Astound Quotes

To the young child, all life is a great adventure -
when did we grow so dull and brittle.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

If a man is called to be a street sweeper,
he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted,
or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry.
He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts
of heaven and earth will pause to say,
here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

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

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

If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant.
If we did not sometimes taste of adversity,
prosperity would not be so welcome.
- Anne Bradstreet

When the best leader's work is done the people say,
"We did it ourselves."
- Lao Tzu

Sometimes you get the results you wanted,
sometimes you don't.
What matters is that you did your best.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

As for accomplishments,
I just did what I had to do as things came along.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

Many of life's failures are people who did not realize
how close they were to success when they gave up.
- Thomas Edison

Success comes from knowing that
you did your best to become the best
that you are capable of becoming.
- John Wooden

A leader is most effective when people barely know he exists.
When his work is done, his aim fulfilled,
his troops will feel they did it themselves.
- Lao Tzu

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

There are two kinds of failures:
those who thought and never did,
and those who did and never thought.
- Laurence J. Peter

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

Every day I give thanks that I am me,
and that everything that has ever occurred in my life
happened exactly as it did -
however unpleasant it may have appeared at the time.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Never say or do anything you wouldn't want
to be the last thing you ever said or did.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

A leader is best when people barely know he exists,
not so good when people obey and acclaim him,
worst when they despise him.
But of a good leader, who talks little,
when his work is done, his aim fulfilled,
they will say, "We did this ourselves."
- Lao Tzu

We did not change as we grew older;
we just became more clearly ourselves.
- Lynn Hall

I did not wish to take a cabin passage,
but rather to go before the mast
and on the deck of the world,
for there I could best see
the moonlight amid the mountains.
I do not wish to go below now.
- Henry David Thoreau

I've learned that people will forget what you said,
people will forget what you did,
but people will never forget how you made them feel.
- Maya Angelou

Where am I? Who am I? How did I come to be here?
What is this thing called the world?
How did I come into the world?
Why was I not consulted?
And If I am compelled to take part in it,
Where is the director? I want to see him.
- Soren Kierkegaard

I honor you, Hero, for you do not play to the crowd.
You play to your own soul.
An audience of one fills the house with its appreciation and applause.
Others follow you, and may attempt to emulate you,
but that is not why you are a hero.
Fame may smile upon you, or it may not.
The world may cheer your name, or you may be the unknown warrior
who rescued comrades in battle,
or taught a young girl how to shed tears of joy.
Whatever you did, you did not do for fame.
If you had, you would not be a Hero.
You are a Hero for your bold courageous inspired action.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time;
it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.
- Sydney Harris

The crops were planted, tended, and harvested -
now the ground lies fallow, awaiting the new planting.
Did the year fail? I think not.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

A man who views the world the same at fifty
as he did at twenty
has wasted thirty years of his life.
- Muhammad Ali

True believers just don't see things the way they are,
because if they did, they wouldn't be true believers anymore.
- Philip Caputo

Did you ever stop to think, and forget to start again?
- A. A. Milne (Winnie-The-Pooh)

Jesus preached more and taught more
about helping the poor and the sick and the hungry
than he did about heaven and hell.
Shouldn't that tell us something?
- John Grisham

I recognize that the person I was in my past
is not the person I am today.
That person did the very best they could,
given the knowledge, emotions, and prior experience
they had to draw upon at the time.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Guilt says I've done something wrong;
... shame says there is something wrong with me.
Guilt says I've made a mistake;
... shame says I am a mistake.
Guilt says what did was not good;
... shame says I am no good.
- John Bradshaw

If I hadn't met you, I wouldn't like you.
If I didn't like you, I wouldn't love you.
If I didn't love you, I wouldn't miss you.
But I did, I do, and I will.
- Anonymous

The thing the sixties did was to show us the possibilities
and the responsibility that we all had.
It wasn't the answer.
It just gave us a glimpse of the possibility.
- John Lennon

There is no doubt that life can be a bumpy ride.
But so were those roller coasters you loved as a kid.
Savor the adventure.
Find excitement in the uncertainty and the constant change.
Even let a touch of fear add spice to your life -
as you did on that roller coaster.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

If a friend of mine gave a feast, and did not invite me to it,
I should not mind a bit.
but if a friend of mine had a sorrow
and refused to allow me to share it,
I should feel it most bitterly.
If he shut the doors of the house of mourning against me,
I would move back again and again and beg to be admitted
so that I might share in what I was entitled to share.
If he thought me unworthy, unfit to weep with him,
I should feel it as the most poignant humiliation.
- Oscar Wilde

