Wise Quotes about Responding

How you respond to the challenge in the second half
will determine what you become after the game,
whether you are a winner or a loser.
- Lou Holtz

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

Life is ten percent what happens to you
and ninety percent how you respond to it.
- Lou Holtz

We receive this food in gratitude to all beings
Who have helped to bring it to our table,
And vow to respond in turn to those in need
With wisdom and compassion.
- Buddhist Blessing

Unless we form the habit of going to the Bible
in bright moments as well as in trouble,
we cannot fully respond to its consolations
because we lack equilibrium between light and darkness.
- Helen Keller

Most people think that anger is an instinctive response,
and that some people were just born with the temperament
to get angrier faster than others.
That statement is only half right.
Anger is an instinctive response.
We respond to an affront with anger essentially instantaneously -
much too quickly for conscious thought to be called upon.
But the instinct of the anger response
can be trained through conscious repetition,
visualization, and coaching.
Visualization is seeing the event
we desire to master in our mind's eye.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

During his training, a baseball player strives
to make each swing better than the last.
The repetition of a faulty swing would be worse than useless.
It would ingrain bad habits.
The same is true of emotional responses.
If we allow ourselves to continue to have the same angry responses,
we just entrench our anger habit.
But if we strive - through consciousness, visualization, and coaching -
to moderate our anger response,
over time, we can train ourselves to respond
to events as we choose - without anger.
You can't magically be free from anger tomorrow,
but you can put yourself on your own training program
that will reduce the frequency and intensity
of your anger response day by day, year by year.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The holiday season promotes
a heightened sense of community.
It draws our chins up and
helps us look above and over
the limiting fence of our own events,
activities and preoccupations.
The opportunity for a heroic gesture
can tap you quietly on the shoulder
in the midst of a holiday bustle.
If you are attentive,
you will notice the gentle touch
and will be able to respond. Remember...
There are no small acts of kindness.
Every compassionate act makes large the world.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

Time is a monster that cannot be reasoned with.
It responds like a snail to our impatience,
then it races like a gazelle when you can't catch a breath.
- the movie Simon Birch

Have you ever hugged a tree?
Hug a tree, and one day you will come to know
that it is not only that
you have hugged the tree
but that the tree also responds,
the tree also hugs you.
- Osho

A little girl at the wedding afterwards asked her mother
why the bride changed her mind.
What do you mean? responded her mother.
Well, she went down the aisle with one man,
and came back with another.
- Anonymous

Having seen the devastation of war first hand,
Eisenhower came both to despise war
and to see that "war settles nothing."
On the other hand, Ike was certainly no peacenik.
He understood that, in an emergency,
action must be met with reaction.
When truly necessary, violence met with violence -
but never hate responded to with hate.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that.
- John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859)

It is not the man who has too little,
but the man who craves more, that is poor.
- Lucius Annaeus Seneca

We shall see but a little way if
we require to understand what we see.
- Henry David Thoreau

The choice is to work alone to be a little
more successful than the next person,
or to work together for the great betterment of humanity.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Practice yourself, for heaven's sake in little things,
and then proceed to greater.
- Epictetus

You give but little when you give of your possessions.
It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.
- Khalil Gibran

Little minds have little worries,
big minds have no time for worries.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

The wise man looks into space,
and does not regard the small as too little,
nor the great as too much;
for he knows that there is no limit to dimensions.
- Lao Tzu

Let the refining and improving of your own life
keep you so busy that you have little time to criticize others.
- H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize
how little we understand about life,
ourselves, and the world around us.
- Socrates

A little simplification would be
the first step toward rational living.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

Life is lived in the mists -
little is fully visible, less is certain.
Yet rejoice in the unknowing,
and let all of life be a wonderful adventure.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

If we all worked on the assumption that what is accepted as true
were really true, there would be little hope of advance.
- Orville Wright

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,
adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.
With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. -
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Any man who reads too much
and uses his own brain too little
falls into lazy habits of thinking.
- Albert Einstein

Mother is the name for God
in the lips and hearts of little children.
- William Makepeace Thackeray

The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live
that his happiness shall depend
as little as possible on external things.
- Epictetus

