Thoughts on Twenty from Daily Inspiration

Thoughts on Twenty

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

And in the end, it's not
the years in your life that count,
it's the life in your years.
- Abraham Lincoln

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Thank You,
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

If you think in terms of a year, plant a seed;
if in terms of ten years, plant trees;
if in terms of 100 years, teach the people.
- Confucius

Love is not a matter of counting the years,
but making the years count.
- Michele St. Amand

I live in that solitude which is painful in youth,
but delicious in the years of maturity.
- Albert Einstein

"Mother Teresa Prayer"
People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered;
... Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you
of selfish, ulterior motives;
... Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some
false friends and some true enemies;
... Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you;
... Be honest and frank anyway.
What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight;
... Build anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous;
... Be happy anyway.
The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;
... Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough;
... Give the world the best you've got anyway.
You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God;
It was never between you and them anyway.
We can do no great things - only small things with great love.
- although commonly attributed to Mother Teresa,
who kept a copy of this prayer on
the wall of her Calcutta orphanage,
this prayer was actually written by Kent Keith.

Anger is a destructive emotion
that becomes instinctive over the years.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

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

Might I perhaps win my wings?
I've been waiting for over 200 years now, sir,
and people ARE beginning to talk.
- It's a Wonderful Life (1946 movie)

You can make more friends in two months
by becoming interested in other people
than you can in two years by trying
to get other people interested in you.
- Dale Carnegie

Almost nothing you worry about today
will matter in a hundred years.
Think carefully about what you can focus on today.
Choose tasks that will actually make a positive difference
to your great-grandchildren.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

I do not fear death.
I had been dead for billions and billions
of years before I was born,
and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.
- Mark Twain

When a man you like switches from what
he said a year ago, or four years ago,
he is a broad-minded person who has courage enough
to change his mind with changing conditions.
When a man you don't like does it,
he is a liar who has broken his promise.
- Franklin Pierce Adams

I have spent many years of my life in opposition,
and I rather like the role.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant
I could hardly stand to have the old man around.
But when I got to be 21, I was astonished
at how much the old man had learned in seven years.
- Mark Twain

A person is smart. People are dumb,
panicky dangerous animals and you know it.
Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew
the Earth was the center of the universe.
Five hundred years ago,
everybody knew the Earth was flat,
and fifteen minutes ago,
you knew that humans were alone on this planet.
Imagine what you'll know tomorrow.
- the movie Men in Black

In a bad marriage, friends are the invisible glue.
If we have enough friends, we may go on for years,
intending to leave, talking about leaving -
instead of actually getting up and leaving.
- Erica Jong

Once you have seen the truth
you must make the decision to let go
of the pain, anger, and resentment you have been holding on to.
This requires you to take action.
If you are attached to your pain, resentment,
and self-righteousness, and addicted to your emotional reactions,
this will be a difficult step for you.
Taking action requires letting go of the very thing
you have been holding on to for so many years.
There is comfort in what we find familiar,
even if we are experiencing pain and suffering.
The pain and suffering itself becomes the familiarity we seek.
It takes absolute faith in yourself
plus courage, will, and discipline to let go.
But once you let go, it will be as if
the weight of the world has been taken off your shoulders.
In this process it is important to forgive
not just the others in our lives, but also ourselves.
For most people, giving ourselves
the gift of forgiveness is very challenging.
- Sheri Rosenthal

Everyone has an opinion on many subjects
and is ready to share those opinions -
labeling them as "truth."
Sometimes it is relatively easy
to filter out these opinions.
Upon hearing an ad for the latest
weight-loss powder on late-night TV,
our skepticism leaps to our defense.
However, if we have heard the same opinion for years
from our parents, friends,
government officials, or religious leaders,
we are more likely to believe without questioning
than to raise our filter of skepticism
and ask the hard questions.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

One of the greatest titles we can have is "old friend."
We never appreciate how important old friends are until we are older.
The problem is we need to start our old friendships when we are young.
We then have to nurture and grow those friendships over our middle age
when a busy life and changing geographies
can cause us to neglect those friends.
Today is the day to invest in those people
we hope will call us "old friend" in the years to come.
- Grant Fairley

Personally, I have fond memories of playing
on slippery rocks on the banks of a rushing river
as a child and hitchhiking in college.
To those who say, "But times are different now,"
I reply that statistically life is much safer now
than in the 1950s, with regard to both crime and accidents.
What has changed is our attitudes.
In those years, a broken leg from falling off a swing
or the back of a tractor was just part of childhood -
an excuse for gathering autographs.
Today that broken leg would be a source
of outrage and probably lawsuits.
I long for a simpler time when life was taken less seriously.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

To be seventy years young is sometimes
far more cheerful and hopeful
than to be forty years old.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Some years ago I became president of Columbia University
and learned within 24 hours to be ready
to speak at the drop of a hat,
and I learned something more, the trustees were expected
to be ready to speak at the passing of the hat.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

If you have been divorced, you know it hurts -
especially if your marriage had lasted many years.
Whatever the circumstances of your relationship,
and whatever the nature of its ending,
there is always grief and regret -
perhaps regret over the ending,
or perhaps regret over not ending the relationship sooner -
or perhaps both.
Nonetheless, move past the grief and regret.
No matter how painful, divorce, like all endings,
opens the door to new beginnings.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Regrets and their cousins, resentments,
are a huge cause of self-inflicted suffering.
Sometimes it takes years of psychotherapy
to gain freedom from regrets about what you did or did not do,
and freedom from resentment over what others did or did not do.
Sometimes it takes a lifetime of self-talk to remember
to put the past in the past where it belongs.
However, sometimes a simple symbolic act can help immeasurably
to grant ourselves freedom from the past.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

