The most called-upon prerequisite of a friend is an accessible ear. ... by Maya Angelou

The most called-upon prerequisite of a friend is an accessible ear. ...
by Maya Angelou

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Thank You,
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

One must know not just how to accept a gift,
but with what grace to share it.
- Maya Angelou

The ache for home lives in all of us,
the safe place where we can
go as we are and not be questioned.
- Maya Angelou

There's a world of difference between truth and facts.
Facts can obscure truth.
- Maya Angelou

If you don't like something, change it,
If you can't change it, change your attitude
- Maya Angelou

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

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

If a man is called to be a street sweeper,
he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted,
or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry.
He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts
of heaven and earth will pause to say,
here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

We have to stop and be humble enough to understand
that there is something called mystery.
- Paulo Coelho

No one is to be called an enemy,
all are your benefactors, and no one does you harm.
You have no enemy except yourselves.
- St. Francis of Assisi

A wise one said, "We are most like God when we forgive."
It is easy for us to blame, but hard for us to forgive.
Yet that is what we are called upon to do -
to forgive everyone for everything.
And the reward?
In this life, the reward for forgiveness
is your own happiness.
Unconditional universal forgiveness is
the key to your own happiness.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

We are called to be architects of the future, not its victims.
- R. Buckminster Fuller

Yesterday is history,
tomorrow is a mystery.
Today is a gift.
That is why it is called Present.
- Anonymous

An idea that is not dangerous is
unworthy of being called an idea at all.
- Oscar Wilde

Some people care too much. I think it's called love.
- A. A. Milne (Winnie-The-Pooh)

Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life
are not only not indispensable,
but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.
- Henry David Thoreau

Everyone believes that their beliefs are the right ones -
that is why they are called beliefs.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Where am I? Who am I? How did I come to be here?
What is this thing called the world?
How did I come into the world?
Why was I not consulted?
And If I am compelled to take part in it,
Where is the director? I want to see him.
- Soren Kierkegaard

I have called this principle,
by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved,
by the term of Natural Selection.
- Charles Darwin

What is called genius is the
abundance of life and health.
- Henry David Thoreau

I can do no other than be reverent
before everything that is called life.
I can do no other than to have compassion
for all that is called life.
That is the beginning and the foundation of all ethics.
- Albert Schweitzer

Just one quality of the Buddha has to be remembered.
He consists only of one quality: witnessing.
This small word witnessing contains the whole of spirituality.
Witness that you are not the body.
Witness that you are not the mind.
Witness that you are only a witness.
As the witnessing deepens,
you start becoming drunk with the divine.
That is what is called ecstasy.
- Osho

Most people think that anger is an instinctive response,
and that some people were just born with the temperament
to get angrier faster than others.
That statement is only half right.
Anger is an instinctive response.
We respond to an affront with anger essentially instantaneously -
much too quickly for conscious thought to be called upon.
But the instinct of the anger response
can be trained through conscious repetition,
visualization, and coaching.
Visualization is seeing the event
we desire to master in our mind's eye.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

When we lose one we love,
our bitterest tears are called forth
by the memory of hours when we loved not enough.
- Maurice Maeterlinck

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

Our Joy comes from living our own lives simply -
never from demanding that others live simply -
or from ever making any demands whatsoever upon others.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God,
visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children
to the third and fourth generations.
- Exodus 20:5

Whatever you do, you need courage.
Whatever course you decide upon,
there is always someone to tell you
that you are wrong.
There are always difficulties arising
that tempt you to believe your critics are right.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Happiness is a butterfly, which, when pursued,
is always just beyond your grasp,
but which, if you will sit down quietly,
may alight upon you.
- Nathaniel Hawthorne

When one door closes, another opens.
But often we look so long, so regretfully,
upon the closed door,
that we fail to see the one that is opened for us.
- Helen Keller

Obstacles are like wild animals.
They are cowards but they will bluff you if they can.
If they see you are afraid of them...
they are liable to spring upon you;
but if you look them squarely in the eye,
they will slink out of sight.
- Orison Swett Marden

