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Seek first to understand,
by Stephen Covey

Seek first to understand,
then to be understood.
- Stephen Covey

Related topics: Wisdom Life Human-Nature Psychology Service Love Inspiration Understanding

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

Live out of your imagination, not your history.
- Stephen Covey

How different our lives are when we
really know what is deeply important to us,
and keeping that picture in mind,
we manage ourselves each day
to be and to do what really matters most
- Stephen Covey

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

Begin with the end in mind.
- Stephen Covey

The nature of life is to be
a study of contrasts: joy/sadness, full/empty.
The Main Thing is to Keep The Main Thing The Main Thing.
- Stephen Covey

Every human has four endowments- self awareness, conscience,
independent will and creative imagination.
These give us the ultimate human freedom...
The power to choose, to respond, to change.
- Stephen Covey

Lord, grant that I might not so much
seek to be loved as to love.
- St. Francis of Assisi

The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.
- Joseph Campbell

Know that the greatest fear is fear of the unknown.
Seek to meet the unknown with courage and a sense of adventure.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek,
but a means by which we arrive at that goal.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

We seek opinions that are likely to
support what we want to be true.
- Thomas Gilovich

All your anxiety is because of your desire for harmony.
Seek disharmony, then you will gain peace.
- Rumi

What we seek we shall find; what we flee from flees from us.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

The essence of being human is that one
does not seek perfection.
- George Orwell

The means we use must be as pure
as the ends we seek.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Do not seek to bring things to pass
in accordance with your wishes,
but wish for them as they are,
and you will find them.
- Epictetus

We travel, some of us forever, to seek
other states, other lives, other souls.
- Anais Nin

Your task is not to seek for love,
but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself
that you have built against it.
- A Course In Miracles (commonly misattributed to Rumi)

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
- St. Francis of Assisi

We live in a wonderful world that is
full of beauty, charm and adventure.
There is no end to the adventures that we can have
if only we seek them with our eyes open.
- Jawaharlal Nehru

I constantly seek excellence
in all domains that truly matter to me.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

While the laughter of joy is in
full harmony with our deeper life,
the laughter of amusement
should be kept apart from it.
The danger is too great of thus learning
to look at solemn things in a spirit of mockery,
and to seek in them opportunities for exercising wit.
- Lewis Carroll

Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without.
- The Buddha

What each must seek in his life never was on land or sea.
It is something out of his own unique potentiality for experience,
something that never has been and never could
have been experienced by anyone else.
- Joseph Campbell

Formulate and stamp indelibly on your mind
a mental picture of yourself as succeeding.
Hold this picture tenaciously. Never permit it to fade.
Your mind will seek to develop the picture...
Do not build up obstacles in your imagination.
- Norman Vincent Peale

Seek always to do some good, somewhere.
Every man has to seek in his own way to realize his true worth.
You must give some time to your fellow man.
For remember, you don't live in a world all your own.
Your brothers are here too.
- Albert Schweitzer

In our willingness to give that which we seek,
we keep the abundance of the universe circulating in our lives.
- Deepak Chopra

Don't seek God in temples.
He is close to you.
He is within you.
Only you should surrender to Him
and you will rise above happiness and unhappiness.
- Leo Tolstoy

Ordinary life does not interest me.
I seek only the high moments.
I am in accord with the surrealists,
searching for the marvelous.
- Anais Nin

Let us more and more insist on raising funds of love,
of kindness, of understanding, of peace.
Money will come if we seek first the Kingdom of God -
the rest will be given.
- Mother Teresa

If you seek truth, you will not seek
victory by dishonorable means,
and if you find truth, you will become invincible.
- Epictetus

Seek not outside yourself.
- A Course in Miracles

If you are walking to seek, ye shall find.
- Sommeil Liberosensa

Let us seek to invoke the wonders of science ...
explore the stars, conquer the deserts,
eradicate disease, tap the ocean depths,
and encourage the arts and commerce.
- John F. Kennedy

Do not seek the because -
in love there is no because,
no reason, no explanation, no solutions.
- Anais Nin

Ask and it will be given to you;
seek and you will find;
knock and the door will be opened to you.
- Matthew 7:7

It is curious to observe what different
ideals of happiness people cherish,
and in what singular places they look
for this well-spring of their life.
Many look for it in the hoarding of riches,
some in the pride of power,
and others in the achievements of art and literature;
a few seek it in the exploration of their own minds,
or in search for knowledge.
- Helen Keller

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

To love. To be loved.
To never forget your own insignificance.
To never get used to the unspeakable violence
and the vulgar disparity of life around you.
To seek joy in the saddest places.
To pursue beauty to its lair.
To never simplify what is complicated
or complicate what is simple.
To respect strength, never power.
Above all, to watch. To try to understand.
To never look away. And never, never, to forget.
- Arundhati Roy

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

We seek to emphasize those practical things that we have in common.
- Australian Prime Minister John Howard

Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition.
- Marilyn Monroe

The Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace,
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
- although attributed to St. Francis of Assisi,
this prayer first appeared (written in French) in 1912

We seek peace, knowing that peace is the climate of freedom.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

Let us not seek the Republican answer
or the Democratic answer,
but the right answer.
Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past.
Let us accept our own responsibility for the future.
- John F. Kennedy

The Creator has not thought proper
to mark those in the forehead
who are of stuff to make good generals.
We are first, therefore, to seek them blindfold,
and then let them learn the trade
at the expense of great losses.
- Thomas Jefferson

Always be a first-rate version of yourself,
instead of a second-rate version of somebody else.
- Judy Garland

Today is the first day of the rest of your life.
- Anonymous

When we step on the battlefield, I will be
The First Boots On and the Last Boots Off.
- LtG. Hal Moore

Tolerance is the first principle of community;
it is the spirit which conserves
the best that all men think.
- Helen Keller

To climb steep hills requires a slow pace at first.
- William Shakespeare

All things at first appear difficult.
- Chinese proverb

Faith is taking the first step,
even when you don't see the whole staircase.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Nothing happens unless first a dream.
- Carl Sandburg

If you would take, you must first give,
this is the beginning of intelligence.
- Lao Tzu

The first step in the evolution of ethics
is a sense of solidarity with other human beings.
- Albert Schweitzer

In order to succeed, you must first be willing to fail.
- Anonymous

Habits are cobwebs at first, cables at last.
- Chinese proverb

Self-trust is the first secret of success.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Know, first, who you are, and then adorn yourself accordingly.
- Epictetus

Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.
- Samuel Johnson

A leader is not one who says, "Follow me."
A leader is one who says, "I'll go first."
- Neale Donald Walsch

Put on your own oxygen mask first.
- Airline companies

You grow up the day you have
your first real laugh - at yourself.
- Ethel Barrymore

Give thanks for the rainbows, for the butterflies,
for all God's creatures - large and small,
for the bright blue sky and the soft fog and the gentle rain,
for the tree veiled in the season's first frost,
for the baby's laugh, for the touch of a hand
and the whispered "I love you."
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself -
and you are the easiest person to fool.
- Richard Feynman

The first step towards the solution
of any problem is optimism.
- John Baines

Non-violence is the first article of my faith.
It is also the last article of my creed.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

First learn the meaning of what you say, and then speak.
- Epictetus

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