"Admire as much as you can, most people don't admire enough."  --Vincent van Gogh

Vincent Van Gogh’s “The Starry Night” [my favorite painting] is widely considered one of the best and most famous paintings in history. But according to letters sent to his brother Theo, Van Gogh was staying in an asylum for depression at the time he began that masterpiece, and he wasn’t permitted to paint in his room. After admiring the sky from his bedroom window in the morning, he relied on the deep impression the sky had left in his memory once he had access to his paints. This story lends a poignant depth to his advice to admire all we can, which itself comes from another letter to Theo. Van Gogh’s appreciation for the beauty around him, even in the most challenging of circumstances, led him to produce perhaps his greatest work. What beauty might we glean from our own lives if we were to also cultivate a deep level of admiration for the world around us? 

"My turn shall also come: I sense the spreading of a wing."  --Osip Mandelstam

"If we don't change, we don't grow. If we don't grow, we are not really living."  --Gail Sheehy 

"The beauty is that through disappointment you can gain clarity, and with clarity comes conviction and true originality."  --Conan O'Brien

"A day without laughter is a day wasted."  --Charlie Chaplin

"The best way to lift one's self up is to help someone else."  --Booker T. Washington

"One of the most severe types of injustice is when the oppressor plays the role of the victim and accuses the oppressed of being unjust"  --David Hilbert