A Pocket Eden: Words to the wise

Scroll down for an ever-growing anthology of good ideas and bons mots. From my personal stash.

Poets and artists live on frontiers. They have no feedback, only feedforward. They have no identities. They are probes. (Marshall McLuhan)

All art is autobiographical; the pearl is the oyster's autobiography. (Federico Fellini)

All glory comes from daring to begin. (Eugene F. Ware)

Chance favors those in motion. (James Austin)

Move, and the way will open. (Zen proverb)

Achievement is the knowledge that you have studied and worked hard and done the best you can. Success is being praised by others— and that's nice too, but it is not as important or satisfying. Always aim for achievement and forget about success. (Helen Hayes)

I have lost the consolation of faith, though not the ambition to worship (Forrest Gander)

Those who are willing to be vulnerable move among mysteries. (Theodore Roethke)

Your name is a golden bell hung in my heart. I would break my body to pieces to call you once by your name. (Peter Beagle)

To believe [in god] is to know that all the rules are fair and that there will be wonderful surprises. (Ugo Betti)

Be patient towards all that is unsolved in your heart. And try to love the questions themselves. Do not seek the answers that cannot be given to you, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will gradually without noticing it live along some distant day into the answers. (Rainer Maria Rilke)

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Fail again. Fail better. (Samuel Beckett)

Our lives are not as limited as we think they are; the world is a wonderfully weird place; consensual reality is significantly flawed; no institution can be trusted, but love does work; all things are possible; and we all could be happy and fulfilled if we only had the guts to be truly free and the wisdom to shrink our egos and quit taking ourselves so damn seriously. (Tom Robbins)

I have this sense of urgency about what I want to get done, and I discipline myself by keeping to myself. (Marilynne Robinson)

Taking pictures is savouring life intensely, every hundredth of a second. (Marc Riboud)

So long as I have questions to which there are no answers, I shall go on writing. (Clarice Lispector)

If you know exactly what you are going to do, what is the point of doing it? (Pablo Picasso)

A successful illustration — one that expresses the most with the least. Or one that has many possible interpretations. (Jacobo Muniz)

I'm not very good at praying, but what I experience when I'm writing a poem is close to prayer. I feel it in different degrees and not with every poem. But in certain ways writing is a form of prayer. (Denise Levertov)

Let me keep my mind on what matters, which is my work — which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished. (Mary Oliver)

A mystical experience would be wasted on me. Ordinary things always seemed numinous to me. There are two sides to your encounter with the world — you don't simply perceive something that is statically present, but in fact there is a visionary quality to all experience. It means something because it is addressed to you. This is the individualism that you find in Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. You can draw from perception the same way a mystic would draw from a vision. (Marilynne Robinson)

Grace/ to be born and live as variously as possible. (Frank O'Hara)

I don't want to be a master — I want to be a kid. To keep making art, you have to put yourself in the position of a beginner. You have to be excited by a stone on the sidewalk, or, like a child, the flight of a bird. (Gabriel Orozco)

Great art is clear thinking about mixed feelings (Russell Davies)

Design is thinking made visual (Saul Bass)

Le travail des mains oblige l'esprit à la tranquilité et laisse le champs libre aux mouvements de l'âme (Diderot)

The only thing worse than starting something and failing... is not starting something. (Seth Godin)

Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is to try just one more time. (Thomas Edison)

Be like a postage stamp: stick to one thing until you get there. (Josh Billings)

The three great essentials to achieve anything worthwhile are: hard work, stick-to-it-iveness, and common sense.(Thomas Edison)

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing. (George Bernard Shaw)

Growing up in the West, being an independent person was very highly valued. What that meant: cultivating an interior life that could sustain you, that dignified you. The word "lonely", when I was a little kid, had a very strong positive connotation. It was an experience to be sought, and it took me a while to learn that this was not common wisdom. (Marilynne Robinson)

A work of art is realised when form and content are indistinguishable. When form predominates, meaning is blundered, but when content predominates, interest flags. But genius comes in when both of these things fuse. (Paul Rand).

The kind of conversation I like is one in which you are prepared to emerge a slightly different person. (Theodore Zeldin)

We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about. (Einstein)

Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened (Dr. Seuss)

To forgive is to give up all hope for a better past. (Buddhist saying)

Work is more fun than fun. (Noel Coward)

Seek freedom and become captive of your desires, seek discipline and find your liberty. (Frank Herbert)

There is no path, paths are made by walking. (Antonio Machado)

If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough. (Albert Einstein)

It’s not denial. I’m just very particular about the reality I choose to accept. (Calvin)

Without deviation from the norm, 'progress' is not possible. (Frank Zappa)

A mind is like a parachute. It doesnt work if it's not open. (Frank Zappa)

Jazz is not dead, it just smells funny. (Frank Zappa)

When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong. (Buckminster Fuller)

Talent hits a target no one else can hit, while genius hits a target that no one else can see. (Arthur Schopenhauer)

I have long thought that anyone who does not regularly gaze up and see the wonder and glory of a dark night sky filled with countless stars loses a sense of their fundamental connectedness to the universe. (Brian Greene— Theoretical physicist, son of a vaudeville performer and author of The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for Ultimate Theory)

We do not see things as they are, we see them as we are. (Anais Nin)

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes. (Marcel Proust)

The world is a wonderfully weird place, consensual reality is significantly flawed, no institution can be trusted, certainty is a mirage, security a delusion, and the tyranny of the dull mind forever threatens - but our lives are not as limited as we think they are, all things are possible, laughter is holier than piety, freedom is sweeter than fame, and in the end it's love and love alone that really matters. (Tom Robbins)

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage. (Anais Nin)

We have nothing to fear but fear itself. (Franklin D. Roosevelt)

Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over he became a butterfly.

Life is like arriving late for a movie, having to figure out what was going on without bothering everybody with a lot of questions, and then being unexpectedly called away before you find out how it ends. (Joseph Campbell)

We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience. (Pierre Teilhard de Chardin)

There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened. (Douglas Adams)

Imagination is one of the forces of nature. (Wallace Stevens)

Nature is trying very hard to make us succeed, but nature does not depend on us. We are not the only experiment. (Buckminster Fuller)

Dare to be naïve. (Buckminster Fuller)

A warrior lives by acting, not by thinking about acting, nor by thinking about what he will think when he has finished acting. (Carlos Castaneda)

The imagination is a dimension of non-local information (McKenna)

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence move, too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no one could have dreamed would have come their way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. (W.H. Murray)

The talent is in the choices (Robert de Niro)

What you are will show in what you do.(Thomas Edison)

It's not how good you are, it's how good you want to be (Paul Auster)

I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismograph (Ken Kesey)

Don't ask what the world needs — ask what makes you come alive, then do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive. (Howard Martin)

If you have made mistakes, there is always another chance for you. You may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing we call "failure" is not the falling down, but the staying down. (Mary Pickford)

I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work. (Thomas Edison)

Discontent is the first necessity of progress.(Thomas Edison)

Hell there are no rules here — we're trying to accomplish something.(Thomas Edison)

Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do doesn't mean it's useless.(Thomas Edison)

Nearly everyone who develops an idea works it up to the point where it looks impossible, and the they get discouraged. That's not the place to become discouraged. (Thomas Edison)

Restlessness and discontent are the first necessities of progress.(Thomas Edison)

There is no substitute for hard work.(Thomas Edison)