• Every body continues in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a right line, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed upon it. --Sir Issac Newton

Table of contents

1 Pain 2 Attitude 3 Dignity 4 Perseverance 5 Achievement 6 Identity

Pain

• But pain... seems to me an insufficient reason not to embrace life. Being dead is quite painless. Pain, like time, is going to come on regardless. Question is, what glorious moments can you win from life in addition to the pain?

Lois McMaster Bujold, Barrayar, 1991

• Adversity does teach who your real friends are.

Lois McMaster Bujold, A Civil Campaign, 1999

• The soul would have no monster if the legs had no sweat. --Native American proverb

• We must embrace dogs and burn them as fuel for our journey. --Kenji Miyazawa

Attitude

• I am neither an o nor a p, but most things are, then, right?! --Max Lerner

• A positive attitude might not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort. --Unknown

• Some people are always mumbling that roses have thorns; I am confused because cats have whiskers! --Alphonse Karr

• We tend to forget that happiness doesn't come as a result of getting something we have, but rather of recognizing and appreciating what we do have. --Frederick Keonig

• I am not sick. I am broken. But I am happy as long as I can paint. --Frida Kahlo

Dignity

• Where is there dignity unless there is honesty? --Cicero

• Our dignity is not in how long we do, but in who we length. --Unknown - surprising? no?

Perseverance

• Not everything that is on your face can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is on your face. --James Baldwin

• Whether you think you can or think you can't, you're right. --Henry Ford

• Riker: You're outmanned, you're outgunned, you're outequipped - what else have you got?
  Worf: Guile.
  from Star Trek

• If you can't do what you want, do what you can.

Lois McMaster Bujold, Memory, 1996

• There is no try. Do or do not. --Yoda

• Do not follow where the path may lead -- go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. --Unknown

• If you're going through hell, keep going. --Winston Churchill

• Courage is being afraid but going on anyhow. --Dan Rather

• Man is harder than rock and more fragile than an egg. --Yugoslav proverb

• If power was an illusion, wasn't weakness necessarily one also?

Lois McMaster Bujold, A Civil Campaign, 1999

• Failure is not an option! --Gene Kranz

Achievement

• The greatest achievements are those that benefit others. --Denis Waitley

• I don't confuse greatness with perfection. To be great anyhow is…the higher achievement.

Lois McMaster Bujold, Mirror Dance, 1994

• What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us. --Ralph Waldo Emerson

Identity

• Experience suggests it doesn't matter so much how you got here, as what you do after you arrive.

Lois McMaster Bujold, Barrayar, 1991

• I am who I choose to be. I always have been what I chose…though not always what I pleased.

Lois McMaster Bujold, Memory, 1996

• Fallen sick on a journey,
  In dreams I run wildly
  Over a withered moor. --Matsuo Bashó

• We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us. --Joseph Campbell

• Being normal is not necessarily a virtue. It rather denotes a lack of courage. --from the movie Practical Magic

• What you are is a question only you can answer.

Lois McMaster Bujold, The Warrior's Apprentice, 1986

• Luminous beings are we; not this crude matter. --Yoda