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Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the lake. ...
by Wallace Stevens

Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the lake.
- Wallace Stevens

Related topics: Nature

To go against the dominant thinking of your friends,
of most of the people you see every day,
is perhaps the most difficult act of heroism you can perform.
- Theodore H. White

Anger? perhaps there is a better way.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

There is more value in a very good painting
that is completed and on display,
than in an excellent painting
that is still in the artist's studio,
or perhaps still in his mind.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

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Thank you for joining me on this journey we call life,
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

If a man does not keep pace with his companions,
perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.
- Henry David Thoreau

Perhaps it is better to be irresponsible and right,
than to be responsible and wrong.
- Winston Churchill

Improve what you can
and accept all the rest of life
just as it comes.
Know that fear is your worst enemy -
perhaps your only enemy.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

If a man loses pace with his companions,
perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.
Let him step to the music which he hears,
however measured or far away.
- Henry David Thoreau

I must uphold my ideals,
for perhaps the time will come
when I shall be able to carry them out.
- Anne Frank

Know that fear is your worst enemy -
perhaps your only enemy.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Action is a great restorer and builder of confidence.
Inaction is not only the result, but the cause, of fear.
Perhaps the action you take will be successful;
perhaps different action or adjustments will have to follow.
But any action is better than no action at all.
- Norman Vincent Peale

Choose your goal and keep your eye on it. Never give up.
Perhaps you will need to change your plan
and approach you goal from a different direction, but don't quit.
Keep thinking. Keep re-planning. Keep going.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

A state of expectancy is a great asset;
a state of uncertainty -
one moment thinking "perhaps"
and the next moment thinking "I don't know" -
will never get desired results.
- Ernest Holmes

The greatest virtue of man is perhaps curiosity.
- Anatole France

Smile.
Today would be a wonderful day
not to take life so seriously.
Today may end up the way you prefer -
and it may not.
Happiness is not about being a winner -
it's about being gentle with life -
being gentle with yourself.
Let life be a dance,
and choose the kind of
dance you want for today -
perhaps a gentle loving dance.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

"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

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

Maybe life isn't really as complicated
as we make it out to be.
Perhaps a simple child-like attitude would create
a less stressful and happier life.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Ever had a bad hair day -
a day when everything seemed to be going wrong?
Perhaps today is a day to soothe your ruffled feathers,
take a deep breath, and reaffirm that
the weight of the world is really not on your shoulders,
unless you choose to assume that burden.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Not everyone is always going to like what you do.
Your job application, your book proposal,
your offer of marriage is going to
get rejected sometimes - perhaps often.
Your boss, your spouse, even the person
behind you in the supermarket checkout line
is occasionally going to think that you are doing it all wrong.
Don't take it personally.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Each of us holds a different image of God.
There are as many perspectives on
the nature of God as there are people.
However much any of us may choose to argue,
or to fight and kill, for our point of view,
the nature of God is an unanswerable question.
Perhaps there is a specific answer,
that we will never learn - in this lifetime.
Perhaps the nature of God is so complex and multifaceted
that each view of God describes an aspect of the complex whole.
Or perhaps the nature of God is actually defined by our beliefs.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

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)

What if it were only an illusion?
Perhaps life is not as threatening as it appears.
Perhaps the greatest threat to our serenity
is our fear of the future -
our fear of the unknown.
Perhaps, as Franklin D. Roosevelt said,
"The Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Fear Itself."
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

I seldom think about my limitations,
and they never make me sad.
Perhaps there is just a touch of yearning at times;
but it is vague, like a breeze among flowers.
- Helen Keller

Perhaps one has to be very old before one learns
to be amused rather than shocked.
- Pearl S. Buck

If you are over 30, get out your high-school yearbook
and look for ideas you can apply today -
perhaps an innocent optimism about life -
perhaps a hobby you loved.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Perhaps nature is our best assurance of immortality.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

Today, try something you have never tried before.
Perhaps just a food that is new to you -
perhaps a whole new way of living.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

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

What if Christmas, he thought, doesn't come from a store.
What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more.
- Dr. Seuss

Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed,
and in such desperate enterprises?
If a man does not keep pace with his companions,
perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.
- Henry David Thoreau

The greatest battle of all is simply... Life.
This is no child's game. This is the big one -
the Super Bowl - the Game of all games.
The rules of Life are unwritten and unknown.
Perhaps, one could say that there are no rules.
The Judge has ultimate power.
She can call the game at any time - for any reason.
The penalties in the Game are completely arbitrary -
in both timing and severity.
Penalty for what, we ask?
The Judge is silent.
How can I win the Game?
"You can never win," comes the answer,
"So just take pleasure in playing the Game."
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

One of the greatest cause of unhappiness -
perhaps even the only cause of unhappiness - is comparison.
I remember as a young child hearing my mother say,
"Comparisons are odious."
That is one of the oldest sayings in the English language,
and one of the most important.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

If you don't enjoy your career,
today is the day to begin a long-term plan
for creating a career that interests and excites you.
And, in the short term, even if you hate your job,
look for small joys at work each day,
perhaps in your interactions with customers and co-workers.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Have a talk with your mind
(it really is something separate from yourself).
Lay down the law.
"My life begins TODAY.
I am like a newborn.
I have what I have today;
I have my fingers, my toes,
some people in my life,
some material and financial state.
Yesterday is only a dream -
perhaps a nightmare,
perhaps a cherished memory,
but only a dream - nothing more.
I will make all decisions and actions based solely
on what I have today as a starting point."
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

