Inspirations

Many have inspired me.  The largest section of dbweaver.art is entitled “Inspirations,” where I’ve assembled and illustrated words of wisdom from these influential sources:

St. Francis of Assisi
“What you are looking for is who is looking.”

Thoreau
“It’s not what you look at that matters.  It’s what you see.”

“Men have become the tools of their tools.”

“All things in this world must be seen with youthful, hopeful eyes.”

“Every child begins the world again.”

Anaïs Nin
“We do not see things as they are; we see them as we are.”

“When you possess light within, you see it externally.”

Rumi
“Everything that is made beautiful and fair and lovely is made for the eye of one who sees.”

“Maybe you are searching among the branches, for what only appears in the roots.”

“Life is a balance between holding on and letting go.”

“Be like a tree and let the dead leaves drop.”

“Why are you so enchanted by this world, when a mine of gold lies within you?”

“The beauty you see in me is a reflection of you.”

“When will you begin that long journey into yourself?”

“As you start to walk on the way, the way appears.”

William Blake
“To see a world in a grain of sand and a heaven in a wildflower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour.”

“Great things are done when men and mountains meet.”

“If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, Infinite.”

Rousseau
“The world of reality has its limits.  The world of imagination is boundless.”

Wordsworth
“Come forth into the light of things.  Let Nature be your teacher.”

“My heart leaps up when I behold a rainbow in the sky: So it was when my life began; so is it now I am a man; so be it when I shall grow old, or let me die!  The child is the father of the man; and I could wish my days to be bound each to each by natural piety.”

Anne Frank
“The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely, or unhappy, is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature and God.  Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be.”

John Muir
“Keep close to Nature’s heart…and break clean away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods.  Wash your spirit clean.”

“The grand show is eternal.  It is always sunrise somewhere…  Eternal sunrise, eternal sunset, …on seas and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls.”

“Society speaks and all men listen.  Mountains speak and wise men listen.”

Shakespeare
“One touch of Nature makes the whole world kin.”

Emerson
“Adopt the pace of Nature; her secret is patience.”

“Most of the shadows of this life are caused by standing in one’s own sunshine.”

“When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.”

“What is success?  To laugh often and much; to win the affection of children; …to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived.  This is to have succeeded!”

“Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.”

“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”

“Do not go where the path may lead.  Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”

Einstein
“Look deep into Nature and then you will understand everything better.”

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.  It is the source of all true art and science.”

“We cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them.”

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
“People are like stained glass windows.  They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when darkness sets in, their true color is revealed only if there is light from within.”

Maya Angelou
“Let nothing dim the light that shines from within.”

Helen Keller
“Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadow.”

Max Ehrmann
“Desiderata” – entire.

Scott Peck
“Life is difficult.  This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths.  It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it.  Once we truly know that life is difficult – once we truly understand and accept it – then life is no longer difficult.  Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.”

Longfellow
“For after all, the best thing one can do when it is raining is let it rain.”

George Orwell
“Happiness can exist only in acceptance.”

Carl Sagan
“There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image [shot from space] of our tiny world.  To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”

Ouspensky
“The strangest and most fantastic fact about negative emotions is that people actually worship them.”

Joseph Conrad
“The man who says that he has no illusions has at least that one.”

Mark Twain
“I’ve experienced many terrible things in my life, a few of which actually happened.”

Jung
“When an inner condition is not made conscious, it happens outside as fate.”

George Carlin
“Just when I learned the meaning of life, they changed it.”

Dostoevsky
“The soul is healed by being with children.”

Don Miguel Ruiz
“Just imagine becoming the way you used to be as a very young child, before you understood the meaning of any word, before opinions took over your mind.  The real you is loving, joyful, and free.  The real you is just like a flower, just like the wind, just like the ocean, just like the sun.”

Erik Erikson
“You see a child play, and it is so close to seeing an artist paint, for in play the child says things without uttering a word.”

Picasso
“All children are artists.  The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.”

Debussy
“I wish to sing of my interior visions with the naïve candor of a child.”

Aldous Huxley
“The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which means never losing your enthusiasm.”

Van Gogh
“What color is in a picture, enthusiasm is in life.”

Thich Nhat Hanh
“You are like fireworks.  You go out into your children, your friends, your society, and the whole world.”

“Thanks to impermanence, everything is possible.”

Buddha
“Do not dwell in the past; do not dream of the future; concentrate the mind on the present moment.”

“I am a finger pointing to the moon.  Don’t look at me; look at the moon.”

André Gide
“In order to be utterly happy the only thing necessary is to refrain from comparing this moment with other moments of the past, which I often did not fully enjoy because I was comparing them with other moments of the future.”

“One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.”

Patrick Cohn
“The zone is simply a mental state of total focus in the present moment.  You trust your skills and react without doubt or fear about results.”

Dalai Lama XIV
“Nothing is permanent.”

Heraclitus
“Everything flows and nothing abides.  Everything gives way, and nothing stays fixed.”

Alexander Graham Bell
“When one door closes another door opens, but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us.”

Camus
“In the midst of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.  And that makes me happy.  For it says no matter how hard the world pushes against me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back.”

Eckhart Tolle
“I have lived with several Zen masters – all of them cats.”

“Just watching an animal closely can take you out of your mind and bring you into the present moment, which is where the animal lives all the time – surrendered to life.  That is why the dog is so joyful.”

Alan Watts
“No one imagines that a symphony is supposed to improve in quality as it goes along, or that the whole object of playing it is to reach the finale.  The point of music is discovered in every moment of playing and listening to it.  It is the same, I feel, with the greater part of our lives, and if we are unduly absorbed in improving them we may forget altogether to live them.”

Robert Schumann
“The musician’s art is to send light into the depths of men’s hearts.”

Lao Tzu
“Music in the soul can be heard by the universe.”

Bernard Berenson
“It was a morning in early summer.  A silver haze shimmered and trembled over the lime trees.  The air was laden with their fragrance.  The temperature was like a caress.  I remember…that I climbed up a tree stump and felt suddenly immersed in Itness.  I did not call it by that name.  I had no need for words.  It and I were one.”

Zen koan
“The snow falls, each flake in its appropriate place.”

Aristotle
“The soul never thinks without a picture.”

Teilhard de Chardin
“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience.  We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”

Lil Xan
“It gets better: there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.  It may take one day, it may take ten years.  But one day, you will find happiness if you manifest it.  Put that energy out, and it will come back.”