Looking for a little meaning in your day or inspiration to carry you through the rest of the week? Sounds like a job for Wednesday Wisdom!
Below you'll find nuggets of hard-earned wisdom from library staff. Check back each month as more nuggets are added.
We'd love to hear from you! Share your thoughts or insights in the comments below.
September
"Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. / Just keep going. No feeling is final.” - Rainer Maria Rilke
"Make of yourself a light" - Buddha
“Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others… re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul…” - Walt Whitman
"One thing life has taught me: if you are interested, you never have to look for new interests. They come to you. When you are genuinely interested in one thing, it will always lead to something else.” - Eleanor Roosevelt
My mom said, "You might not get it, but you miss all the shots you don't take."
Your mind is your greatest power. Use it well. – Aneta Cruz
الخوف لا يمنع من الموت ولكنه يمنع من الحياة‘’Fear doesn’t prevent death. It prevents life’’ - Naguib Mahfouz
"When you arise in the morning think of what a privilege it is to be alive, to think, to enjoy, to love." - Marcus Aurelius
"Today is just one of the days we have to go through. But what will happen in the coming days will only depend on what we do today." - Ernest Hemingway
August
"We are made of star stuff." - Carl Sagan
"All of us, at some time or other, need help. Whether we're giving or receiving help, each one of us has something valuable to bring to this world. That's one of the things that connects us as neighbors--in our own way, each one of us is a giver and a receiver." - Mr. Rogers
Ignorance is not bliss, but in truth, an invisible cell. One which constrains thought to chains and sensibility to starvation.
A dear friend from college always used to say "when do you get the chance?" (with a little shrug of his shoulders and tilt of the head). I hear his voice in my head whenever I am considering something that might take me out of my comfort zone. It is a good prompt for me to take life by the throat and shake things up.
From a first-gen college student seminar (advice on applying for jobs or grad school and not feeling "qualified" enough) - Let them (the job/school/etc.) tell you no.
Wherever you go, there you are.
“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” - Maya Angelou
"Find out who you are and do it on purpose." - Dolly Parton
"Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people." - Eleanor Roosevelt
"Live simply so others may simply live" - Mahatma Gandhi
July
If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is!
You can never have too many napkins.
Anything worth doing is worth doing well.
“And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair." - Khalil Gibran, The Prophet
"The plural of anecdote is not data" - Mistakes in Quality Statistics and How to Fix Them by Donald W. Benbow...but he attributes the quote to "as statisticians say"
"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." - Thomas Edison
—ArapahoeJoanne
"The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy." - Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus (He is saying that we must rebel against the absurdity of the universe by choosing to be happy. Joy is rebellion.)
—ArapahoeSarahB
"You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop." - Rumi
"A well-educated mind will always have more questions than answers." Helen Keller
My mother always said, Only boring people get bored. Hard to argue that one, no matter how bored you were.
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