Need Some Inspiring Quotes about Life Stages?
The Eight Stages of Life and Evolution
Here are great and inspiring quotes about the challenges and critical tasks involved with Eight Stages of Life. I hope you enjoy them. If you want to learn more, start here.
Life Stages
Spiritual and religious traditions, when shaped by the feminine principle, affirm the cyclical phrases of our lives and the wisdom each phase brings.
- Patrick Wynne
There must be a beginning of any great matter, but the continuing unto the end until it be thoroughly finished yields the true glory.
- Sir Frances Drake
Exploring (Life Stage 1)
... the free, exploring mind of the individual human is {one of} the most valuable thing{s} in the world.
- John Steinbeck
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.
- Mark Twain
To reach a port, we must sail - sail, not tie at anchor, sail not drift.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt
Critical Tasks
Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to continually be part of unanimity.
- Christopher Morley
We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started {phase 8/0} ... and know the place for the first time.
- T. S. Eliot
If life's journey be endless where is its goal? The answer is, it is everywhere .. . We are in a palace (key 21) which has no end, but which we have reached. By exploring it and extending our relationship with it we are ever making it more and more our own. The i ...
- Rabindranath Tagore
Challenges
Perhaps I am doomed to retrace my steps under the illusion that I am exploring, doomed to try and learn what I should simply recognize, learning a mere fraction of what I have forgotten.
- Andre Breton
Symbols & Art
Genius is the gold in the mine; talent is the miner who works and brings it out.
- Lady Blessington
Focusing (Life Stage 2)
What you choose to focus your mind on is critical because you will become what you think about most of the time.
- Noel Peebles
Nothing can add more power to your life than concentrating all your energies on a limited set of targets.
- Nido Qubein
No horse gets anywhere until he is harnessed. No stream or gas drives anything until it is confined. No Niagara is ever turned into light and power until it is tunneled. No life ever grows great until it is focused, dedicated, disciplined.
- Harry Emerson Fosdick
No life ever grows great until it is focused, dedicated and disciplined.
- unknown
Critical Tasks
The indispensable first step to getting the things you want out of life is this: decide what you want.
- Ben Stein
Energy is the essence of life. Every day you decide how you're going to use it by knowing what you want and what it takes to reach that goal, and by maintaining focus.
- Oprah Winfrey
Concentration is the secret of strength (key 8).
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
My interest is in the future, because I'm going to spend the rest of my life there.
- Charles F. Kettering
Keep your eyes and dreams focused on the future, but never forget the past.
- unknown
Challenges
The first rule of focus is this: "Wherever you are, be there."
- unknown
Only when your consciousness is totally focused on the moment you are in can you receive whatever gift, lesson, or delight that moment has to offer.
- Barbara De Angelis
What we focus on expands.
- Arnold Patent
If you chase two rabbits, both will escape.
- unknown
Symbols & Art
We did not change as we grew older; we just became more clearly ourselves.
- Lynn Hall, Where Have All the Tigers Gone?
Life Calling (Life Stage 3)
Behold, a sacred voice is calling you; All over the sky a sacred voice is calling.
- Black Elk Speaks
Look, it is magic. I mean, it did point my life in a new direction when I first saw it. But you can't go around telling people that or they will think you are crazy. OK?- Blue Butterfly (movie)
With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling ...
- TS Elliot
Symbols & Art
The wind, one brilliant day, called.
- Antonio Machado
Read the rest of my life calling and change the world quotes in Finding Your Bliss.
Working (Life Stage 4)
If the nature of the work (key 11) is properly appreciated and applied, it will stand in the same relation to the higher faculties as food is to the physical body.
- J. C. Kumarappa
Critical Tasks
Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun's rays do not burn until brought to a focus. (key 19)
- Alexander Graham Bell
Luck is a matter of preparation meeting opportunity.
- Oprah Wifrey
I'm a great believer in luck, and I find that the harder I work, the more I have of it.- Thomas Jefferson
If you work all the time, you lose the intermittence of reflection and thought at every stage. Take breaks - for you and your work.
- Peter Megargee Brown
Symbols & Art
Turbulence is life force. It is opportunity. Let's love turbulence and use it for change.
- Ramsay Clark
For more quotes about work, visit my The Game of Work pages.
Excelling (Life Stage 5)
Excellence is a better teacher than mediocrity. The lessons of the ordinary are everywhere. Truly profound and original insights are to be found only in studying the exemplary.
- Warren G. Bennis
The secret of joy in work is contained in one word - excellence. To know how to do something well is to enjoy it.