God is Within You!
You yourself are the creator.
If you find that place within you
from which you brought this thing about,
you will be able to live with it and affirm it,
perhaps even enjoy it, as your life.
- Joseph Campbell

We fear the unknown,
perhaps more than we fear anything else,
and yet we are, at heart, adventurers.
We seek to expand our realm of knowledge and dominion.
Perhaps we are attempting to overcome and crush the unknown,
but our duel with the unknown is such a one-sided clash
that we must know in our hearts
that our adventure is no more than a child's game.
Perhaps we hope that the unknown
is like the darkness of a cave
and that the brief light of our adventurer's candle
can illuminate the entire cave.
Nonetheless, the path of the adventurer
is a path of joy, while the way of fear is one of suffering.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Recall a recent time when someone was strongly critical
of your opinions (perhaps your political or religious beliefs).
Now, put yourself in their shoes - with compassion.
Try to understand and appreciate their point-of-view -
not to change your own opinions,
but to celebrate all our human differences - in peace.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Trust:
Perhaps you trust your doctor,
your lawyer, your boss - perhaps not.
Perhaps you trust in a "Higher Power" - perhaps you don't.
Trust is something that we become aware of in unusual situations,
such as a once-in-a-lifetime ride on a zip-line,
but most of the time, we become oblivious
to the trust we have, or don't have.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Man's role is uncertain, undefined, and perhaps unnecessary.
- Margaret Mead

Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing
for most of us that it is not.
- Oscar Wilde

I consider my greatest accomplishment to be lifelong celibacy.
- Isaac Newton
(discoverer of the laws of gravitation and motion,
famous mathematician, and perhaps the greatest scientist ever)

I do not believe that civilization will be wiped out
in a war fought with the atomic bomb.
Perhaps two-thirds of the people of the earth will be killed.
- Albert Einstein

Ennui has made more gamblers than avarice,
more drunkards than thirst,
and perhaps as many suicides as despair.
- The Buddha

Now this is not the end.
It is not even the beginning of the end.
But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.
- Winston Churchill

It is much more painful to have lost
something you thought you had,
than never to have had it at all.
If feels as if our trust was dashed.
We are disappointed and we are angry;
but not quite sure at who to direct our anger.
Someone, perhaps "the system," perhaps God,
should have done better.
Most of all we are angry at ourselves -
even though we did our best -
and we are afraid.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

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

Guilt for being rich,
and guilt thinking that perhaps love and peace isn't enough
and you have to go and get shot or something.
- John Lennon

Pitiful is the person who is afraid of taking risks.
Perhaps this person will never
be disappointed or disillusioned;
perhaps she won't suffer the way
people do when they have a dream to follow.
But when the person looks back -
and at some point everyone look back -
she will hear her heart, saying,
"What have you done with the miracles
that God planted in your days?
What have you done with the talents
God bestowed on you?"
- Paulo Coelho

The child in me could not die as it should have died,
because according too legends it must find its father again.
The old legends knew, perhaps, that in absence
the father becomes glorified, deified, eroticized,
and this outrage against God the Father has to be atoned for.
The human father has to be confronted and recognized as human,
as man who created a child and then, by his absence,
left the child fatherless and then Godless.
- Anais Nin

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person.
Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
- Oscar Wilde

When a thing is funny, search it for a hidden truth.
- George Bernard Shaw

The water in a vessel is sparkling;
the water in the sea is dark.
The small truth has words which are clear;
the great truth has great silence.
- Rabindranath Tagore

The words of truth are always paradoxical.
- Lao Tzu

The truth. It is a beautiful and terrible thing,
and should be treated with caution.
- J. K. Rowling

Our actions are constrained by fear of reprisal,
but our dreams reveal our true character.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Use the power of your word
in the direction of truth and love.
- don Miguel Ruiz

An error does not become truth
by reason of multiplied propagation,
nor does truth become error because nobody sees it.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

Even if you are a minority of one,
the truth is the truth.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

We occasionally stumble over the truth
but most of us pick ourselves up and
hurry off as if nothing had happened.
- Winston Churchill

It's essential to tell the truth at all times.
This will reduce life's pain.
Lying distorts reality.
All forms of distorted thinking must be corrected.
- John Bradshaw

Love is the ultimate meaning of everything around us.
Love is not a mere sentiment.
Love is the ultimate truth at the heart of creation.
- Rabindranath Tagore

The presence of those seeking the truth
is infinitely to be preferred
to the presence of those who think they've found it.
- Terry Pratchett

We are not afraid to follow truth
wherever it may lead,
nor to tolerate any error
so long as reason is left free to combat it.
- Thomas Jefferson

Love is not a mere sentiment.
Love is the ultimate truth at the heart of creation.
- Rabindranath Tagore

The problem with making assumptions
is that we believe they are the truth
- don Miguel Ruiz

Love is the ultimate truth at the heart of creation.
- Rabindranath Tagore

The truth is incontrovertible,
malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it,
but in the end; there it is.
- Winston Churchill

The search for truth is more precious than its possession.
- Albert Einstein

Begin to act from your dominion.
Declare the truth by telling yourself
that there is nothing to be afraid of,
that you no longer entertain any images of fear.
- Ernest Holmes

Thank you for visiting: Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the lake. ... by Wallace Stevens.

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