Treasure Chest 2022

Words make a difference. They influence our thoughts, which in turn become our actions.

Dad had a fabulous memory. He made a life-long practice of storing meaningful things he read in his “mental treasure chest.” He was fond of reciting entries from memory, saying they  brought inspiration during difficult times. 

I don’t have a fabulous memory, but I have a smartphone. Whenever I come across something meaningful I paste it into a file.

Below are my top 20 entries for 2022.

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The secret of Being is “to do nothing but listen,” so that the song of life, which is the song of love, may be heard. -Maria Popova expanding on the words of Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself from Leaves of Grass

Wisdom involves using our powerful intellect to recognize the consequences of our actions and to think of the well-being of the whole. -Jane Goodall 

Since the world is round, there is no way to walk away from each other, for even then, we are coming back together. -Amanda Gorman, “Call Us What We Carry”

Life is not what is promised, but is sought. -Amanda Gorman, “Call Us What We Carry”

The life we live in others (is) larger and more important than the one we live in ourselves. -Samuel Butler

The bad news is time flies. The good news is you’re the pilot. -Michael Altshuler

One discovers the light in darkness, that is what darkness is for; but everything in our lives depends on how we bear the light. It is necessary, while in darkness, to know that there is a light somewhere, to know that in oneself, waiting to be found, there is a light. -James Baldwin

Shine the beam of curiosity upon even the dullest object and it becomes interesting; polish anything with attention and it becomes a mirror for the meaning of life. -Nathaniel Hawthorne

You are the sky. Everything else is just the weather. -Pema Chodron

Living wisely is the art of learning how you will wish to have lived. A kind of resolution in reverse. -Maria Popova, The Marginalian

We only see as much kindness as we ourselves possess. -Leo Tolstoy

We suffer more often in imagination than in reality. -Seneca

The religious life isn’t about truth as much as it is about relationship…, relationship is not something that happens (or doesn’t happen) in life, it is life. -Norman Fisher 

Who knows doesn’t talk. Who talks doesn’t know. -Ursula K. Le Guin

For thought is a bird of space, that in a cage of words may indeed unfold its wings, but cannot fly. -Kahlil Gibran

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

Inside the person you know there is a person you do not know.  -Christy Lefteri

Within the brain, every person we love leaves a tangible, structural imprint, encoded in synapses that can never be vanquished or replaced by new and different love. -Maria Popova, The Marginalian

The economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment, and not the other way around. -Gaylor Nelson

Love does not consist of gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.  -Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

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