“Life is what you make it.. Never waste time and energy wishing you were somewhere else, doing something else. You may not always understand why find yourself where you are, but you may be sure there is a very good reason and that there is a lesson to be learnt. Do not fight against it, but find out what that lesson is and learn it quickly so that you can move on.. As you cease resisting and simply accept the lessons to be learnt, taking them all in your stride, you will find life much easier and, what is more, you will enjoy the changes that take place. A plant does not resist growth or change; it simply flows with it and unfolds in true perfection. Why don’t you do the same?”

Eileen Caddy (1907 – 2006), one of the founders of the Findhorn Foundation

International Day for countering hate speech

“We have begged for peace around the world.
We have fought for peace around the world.
We have contributed funds to peace around the world.
We have given great speeches for peace around the world.
Yet we have failed to make peace with our husbands and wives, our children, and our neighbours.
It is not enough to proclaim peace to the end of the earth.
Unless a man can make peace with those nearest to him, he has not found religion. May we find religion in our daily living.”

Philip Larson (1919 – 1996), Unitarian Universalist

World Day to combat desertification and drought

“I want the future to extend before me like the horizon
widening as I walk. I want the blue sierra that I planted
squatting over the child in my womb
to grow into a thick tangled hedge
rich with blossoms and bees buzzing like crazy.
I want the smell to make someone’s great great
grandchildren
dizzy.

Imagine that we are all born
with the gift of time.”

Ellen Bass

“Before there was a trace of this world of men,
I carried a memory of a lock of your hair,
A stray end gathered within me, though unknown.
Inside that invisible realm,
Your face like the sun longed to be seen,
Until each separate object was finally flung into light.
From the moment of Time’s first-drawn breath,
Love resides in us,
A treasure locked into the heart’s hidden vault;
Before the first seed broke open the rose bed of Being,
An inner lark soared through your meadows,
Heading towards Home.
What can I do but thank you, one hundred times?
Your face has illumined the shrine of Hayati’s eyes,
Constantly present and lovely.”

Bibi Hayati (19th century Persian Sufi poet)

“To no one will we sell, to no one will we deny or delay right or justice.”

Magna Carta clause 40, signed on this day in 1215 at Runnymede (pictured)

“Half the misery in the world comes of want of courage to speak and to hear the truth plainly and in a spirit of love.”

Harriet Beecher Stowe, abolitionist and author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, born on this day in 1811

“Happiness cannot be found through great effort and willpower,
but is already there, in relaxation and letting go.

Don’t strain yourself, there is nothing to do.
Whatever arises in the mind has no importance at all,
because it has no reality whatsoever.
Don’t become attached to it.
Don’t pass judgement.

Let the game happen on its own, springing and falling back
without changing anything –
and all will vanish and reappear, without end.

Only our search for happiness prevents us from seeing it.
It is like a rainbow
which you run after without ever catching it.
Although it does not exist,
it has always been there and accompanies you every instant..

Waiting to grasp the ungraspable, you exhaust yourself in vain.
As soon as your relax this grasping, space is there
open, inviting, and comfortable..

All is yours already.
Don’t search any further..

Nothing to do,
nothing to force,
nothing to want,
and everything happens by itself.”

Venerable Lama Gendun Rinpoche (1918 – 1997)

“How noble and good everyone could be if, every evening before falling asleep, they were to recall to their minds the events of the whole day and consider exactly what has been good and bad. Then, without realizing it you try to improve yourself at the start of each new day; of course, you achieve quite a lot in the course of time. Anyone can do this, it costs nothing and is certainly very helpful.”

Anne Frank, born on this day in 1929

“There are no boundaries in the real Planet Earth. No United States, no Soviet Union, no China, no Taiwan…Rivers flow unimpeded across the swaths of continents. The persistent tides – the pulse of the sea – do not discriminate; they push against all the varied shores on Earth…

The sea, the great unifier, is man’s only hope. Now, as never before, the old phrase has a literal meaning: we are all in the same boat.”

Jacques Cousteau, born on this day in 1910 (oceanographer, explorer and scientist, pioneer of marine conservation)

“Putting a little time aside for clean fun and good humor is very necessary to relieve the tensions of our time.”

Hattie McDaniel born on this day in 1893 (first African American actress to win an Oscar, for her role as Mammy in Gone with the Wind)