Quotes by Unitarian Ministers

I cannot do everything but still I can do something and because I cannot do everything I will not refuse to do something that I can do.

Edward Everett Hale

It's not that I'm not grateful for all this attention. It's just that fame and fortune ought to add up to more than fame and fortune.

Robert Fulghum

I cannot do everything but still I can do something and because I cannot do everything I will not refuse to do something that I can do.

Edward Everett Hale

Every man is his own ancestor and every man his own heir. He devises his own future and he inherits his own past.

H. F. Hedge

I cannot do everything but still I can do something and because I cannot do everything I will not refuse to do something I can do.

Edward Everett Hale

Try as hard as we may for perfection the net result of our labors is an amazing variety of imperfectness. We are surprised at our own versatility in being able to fail in so many different ways.

Samuel McChord Crothers

I am only one but still I am one. I cannot do everything but still I can do something and because I cannot do everything I will not refuse to do something I can do.

Edward Everett Hale

I cannot do everything but still I can do something and because I cannot do everything I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.

Edward Everett Hale

To look up and not down To look forward and not back To look out and not in and To lend a hand.

Edward Everett Hale

I cannot do everything but still I can do something and because I cannot do everything I will not refuse to do something I can do.

Edward Everett Hale

Try as hard as we may for perfection the net result of our labors is an amazing variety of imperfectness. We are surprised at our own versatility in being able to fail in so many different ways.

Samuel McChord Crothers

To look up and not down To look forward and not back To look out and not in and To lend a hand.

Edward Everett Hale

An easy thing O Power Divine To thank thee for these gifts of Thine For summer's sunshine winter's snow For hearts that kindle thoughts that glow But when shall I attain to this- To thank Thee for the things I miss?

Thomas W. Higginson

There is no defense against adverse fortune which is so effectual as an habitual sense of humor.

Thomas W. Higginson

Noble discontent is the path to heaven.

Thomas W. Higginson

The Sikh gave him the money. When Menon asked for his address so that he could repay the man, the Sikh said that Menon owed the debt to any stranger who came to him in need, as long as he lived. The help came from a stranger and was to be repaid to a stranger.

Robert Fulghum

Is it always to be a winners-losers world, or can we keep everyone in the game? Do we still have what it takes to find a better way?

Robert Fulghum

About winning and losing: It isn't important, what really counts is how you play the game. About playing the game: PLAY TO WIN!

Robert Fulghum

The Indian danced on alone. The crowd clapped up the beat. The Indian danced with a chair. The crowd went crazy. The band faded. The crowd cheered. The Indian held up his hands for silence as if to make a speech. Looking at the band and then the crowd, the Indian said, "Well, what're you waiting for? Let's DANCE.

Robert Fulghum

Be aware of wonder. Live a balanced life - learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.

Robert Fulghum

The pig was so earnest. So sincere. So very “there.” The pig brought gravity and mythic import to this well-worn fairy tale.

Robert Fulghum

Wherever and however any one of us may be conceived, it is the same. We come into being in the arms of God.

Robert Fulghum

If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on fire, then you got a problem. Everything else is inconvenience.

Robert Fulghum

Animals, like us, are living souls. They are not things. They are not objects. Neither are they human. Yet they mourn. They love. They dance. They suffer. They know the peaks and chasms of being.

Gary Kowalski

One of life's best coping mechanisms is to know the difference between an inconvenience and a problem. If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on fire – then you’ve got a problem. Everything else is an inconvenience. Life is inconvenient. Life is lumpy. A lump in the oatmeal, a lump in the throat and a lump in the breast are not the same kind of lump. One needs to learn the difference.

Robert Fulghum

The gift was not large as money goes, and my need was not great, but the spirit of the gift is beyond price and leaves me blessed and in debt.

Robert Fulghum

Yelling at living things does tend to kill the spirit in them. Sticks and stones may break our bones, but words will break our hearts...

Robert Fulghum

And sure, I know if you eat this way you'll die. So? If you don't eat this way you're still going to die. Why not die happy?

Robert Fulghum

Don't Believe Everything You Think!

Robert Fulghum

It's just this: that there are places we all come from-deep-rooty-common places- that makes us who we are. And we disdain them or treat them lightly at our peril. We turn our backs on them at the risk of self-contempt. There is a sense in which we need to go home again-and can go home again. Not to recover home, no. But to sanctify memory.

Robert Fulghum

Pardon me, but my father says that it is a lie that Americans have everything. You have no sheep, no goats, no trees, no oil, no vines, no wine, not even chickens. He asks, 'What kind of life is that?' He says, 'No wonder you don't sing or dance or recite poetry very often.

Robert Fulghum

I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And I will not let what I cannot do interfere with what I can do.

Edward Everett Hale

Try as hard as we may for perfection, the net result of our labors is an amazing variety of imperfectness. We are surprised at our own versatility in being able to fail in so many different ways.

Samuel McChord Crothers

I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something. And because I cannot do everything I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.

Edward Everett Hale

I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.

Edward Everett Hale

The most fertile soil does not necessarily produce the most abundant harvest. It is the use we make of our faculties which renders them valuable.

Thomas Wentworth Higginson

Always trust your fellow man. And always cut the cards. Always trust God. And always build your house on high ground. Always love thy neighbor. And always pick a good neighborhood to live in.