The power of the Wizard lives within me.
I call upon its magic at will - transforming Fear into Love.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Great talents are the most lovely
and often the most dangerous
fruits on the tree of humanity.
They hang upon the most slender twigs
that are easily snapped off.
- Carl Jung

Anyone who proposes to do good
must not expect people to roll stones out of his way,
but must accept his lot calmly,
even if they roll a few stones upon it.
- Albert Schweitzer

The eyes of the cheerful and of the melancholy man
are fixed upon the same creation;
but very different are the aspects which it bears to them.
- Albert Pike

You may be always victorious if
you will never enter into any contest
where the issue does not wholly depend upon yourself.
- Epictetus

I have compassion for everyone who has ever
been a player upon the stage of my life.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Action is our greatest weapon against fear.
Left to molder, fear grows upon itself,
but in the face of action,
fear is left in the dust.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it
and no happiness in any place except what you bring to it yourself.
- Henry David Thoreau

Success depends upon previous preparation,
and without such preparation there is sure to be failure.
- Confucius

One of the surest ways to cause
yourself great suffering
is to insist upon being right -
to demand that all others view life
exactly as you view it.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Protect your vision.
Prevail over adversity.
Persevere in the midst of turmoil.
Passionately act upon your convictions.
Purposely walk into the day.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

My compassionate intents are generally received clearly
and acted upon - perhaps not immediately,
or in exactly the way I hope -
but acted upon favorably, nonetheless.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Remember, upon the conduct of each depends the fate of all.
- Alexander the Great

May the world be kind to you,
and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
May your spirit soar throughout the vast cathedral of your being.
May your mind whirl joyful cartwheels of creativity.
May your heart sing sweet lullabies of timelessness.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

May the road rise up to meet you,
may the wind be ever at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face
and the rain fall softly on your fields.
And until we meet again,
May God hold you in the hollow of his hand.
- Irish Blessing

Many a man curses the rain that falls upon his head,
and knows not that it brings abundance
to drive away the hunger.
- Saint Basil

We humans feel an instinctive need to know
what is coming next - what we can count upon.
We fear change - even the most positive change.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

I forgive everyone for every "wrong"
that I believe they have ever inflicted upon me.
I forgive them for my own sake,
that I may release the venom -
the anger and resentment within myself -
and regain my joy and serenity.
I have compassion for everyone who has ever
been a player upon the stage of my life.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

I recognize that the person I was in my past
is not the person I am today.
That person did the very best they could,
given the knowledge, emotions, and prior experience
they had to draw upon at the time.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The solution to adult problems tomorrow
depends in large measure upon
how our children grow up today.
- Margaret Mead

Hardly a man in the world has an opinion
upon morals, political, or religion
which he got otherwise than
through his associations and sympathies.
- Mark Twain

Faith:
When you walk to the edge of all the light you have
and take that first step into the darkness of the unknown,
you must believe that one of two things will happen:
...
There will be something solid for you to stand upon,
or, you will be taught how to fly
- Patrick Overton - from his book of poems: The Leaning Tree, 1975
[Widely mis-attributed to Barbara J. Winter, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, and others]

"Fair" is not a useful concept.
Life is not "fair."
You can't make life "fair."
You can get angry.
You can complain about life not being "fair."
You can attempt revenge - perhaps violently.
You can inflict great suffering upon yourself
in the name of life being "unfair."
And Life is still not "fair."
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Pain is what the world inflicts upon us.
Suffering is our emotional reaction when we fail
to make the difficult conscious choice to choose Joy.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

History is the version of past events
that people have decided to agree upon.
- Napoleon Bonaparte

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

The girl of my dreams is my mother's shadow,
cast upon the distant movie screen of my future.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Friendship based solely upon gratitude
is like a photograph; with time it fades.
- Carmen Sylva

Thank you for visiting: The most called-upon prerequisite of a friend is an accessible ear. ... by Maya Angelou.

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

The most called-upon prerequisite of a friend is an accessible ear. ...by Maya Angelou

Daily Inspirations

The most called-upon prerequisite of a friend is an accessible ear. ...
by Maya Angelou