Quotes by Oscar Levant

There is a fine line between
the perseverance of the courageous tortoise
and the habit of the stubborn donkey.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Could you risk believing that everything
will unfold just fine if you completely let go
of all concern about everything else,
and simply are here, now - if only for a moment?
- Dmitri Bilgere

The key to success, and to happiness,
is being fully engaged in life -
leading yourself with inspiration and committed action -
setting your own fine and honorable example.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

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

Don't take rejection personally.
Don't let someone else's bad day spoil your day.
As long as you never reject yourself, you'll be fine.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

I once had a rose named after me
and I was very flattered.
But I was not pleased to read
the description in the catalogue:
no good in a bed, but fine up against a wall.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

Reading about nature is fine, but if a person
walks in the woods and listens carefully,
he can learn more than what is in books,
for they speak with the voice of God.
- George Washington Carver

Spirit is always waiting to rush into us,
but we are too full of worldly things.
It is like trying to pour fine wine into a cup filled with mud -
the wine is waiting, but the mud must be removed first.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

There is a fine line between perseverance and insanity.
At what point have you tried your best,
and it's time to do something different?
It's a balance - a paradox.
If you get in the habit of giving up
as soon as something gets difficult,
your life won't work,
but if you keep tilting at windmills -
madly trying the same thing again and again,
your life also won't work.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

I am the Wizard. This world is mine.
I speak. It's done. My realm is fine.
My wand, my tongue. My sword, my voice.
It's good. It's bad. I speak my choice.
I say happy, or I say mad.
I say angry, or I say glad.
I name that drawing on the wall.
It's not graffiti after all.
The past has been broken. The prison's not real.
My word holds the magic - the power to heal.
Intent is my weapon - a sword from above.
Cruel hate, fear, and anger transmute into love.
This world's my joy. This mouth's my toy.
Reborn -I'm a brand new girl or boy.
I choose. I speak. My will is done.
Come join. Come play. This can be fun.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Life repeats itself mindlessly -
unless you become mindful, it will go on repeating like a wheel.
That's why Buddhists call it the wheel of life and death,
the wheel of time.
It moves like a wheel: birth is followed by death,
death is followed by birth;
love is followed by hate, hate is followed by love;
success is followed by failure,
failure is followed by success. Just see!
If you can watch just for a few days,
you will see a pattern emerging, a wheel pattern.
One day, a fine morning, you are feeling so good and so happy,
and another day you are so dull,
so dead that you start thinking of committing suicide.
And just the other day you were so full of life,
so blissful that you were feeling thankful to God,
that you were in a mood of deep gratefulness,
and today there is great complaint
and you don't see the point why one should go on living...
And it goes on and on, but you don't see the pattern.
Once you see the pattern, you can get out of it.
- Osho

Most people give up just when
they're about to achieve success.
They quit on the one yard line.
They give up at the last minute of the game,
one foot from a winning touch down.
- Ross Perot

May flowers always line your path and sunshine light your day.
May songbirds serenade you every step along the way.
May a rainbow run beside you in a sky that's always blue.
And may happiness fill your heart each day your whole life through.
- Irish Blessing

It is better to lead from behind
and to put others in front,
especially when you celebrate victory
when nice things occur.
You take the front line when there is danger.
Then people will appreciate your leadership.
- Nelson Mandela

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

Not paying a just wage, not giving work,
only because one is looking at the bottom line,
at the budget of the company, seeking only profit -
that is against God.
- Pope Francis

Life is a constant opponent,
and an overpowering adversary if attacked directly.
The successful and happy ones dance lightly with life -
a parry here, a feint there - always engaged,
but never in the direct line of life's heaviest blows.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Maybe I could have loved you better.
Maybe you should have loved me more.
Maybe our hearts were just next in line.
Maybe everything breaks sometime.
- Jewel

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

People that seem so glorious are all show;
underneath they are like everyone else.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

To the people who love you,
you are beautiful already.
This is not because they're
blind to your shortcomings
but because they so clearly see your soul.
- Victoria Moran

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

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

People will forget what you said,
people will forget what you did,
but people will never forget
how you made them feel.
- Maya Angelou

A common denominator of all religions is that
they have the power to bring out the best and the worst in people.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

When dealing with people, remember you are
not dealing with creatures of logic,
but creatures of emotion.
- Dale Carnegie

Knowing your own darkness is the best method
for dealing with the darknesses of other people.
- Carl Jung

Whenever you're in conflict with someone,
there is one factor that can make the difference
between damaging your relationship and deepening it.
That factor is attitude.
- William James

People understand me so poorly that they don't even understand
my complaint about them not understanding me.
- Soren Kierkegaard

Instead of worrying about what people say of you,
why not spend time trying to accomplish
something they will admire.
- Dale Carnegie

The meeting of two personalities is
like the contact of two chemical substances:
if there is any reaction, both are transformed.
- Carl Jung

If only the people who worry about their liabilities
would think about the riches they do possess,
they would stop worrying.
- Dale Carnegie

What old people say you cannot do,
you try and find that you can.
Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.
- Henry David Thoreau

The way to happiness is what I call Zero-Based Gratitude.
Each day be happy and grateful for what you have,
independent of yesterday and of other people.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Real love is accepting other people the way they are
without trying to change them.
- don Miguel Ruiz

You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture.
Just get people to stop reading them.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

Opportunity is missed by most people
because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.
- Thomas Edison

I challenge you to make your life a masterpiece.
I challenge you to join the ranks of those people
who live what they teach, who walk their talk.
- Tony Robbins

Motivation is the art of getting people to do
what you want them to do because they want to do it.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

What people say, what people do,
and what they say they do
are entirely different things.
- Margaret Mead

"Go to the people and live among them
in order to know them and learn from them.
- Jimmy Yen

People hardly ever make use of the freedom which they have,
for example, freedom of thought;
instead they demand freedom of speech as a compensation.
- Soren Kierkegaard

Success seems to be connected with action.
Successful people keep moving.
They make mistakes, but they don't quit.
- Conrad Hilton

The most common way people give up their power
is by thinking they don't have any.
- Alice Walker

Watch what people are cynical about,
and one can often discover what they lack.
- George S. Patton

Most of the important things in the world
have been accomplished by people
who have kept on trying
when there seemed to be no hope at all.
- Dale Carnegie

A leader is best when people barely know he exists;
when his work is done, his aim fulfilled,
they will say: we did it ourselves.
- Lao Tzu

I believe that everything happens for a reason.
People change so that you can learn to let go,
things go wrong so that you appreciate them when they're right,
you believe lies so you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself,
and sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.
- Marilyn Monroe

I can't understand why people
are frightened by new ideas.
I'm frightened of old ones.
- John Cage

Some people come into our lives and quickly go.
Some people stay for awhile,
and move our souls to dance.
They awaken us to a new understanding,
leave footprints on our hearts,
and we are never, ever the same.
- Flavia Weedn

If a million people say a foolish thing,
it is still a foolish thing.
- Anatole France

People seem not to see that
their opinion of the world
is also a confession of character.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

The wicked leader is he who the people despise.
The good leader is he who the people revere.
The great leader is he who the people say, "We did it ourselves."
- Lao Tzu

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

Jonathan Huie jlh(at)jlhuie(dot)com - About & Disclosure

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Quotes by Oscar Levant

Daily Quotes to Live By