- Pearl S. Buck
The ancient Greek definition of happiness was the full use of your powers along lines of excellence.
- John F. Kennedy
With regard to excellence, it is not enough to know, but we must try to have and use it.
- Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics
Timing
A restless vitality wells up as we approach 30.
- Gail Sheehy
It takes a long time to bring excellence to maturity.
- Publilius Syrus (~100 BC), Maxims
Critical Tasks
I am careful not to confuse excellence with perfection. Excellence, I can reach for -- perfection is God's business.
- Michael J. Fox
If you chase perfection, you often catch excellence.
- William Fowble
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.
- Aristotle
Excellence is in the details. Give attention to the details and excellence will come.
- Perry Paxton
Excellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way.
- Booker T. Washington
Excellence is the gradual result of always striving to do better.
- Pat Riley
All that we are arises with our thoughts.
- Bud had (flower that once was a bud and then bloomed)
The secret of living a life of excellence is merely a matter of thinking thoughts of excellence.
- Charles Swindoll
Challenges
The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy: neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.
- John W. Gardner
The sad truth is that excellence makes people nervous.
- Shana Alexander
Usefulness is not impaired by imperfection -- you can drink from a chipped cup.
- Greta Nagel
To the mediocre, mediocrity appears great.
- Native AMerican saying
Mastering (Life Stage 6)
Most people have no idea of the giant capacity we can immediately command when we focus all of our resources on mastering a single area of our lives.
- Anthony Robbins
When love and skill work together expect a masterpiece.
- John Ruskin
Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heart-ache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master and recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty.
- Henry MillerTiming
Business slogan: Mastering The Art of Touch.ology
- Son.Y DaViD {key 9 and key 0 touch.dogy where ol=d, witch you can't teach new tricks}
Critical Tasks
The most perfect technique is that which is not noticed at all.
- Pablo Casals
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
- Antoine de St. Exupery
We do not seek to imitate the masters; rather we seek what they sought.
- Basho (Japanese poet)
The eye of the master will do more work than both his hands.
- Benjamin Franklin
The most important things that one's working on are not necessarily the most important things that one thinks one's working on.
- Anish Kapoor
Challenges
It is only the mediocre student who does not surpass his master.
- Leonardo da Vinci
Read more Mastery quotes in Life Way Mastery.
Transcending (Life Stage 7)
The desire for transcendence is intimately connected with the desire for creativity. It is just as essential to who and what we are.
- Marianne Williamson, Quest video
If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws are expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings.
- Henry David Thoreau
It is possible to transcend the usual limitations of the body, ego, space, and linear time.
- Stanislav Grof
Critical Tasks
The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible.
- Arthur C. Clarke
It's kind of fun to do the impossible.
- Walt Disney
The difference between the impossible and the possible lies in a person's determination.
- Tommy Lasorda
Progress and growth are impossible if you always do things the way you've always done things.
- Wayne W. Dyer
This has always been a motto of mine: Attempt the impossible in order to improve your work.
Challenges
Always listen to experts. They'll tell you what can't be done and why. The.n do it!
- Robert A. Heinlein
Great minds have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.
- Albert Einstein
Re-genesis (Life Stage 8/0)
Today life opened inside me like an egg ...
- Anne Sexton
What lies behind us and lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes
"How does one become a butterfly?" she asked pensively. "You must want to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar."
- Trina Paulus
Feed a grub royal jelly and he will turn into an Emperor butterfly in an instant.
- Arabian Nights (Hallmark movie)
With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling ...
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree ...- T. S. Elliot
Here is a test to find out whether your mission in life is complete. If you're alive, it isn't.
- unknown
Critical Tasks
We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started ... and know the place for the first time.
- T. S. Eliot
There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.
- Nelson Mandela
Challenges*
Those who appear foolish may only be ahead of their time.
- Manifest
Symbols & Art
At the age of 80, I'm becoming a visual artist. This could be my rebirth.
- Harry Seidler
Change is the constant, the signal for rebirth, the egg of the phoenix.
- Christina Baldwin
Links To Other Quote Sources
There are a number of great sources for quotes on the web. If you are looking for more quotes to inspire yourself or a friend, you can explore my entire personal collection or try these sources ...
- Thinkexist.com for quotes on exploring, focus, and more.
- Thinkarete.com for lots of inspiring quotes and wisdom
- QuotationsPage.com for quotes on excellence and more.
- Zaadz.com for more in-depth quotes by authors on transcendence, mastery, etc.
- ReelLifeWisdom.com for 600+ inspiring and memorable quotes from the movies.
