Self-Empowerment

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 say, "How good or how bad am I?" That's where courage comes in.

            --  Erma Bombeck

Never grow a wishbone, daughter, where you backbone ought to be.

            --  Clementine Paddleford

Be afraid of nothing

  you have within you–

            all wisdom

            all power

            all strength

            all understanding.

                        --  Eileen Caddy

Shakkai: Only if you have ego is there a conflict between the dark and the light. If there is no ego, there is no fight. There is only a divine vulnerability, which is your very best shield and defense.

            -- Lynn Andrews, Woman of the Sacred Garden

What is needed, rather than running away or controlling or suppressing or any other

resistance, is understanding fear; that means, watch it, learn about it, come directly into

contact with it. We are here to learn about fear, not how to escape from it.

            --  Jiddu Krishnamurti

The purpose of life is the expansion of happiness.

            --Deepak Chopra

You begin saving the world by saving one person at a time; all else is grandiose romanticism or politics.

            --Charles Bukowski

What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us

are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.

            --Thoreau

Always do what you are afraid to do.

            --Ralph Waldo Emerson

To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming is the only end of life.

            --Robert Louis Stevenson

You have been criticizing yourself for years, and it hasn't worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens.

            --  Louise L. Hay

Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it.

Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.

            --  Chief Seattle

I'm not afraid of storms for I'm learning how to sail my ship.

            --  Louisa May Alcott

 

Do not follow where the path may lead.

Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

            --  Muriel Strode

 

If you're able to be yourself, then you have no competition. All you have to do is get closer and closer to that essence.

            --  Barbara Cook

Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.

            --  Andre Gide

Nurture your mind with great thoughts, for you will never go any higher than you think.

            --  Benjamin Disraeli

The art of living lies not in eliminating but in growing with troubles.

            --  Bernard M. Baruch

Proust has pointed out that the predisposition to love creates its own objects;

is this not also true of fear?

            --  Elizabeth Bowen

We are so obsessed with doing

that we have no time

and no imagination left for being.

As a result, men are valued not for what they are

but for what they do or what they have

— for their usefulness.

            --  Thomas Merton

It's not true that nice guys finish last.

Nice guys are winners before the game even starts.

            --  Addison Walker

What worries you, masters you.

            --  Haddon W. Robinson

If you let fear of consequence prevent you from following your deepest instinct, then your life will be safe, expedient and thin.

            --  Katharine Butler Hathaway

"Come to the edge," he said. They said, "We are afraid." "Come to the edge," he said. They came. He pushed them ... and they flew.

            --  Guillaume Apollinaire

Confront your fears, list them, get to know them, and only then will you be able to put them aside and move ahead.

            --  Jerry Gillies

Each time a person stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, these ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

            --  Robert F. Kennedy

I have not ceased being fearful, but I have ceased to let fear control me. I have accepted fear as a part of life–specifically the fear of change, the fear of the unknown; and I have gone ahead despite the pounding in my heart that says: turn back, turn back, you'll die if you venture too far.

            --  Erica Jong

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

            --  e.e. cummings

If you listen to your fears, you will die never knowing what a great person you might have been.

            --  Robert H. Schuller

It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that things are difficult.

            --  Seneca

Something happens to me when I witness someone's courage. They may not know I'm watching and I might not let them know. But something happens to me that will last me for a lifetime. To fill me when I'm empty, and rock me when I'm low.

            --  Holly Near

Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising which tempt you to believe that your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires courage.

            --  Ralph Waldo Emerson