The nearest way to glory is to strive to be what you wish to be thought to be. - Socrates
I remind myself of this quote every time I catch myself daydreaming. Instead of daydreaming I should be working on trying to make things happen in my real life. I actually like to set goals, the problem is sticking to them. But I guess some goals are better than no goals at all, even if mine are a little fuzzy.
I read a book on voluntary simplicity recently. The authors had a hectic life style with jobs they hated, long commutes, fancy cars and a lot of debt. They ended up getting so stressed out they chucked it all, after going to some seminar based on the book Your Money or Your Life.
So they quit their jobs now live on a poverty level income, which they glamorize in their book. I really don’t get that lifestyle at all. To me that is like failing and giving up on life. I think it is better to just find a job you love, buy inexpensive cars and live within your means. These authors seemed to be going from one xtreme to the other.
Ideas are like shadows — substantial enough until we try to grasp them. – Samuel Butler
A soul occupied with great ideas best performs small duties. – Harriet Martineau
The question for each man to settle is not what he would do if he had means, time, influence and educational advantages; the question is what he will do with the things he has. The moment a young man ceases to dream or to
bemoan his lack of opportunities and resolutely looks his conditions in the face, and resolves to change them, he lays the corner-stone of a solid and honorable success. – Hamilton Wright Mabie
I think this quotes makes an important point: that we have to make the most in life out of what we have to work with, not the ideal environment that we wish we could have in life.
True success is the educating and adapting of one’s mind and soul in such a manner that he may be able to enjoy life and appreciate its highest conceptions, that he may partake of the sweetness of nature, and in his daily walks and labors be able to teach and enlighten the minds of others, thus making life a pleasure to his fellow-man as well as to himself. – Orison Swett Marden
Most of the shadows of this life are caused by our standing in our own sunshine. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Far away in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead.
Louisa May Alcott
http://www.inspirational-quotes.info/imagination.html
Imagination and fiction make up more than three quarters of our real life. – Simone Weil
http://www.george-macdonald.com/simoneweil/quotes.htm
The source of genius is imagination alone, the refinement of the senses that sees what others do not see, or sees them differently.
Eugène Delacroix
http://www.makart.com/makgallery/quotes.html
Life, like a dome of many colored glass,
Stains the white radiance of eternity.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
All animals except man know that the ultimate point of life is to enjoy it.
Samuel Butler
God asks no man whether he will accept life. That is not the choice. You must take it. The only question is how. Henry Ward Beecher
"I have never avoided the influence of others. I would have considered this a cowardice and lack of sincerity toward myself." – Henri Matisse
"The law of the harvest is to reap more than you sow. Sow an an act, and you reap a habit; sow a habit, and you reap a character; sow a character, and you reap a destiny." – G.D. Boardman
"Be your character what it will, it will be known, and nobody will take your word upon it." – Lord Chesterfield