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To be oneself is a rare thing, and a great one. ...
by Ursula K. Le Guin

To be oneself is a rare thing, and a great one.
- Ursula K. Le Guin

Related topics: Values

To oppose something is to maintain it.
- Ursula K. Le Guin

It is the journey that matters, in the end
- Ursula K. Le Guin

To light a candle is to cast a shadow.
- Ursula K. Le Guin

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

The only questions that really matter are the ones you ask yourself.
- Ursula K. Le Guin

There are no right answers to wrong questions.
- Ursula K. Le Guin

There's a point... when you have to choose
whether to be like everybody else the rest of your life,
or to make a virtue of your peculiarities.
- Ursula K. Le Guin

I had forgotten how much light there is in the world,
'til you gave it back to me.
- Ursula K. Le Guin

It is good to have an end to journey towards;
but it is the journey that matters in the end.
- Ursula K. Le Guin

It is above all by the imagination
that we achieve perception and compassion and hope.
- Ursula K. Le Guin

The only thing that makes life possible
is permanent, intolerable uncertainty;
not knowing what comes next.
- Ursula K. Le Guin

Though I am a servant, I am not your servant.
- Ursula K. Le Guin

Love doesn't just sit there like a stone;
it has to be made,like bread,
remade all the time, made new.
- Ursula K. Le Guin

Morning comes whether you set the alarm or not.
- Ursula K. Le Guin

My imagination makes me human and makes me a fool;
it gives me all the world and exiles me from it.
- Ursula K. Le Guin

The creative adult is the child who has survived.
- Ursula K. Le Guin

What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?
- Ursula K. Le Guin

To know how to free oneself is nothing;
the arduous thing is to know what to do with one's freedom.
- Andre Gide

Violence, even well intentioned,
always rebounds upon oneself.
- Lao Tzu

My experience has been that work is
almost the best way to pull oneself out of the depths.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

These are the keys to a great life...
taking oneself lightly, forgiveness, and acceptance.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily.
Not to dare is to lose oneself.
- Soren Kierkegaard

The acceptance of oneself is
the essence of the whole moral problem
and the epitome of a whole outlook on life.
- Carl Jung

One defeats a fanatic precisely by not being a fanatic oneself,
but on the contrary by using one's intelligence.
- George Orwell

If you are disabled, it is probably not your fault,
but it is no good blaming the world or expecting it to take pity on you.
One has to have a positive attitude
and must make the best of the situation that one finds oneself in.
If one is physically disabled,
one cannot afford to be psychologically disabled as well.
- Stephen Hawking

To accuse others for one's own misfortunes
is a sign of want of education.
To accuse oneself shows that one's education has begun.
To accuse neither oneself nor others
shows that one's education is complete.
- Epictetus

A quotation is a handy thing to have about,
saving one the trouble of thinking for oneself.
- A. A. Milne (Winnie-The-Pooh)

Don't aim at success.
The more you aim at it and make it a target,
the more you are going to miss it.
For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued;
it must ensue, and it only does so as
the unintended side effect of one's personal dedication
to a cause greater than oneself.
- Viktor E. Frankl

Toleration is the greatest gift of the mind;
it requires the same effort of the brain
that it takes to balance oneself on a bicycle.
- Helen Keller

One's own religion is after all
a matter between oneself
and one's Maker and no one else's.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

Testing oneself is best when done alone.
- Jimmy Carter

Sometimes, indeed, there is such a discrepancy
between the genius and his human qualities
that one has to ask oneself whether
a little less talent might not have been better.
- Carl Jung

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

The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on.
It is never of any use to oneself.
- Oscar Wilde

Those who are dedicated to a life of wisdom
understand that the impulse to blame
something or someone is foolishness,
that there is nothing to be gained in blaming,
whether it be others or oneself.
- Epictetus

When you are alone you are not alone,
you are simply lonely -
and there is a tremendous difference
between loneliness and aloneness.
When you are lonely you are thinking of the other,
you are missing the other.
Loneliness is a negative state.
You are feeling that it would have been
better if the other were there -
your friend, your wife, your mother,
your beloved, your husband.
It would have been good if the other
were there, but the other is not.
Loneliness is absence of the other.
Aloneness is the presence of oneself.
Aloneness is very positive.
It is a presence, overflowing presence.
You are so full of presence
that you can fill the whole universe
with your presence and there is no need for anybody.
- Osho

I always pass on good advice.
It is the only thing to do with it.
It is never of any use to oneself.
- Oscar Wilde

In order to be an immaculate member of a flock of sheep,
one must above all be a sheep oneself.
- Albert Einstein

Go ahead. Weep for the rare,
the never seen this way again,
the excruciating, ineffable,
unmitigated beauty of love.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

Each contact with a human being is so rare, so precious,
one should preserve it.
- Anais Nin

However rare true love may be,
it is less so than true friendship.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Real friendships among men are so rare
that when they occur they are famous.
- Clarence Day

Friendship without self-interest
is one of the rare and beautiful things in life.
- James Francis Byrnes

Friends are those rare people who ask how we are
and then wait to hear the answer.
- Anonymous

If you can speak what you will never hear,
if you can write what you will never read,
you have done rare things.
- Henry David Thoreau

It is curious - curious that physical courage
should be so common in the world, and moral courage so rare
- Mark Twain

Except in cases of necessity, which are rare,
leave your friend to learn
unpleasant things from his enemies;
they are ready enough to tell them.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

In individuals, insanity is rare;
but in groups, parties, nations and epochs,
it is the rule.
- Friedrich Nietzsche

Time to Die:
A Zen teacher had a rare and priceless teacup.
One day, his precocious student accidentally broke the cup.
Hearing the footsteps of his teacher,
the student held the pieces of the cup behind his back.
When the master appeared, he asked: "Why do people have to die?"
"This is natural," explained the teacher.
"Everything has to die and has just so long to live."
The student showed the shattered cup, saying,
"It was time for your cup to die."
- Traditional Zen Koan

Take your life in your own hands, and what happens?
A terrible thing: no one to blame.
- Erica Jong

It is a terrible thing to see and have no vision.
- Helen Keller

Fear defeats more people than
any other one thing in the world.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Main Thing is to Keep
The Main Thing The Main Thing.
- Stephen Covey

Worry often gives a small thing a big shadow.
- Swedish Proverb

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

The only thing necessary for evil to triumph
is for enough good men to do nothing.
- Edmund Burke

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

Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again,
but expecting different results.
- Rita Mae Brown, also attributed to Einstein

Take time to play!
Ask for what you want.
Laugh.
Live loudly.
Be avid.
Learn a new thing.
Be Yourself!
- Mary Anne Radmacher

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

The thing always happens that you really believe in;
and the belief in a thing makes it happen.
- Frank Lloyd Wright

No great thing is created suddenly.
- Epictetus

It is a fine thing to be honest,
but it is also very important to be right.
- Winston Churchill

You have to accept whatever comes
and the only important thing is that you meet it with courage
and with the best that you have to give.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing,
and that is that I know nothing.
- Socrates

The way to develop self-confidence
is to do the thing you fear
and get a record of successful experiences behind you.
- William Jennings Bryan

Sometimes it is better to lose
and do the right thing
than to win and do the wrong thing.
- Tony Blair

I was brought up to believe that the only thing worth doing
was to add to the sum of accurate information in the world.
- Margaret Mead

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt

The truth of the matter is that
you always know the right thing to do.
The hard part is doing it.
- Norman Schwarzkoff

Shake structures.
School yourself.
Look twice at a thing,
once upside down.
Answer yourself clearly.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

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