

How to Cope With Life

Strength In Hard Times

Why Me, God?

Overcome Being Negative

A Shadow Cast

Everything that we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Beware lest you lose the substance by grasping at the shadow.
- Aesop

Most of the shadows of life are caused
by standing in our own sunshine.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Not everything that casts a long shadow is to be feared.
Often the trouble you fear is no more than bluff and bluster.
Fear is a bully that dissolves when confronted.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: The Shadow of Worry

Discovery and adventure, rather than fear

Getting Better

The Power of Your Intention

Through the Eyes of Another

You never really understand a person
until you consider things from his point of view.
- Harper Lee

As we grow as unique persons, we learn to respect
the uniqueness of others.
- Robert H. Schuller

It is not our differences that divide us.
It is our inability to recognize, accept,
and celebrate those differences.
- Audre Lorde

The essence of compassion is accepting others as unique individuals,
without believing that they are less good for not being carbon copies of ourselves.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading:  Tolerance

Open Minds

Diversity

Travel

To Serve

The purpose of human life is to serve,
and to show compassion and the will to help others.
- Albert Schweitzer

It's a privilege to serve the poor.
- Bono 

The only way you can serve God is by serving other people.
- Rick Warren

We come nearest to the great
when we are great in humility.
- Rabindranath Tagore

Love your neighbor as yourself.
- Leviticus 19:18

Further reading: Create Light for Others

How to Choose Your Life Purpose

Choosing Your Destination

We Belong to Each Other

Inner Life - Outer Life

Don't be a Pessimist

The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity.
The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
- Winston Churchill

Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement.
Nothing can be done without hope or confidence.
- Helen Keller

In spite of unseasonable wind, snow and unexpected weather of all sorts –
a gardener still plants. And tends what they have planted ...
believing that Spring will come.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

Positive thinking will let you do everything
better than negative thinking will.
- Zig Ziglar

Sow optimism and hard work; reap a harvest of success and joy.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: Dangers of Pessimism

Understand More, Fear Less

Is your glass of life half empty? Or half full?

Attitude is Everything

Look on The Bright Side

Thinking as Creation

What we think, we become.
All that we are arises with our thoughts.
With our thoughts, we make the world.
- The Buddha

The ancestor of every action is a thought.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Your inner thoughts reveal your true nature.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Self-disciplined begins with the mastery of your thoughts.
If you don't control what you think, you can't control what you do.
Simply, self-discipline enables you to think first and act afterward.
- Napoleon Hill

Every thought we think is creating our future.
- Louise L. Hay

Your worst enemy cannot harm you as much as
your own unguarded thoughts.
- The Buddha

Further reading: Your Inner Thoughts

Life Is A Mirror

Choose Not To Stress

First Boots

When we step on the battlefield, I will be
The First Boots On and the Last Boots Off.
- LtG. Hal Moore

A leader is not one who says, "Follow me."
A leader is one who says, "I'll go first."
- Neale Donald Walsch

Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers,
who can cut through argument, debate, and doubt
to offer a solution everybody can understand.
- Colin Powell

Successful leadership requires accepting responsibility,
making commitments and consistently delivering on those commitments,
and always setting an outstanding example for those you lead.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: Being a Leader

Leading by Example

Teaching by Example

Fulfilling Your Dreams

Self Pity

Feeling sorry for yourself, and your present condition,
is not only a waste of energy
but the worst habit you could possibly have.
- Dale Carnegie

Self-pity is our worst enemy
and if we yield to it,
we can never do anything wise in this world.
- Helen Keller

We have met the enemy and he is us.
- Walt Kelly (Pogo comic strip)

Improve what you can
and accept all the rest of life
just as it comes.
Know that fear is your worst enemy -
perhaps your only enemy.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: How to Stay Positive

Is your glass of life half empty? Or half full?

