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To be oneself is a rare thing, and a great one.
- Ursula K. Le Guin
Related topics: Values
To oppose something is to maintain it.
- Ursula K. Le Guin
To light a candle is to cast a shadow.
- Ursula K. Le Guin
There's a point... when you have to choose
whether to be like everybody else the rest of your life,
or to make a virtue of your peculiarities.
- Ursula K. Le Guin
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It is the journey that matters, in the end
- Ursula K. Le Guin
There are no right answers to wrong questions.
- Ursula K. Le Guin
It is good to have an end to journey towards;
but it is the journey that matters in the end.
- Ursula K. Le Guin
The only questions that really matter are the ones you ask yourself.
- Ursula K. Le Guin
It is above all by the imagination
that we achieve perception and compassion and hope.
- Ursula K. Le Guin
I had forgotten how much light there is in the world,
'til you gave it back to me.
- Ursula K. Le Guin
Morning comes whether you set the alarm or not.
- Ursula K. Le Guin
Though I am a servant, I am not your servant.
- Ursula K. Le Guin
Love doesn't just sit there like a stone;
it has to be made,like bread,
remade all the time, made new.
- Ursula K. Le Guin
My imagination makes me human and makes me a fool;
it gives me all the world and exiles me from it.
- Ursula K. Le Guin
The only thing that makes life possible
is permanent, intolerable uncertainty;
not knowing what comes next.
- Ursula K. Le Guin
These are the keys to a great life...
taking oneself lightly, forgiveness, and acceptance.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily.
Not to dare is to lose oneself.
- Soren Kierkegaard
When you are alone you are not alone,
you are simply lonely -
and there is a tremendous difference
between loneliness and aloneness.
When you are lonely you are thinking of the other,
you are missing the other.
Loneliness is a negative state.
You are feeling that it would have been
better if the other were there -
your friend, your wife, your mother,
your beloved, your husband.
It would have been good if the other
were there, but the other is not.
Loneliness is absence of the other.
Aloneness is the presence of oneself.
Aloneness is very positive.
It is a presence, overflowing presence.
You are so full of presence
that you can fill the whole universe
with your presence and there is no need for anybody.
- Osho
To know how to free oneself is nothing;
the arduous thing is to know what to do with one's freedom.
- Andre Gide
The acceptance of oneself is
the essence of the whole moral problem
and the epitome of a whole outlook on life.
- Carl Jung
Don't aim at success.
The more you aim at it and make it a target,
the more you are going to miss it.
For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued;
it must ensue, and it only does so as
the unintended side effect of one's personal dedication
to a cause greater than oneself.
- Viktor E. Frankl
Testing oneself is best when done alone.
- Jimmy Carter
Violence, even well intentioned,
always rebounds upon oneself.
- Lao Tzu
If you are disabled, it is probably not your fault,
but it is no good blaming the world or expecting it to take pity on you.
One has to have a positive attitude
and must make the best of the situation that one finds oneself in.
If one is physically disabled,
one cannot afford to be psychologically disabled as well.
- Stephen Hawking
To accuse others for one's own misfortunes
is a sign of want of education.
To accuse oneself shows that one's education has begun.
To accuse neither oneself nor others
shows that one's education is complete.
- Epictetus
My experience has been that work is
almost the best way to pull oneself out of the depths.
- Eleanor Roosevelt
A quotation is a handy thing to have about,
saving one the trouble of thinking for oneself.
- A. A. Milne (Winnie-The-Pooh)
One defeats a fanatic precisely by not being a fanatic oneself,
but on the contrary by using one's intelligence.
- George Orwell
When one gets angry, it is always angry AT someone -
perhaps a friend or spouse, perhaps a stranger,
perhaps the nameless "they" - "those people at the bank wronged me,"
perhaps God, or perhaps oneself.
In any case, when one gets angry,
they want to find someone to be "responsible" for what happened.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Toleration is the greatest gift of the mind;
it requires the same effort of the brain
that it takes to balance oneself on a bicycle.
- Helen Keller
Those who are dedicated to a life of wisdom
understand that the impulse to blame
something or someone is foolishness,
that there is nothing to be gained in blaming,
whether it be others or oneself.
- Epictetus
Sometimes, indeed, there is such a discrepancy
between the genius and his human qualities
that one has to ask oneself whether
a little less talent might not have been better.
