January 1-15, 2010 Quotes

Everyday this year I will post as my status message on Facebook, and here in Ramblin' Anne, a quote which I find inspiring either to my current situation, mood, or world events.  These can be used for free-writing prompts, or a way to look upon your day.  Many times I use the thoughtful words of past writers and inspired persons as reminders of how I should perceive and approach my world today.  Often these quotes come with imaginative metaphors which can spark an idea in any creative person's think-box.  :)  So here's my catch up, quotes I selected for the first fifteen days of 2010.
January 15, 2010
"There is a muscular energy in sunlight corresponding to the spiritual energy of wind." - Annie Dillard
January 14, 2010
"Compassion can be put into practice if one recognizes the fact that every human being is a member of humanity and the human family regardless of differences in religion, culture, color and creed. Deep down there is no difference." - Dalai Lama
January 14, 2010
"The essence of love and compassion is understanding, the ability to recognize the physical, material, and psychological suffering of others, to put ourselves 'inside the skin' of the other. We 'go inside' their body, feelings, and mental formations, and witness for ourselves their suffering. Shallow observation as an outsider is not enough to ... See Moresee their suffering. We must become one with the subject of our observation. When we are in contact with another's suffering, a feeling of compassion is born in us. Compassion means, literally, 'to suffer with.'" - Thich Nhat Hanh
January 13, 2010
“Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.” "How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains!" - John Muir
January 13, 2010
"The actions of men are the best interpreters of their thoughts." - John Locke
January 12, 2010
"As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives." - Henry David Thoreau
January 11, 2010
"Inside my empty bottle I was constructing a lighthouse while all the others were making ships." - Charles Simic
January 10, 2010
"Tennessee's a brother to my sister Carolina where they're gonna bury me." - Ryan Adams & the Cardinals, "Let It Ride"
January 9, 2010
"Down by the Riverside motel, it’s 10 below and falling. By a 99 cent store she closed her eyes and started swaying. But it's so hard to dance that way when it’s cold and there's no music. Well, your old hometown is so far away, but inside your head there's a record that's playing, a song called ‘Hold on, hold on.’" - Tom Waits, "Hold On"
January 8, 2010
"The grand show is eternal. It’s always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never dried all at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal dawn & gloaming, on sea & continents & islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls." - John Muir
January 7, 2010
"I lived in solitude in the country and noticed how the monotony of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind." - Albert Einstein
January 6, 2010
"Your physical body, which you have always assumed to be real, is actually a fiction." - Deepak Chopra
January 5, 2010
"A single conversation across the table with a wise man is better than ten years mere study of books." - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
January 4, 2010
"Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in, forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day, you shall begin it well and serenely..." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
January 3, 2010
"In the depths of winter I finally learned there was in me an invincible summer." - Albert Camus
January 2, 2010
"Few are altogether deaf to the preaching of pine trees. Their sermons on the mountains go to our hearts; and if people in general could be got into the woods, even for once, to hear the trees speak for themselves, all difficulties in the way of forest preservation would vanish." - John Muir
January 1, 2010
"For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning."
- T.S. Eliot, "Little Gidding"