How to Feel Better About Yourself

How to Cope with Loneliness
 

Choosing to be Courageous

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.
- Anaïs Nin

Let us not pray to be sheltered from dangers
but to be fearless when facing them.
- Rabindranath Tagore

Can you imagine a life with no fear?
What if faith, not fear, was your default reaction to threats?
- Max Lucado

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt

A life lived in fear is a life half lived.
- Anonymous

There can be no happiness when one lives in fear.
Whatever the future holds, fear will not improve tomorrow,
and it will destroy your happiness today.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: A Life Without Fear

The Power of Courage

Coping with Anxiety

Rattlesnake of the Mind

Eye of the Storm

Forgiveness: Path to Inner Peace

Forgiveness is not always easy.
At times, it feels more painful
than the wound we suffered,
to forgive the one that inflicted it.
And yet, there is no peace without forgiveness.
- Marianne Williamson

Forgiveness ... is the finishing of old business
that allows us to experience the present,
free of contamination from the past.
- Joan Borysenko

Forgiveness means letting go of the hope for a better past.
- Lama Surya Das

Forgive those who have injured you -
not because they deserve your forgiveness,
but because you can never be happy until
you release your anger and grant forgiveness.
Forgiving is not a gift to someone else -
Forgiving is your gift to yourself - a great gift - the gift of happiness.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: Forgive Others for Your Own Sake

Forgiveness is Essential to a Great Relationship

How to Forgive and Move On

Stop Anger Before it Stops You 

Your Own Reality

You Create Your Own Reality.
- Anonymous

Your thoughts create your reality.
Your mind is more powerful than you know.
- Neale Donald Walsch

Reality is what you believe it to be.
It's what you put your thought and energy into,
because your hands physically manifest thought.
So your world becomes what you feel and what you think.
- Jewel

The world you see has nothing to do with reality.
It is of your own making and does not exist.
- A Course In Miracles

May Your Most Beautiful Dreams Become Your Reality.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: What is Real?

Life: Mystery and Riddle

Not As It Appears

Dream To Reality

Pleasing Everyone

Happiness is Contagious

Be careful the friends you choose - for you will become like them.
- W. Clement Stone

Remember that happiness is as contagious as gloom.
It should be the first duty of those who are happy
to let others know of their gladness.
- Maurice Maeterlinck

Confidence is contagious.
So is lack of confidence.
- Vince Lombardi

Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand,
the spines of others are often stiffened.
- Billy Graham

It's your life.
Live it with people who are alive.
It tends to be contagious.
- Peter McWilliams

Further reading: Happy Friends - Happy You

Choosing Your Friends

Radiate Your Happiness to the World

What If Happiness...

Happiness in Cheering Others

Progress

The world moves, and ideas that were
once good are not always good.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas
as in escaping from old ones.
- John Maynard Keynes

There are no constraints on the human mind,
no walls around the human spirit, no barriers to our
progress except those we ourselves erect.
- Ronald Reagan

The world hates change, yet it is the only thing that has brought progress.
- Charles Kettering (1876-1958 - holder of 186 US Patents, including the automotive electric starter)

The test of our progress is not whether we add more
to the abundance of those who have much.
It is whether we provide enough for those who have little.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt

Further reading: Working Toward a Better World

Never Try To Stop The Music

Moving Forward

The momentum of progress is unstoppable.

Turning Crisis into Progress

Ego/Pride

A man's pride shall bring him low,
but honor shall uphold the humble in spirit.
- Proverbs 29:23

The ego lives by comparisons...
The ego cannot survive without judgment.
- A Course in Miracles

We take refuge in pride because we are afraid to tell the truth to ourselves.
- Kakuzo Okakura

You never really learn much from hearing yourself speak.
- George Clooney

Pride comes in two flavors -
choose honor, not ego.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: my thoughts on ego

The Problem with Comparisons

Respecting Yourself Without Ego

Against the Flow

All your anxiety is because of your desire for harmony.
Seek disharmony, then you will gain peace.
- Rumi

Music, to create harmony, must investigate discord.
- Plutarch

What is happiness except the simple harmony
between a man and the life he leads?
- Albert Camus