Every man casts a shadow;
not his body only, but his imperfectly mingled spirit.
This is his grief. Let him turn which way he will,
it falls opposite to the sun;
short at noon, long at eve. Did you never see it?
- Henry David Thoreau

Well, it seems to me that the best relationships -
the ones that last -
are frequently the ones that are rooted in friendship.
You know, one day you look at the person
and you see something more than you did the night before.
Like a switch has been flicked somewhere.
And the person who was just a friend is...
suddenly the only person you can ever imagine yourself with.
- Dana Scully

I Did Not Die
Do not stand at my grave and weep;
I am not there. I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn's rain,
When you awaken in the morning's hush,
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there. I did not die.
- Anonymous

Future generations are not going to ask us
what political party were you in.
They are going to ask what did you do about it,
when you knew the glaciers were melting.
- Martin Sheen

It was like being in the eye of a hurricane.
You'd wake up in a concert and think,
Wow, how did I get here?
- John Lennon

Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

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

With the fearful strain that is on me night and day,
if I did not laugh I should die.
- Abraham Lincoln

If we were meant to be happy,
why did God create war, hunger, and the 11 o'clock news?
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Regrets and their cousins, resentments,
are a huge cause of self-inflicted suffering.
Sometimes it takes years of psychotherapy
to gain freedom from regrets about what you did or did not do,
and freedom from resentment over what others did or did not do.
Sometimes it takes a lifetime of self-talk to remember
to put the past in the past where it belongs.
However, sometimes a simple symbolic act can help immeasurably
to grant ourselves freedom from the past.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

America did not invent human rights.
In a very real sense, it is the other way around.
Human rights invented America.
- Jimmy Carter

This [the Holocaust] must never happen again. ...
Be vigilant about your rights.
Care about the rights and human dignity of others.
When the rights of any group, no matter how small,
no matter how marginal, are violated,
your liberty, your freedom is put at risk.
Let there never be a day when we cast about in horror
and have to ask the question, "How did it ever come to this?"
- Thomas Childers, Ph.D., Professor of History,
University of Pennsylvania, in the closing remarks
of his six-hour Teaching Company audio lecture series

At twenty years of age the will reigns;
at thirty, the wit;
and at forty, the judgment.
- Benjamin Franklin

It does me no injury for my neighbor to say
there are twenty gods or no God.
- Thomas Jefferson

The Four Stages of Public Opinion
I (Just after publication): The novelty is absurd
and subversive of Religion and Morality.
The propounder both fool and knave.
II (Twenty years later): The Novelty is absolute Truth
and will yield a full and satisfactory
explanation of things in general -
The propounder a man of sublime genius and perfect virtue.
III (Forty years later): The Novelty won't explain
things in general after all, and therefore is a wretched failure.
The propounder a very ordinary person advertised by a clique.
IV (A century later): The Novelty a mixture of truth and error.
Explains as much as could reasonably be expected.
The propounder worthy of all honor
in spite of his share of human frailties,
as one who has added to the permanent possessions of science.
- Thomas Henry [T. H.] Huxley

I got a perfect build for clothes.
I'm a twenty-eight dwarf.
- the movie Love and Death

Mr. President, I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed.
But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops.
Uh, depending on the breaks.
- the movie Dr. Strangelove

Love is not a matter of counting the years,
but making the years count.
- Michele St. Amand

If you think in terms of a year, plant a seed;
if in terms of ten years, plant trees;
if in terms of 100 years, teach the people.
- Confucius

And in the end, it's not
the years in your life that count,
it's the life in your years.
- Abraham Lincoln

You can make more friends in two months
by becoming interested in other people
than you can in two years by trying
to get other people interested in you.
- Dale Carnegie

If the stars should appear
but one night every thousand years
how man would marvel and stare.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Anger is a destructive emotion
that becomes instinctive over the years.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Almost nothing you worry about today
will matter in a hundred years.
Think carefully about what you can focus on today.
Choose tasks that will actually make a positive difference
to your great-grandchildren.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

I live in that solitude which is painful in youth,
but delicious in the years of maturity.
- Albert Einstein

If you plan for a year, plant a seed.
If for ten years, plant a tree.
If for a hundred years, teach the people.
When you sow a seed once, you will reap a single harvest.
When you teach the people, you will reap a hundred harvests.
- Kuan Chung

When a man you like switches from what
he said a year ago, or four years ago,
he is a broad-minded person who has courage enough
to change his mind with changing conditions.
When a man you don't like does it,
he is a liar who has broken his promise.
- Franklin Pierce Adams

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)

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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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