The power of sentences to move, focus and remind us is wonderful – a collection of words can connect us to important qualities and a well of insight and knowing.
Try some of these quotes to orientate you back to your centre and remind you what you already know about living well:
Pain and discovery
It takes courage…to endure the sharp pains of self-discovery rather than choose to take the dull pain of unconsciousness that would last the rest of our lives. – Marianne Williamson
And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. – Anaïs Nin
I want to unfold. I don’t want to stay folded anywhere, because where I am folded, there I am untrue. – Rainer Maria Rilke
We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty. – Maya Angelou
Resistance
People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own souls. – Jung
Whatever is repressed returns later, often in disguise, to claim its due. – Roberto Assagioli
Becoming the conductor
Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate. – Jung
Universal life itself appears to us as a struggle between multiplicity and unity – a labour and an inspiration towards union. – Assagioli
Connection
Sometimes our light goes out but is blown again into flame by an encounter with another human being. – Albert Schweitzer
Presence
Self-consciousness involves our being a witness – a pure, objective, loving witness – to what is happening within and without. – Assagioli
You cannot find yourself in the past or future. The only place where you can find yourself is in the Now. – Eckhart Tolle
At the centre of your being you have the answer; you know who you are, you know what you want. – Lao Tzu
To learn to be ourselves, we have to start with what we have – and what we always have is our experience in the moment. – A.H.Almaas
Presence requires a tolerance for both uncertainty and vulnerability. – Daniel Siegel
Relationship
People don’t always remember what you say or even what you do, but they always remember how you made them feel. – Maya Angelou
To love is to recognize yourself in another. – Eckhart Tolle
Music in the soul can be heard by the Universe. – Lao Tzu
The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed. – Jung
Responsibility
Experience is not what happens to you; it’s what you do with what happens to you. – Aldous Huxley
I wanted to change the world. But I have found that the only thing one can be sure of changing is oneself. – Aldous Huxley
Journey
There is no certainty — there is only adventure. – Assagioli
The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. – Lao Tzu
A good traveller has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving. – Lao Tzu