Thoughts on Strangers from Daily Inspiration

Thoughts on Strangers

May you find inspiration in these thoughts and quotes on Strangers from my large Daily Inspiration library of inspiring quotes and inspirational words.

If you have only one smile in you,
give it to the people you love.
Don't be surly at home,
then go out in the street
and start grinning good morning
at total strangers.
- Maya Angelou

Please sign up for my Daily Inspiration email using the form below.
Thank You,
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

A single event can awaken a stranger totally unknown to us.
To live is to be slowly born.
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.
It is the source of all true art and all science.
He to whom this emotion is a stranger,
who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe,
is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.
- Albert Einstein

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life.
It turns what we have into enough, and more.
It turns denial into acceptance,
chaos to order, confusion to clarity.
It can turn a meal into a feast,
a house into a home, a stranger into a friend.
Gratitude makes sense of our past,
brings peace for today,
and creates a vision for tomorrow.
- Melody Beattie

'Tis strange - but true;
for truth is always strange;
Stranger than fiction.
- Lord Byron

We cannot possibly let ourselves get frozen into regarding
everyone we do not know as an absolute stranger.
- Albert Schweitzer

Truth is stranger than fiction,
but that is because Fiction is obliged
to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.
- Mark Twain

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

We are all "neighbors."
Our world has gotten too small for us to be anything else.
We can no longer have "us" and "them" - friends and enemies.
A person from Iraq, or Russia, or Columbia is
no more a stranger or enemy than a person from across town.
A few people everywhere are troublemakers.
Every religion provokes a few people to become extremists.
Do we need police around the globe? Unfortunately, we always will.
Do we need war? Does that question even deserve an answer?
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Laws are sand, customs are rock.
Laws can be evaded and punishment escaped,
but an openly transgressed custom brings sure punishment.
The penalty may be unfair, unrighteous, illogical, and a cruelty;
no matter, it will be inflicted, just the same.
Certainly, then, there can be but one wise thing
for a visiting stranger to do -
find out what the country's customs are,
and refrain from offending against them.
- Mark Twain

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
- Lao Tzu (Chinese Proverb)

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

To give pleasure to a single heart by a single act
is better than a thousand heads bowing in prayer.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

Life is NOT "Supposed to be Fair."
Know that there is no single way that life is "supposed" to be.
Demanding that life meet our expectations
is a sure fire recipe for a miserable existence.
Life is a game with no rules.
Life just happens to us regardless of our best intentions.
Our only path to happiness lies in being open
to receiving whatever life throws at us -
with Gratitude. Have NO Expectations of life.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

All the darkness of the world cannot
extinguish the light of a single candle,
yet one candle can illuminate all the darkness.
- Jewish Hanukah Prayer

All the great things are simple,
and many can be expressed in a single word:
freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.
- Winston Churchill

Neither should a ship rely on one small anchor,
nor should life rest on a single hope.
- Epictetus

Confidence is the most important single factor in this game,
and no matter how great your natural talent,
there is only one way to obtain and sustain it: work.
- Jack Nicklaus

Do the difficult things while they are easy
and do the great things while they are small.
A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.
- Lao Tzu

The flower which is single need not envy
the thorns that are numerous.
- Rabindranath Tagore

How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment
before starting to improve the world.
- Anne Frank

If you plan for a year, plant a seed.
If for ten years, plant a tree.
If for a hundred years, teach the people.
When you sow a seed once, you will reap a single harvest.
When you teach the people, you will reap a hundred harvests.
- Kuan Chung

Consciously adopt the mindset of a young child,
to whom all of life is a grand adventure.
Life is your playground.
Fashion grand castles and sweeping boulevards,
defeat fire-breathing dragons,
leap tall buildings in a single bound.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

A man's interest in a single bluebird
is worth more than a complete but dry list
of the fauna and flora of a town.
- Henry David Thoreau

I am so clever that sometimes I don't
understand a single word of what I am saying.
- Oscar Wilde

No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right;
a single experiment can prove me wrong.
- Albert Einstein

Two souls with but a single thought,
Two hearts that beat as one.
- Friedrich Halm

As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth,
so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind.
To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again.
To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over
the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.
- Henry David Thoreau

If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need
but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him?
- 1 John 3:17

Give me your tired, your poor,
your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.
- written on the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
- St. Francis of Assisi

One can not reflect in streaming water.
Only those who know internal peace can give it to others.
- Lao Tzu

No man stands so tall as when he stoops to help a child.
- Anonymous (often attributed to Abraham Lincoln)

God has given us two hands, one to receive with
and the other to give with.
- Billy Graham

You cannot do a kindness too soon,
for you never know how soon it will be too late.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Life is an exciting business,
and most exciting when it is lived for others.
- Helen Keller

For some of us, the world appears to provide
only a fixed quantity of each resource -
a limited amount of food, of money,
of love, of success, of appreciation.
For others, life is unlimited.
Their world expands with the generosity, compassion,
inventiveness, and service that they contribute.
In this world-view, money that is spent
or given away returns multiplied.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The wise man does not lay up his own treasures.
The more he gives to others, the more he has for his own.
- Lao Tzu

What you leave behind is not what
is engraved in stone monuments,
but what is woven into the lives of others.
- Pericles

Judgment and weariness are foes to service and generosity.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

Gentleness, self-sacrifice and generosity
are the exclusive possession of no one race or religion.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

Whosoever is spared personal pain
must feel himself called
to help in diminishing the pain of others.
We must all carry our share of
the misery which lies upon the world.
- Albert Schweitzer

We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled.
The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over
and let the beautiful stuff out.
- Ray Bradbury

A gift consists not in what is done or given,
but in the intention of the giver or doer.
- Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Give to your relatives, and to the needy, and to travelers.
Do not squander your wealth in wantonness.
- Quran 17:26

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

Where there is charity and wisdom,
there is neither fear nor ignorance.
- St. Francis of Assisi

Your greatest gift to others is to be happy
and to radiate your happiness to the entire world.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

No one can find inner peace except by working,
not in a self-centered way, but for the whole human family.
- Peace Pilgrim

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

It costs you nothing to make another happy -
and you gain your true self through the act of spreading joy.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

I have found that among its other benefits,
giving liberates the soul of the giver.
- Maya Angelou

We are rich only through what we give,
and poor only through what we refuse.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

We make a living by what we get.
We make a life by what we give.
- Winston Churchill

In our willingness to give that which we seek,
we keep the abundance of the universe circulating in our lives.
- Deepak Chopra

For me, the most powerful expressions of true Christianity
in this material world are an unconditional love of all humans,
and an uncompromising commitment to caring for all
who are sick, infirm, or troubled -
as expressed in the biblical story of the Good Samaritan.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

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

Please sign up on the form below to receive
my Free Daily Inspiration - Daily Quotes email.

May the world be kind to you,
and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Thoughts on Strangers

Daily Inspirations