Pillow of Faith

Fear can keep us up all night long, but faith makes one fine pillow.

Be aware of your Fears

You always have two choices: your commitment versus your fear.

Fear is never a reason for quitting; it is only an excuse.

Ultimately we know deeply that the other side of every fear is freedom.

Fear can be a powerful ally, instead of just an obstacle to overcome. It has the power to focus you on what's important, prepare for upcoming challenges and be cautious in unknown situations. Yes, it can be harmful, just as pain can be chronic, but that doesn't mean I would like to eliminate pain while my hand is in the fire.
Fear the Right Things! Too much energy is wasted being afraid of the wrong things. 
All of our fears have both a degree of truth and a degree of ridiculousness.

Its worth it!

The most worth-while thing is to try to put happiness into the lives of others.

Learn > Preach

Go to learn, not to preach; always ask questions like a 6-year old!
- HarvardHBS Professor Ananth Raman
- Parting advice

Inside out solution

Change your thoughts and you change your world.

The life of inner peace, being harmonious and without stress, is the easiest type of existence.

kNOTs must be fought

My dear friend, clear your mind of cant.

Clap or Shake - Needs two open hands

You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist.

True

Change is the end result of all true learning.
- Leo Buscaglia

Purpose precedes Success

A purpose is the eternal condition of success.

Imagination pays, humor works

Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is.

kuch techie ho jaye

The journey of a thousand miles begins with an open parenthesis.
- Rainer Joswig

a complimentary quote

There are three infallible ways of pleasing an author, and the three form a rising scale of compliment: 1, to tell him you have read one of his books; 2, to tell him you have read all of his books; 3, to ask him to let you read the manuscript of his forthcoming book. No. 1 admits you to his respect; No. 2 admits you to his admiration; No. 3 carries you clear into his heart.    

free the freedom, don't be nervous

We are willing enough to praise freedom when she is safely tucked away in the past and cannot be a nuisance. In the present, amidst dangers whose outcome we cannot foresee, we get nervous about her, and admit censorship. 
E. M. Forster (1879-1970)

There is little that can withstand a man who can conquer himself.
- Louis XIV

John, Irving John!

We often need to lose sight of our priorities in order to see them.
- John Irving, Trying to Save Piggy Sneed

People only ask questions when they're ready to hear the answers.
- John Irving, The Cider House Rules

Imagining something is better than remembering something.
- John Irving, The World According to Garp

Difficulties and Solutions matter, excuses and slogans don't

Difficulty is the excuse history never accepts.

A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.

Our major obligation is not to mistake slogans for solutions.

Everyone is a prisoner of his own experience. No one can eliminate prejudices--just recognize them.

Worry Hurry

Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.

be a doer not a todo machine - rahul

"To be or not to be." - Shakespeare 
"To be is to do" - Socrates
"To do is to be" - Jean-Paul Sartre
"Do be do be do" - Frank Sinatra

Differences makes all the difference

It were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion that makes horse-races. 
- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"

minus and plus have "us" common

You're going to go through tough times - that's life. But I say, "Nothing happens to you, it happens for you". See the positive in negative events.
- Joel Osteen

What's your present today

"Quit, don't quit. Noodles, don't noodles. You are too concerned with what was and what will be. There's a saying: 'Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift…that is why it is called the present." 
- Master Oogway, 
From the movie KungFu Panda

Fight or Fly but not fear

Extreme fear can neither fight nor fly. 
- William Shakespeare, "The Rape of Lucrece"

Q&A

You cannot discover the purpose of life by asking someone else - the only way you'll ever get the right answer is by asking yourself.

way to perfect lives, knowledge and design

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Airman's Odyssey

When you want to know how things really work, study them when they're coming apart.
William Gibson, Zero History

there are people who live their whole lives on the default settings never realizing you can customize 

a short one about a long one

Don't worry. Life's too long.
- Vincent Sardi, Jr. 

Think before you wish

Our inventions mirror our secret wishes.

Keep Trying to Connect

Just because the message may never be received, does not mean it is not worth sending.

Ear drives the story

It is not the voice that commands the story: it is the ear.

Funny take on plagiarism

Your manuscript is both good and original, but the part that is good is not original and the part that is original is not good.
- Samuel Johnson

Bitter to Sweet

Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.
- Mark Twain
Author, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's  Calendar"  

Trust the winds of change within you

You're never as good as everyone tells you when you win, and you're never as bad as they say when you lose.

caged by the masters you chose

The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.

time to share bless deposits

All the blessings we enjoy are Divine deposits, committed to our trust on this condition, that they should be dispensed for the benefit of our neighbors.
- John Calvin

tune in to a positive beat

A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others.

The ladder of success is best climbed by stepping on the rungs of opportunity.


- Ayn Rand

sense what others are insensitive to

Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can read.
Mark Twain

go along before you change your way

I have found out that there ain't no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)

Lifie

Living your life is a task so difficult, it has never been attempted before.

The less you respond to negative people, the more peaceful life becomes.

be a package, not a baggage

How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in your life you will have been all of these.
- George Washington Carver

Audience

Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.
- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"  

Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind.
- William Shakespeare
(Source: Unix Fortune Cookie)

The Overwhelm

"the overwhelm" is a function not so much of how many things [we] have to do but of how much time [we] spend thinking about how many things [we] have to do.

Work may not set us free, but it lends meaning to our days, and without it we'd be lost.

The new wealth is so highly concentrated that only a very few people have the wherewithal to stop and smell the roses, which have been flown in at great expense from Ecuador. 

compulsive profit syndrome

The disproportionately compensated have a disproportionate motive to keep on working.

No time for free time

inequality has grown, that leisure is scarce, that even the rich complain of being overwhelmed. And yet so much of what we do, collectively and individually, suggests that we still believe more wealth is the answer. Reëxamining this belief would probably be a good idea—that is, if anyone had the time for it.

compulsive consumption syndrome

a Swedish economist named Staffan B. Linder coined the phrase "the harried leisure class." Linder argued that as people became wealthier they would inevitably feel more squeezed, because they would feel compelled to consume more and more goods per unit of free time. Linder envisioned his harried protagonist "drinking Brazilian coffee" while "smoking a Dutch cigar, sipping a French cognac, reading The New York Times, listening to a Brandenburg Concerto and entertaining his Swedish wife." 

Load Zero to Head

Throw out an alarming alarm clock. If the ring is loud and strident, you're waking up to instant stress. You shouldn't be bullied out of bed, just reminded that it's time to start your day.
- Sharon Gold

The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation, but your thoughts about it.
- Eckhart Tolle, author, "The New Earth"

Is everything as urgent as your stress would imply?
- Carrie Latet

There is more to life than increasing its speed.
  - Mohandas K. Gandhi


The Unsinkable soul

An entire sea of water can't sink a ship unless it gets inside the ship. Similarly, the negativity of the world can't put you down unless you allow it to get inside you.

Happy Birthday sunosuno

I just realized that this blog has lived for a decade now.
I have been a fan of motivational quotes since school days... used to collect lots of small inspiring literary stuff in a personal diary.

suno suno in hindi is a phrase spoken aloud to attract your audience to hear the message you want to deliver.

I try my best to mention the source/author of the quote.

If there is any unclaimed quote, I would be more than happy to attribute it to its progenitor.


cowsay fun :)

Nothing so needs change as other people's habits.

The surest protection against temptation is cowardice.
- Mark Twain

Google, Orwell's new Big Brother

Google knows more about every digital active citizen than George Orwell dared 1984 ever imagine in his wildest visions.
Mathias Döpfner, 
CEO,  Axel Springer
(German media empire)

Tiny Sparks can cause major fire

It does not take a majority to prevail but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men.

Live or Dead, Full or Flat, Pain or Gain

Are we - and all living beings - just survival machines, blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes, as Richard Dawkins states? Are we incapable of knowing beyond the frames imposed to us by nature?
- gmail status of sachin anklekar

World is flat because the cunning people have punctured it.
- Rahul Gupta
Pain is temporary, quitting lasts for ever.
- Lance Armstrong, 5 time Winner of Tour De France
gmail status of Pravin Shinde

Time is a great teacher; what an year teaches you days didn't know.
- A dialogue from "Shadows in the Sun"


Need of the Hour

It may or may not be worthwhile, but it still has to be done.
- Unknown (picked up from cowsay)

Truth lessens the load on working memory

If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything.
- Mark Twain

page by page

Many pages make a thick book.
-- fortune cookie 
- Unknown Author 

Quack Quack

Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she laid an asteroid.
-- Mark Twain

Spirit - The toughest metal

Man never made any material as resilient as the human spirit. 
- Bernard Williams
(gmail status of sawani)

Don't let worries worry you

Worrying does not empty tomorrow of its troubles, it empties today of its strength.
- Corrie ten Boom

Successful Failure

Writing is turning one's worst moments into money.
- J.P. Donleavy 

    

Its Life! not a balance machine

"There is no such thing as work/life balance—there is only life. You don't have to be the last one at the office every night, and you don't have to change every diaper. Make the choices you believe in your heart are right, and make no apologies." - Mary Ann Byrnes

Manimal

We're one of the only animals in the world that don't really think of ourselves as animals, but we are animals and we must respect our fellow animals.

The Auto Audience

Writing used to be more about style and personality than structure. 

Now, addressing an audience of robots, spiders, applets, servers, and content management applications, as well, as, oh yes, people, we are more constrained by the need to follow a standard model with absolute consistency, for fear of confusing the software.  Humans can handle inconsistency, but programs cannot. Meet your new reader: a few lines of code.

Feel them but not let them fool you

Terrible emotions always do sound foolish when we put them into our inadequate words. They are not meant to be spoken—only felt and endured.

Wake up, Waters await! Swim to them, shores wait!

Slumber can make you a perfect blind man when opportunities are so close. Laziness can make you think the right opportunity has not come yet. But action will make you realize that, the least opportunity can shower you with many blessings. Wake up from your slumber because opportunities are all around you. Be active, leave the laziness behind and grab the opportunities.
Written in 2013 by Albert Douglas Quayson --- Ghana

 While swimming, the depths don't matter. Remember, keep swimming, the shore will come to you."
Written in 2013 by Joyal Mehta --- India

oh god i feel lucky

whenever you meet good people, you feel the presence of some power helping you being lucky.

whenever you meet not-so-good people, you feel the presence of some power testing your strength in unlucky times.

- me

The curious case of a Bicycle

Bicycle is a curious vehicle, its passenger is its engine.
- John Howard

Perfection, Fear and Story of life

When you stop expecting people to be perfect, you can like them for who they are.

Fear is a manipulative emotion that can trick us into living a boring life.

I think this is when most people give up on their stories. They come out of college wanting to change the world, wanting to get married, wanting to have kids and change the way people buy office supplies. But they get into the middle and discover it was harder than they thought. They can't see the distant shore anymore, and they wonder if their paddling is moving them forward. None of the trees behind them are getting smaller and none of the trees ahead are getting bigger.  


Follow Passion, Delay Judgement

Have a passion for Doing something rather than Being a title on a business card.
- Steve Blank  (Facebooked by Ankit Jain)

Delay your judgements as long as possible.
- a wise friend from NCST (Facebooked by Apoorv Sharma)

satyam shbivam sundaram

batane se baat hi parayi hoti hai
paraye apne nahi hotey
- satyam shbivam sundaram, movie

Good Day

A day lived without exchange of advice is a good day.

- gmail status of shantanu ghosh

Conquer Your Inner Everest

It's not the mountain that we conquer but ourselves.

- Edmund Hillary

Life

Many people die at twenty five and aren't buried until they are seventy five.

Bad Silence

The worst thing that one can do is not to be aware of what one wants and not give in to it, to spend years in silent hurt wondering if something could have materialized – and never knowing.
- David Viscott

Work to get the work done

Nothing will work unless you do!

- Maya Angelou

Apre un long temps

When times are tough, vision is the first casualty. Before conditions can improve, it is the first thing we must recover.

- Michael Hyatt



Make it large, Work out larger

No dream's big, its the effort that is small...

Apo logy

Apologizing does not mean that you are wrong and the other one is right... It simply means that you value the relationship much more than your ego .....

- gmail status of piyush sharan
Apology - Its not about stepping back, its about coming forward and accepting it.
- Rahul

I am careful not to confuse excellence with perfection. Excellence, I can reach for; Perfection is God's business.

My riches consist not in the extent of my possessions, but in the fewness of my wants.

~ J. Brotherton

Forget, to Annoy

Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.

- Oscar Wilde
Thanks to eastcoast for sharing on her webpage

Un known

Happiness keeps you Sweet,
Trials keep you Strong, 
Sorrows keep you Human, 
Failures keep you humble , 
Success keeps You Glowing,
but Only God keeps You Going!


Facebook is like jail, you sit around and waste time, write on walls, and get poked by people you don't know.

Blame the Origins

Accursed be he that first invented war.

- Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593)

Accused be the society who made me.
- Attitude of non-regretting accused

Rationale

Man is an irrational being capable of producing rational actions and thoughts.

Quote Clamour

Men are cruel, but Man is kind.
Man goes into the noisy crowd to drown his own clamour of slience.

Truth comes as conqueror only to those who have lost the art of receiving it as a friend.

He who wants to do good knocks at the gate; He who loves finds the gate open.
The weak can be terrible because they try furiously to appear strong.

The tendency in modern civilization is to make the world uniform... Let the mind be universal. The individual should not be sacrificed.

- Rabindranath Tagore

I, Me, Thy

These paper boats of mine are meant to dance on the ripples of hours, and not reach any destination.
Praise shames me, for I secretly beg for it.

God respects me when I work, but He loves me when I sing.
I have spent my days stringing and unstringing my instrument while the song I came to sing remains unsung.
I leave no trace of wings in the air, but I am glad I have had my flight.

We read the world wrong and say that it deceives us.
Whatever we treasure for ourselves separates us from others; our possessions are our limitations.

- Rabindranath Tagore

Love

तस्कीन-ऐ-मुहब्बत के बस दो ही तरीके हैं, ये दिल न बना होता या तुम न बने होते.. ये दिल न बना होता या तुम न बने होते .

- sanjay's gmail status

Usability

Before software can be reusable, it first has to be usable.

- Ralph Johnson

Air Insane

Insanity is in the air or how else do we breathe. 

Oh my God-men

"God-men" are all humans with power, money and people's ignorance to back them.

in a lighter vein ...

Why dogs don't marry? Ans: Because they are already leading a dog's life! ;)

Last Benchers

First bench students are intelligent until last bench students don't participate in the'Competition'

- A. P. J. Kalam

Kipling's Fears

Of all the liars in the world, sometimes the worst are your own fears.

- Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

T-Shirt Quote

I may be nobody but nobody can be me.

- site-admin ;-)

Mishranomics

IIT is the place to keep the best minds sedated.


After certain age, you are set free to build your own landmine. Pursue your dreams, don't evaluate.
- Mishraji

Hungry Quote

Hunger makes you search for possibility, inspiration reinforces hope in possibility, motivation pushes despite hope but action is the only one that converts the possibility. They all deserve to be credited but if we still want to medal them out, hunger and action certainly deserve to stand on dais.

- Me

Snack Time Quotes

Accept that some days you're the pigeon and some days you're the statue.

For every student with a spark of brilliance, there are about ten with ignition trouble.

Evening news is where they begin with "Good evening," and then proceed to tell you why it isn't.

I used to be indecisive, now I'm not sure.

Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.

Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.

An optimist is someone who falls off the Empire State Building, and after 50 floors says, 'So far, so good!'

Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit; Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.

Adieu to 2010

Research is to see what everybody else has seen, and to think what nobody else has thought.

- Albert Szent-Gyorgyi (source link)

kabi rabi

Our country is the land of rites and ceremonials, so that we have more faith in worshiping the feet of the priest than the Divinity whom he serves.

Mark, his words

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

I was seldom able to see an opportunity until it had ceased to be one.

Don't be strangely known

It is good to be friends rather than known strangers.

- gmail status of ankit dangi

PS - I am slowly losing interest in maintaining this blog. It has been one of the things I have been consistent for a long time in life. I am sure there must be a gem lying in this blog that makes me do a comeback.

Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others.