Senbazuru

A record of 1,000 things I want you to know and remember through out your life. For each quote, a crane is folded and will eventually be strung into a mobile that hangs in our home.

Senbazuru - Japanese word for the act of folding 1,000 cranes



1) May you always be kind to other and yourself.


2) May you be confidant in your own truth and not plagued by doubt.


3) May you recognize and avoid people who would harm you.


4) May you always be surrounded and supported by loving friends and family.


5) May you treat everyone with respect, including yourself.


6) May you never weigh yourself down with bitterness, regret, hate or jealousy.


7) May you have the wisdom to know what the right thing is and the have the courage to act on it.


8) May you never feel either inferior or superior to anyone else.


9) May you be easily content, but still driven to achieve your dreams


10) May you recognize pointless battles and not fight them.


11) May you learn from your mistakes and not repeat them.


- (1 - 11; my wishes for you)


12) Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.


13) As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons.


14) Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant, they too have their story.


15) Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexations to the spirit.


16) If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.


17) Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.


18) Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.


19) Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery.


20) But let not this blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full or heroism.


21) Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection.


22) Neither be cynical about love, for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is perennial as the grass.


23) Take kindly to the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.


24) Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.


25) But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.


26) Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.


27) Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself.


28) You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.


29) And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.


30) Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be.


31) And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul.


- (12 - 31; Desiderata)


32) Before you speak it is necessary for you to listen, for God speaks in the silence of the heart.

- Mother Theresa


33) Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year


34) He is rich who owns the day, and no one owns the day who allows it to be invaded with fret and anxiety.


35) Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could.


36) Some blunders and absurdities, no doubt, crept in. Forget them as soon as you can,


37) tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense.


38) This new day is too dear, with its hopes and invitations, to waste a moment on the yesterdays.

- (33 - 38; Emerson)


39) I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life.


40) And see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

- (39 - 40; H.D. Thoreau)


41) Build a dream and the dream will build you.

- Dr. Robert Schuller


42) Life is still beautiful.

- J.C.F. Schiller


43) Consult not your fears, but your hopes and dreams.


44) Think not about your frustrations, but about your unfulfilled potential.


45) Concern yourself not with what you have tried and failed in, but with what it is still possible for you to do.


- (43 - 45; Pope John XXIII)


46) A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.

- William Shedd


47) Govern a family as you would cook a small fish - very gently.

- Chinese proverb


48) Life is not meant to be easy, my child, but take courage - it can be delightful.

- George Bernard Shaw


49) Use what talents you possess; the woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best.

- Henry Van Dyke


50) You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else.

- Albert Einstein


51) Fear less, hope more. Eat less, chew more. Whine less, breathe more. Talk less, say more. Love more and all good things will be yours.

- Swedish proverb


52) A house is a home when it shelters the body and comforts the soul.

- Phillip Moffitt


53) To me, every hour of the day and night is an unspeakable perfect miracle.

- Walter Chrysler


54) Adventure: the pursuit of life.

- Daniel Roy Wiarda


55) Snowflakes are one of natures most fragile things, but just look what they do when they stick together.

- Verna M. Kelly


56) Happiness seems made to be shared.

- Pierre Corneille


57) Light a candle instead of cursing the darkness

- Peter Beneson


58) To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury and refinement rather than fashion.


59) to be worthy, no respectable, and wealthy, not rich; to listen to stars and birds, babes and sages, with open heart.


60) to study hard; to think quietly, act frankly, talk gently, await occasions, hurry never


61) in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common - this is my symphony


(58 - 61; William Henry Channing)


62) Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful, for beauty is God's handwriting.

- Emerson


63) One cannot consent to creep when one feels the impulse to soar.

- Helen Keller

64) To be a star you must shine your own light follow your own path and don't worry about the darkness, for that is when the stars shine their brightest.

- Anonymouse

65) hand in hand with fairy grace, we will sing and bless this place.

- Shakespeare

66) Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children.

- Kahlil Gibran

67) And we should consider everyday lost on which we have not danced at least once.  And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh.

- Friedrich Nietzsche

68) Happiness is not a state to arrive at, but a manner of traveling.

- M.L. Runbeck

69) Plenty of people miss their share of happiness, not because they never found it, but because they didn't stop to enjoy it.

- William Feather

70) A friend is someone who knows the song of your soul and sings it back to you when you have forgotten the words.

- Anonymous

71) I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.

- John Muir

72) You have succeeded in life when all you want is only what you really need.

- Vernon Howard

73) Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.  Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light and where there is sadness, joy.

74) O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love.  For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.  Amen.

- The Prayer of St. Francis

75) Associate with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation; for it is better to be alone than in bad company.

- George Washington

76)  There are things I cannot force.  I must adjust.  There are times when the greatest change needed is a change in my viewpoint.

- Denis Diderot

77) One should examine oneself for a very long time before thinking of condemning others.

- Moliere

78) Happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if only one remembers to turn on the lights.

- Albus Dumbledore



79) Hold yourself to higher standards than anybody else expects of you.

- Henry Ward Beecher

80) To be a star you must shine your own light, follow your own path, and don't worry about the darkness for that is when stars shine their brightest.

- Anonymous

81) Don't wait until everything is just right.  It will never be perfect.  There will always be challenges, obstacles and less that perfect conditions.

82) So what?  Get started now.  With each step you take, you will grow stronger and stronger, more and more skilled, more and more self-confident and more and more successful.

- Mark Victor Hansen

83) In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.

- Camus

84) Change your opinions, keep to your principles; change your leaves, keep intact your roots.

- Victor Hugo

85) A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials.

- Seneca

86)       Your life is your life.
             Don't let it be clubbed
             into dank submission.
            Be on the watch
           there are ways out
            there is a light somewhere
            it may not be much light, but
           it beats the darkness
         be on the watch.
       the gods will offer you chances.

87)  know them.
        take them.
        you can't beat death, but
       you can beat death in life, sometimes
       and the more often
        you learn to do it
        the more light there will be.
    Your life is your life.
    Know it while you have it.
     You are marvelous.
      the gods wait to delight
       in you.
 - Charles Bukowski

88) You are forgiven for your happiness and your successes only if you generously consent to share them.

- Albert Camus

89) Let me tell you the secret that has led me to my goal.  My strength lies solely in my tenacity.

- Louis Pasteur

90) Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstcacles which he has overcome.

- Booker T Washington

91) The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not.  The cure for it is occupation.

- George Bernard Shaw

92) A wise man is superior to any insults which can be put upon him and the best reply to unseemly behavior is patience and moderation.

- Moliere

93) Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do.  Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors.  Try to be better than yourself.

- William Faulkner

94)  Every spoken word is a covering for the inner self... even if what is being said is trivial and wrong, the listener hears the source.

- Rumi

95) When you do the common things in life in an uncommon way, you will command the attention of the world.

- George Washington Carver

96) But there where spreads the infinite sky for the soul to take her flight in, reigns the stainless white radiance.  There is no day nor night nor form nor color and never, never a word.

- Tagore

97)  What was the power that made me open out into this vast mystery like a bud in the forest at midnights?

- Tagore

98)  One is truly ethical only when one obeys the compulsion to help all life which he or she is able to assist and shrinks from injuring anything that lives.

- Albert Schweitzer

99) Our life is composed greatly from dreams, from the unconscious, and they must be brought into connection with action.  They must be woven together.

- Anais Nin

100) If you have anything really valuable to contribute to the world it will come through the expression of your own personality, that single spark of divinity that sets you off and makes you different from every other living creature. 

- Bruce Barton