Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.

~ Howard Thurman

“He who lives by the sword, dies by the sword.”

Jesus Christ (The Bible, Matthew 26:52)

“Live by the sword, die by the sword” is a metaphorical expression meaning that living one’s life in a certain way will, in the end, affect one’s destiny. The proverb comes from the Gospel of Matthew, verse 26:52, which describes a disciple (identified in the Gospel of John as Peter) drawing a sword to defend against the arrest of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, but is rebuked by Jesus, who tells him to sheath the weapon:

Then said Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.

While a common modern interpretation means “those who live by violence will die by violence”, suggesting nonviolence or pacifism as an alternative, it is also used for a variety of situations which contain an element of poetic justice.

“A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.”

- William Shakespeare

“We have met the enemy, and they are us.”

- this is a twist on Oliver Hazard Perry’s words after a naval battle: “We have met the enemy, and they are ours.” The updated version was first used in the comic strip “Pogo,” by Walt Kelly, in the 1960s and referred to the turmoil caused by the Vietnam War.

“I have walked that long road to freedom. I have tried not to falter; I have made missteps along the way. But I have discovered the secret that after climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb. I have taken a moment here to rest, to steal a view of the glorious vista that surrounds me, to look back on the distance I have come. But I can rest only for a moment, for with freedom comes responsibilities, and I dare not linger, for my long walk is not yet ended.”

~ Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom (1995)

“It is very simple to be happy, but it is very difficult to be simple.”

~ Rabindranath Tagore (1861 – 1941)

“Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.”

~ Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali (1912)

“All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.”

~ Martin Buber (1878 – 1965)

“Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.”

~Albert Einstein

“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.”

- Carl Jung, Contributions to Analytical Psychology (1928)

“The memory of that event has only just come back to me, now doubly painful: regret for a vanished past and, above all, remorse for lost opportunities. Mithra-Grandchamp is the women we were unable to love, the chances we failed to seize, the moments of happiness we allowed to drift away. Today it seems to me that my whole life was nothing but a string of those small near misses: a race whose result we know beforehand but in which we fail to bet on the winner.”

— Jean-Dominique Bauby (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly)