As is my wont when I find a good book, I took notes while I was reading Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia. I’ve bookmarked and jotted down many of the anecdotes, facts, and words of wisdom I found in the book because I might be able to use them in my homilies and talks. Eat, Pray, Love is such a fascinating read, one that I recommend to any person trying to rediscover him/herself.

I hope the following quotes will encourage you to eat well, pray regularly and love passionately.

• “People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that’s what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life. “
• “Look for God. Look for God like a man with his head on fire looks for water.”
• “In desperate love, we always invent the characters of our partners, demanding they be what we need of them, and then feeling devastated when they refuse to perform the role we created in the first place.”
• “We’re miserable because we think that we are mere individuals, alone with our fears and flaws and resentment and mortality.”
• “Your treasure – your perfection – is within you already. But to claim it, you must leave the busy commotion of the mind and abandon the desires of the ego and enter into the silence of the heart.”
• “You need to learn how to select your thoughts just the same way you select your clothes every day. This is a power you can cultivate. If you want to control things in your life so bad, work on the mind. That’s the only thing you should be trying to control.”
• “In a world of disorder and disaster and fraud, sometimes only beauty can be trusted. The appreciation of pleasure can be an anchor to one’s humanity.”
• “God is an experience of supreme love.”
• “Learning how to discipline your speech is a way of preventing your energies from spilling out of you through the rupture of your mouth, exhausting you and filling the world with words, words, words instead of serenity, peace and bliss.”
• “There is a reason they call God a presence – because God is right here, right now. In the present is the only place to find Him, and now is the only time.”

Image source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/vincealongi/377951065/

One of the blessings of the work that I do is being able to travel a lot. And because I get to travel a lot I get to meet a lot of amazing people. I cannot anymore count the number of friends and acquaintances who have inspired me to be more courageous in facing challenges. And for that I am forever thankful.

To them that power up courage in me I dedicate these ten quotations.

• “Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.” — Laozi
• “Being negative is easy. There will always be a downside to everything good, a hurdle to everything desirable, a con to every pro. The real courage is in finding the good in what you have, the opportunities in every hurdle, the pros in every con.” — Carolyn Hax
• “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” — Winston S. Churchill
• “We need people in our lives with whom we can be as open as possible. To have real conversations with people may seem like such a simple, obvious suggestion, but it involves courage and risk.” — Thomas Moore
• “It takes much bravery to stand up to our enemies but we need as much bravery to stand up to our friends.” — J.K. Rowling
• “Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.” — Winston Churchill
• “The courage of life is a magnificent mixture of triumph and tragedy. A man does what he must, in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures. And that is the basis of all morality”.” — John Fitzgerald Kennedy
• “It hurts to love someone and not be loved in return, but what is the most painful is to love someone and never find the courage to let the person know how you feel.” — Author Unknown
• “Sometimes moving on is not something that everyone wants. It is the courage and the strength to hold on to the things that you love and cherish the most that counts and the willingness to sacrifice anything for the one thing that matters to us most. Its the one thing that makes life worth living. Existing is common, Living is rare. Don’t mix them both to be the same.” — Thomas Alex
• “Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, “I will try again tomorrow.” — Mary Anne Radmacher

Image source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/loomingma/3078527271/

All of the following quotes are taken from Father Henri Nouwen’s “Finding My Way Home: Pathways to Life and Spirit.” It is a little book but feels like a tome because it is so heavy with wisdom and inspiration.

Fr Nouwen is a Catholic priest and has written 40 books on the spiritual life.

Here’s ten of my most favorite Henri Nouwen quotations from his book “Finding My Way Home: Pathways to Life and Spirit.”

• “The real question is: how can I live so that my death will be fruitful for others?”
• “A theology of weakness challenges us to look at weakness not as a worldly weakness that allows us to be manipulated by the powerful in society and church, but as a total and unconditional dependence on God that opens us to be true channels of the divine power that heals the wounds of humanity and renews the face of the earth.”
• “This brief lifetime is my opportunity to receive love, deepen love, grow in love, and give love.”
• “As long as we imagine and live as if there is no peace in sight, and that it all depends on us to make it come about, we are on the road to self-destruction. But when we trust that the God of love has already given the peace we are searching for, we will see this peace breaking through the broken soil of our human condition and we will be able to let it grow fast and even heal the economic and political maladies of our time.”
• “God loved you before you were born, and God will love you after you die.”
• “Our spiritual life is a life in which we wait, actively present to the moment, expecting that new things will happen to us, new things that are far beyond our own imagination or prediction. This, indeed, is a very radical stance toward life in a world preoccupied with control.”
• “It is in the passion that the fullness of Jesus’ love shines through. It is a waiting love, a love that does not seek control.”
• “Christian community is the place where we keep the flame of hope alive among us and take it seriously so that it can grow and become stronger in us.”
• “It is important for us to realize that when Jesus says, ‘It is accomplished’ (John 19:30), he does not simply mean, ‘I have done all the things I wanted to do.’ He also means, ‘I have allowed things to be done to me that needed to be done to me in order for me to fulfill my vocation.’ Jesus does not fulfill his vocation in action only, but also in passion.”
• “Here we glimpse the mystery of God’s incarnation. God became human not only to act among us but also to be the recipient of our responses.”

