Author Archives: Laura Dobson

“Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn.” Bessie Coleman (1892 – 1926), first black woman to earn a pilot’s license, born on this day

“No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself.” Virginia Woolf (1882 – 1941), born on this day

“We need to experience ourselves in such a way that we could say that our real body… is not just what’s inside the skin, but our whole total external environment… because if we don’t experience ourselves that way, we mistreat our environment, we treat it as an enemy… We exploit the world we live in.Continue reading “Thought for the day, Wednesday 24th January”

“I have just three things to teach: simplicity, patience, compassion.These three are your greatest treasures.Simple in actions and in thoughts, you return to the source of being.Patient with both friends and enemies, you accord with the way things are.Compassionate toward yourself, you reconcile all beings in the world.” Lao-Tzu, 6th century BCE China, translated byContinue reading “Thought for the day, Tuesday 23rd January”

“Hope lies in dreams, in imagination, and in the courage of those who dare to make dreams into reality.” Jonas Salk (1914 – 1995), medical researcher who developed the first safe polio vaccine

“Gary Paulsen’s memoir Winterdance describes a man running the Iditarod, the Alaskan dog team race, only to vanish. Everyone thought he’d fallen through a patch of sea ice and drowned, and Paulsen drilled himself in remembering details about the man to share with his bereaved friends and relations. But the man survived. The ice onContinue reading “Thought for the day, Sunday 21st January”

“Since we humans have the better brain, isn’t it our responsibility to protect our fellow creatures from, oddly enough, ourselves? … Wildlife is something which man cannot construct. Once it is gone, it is gone forever. Man can rebuild a pyramid, but he can’t rebuild ecology, or a giraffe.” Joy Adamson, naturalist (1910 – 1980),Continue reading “Thought for the day, Saturday 20th January”

“It used to make me unhappy, all that feeling. I just didn’t know what to do with it. But now I’ve learned how to make feeling work for me… I don’t know, I just want to feel as much as I can, it’s what ‘soul’ is all about.” Janis Joplin (1943 – 1970), born onContinue reading “Thought for the day, Friday 19th January”

“In the quiet hours when we are alone and there is nobody to tell us what fine fellows we are, we come sometimes upon a moment in which we wonder, not how much money we are earning, nor how famous we have become, but what good we are doing.” A. A. Milne (1882 – 1956),Continue reading “Thought for the day, Thursday 18th January”

“Rest but never quit. Even the sun has a sinking spell each evening. But it always rises the next morning. At sunrise, every soul is born again.” Muhammad Ali (1942 – 2016), born on this day