You are Never Too Old to Give or Get Gold Stars.
Show Your Honest Appreciation - Today.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

If you cry because the sun has gone out of your life,
your tears will prevent you from seeing the stars.
- Rabindranath Tagore

Keep your feet firmly planted on the ground
as you reach for the stars.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

When we contemplate the whole globe as one great dewdrop,
striped and dotted with continents and islands,
flying through space with other stars
all singing and shining together as one,
the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty.
- John Muir

We need to find God, and he cannot
be found in noise and restlessness.
God is the friend of silence.
See how nature - trees, flowers, grass-
grows in silence; see the stars,
the moon and the sun, how they move in silence...
We need silence to be able to touch souls.
- Mother Teresa

We try to realize the essential unity of the world
with the conscious soul of man;
we learn to perceive the unity held together
by the one Eternal Spirit,
whose power creates the earth, the sky, and the stars,
and at the same time irradiates our mind.
- Rabindranath Tagore

No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars,
or sailed to an uncharted land,
or opened a new doorway for the human spirit.
- Helen Keller

We return thanks to our mother,
the earth, which sustains us.
We return thanks to the rivers and streams
which supply us with water.
We return thanks to all herbs, which furnish medicines
for the cure of our diseases.
We return thanks to the corn, and to her sisters,
the beans and squashes, which give us life.
We return thanks to the bushes and trees,
which provide us with fruit.
We return thanks to the wind,
which, moving the air, has banished diseases.
We return thanks to the moon and the stars,
which have given us their light when the sun was gone.
We return thanks to our grandfather He-no,
that he has protected his grandchildren from witches and reptiles,
and has given us his rain.
We return thanks to the sun,
that he has looked upon the earth with a beneficent eye.
Lastly, we return thanks to the Great Spirit,
in whom is embodied all goodness,
and who directs all things for the good of his children.
- Iroquois traditional

People travel to wonder at the height of mountains,
at the huge waves of the sea,
at the long courses of rivers,
at the vast compass of the ocean,
at the circular motion of the stars;
and they pass by themselves without wondering.
- St. Augustine

I will greet this day with love in my heart.
And how will I do this?
Henceforth will I look on all things with love and be born again.
I will love the sun for it warms my bones;
yet I will love the rain for it cleanses my spirit.
I will love the light for it shows me the way;
yet I will love the darkness for it shows me the stars.
I will welcome happiness as it enlarges my heart;
yet I will endure sadness for it opens my soul.
I will acknowledge rewards for they are my due;
yet I will welcome obstacles for they are my challenge.
- Og Mandino

Good friends are like stars ...
you don't always see them,
but you know they are always there.
- Anonymous

Drop guilt! - because to be guilty is to live in hell.
Not being guilty, you will have the freshness
of dewdrops in the early morning sun,
you will have the freshness of lotus petals in the lake,
you will have the freshness of the stars in the night.
Once guilt disappears you will have
a totally different kind of life, luminous and radiant.
You will have a dance to your feet
and your heart will be singing a thousand and one songs.
- Osho

Guys are like stars, there are millions of them,
but only one to make your dreams come true.
- Anonymous

Trust your heart if the seas catch fire,
live by love though the stars walk backward.
- e. e. cummings

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
- Oscar Wilde

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim Soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
- William Butler Yeats

I Did Not Die
Do not stand at my grave and weep;
I am not there. I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn's rain,
When you awaken in the morning's hush,
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there. I did not die.
- Anonymous

The darkest night is often the bridge to the brightest tomorrow.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The ending of a job or a relationship
may appear as the darkest night,
but it is merely the Winter season -
the time of renewal and rebirth
that precedes the new planting -
the beginning of the next great cycle.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

I find hope in the darkest of days,
and focus in the brightest.
I do not judge the universe.
- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama

Know that the darkest night is often
the bridge to the brightest tomorrow.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

If you believe in forever,
then life is just a one night stand.
- The Righteous Brothers

The less I take the difficulties of my life as personal affront,
and the more I use them as an opportunity to learn and grow...
the easier I sleep at night.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

Keep a grateful journal. Every night,
list five things you are grateful for.
- Oprah Winfrey

This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
- William Shakespeare

A man is a success if he gets up in
the morning and gets to bed at night,
and in between he does what he wants to do.
- Bob Dylan

Bold Light of Spirit:
Out of the darkness and into the light,
Open our eyes and behold such a sight.
Brilliance of day takes the place of the night,
Boldness and courage are swords of His Might.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

A man can do only what he can do.
But if he does that each day he can sleep at night
and do it again the next day.
- Albert Schweitzer

What is life?
It is the flash of a firefly in the night.
It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime.
It is the little shadow which runs across
the grass and loses itself in the sunset.
- Crowfoot (Blackfoot warrior and orator 1830 - 1890)

On life's journey, faith is nourishment,
virtuous deeds are a shelter,
wisdom is the light by day
and right mindfulness is the protection by night.
If a man lives a pure life, nothing can destroy him.
- The Buddha

Sometimes I lie awake at night and ask "Why me?"
Then a voice answers "Nothing personal,
your name just happened to come up. -
- Charlie Brown, in Charles M. Schulz' cartoon Peanuts

Make sure you never, never argue at night.
You just lose a good night's sleep,
and you can't settle anything until morning anyway.
- Rose Kennedy

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

Thoughts on Twenty

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