You don't get harmony when everybody sings the same note.
- Doug Floyd

Almost no virtues in this life are absolute. While the quest for harmony is generally the path to a joyful life, consider those occasions when creating, or at least welcoming, disharmony is beneficial.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: My Own Person

Understand More, Fear Less

The Canvas Of Life

How To Not Care What Others Think 

Fake It 'Til You Make It

Act the way you'd like to be
and soon you'll be the way you act.
- Leonard Cohen

Repeat anything often enough
and it will start to become you.
- Tom Hopkins

We are what we repeatedly do.
Excellence then is not an act, but a habit.
- Will Durant (commonly attributed to Aristotle)

Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile,
but sometimes your smile
can be the source of your joy.
- Thich Nhat Hanh

Inner Smile Exercise:
1. Close your eyes.
2. Breath slowly, deeply, and consciously.
3. Set the corners of your mouth in just the slightest smile.
4. Visualize your smile growing larger and larger, and your happiness increasing.

A smile that begins as an effort and a pretense
quickly grows to become genuine,
and given time, a habit of happiness.

Although it is always better to live with conviction and enthusiasm,
some days it is better just to go through the motions than to do nothing.
Smile even when you feel grumpy.
Meditate or Pray even when you have nothing to say to God.
Cook a healthy meal even when you are tired.
Walk or exercise even when the thought doesn't excite you.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: Tending the Garden of Our Lives

Ten Little Tips to Feel Happier Right Now

Choose Your Habits, Choose Your Life

Practice makes perfect - sometimes

Grin your smile; giggle your laugh; unfurl your joy 

Overcome Being Negative

Know that You have been Blessed

Live life as if everything is rigged in your favor.
- Rumi

Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ask and it will be given to you;
seek and you will find;
knock and the door will be opened to you.
- Matthew 7:7

Miracles are the natural way of the Universe -
our only job is to move our doubting minds aside
and let the miracles flow.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

A wonderful gift may not be wrapped as you expect;
be open to receiving the bounty of the Universe.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: More about "A wonderful gift may not be wrapped as you expect"

Life Really Is Good

Recognizing Our Abundance

What If Happiness...

Gratitude for THIS Moment

Our Children's Earth

Treat the earth well.
It was not given to you by your parents,
it was loaned to you by your children.
We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors,
we borrow it from our Children.
- Native American traditional

A man is ethical only when life, as such, is sacred to him,
that of plants and animals as that of his fellow men,
and when he devotes himself helpfully to all life that is in need of help.
- Albert Schweitzer

Be gentle with the earth.
- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama

Everything you do, and everything you do not do, is your legacy to future generations.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: The World We Leave Our Children

Bounty of the Earth

Spend Time In Nature

Natural World

Time to Smell the Flowers

You're only here for a short visit.
Don't hurry. Don't worry.
And be sure to smell the flowers along the way.
- Walter Hagen

Who forces time is pushed back by time;
who yields to time finds time on his side.
- The Talmud

The key to happiness is inner peace.
The greatest obstacles to inner peace are disturbing emotions
such as anger, attachment, fear and suspicion,
while love and compassion and a sense of universal responsibility
are the sources of peace and happiness.
- Dalai Lama

Life only appears complicated when one is worrying.
Relax, and life becomes simple again.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: You Can Be Happy

Choose Not To Stress

Your Relationship with Time

Never Quit??

"Never quit" is one of those very common expressions that contains only one aspect of an important larger truth. Persistence is a virtue only when the goal is both desirable and attainable. There is no dishonor in redirecting your energies to more worthy or achievable goals.

Successful people are simply those with successful habits.
- Brian Tracy

If we want to direct our lives,
we must take control of our consistent actions.
It's not what we do once in a while that shapes our lives,
but what we do consistently.
- Anthony Robbins

Habit and routine have an unbelievable power to waste and destroy.
- Henri de Lubac

The most dangerous phrase in the language is,
"We've always done it this way."
- Grace Hopper

Further reading: We Are What We Do Consistently

Committed yet Flexible

Bad Habits

Healthy Choices