Image source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/felipe_gabaldon/4177158558/

Oprah Winfrey is an inspiration to millions of people worldwide. She talks with sense, entertains her audience creatively and lives life with passion. And of course she has also poured millions of dollars into charitable works. Which makes one say that she indeed walks her talk.

Although, I must confess, I do not watch her TV show that often, I visit her website regularly as it has a section that offers practical tips on how to lead a better, happier life.

Here’s ten of my most favorite Oprah quotations that might jumpstart your week right.

• “Turn your wounds into wisdom.”
• “It makes no difference how many peaks you reach if there was no pleasure in the climb.”
• “The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate.”
• “Be thankful for what you have; you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough”
• “Breathe. Let go. And remind yourself that this very moment is the only one you know you have for sure.”
• “I’ve come to believe that each of us has a personal calling that’s as unique as a fingerprint – and that the best way to succeed is to discover what you love and then find a way to offer it to others in the form of service, working hard, and also allowing the energy of the universe to lead you.”
• “Challenges are gifts that force us to search for a new center of gravity. Don’t fight them. Just find a new way to stand.”
• “When you undervalue what you do, the world will undervalue who you are.”
• “You don’t become what you want, you become what you believe.”
• “The whole point of being alive is to evolve into the complete person you were intended to be.”

Image source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/vincealongi/2936158964/

The world will celebrate Father’s Day this Sunday. Father’s Day is a day of remembering, doing something special for and being grateful to our daddies. I am particularly grateful because God gave me a very loving, patient and amazingly caring papa.

As a tribute to all fathers in the world, I am sharing with you ten of my most favorite quotations on Fatherhood.

• “A truly rich man is one whose children run into his arms when his hands are empty.” — Author Unknown
• “Every father should remember that one day his children will follow his example instead of his advice.” — Author Unknown
• “Let us never forget to pray. God lives. He is near. He is real. He is not only aware of us but cares for us. He is our Father. He is accessible to all who will seek Him.” — Gordon B. Hinckley
• “My grandfather once told me that there were two kinds of people: those who do the work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was much less competition.” — Indira Gandhi
• “By the time a man realises that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he is wrong.” — Charles Wadsworth
• “When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.” — Mark Twain
• “Do not fear what may happen tomorrow. The same loving Father who cares for you today will care for you tomorrow and everyday. Either he will shield you from suffering or He will give you unfailing strength to bear it. Be at peace then and put aside all anxious thoughts and imaginings.” — St. Francis de Sales
• “One startling bit of research conducted by the Christian Business Men’s Committee found the following: When the father is an active believer, there is about a seventy-five percent likelihood that the children will also become active believers. But if only the mother is a believer, this likelihood is dramatically reduced to fifteen percent.” — Keith Meyering
• “A positive and continuous relationship to one’s father has been found to be associated with a good self-concept, higher self- esteem, higher self-confidence in personal and social interaction, higher moral maturity, reduced rates of unwed teen pregnancy, greater internal control and higher career aspirations. Fathers who are affectionate, nurturing and actively involved in child-rearing are more likely to have well- adjusted children.” — Dr. George Rekers
• “He teaches kindness by being thoughtful and gracious even at home. He teaches patience by being gentle and understanding over and over. He teacher honesty by keeping his promises to his family even when it costs. He teaches courage by living unafraid with faith, in all circumstances. He teaches justice by being fair and dealing equally with everyone. He teaches obedience to God’s Word by precept and example as he reads and prays daily with his family. He teaches love for God and His Church as he takes his family regularly to all the services. His steps are important because others follow.” — Author Unknown

Image source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/eflon/2995401141/

It was in 1988 when Paulo Coelho first published his now world-famous “The Alchemist”. When I first read the allegorical novel in 1999 it became an instant favorite of mine. To me it is a modern classic. I like it so much that I bought seven copies of it in seven different international languages. They now adorn my bookshelf like trophies of lessons learned and remind me that when I really want something, the whole universe will conspire to make it happen.

Here’s ten of my most favorite quotations from Paulo Coelho’s “The Alchemist”.

• “And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”
• “It’s the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting.”
• “There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.”
• “If someone isn’t what others want them to be, the others become angry. Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own.”
• “Everything tells me that I am about to make a wrong decision, but making mistakes is just part of life. What does the world want of me? Does it want me to take no risks, to go back to where I came from because I didn’t have the courage to say “yes” to life?”
• “‘My heart is afraid that it will have to suffer,’ the boy told the alchemist one night as they looked up at the moonless sky. ‘Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second’s encounter with God and with eternity.’”
• “Love is an untamed force. When we try to control it, it destroys us. When we try to imprison it, it enslaves us. When we try to understand it, it leaves us feeling lost and confused.”
• “When we love, we always strive to become better than we are. When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.”
• “There was a language in the world that everyone understood, a language the boy had used throughout the time that he was trying to improve things at the shop. It was the language of enthusiasm, of things accomplished with love and purpose, and as part of a search for something believed in and desired.”
• “What you still need to know is this: before a dream is realized, the Soul of the World tests everything that was learned along the way. It does this not because it is evil, but so that we can, in addition to realizing our dreams, master the lessons we’ve learned as we’ve moved toward that dream. That’s the point at which, as we say in the language of the desert, one “dies of thirst just when the palm trees have appeared on the horizon.”

Image source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/soniat360/4114624736/