- Carl Jung
One's own religion is after all
a matter between oneself
and one's Maker and no one else's.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi
However rare true love may be,
it is less so than true friendship.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Real friendships among men are so rare
that when they occur they are famous.
- Clarence Day
Friends are those rare people who ask how we are
and then wait to hear the answer.
- Anonymous
Each contact with a human being is so rare, so precious,
one should preserve it.
- Anais Nin
Go ahead. Weep for the rare,
the never seen this way again,
the excruciating, ineffable,
unmitigated beauty of love.
- Mary Anne Radmacher
Friendship without self-interest
is one of the rare and beautiful things in life.
- James Francis Byrnes
Time to Die:
A Zen teacher had a rare and priceless teacup.
One day, his precocious student accidentally broke the cup.
Hearing the footsteps of his teacher,
the student held the pieces of the cup behind his back.
When the master appeared, he asked: "Why do people have to die?"
"This is natural," explained the teacher.
"Everything has to die and has just so long to live."
The student showed the shattered cup, saying,
"It was time for your cup to die."
- Traditional Zen Koan
It is curious - curious that physical courage
should be so common in the world, and moral courage so rare
- Mark Twain
If you can speak what you will never hear,
if you can write what you will never read,
you have done rare things.
- Henry David Thoreau
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph
is for enough good men to do nothing.
- Edmund Burke
It is a terrible thing to see and have no vision.
- Helen Keller
Take time to play!
Ask for what you want.
Laugh.
Live loudly.
Be avid.
Learn a new thing.
Be Yourself!
- Mary Anne Radmacher
The Main Thing is to Keep
The Main Thing The Main Thing.
- Stephen Covey
Worry often gives a small thing a big shadow.
- Swedish Proverb
We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men
who walked through the huts comforting others,
giving away their last piece of bread...
They offer sufficient proof that everything
can be taken from a man but one thing:
to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances,
to choose one's own way.
- Viktor E. Frankl
Fear defeats more people than
any other one thing in the world.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Whenever you do a thing,
act as if all the world were watching.
- Thomas Jefferson
When a thing is funny, search it for a hidden truth.
- George Bernard Shaw
Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.
- Winston Churchill
The truth. It is a beautiful and terrible thing,
and should be treated with caution.
- J. K. Rowling
Take your life in your own hands, and what happens?
A terrible thing: no one to blame.
- Erica Jong
I teach one thing and one only:
that is, suffering and the end of suffering.
- The Buddha
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful,
committed people can change the world.
Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
- Margaret Mead
Confidence is the most important thing,
more important than gold or currency.
- Wen Jiabao
Appreciation is a wonderful thing.
It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.
- Voltaire
Every time you smile at someone,
it is an action of love,
a gift to that person, a beautiful thing.
- Mother Teresa
Mistakes are, after all, the foundations of truth,
and if a man does not know what a thing is,
it is at least an increase in knowledge
if he knows what it is not.
- Carl Jung
The thing always happens that you really believe in;
and the belief in a thing makes it happen.
- Frank Lloyd Wright
We cannot change our past.
We cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way.
We cannot change the inevitable.
The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have,
and that is our attitude.
I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me
and 90% how I react to it.
- Charles R. Swindoll
The reward of a thing well done, is to have done it.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience
in which you really stop to look fear in the face.
You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.
- Eleanor Roosevelt
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing
over and over and expecting different results.
- Albert Einstein
If I could tell the world just one thing
it would be we're all okay,
and not to worry cause worry is wasteful
and useless in times like these.
I won't be made useless.
I won't be idle with despair,
I will gather myself around my faith.
Light does the darkness most fear.
- Jewel
Love: if you have to ask,
it's not the real thing.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Diversity is the one true thing we all have in common.
Celebrate it every day.
- Anonymous
"Be Prepared."
"Be prepared for what?"
"Why, for any old thing."
- Robert Baden-Powell,
the founder of Scouting.
[as quoted in the Boy Scout Handbook]
No great thing is created suddenly.
- Epictetus
You must do the thing that you think you cannot do.
- Eleanor Roosevelt
Thank you for visiting: To be oneself is a rare thing, and a great one. ... by Ursula K. Le Guin.
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Thank you, Jonathan Lockwood Huie
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