The first rule of holes:when you're in one, stop digging. -- Molly Ivins Arrange whatever pieces come your way. -- Virginia Woolf . . . you don't get to choose how you're going to die, or when.You can only decide how you're going to live now. -- Joan Baez I choose not to be a common man. Me, it's my right to be uncommon if I can. I'll seek opportunity, not security. I do not wish to be a kept citizen--humbled and dulled by having the state look after me. I want to take the calculated risk, to dream and to build, to fail and to succeed. I'll refuse to live from hand to mouth. I'll prefer the challenges of life to the guaranteed existence. The thrill of fulfillment to the stale calm of Utopia. I will never cower before any master nor bend to any friend. It is my heritage to stand erect, proud and unafraid, to think and act for myself and face the world boldly and say, ?This I have done.? -- Theodore Roosevelt The mistake we make is to turn upon our past with angry wholesale negation . . . The way of wisdom is to treat it airily, lightly, wantonly, and in a spirit of poetry; and above all to use its symbols, which are its spiritual essence, giving them a new connotation, a fresh meaning. -- John Cowper Powys You may believe that you are responsible for what you do, but not for what you think. The truth is that you are responsible for what you think, because it is only at this level that you can exercise choice. What you do comes from what you think. -- A Course in Miracles Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss it you will land among the stars. -- Les Brown Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power. -- Lao-tzu Life can only be understood backwards; it has to be lived forwards. -- S?ren Kierkegaard Listen to the exhortation of the dawn Look to this day! For it is life, the very life of life. In its brief course lie all the Verities and realities of your existence; The bliss of growth, The glory of action, The splendor of beauty; For yesterday is but a dream, And tomorrow is only a vision; But today, well lived, makes Every yesterday a dream of happiness, And every tomorrow a vision of hope. Look well therefore to this day! -- Passage from the Sanskrit Life is a mission. Every other definition is false, and leads all who accept it astray. -- Guiseppe Mazzini You ought to be afraid to die until you've contributed something great back to humanity. -- Oliver Wendell Holmes