"Just living is not enough," said the butterfly,
"one must have sunshine, freedom and a little flower."
- Hans Christian Andersen

'Tis the business of little minds to shrink,
but they whose heart is firm,
and whose conscience approves their conduct,
will pursue their principles unto death.
- Thomas Paine

Many people know so little about what
is beyond their short range of experience.
They look within themselves - and find nothing!
Therefore they conclude that there
is nothing outside themselves either.
- Helen Keller

The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra.
- Jimmy Johnson

I never accepted the idea
that I had to be guided by
some pattern or blueprint.
- Little Richard

I have a dream that my four little children will one day
live in a nation where they will
not be judged by the color of their skin,
but by the content of their character.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

They who can give up essential liberty
to obtain a little temporary safety
deserve neither liberty nor safety.
- Benjamin Franklin

A little more persistence,
a little more effort, and
what seemed hopeless failure
may turn to glorious success.
- Elbert Hubbard

Most truths are so naked
that people feel sorry for them
and cover them up,
at least a little bit.
- Edward R. Murrow

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

Unlike grown-ups, children have little need to deceive themselves.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Do you not know that there comes a midnight hour
when every one has to throw off his mask?
Do you believe that life will always let itself be mocked?
Do you think you can slip away a little before midnight
in order to avoid this? Or are you not terrified by it?
I have seen men in real life who so long deceived others
that at last their true nature could not reveal itself;...
In every man there is something which to a certain degree
prevents him from becoming perfectly transparent to himself;
and this may be the case in so high a degree,
he may be so inexplicably woven into relationships of life
which extend far beyond himself that he almost cannot reveal himself.
But he who cannot reveal himself cannot love,
and he who cannot love is the most unhappy man of all.
- Soren Kierkegaard

When was the last time you took
a different route to work ... just because?
Consider shaking up your life a little (or a lot) ...
for no reason, except to do it.
Let your life be an adventure.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back
and realize they were the big things.
- Robert Brault

The Sweetest Strawberry:
A man traveling across a field encountered a tiger.
He fled, the tiger after him.
Coming to a precipice,
he caught hold of the root of a wild vine
and swung himself over the edge.
The tiger sniffed at him from above.
Trembling, the man looked down to where,
far below, another tiger was waiting to eat him.
Only the vine sustained him.
Two mice, one white and one black,
little by little started to gnaw away the vine.
The man then saw a luscious strawberry near him.
Grasping the vine with one hand,
he plucked the strawberry with the other.
How sweet it tasted.
- Zen Koan

For as long as I can remember, I've been searching for something,
some reason why we're here. What are we doing here? Who are we?
If this is a chance to find out
even just a little part of that answer...
I don't know, I think it's worth a human life. Don't you?
- the Jodie Foster movie Contact (1997)

The Moon Cannot Be Stolen:
A thief entered the little hut of a Zen Master,
but discovered there was nothing to steal.
The Zen Master discovered the thief.
"You have come a long way to visit me," he told the prowler,
"and you should not return empty-handed.
Please take my clothes as a gift."
The thief was bewildered,
but he took the clothes and slunk away.
The Zen Master sat naked, watching the moon.
"Poor fellow," he mused,
"I wish I could have given him this beautiful moon."
- Traditional Zen Koan

Genuine heroes - no batteries needed -
bring lots of open-mind and at least a little courage.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

It's the little things you do
that can make a big difference.
What are you attempting to accomplish?
What little thing can you do today
that will make you more effective?
You are probably only one step away from greatness.
- Bob Proctor

Be avid.
Create apart from perfection.
Risk failure.
Cover your words with sweat.
Run a little
Touch excruciatingly.
Laugh until you cry.
Dance with your eyes closed.
Care.
Understand you die a little in every moment.
Be Enlivened
- Mary Anne Radmacher

Don't be too timid and squeamish about your actions.
All life is an experiment.
The more experiments you make the better.
What if they are a little coarse,
and you may get your coat soiled or torn?
What if you do fail, and get fairly rolled
in the dirt once or twice.
Up again, you shall never be so afraid of a tumble.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Love is an act of faith,
and whoever is of little faith is also of little love.
- Erich Fromm

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Wisdom Quotes