Robert Fulghum

Until you have experienced raccoons mating underneath your bedroom at three in the morning, you have missed one of life's sensational moments.

Robert Fulghum

Do you pray for the senators, Dr. Hale?' someone asked the chaplain. No, I look at the senators and I pray for the country.

Edward Everett Hale

There is a tree. At the downhill edge of a long, narrow field in the western foothills of the La Sal Mountains -- southeastern Utah. A particular tree. A juniper. Large for its species -- maybe twenty feet tall and two feet in diameter. For perhaps three hundred years this tree has stood its ground. Flourishing in good seasons, and holding on in bad times. "Beautiful" is not a word that comes to mind when one first sees it. No naturalist would photograph it as exemplary of its kind. Twisted by wind, split and charred by lightning, scarred by brushfires, chewed on by insects, and pecked by birds. Human beings have stripped long strings of bark from its trunk, stapled barbed wire to it in using it as a corner post for a fence line, and nailed signs on it on three sides: NO HUNTING; NO TRESPASSING; PLEASE CLOSE THE GATE. In commandeering this tree as a corner stake for claims of rights and property, miners and ranchers have hacked signs and symbols in its bark, and left Day-Glo orange survey tape tied to its branches. Now it serves as one side of a gate between an alfalfa field and open range. No matter what, in drought, flood heat and cold, it has continued. There is rot and death in it near the ground. But at the greening tips of its upper branches and in its berrylike seed cones, there is yet the outreach of life. I respect this old juniper tree. For its age, yes. And for its steadfastness in taking whatever is thrown at it. That it has been useful in a practical way beyond itself counts for much, as well. Most of all, I admire its capacity for self-healing beyond all accidents and assaults. There is a will in it -- toward continuing to be, come what may.

Robert Fulghum

I know what I really want for Christmas.I want my childhood back.Nobody is going to give me that. I might give at least the memory of it to myself if I try. I know it doesn't make sense, but since when is Christmas about sense, anyway? It is about a child, of long ago and far away, and it is about the child of now. In you and me. Waiting behind the door of or hearts for something wonderful to happen. A child who is impractical, unrealistic, simpleminded and terribly vulnerable to joy.

Robert Fulghum

Ignorance and power and pride are a deadly mixture, you know.

Robert Fulghum

As one old gentleman put it, " Son, I don't care if you're stark nekkid and wear a bone in your nose. If you kin fiddle, you're all right with me. It's the music we make that counts.

Robert Fulghum

Peace is not something you wish for, it is something you make, something youtare, something you do, and something you give away.

Robert Fulghum

Liberation, I guess, is everybody getting what they think they want, without knowing the whole truth. Or in other words, liberation finally amounts to being free from things we don't like in order to be enslaved by things we approve of. Here's to the eternal tandem.

Robert Fulghum

Maybe we should develop a Crayola bomb as our next secret weapon. A happiness weapon. A beauty bomb. And every time a crisis developed, we would launch one. It would explode high in the air - explode softly - and send thousands, millions, of little parachutes into the air. Floating down to earth - boxes of Crayolas. And we wouldn't go cheap, either - not little boxes of eight. Boxes of sixty-four, with the sharpener built right in. With silver and gold and copper, magenta and peach and lime, amber and umber and all the rest. And people would smile and get a little funny look on their faces and cover the world with imagination.

Robert Fulghum

In the consciousness that another mind reflects your thought, you find the keenest satisfaction. Here is the high office of a friend, and in these high experiences is the point of attachment.--

Samuel McChord Crothers

If only the scientific experts could come up with something to get it out of our minds. One cup of fixit fizzle that will lift the dirt from our lives, soften our hardness, protect our inner parts, improve our processing, reduce our yellowing and wrinkling, improve our natural color, and make us sweet and good.

Robert Fulghum

Does the giraffe know what he's for? Or care? Or even think about his place in things? A giraffe has a black tongue twenty-seven inches long and no vocal cords. A giraffe has nothing to say. He just goes on giraffing.

Robert Fulghum

Instructions For WayfarersThey will declare: Every journey has been taken.You shall respond: I have not been to see myself.They will insist: Everything has been spoken.You shall reply: I have not had my say.They will tell you: Everything has been done.You shall reply: My way is not complete.You are warned: Any way is long, any way is hard.Fear not. You are the gate - you, the gatekeeper.And you shall go through and on . . .—Alexandros Evangelou Xenopouloudakis,THIRD WISH

Robert Fulghum

Everything I need to know... I learned in kindergarten.

Robert Fulghum

We are mortals all, human and nonhuman, bound in one fellowship of love and travail. No one escapes the fate of death. But we can, with caring, make our good-byes less tormented. If we broaden the circle of our compassion, life can be less cruel.

Gary Kowalski

We’re all a little weird. And life is a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness—and call it love—true love.

Robert Fulghum

We're all a little weird. And life is a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness — and call it love — true love.

Robert Fulghum

I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge. That myth is more potent than history. That dreams are more powerful than facts. That hope always triumphs over experience. That laughter is the only cure for grief. And I believe that love is stronger than death.

Robert Fulghum

Above all, if what you've done is stupid, but it works, it ain't stupid.

Robert Fulghum

If you tell people you talk to God, they'll think you're religious, but if you say God talks to you, it's ten to one they'll think you're crazy.

Robert Fulghum