Sarah Ban Breathnach Quotes
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When I think about my father, the first image that comes to mind is holding his hand as he drove me to the train station six weeks before he died; I had never noticed how beautiful his hands were until I saw them, for the first and last time, entwined in mine.
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I approach my work with a passionate intensity, acting as if its success depends entirely on me. "But once I've done my best, I try to let go as much as possible and have no expectations about how my work will be received by the world."
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That each day that you love, honor, and respect your own unique point of view, you're a step closer to finding a fortune.
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We think that it's the big moments that define our lives-the wedding, the baby, the new house, the dream job. But really, these big moments of happiness are just the punctuation marks of our personal sagas. The narrative is written every day in the small, the simple, and the common. In your tiny choices, in these tiny changes. In the unconsidered. The overlooked. The discarded. The reclaimed.
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An authentic life is the most personal form of worship. Everyday life has become my prayer.
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Forgiveness is a form of gratitude. When we forgive others, we show them the mercy that we have often received and been thankful for.
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Joy is your birthright.
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Gradually as you become curator of your own contentment, you will learn to embrace the gentle yearnings of your heart.
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Despite all the doom and gloom that constantly assaults our senses, there is a way for us to ransom our lives and reclaim our futures: it consists in turning away from the world to recognize what in life makes us truly happy. For each of us, what that is will be different. But once we obtain this inner knowledge, we will possess the ability to transform our outer world. "You can live a lifetime and, at the end of it, know more about other people than you know about yourself," the pilot and writer Beryl Markham reminds us. We cannot let this continue to occur.
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Celebrate the Sacred in the ordinary.
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A nap is not to be confused with sleeping. We sleep to recharge our bodies. We nap to care for our souls. When we nap, we are resting our eyes while our imaginations soar. Getting ready for the next round. Sorting, sifting, separating the profound from the profane, the possible from the improbable. Rehearsing our acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize, our surprise on receiving the MacArthur genius award. This requires a prone position. If we're lucky, we might drift off, but we won't drift far. Just far enough to ransom our creativity from chaos.
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Gail Sheehy tells us that "the delights of self-discovery are always available." All Fools' Day is the perfect day to engrave this wisdom in our hearts.
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Before we can change anything in our life, we have to recognize that this is the way it is meant to be right now. For me, acceptance has become what I call the long sigh of the soul. It's the closed eyes in prayer, perhaps even the quiet tears. It's "all right," as in "All right, You lead, I'll follow." And it's "all right" as in "Everything is going to turn out all right." This is simply part of the journey.
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Today is not the day you quit. Nor is it the day you cry. Today you know that you have all the passion and wisdom to find that quiet center of solace, serenity and strength necessary to create and sustain an authentic life.
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Today carve out a quiet interlude for yourself in which to dream, pen in hand. Only dreams give birth to change.
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I have a theory about soul mates – that God wants to be our sweetheart. And once we fall in love with life and have an intimate relationship with Spirit, that's when we meet our soul mate. It's as if God says, 'You're not meant to be alone on this earth. I just wanted you to love me first.
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Too often we elevate the inconsequential into the influential... by reacting without reflecting.
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Self-nurturance, or learning to bask in bliss, is an acquired art form.
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Consider the track record of your naysayers. How many dreams have they successfully brought into this world?
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Your life at this exact moment is a direct result of choices you made once upon a time. Thirty minutes or 30 year ago.
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Every time we remember to say "thank you", we experience nothing less than heaven on earth.
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Life is not made up of minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, or years, but of moments. You must experience each one before you can appreciate it.
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Real life isn't always going to be perfect or go our way, but the recurring acknowledgement of what is working in our lives can help us not only to survive but surmount our difficulties.
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Self-sacrifice is one of a woman's seven deadly sins (along with self-abuse, self-loathing, self-deception, self-pity, self-serving, and self-immolation).