Flourishing Quotes

“Love and work are to people what water and sunshine are to plants.”
― Jonathan Haidt, The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom

“There will be times in your life when things simply have to be replaced because they are tired, broken, worn out, harmful, outdated, or irrelevant. Take an inventory of the things that no longer serve your best and highest good so you can replace them with things which do.”
― Susan C. Young

“Reconnect to what makes you happy and brings you Joy. If there is something that used to make you happy which you have stopped doing, do it again. Seek to find deeper meaning and significance rather than living on the surface.”
― Susan C. Young

“Connecting with others gives us a sense of inclusion, connection, interaction, safety, and community. Your vibe attracts your tribe, so if you want to attract positive and healthy relationships, be one! Staying connected and getting reconnected feeds the flow of goodness which empowers our humanity.”
― Susan C. Young

“Did you once have a grand plan which has become obsolete and no longer serves you? If there are areas in your life which must change to help you create better results, a redesign may be in order. Consider going back to the ‘drawing board’ to deconstruct what isn’t working and start anew.”
― Susan C. Young

“Be a life-long learner. Whether you are seeking to achieve peace and harmony, learn a new technology to do your work faster, or design a strategy to blow your competitors out of the water, retraining is a pivotal way to strengthen your knowledge and realize your goals”
― Susan C. Young

“Be a diamond. Flourish under pressure.”
― Maureen Joyce Connolly

“Education is discovering your full potential and flourishing that potential for the benefit of the humanity.”
― Amit Ray, World Peace: The Voice of a Mountain Bird

“We are most ourselves, the most human, when we unabashedly immerse ourselves in the world with love and hope, gratitude and kindness.”
― John Sean Doyle, Mud and Dreams:

“[At] times we have to grab life with both hands, and twist and squeeze and wrench just to extract one sweet drop from this world: But oh how sweet, how nourishing and wholesome, when we discover that even a drop of joy and beauty and hope is possible.”
― John Sean Doyle, Mud and Dreams:

“But we must not follow those who advise us…being mortal, [to think] of mortal things, but must, so far as we can, make ourselves immortal, and strain every nerve to live in accordance with the best thing in us; for even if it be small in bulk, much more does it in power and worth surpass everything.”
― Aristotle

“Don’t ”be yourself”, but work on yourself. Don’t ”be who you are”, but be who you ought. Don’t ”follow your dreams”, but face your realities. And don’t ”live your life”, but live a respectable life. Then you will find out that you cannot do everything, but at least you have to do something.”
― Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski

“Some people have tried to strangle the love out of my life, not realising that I am a "love weed". I can suck up love wherever I am, from anything I touch. I can even soak it up from my own eyes in the mirror! I'm the love weed, that's me. I'll always have more love today than yesterday.”
― C. JoyBell C.

“Few people put more thought into the tiny details than the team behind the ever-expanding Roscioli empire, one of the nerve centers of the cucina romana moderna, found just a few steps from the Campo de' Fiori. Sitting at a small table inside the Ristorante Salumeria Roscioli, a hybrid space that functions as a deli counter in the front and a full-service restaurant in the back, general manager Valerio Capriotti tells me with conviction that Italian food is flourishing- advancing in ways it hasn't in years, if ever, thanks in large part to the efforts of small producers who put their lives into raising rare breeds of pig, growing heirloom varietals of wheat, and milking pampered dairy cows and sheep to create the types of ingredients that drive restaurants like Roscioli forward. "Modern Italian cuisine isn't about technique," he tells me, "it's about ingredients. We know more now than we ever did about how things are made and what they do when we cook and eat them.”
― Matt Goulding, Pasta, Pane, Vino: Deep Travels Through Italy's Food Culture

“To live completely is a felt poetic.”
― John Sean Doyle, Mud and Dreams:

“We have a purpose in this world, something that, without us, would remain undone. Just as a plant needs sunlight to flourish, our world needs us to flourish.”
― Dele Ola, Pursuit of Personal Leadership: Practical Principles of Personal Achievement

“We want sensuality because we want our souls to prosper and flourish.”
― Lebo Grand

“You are born into a world where more isn’t enough. This impulse is fueling the woes and suffering you wrestle with today.”
― Scott Perry, Endeavor: Cultivate Excellence While Making a Difference

“Our highest calling in life is to thrive and flourish, and not just survive. During this incredibly challenging time, we must do our best to thrive.”
― Donald T Iannone, D.Div.

“The planting of the Lord Leads to flourishing. Allow the Lord to plant you. It's a process that you must not jump.”
― Wisdom Kwashie Mensah, THE HONEYMOON: A SACRED AND UNFORGETTABLE SAVOUR OF A BLISSFUL MARITAL JOURNEY

“If I’m not flourishing, I might want to check out the soil.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“A daily conscious breathing practice creates space for your presence, where your intuitive self can emerge and truly flourish.”
― Kris Franken, The Call of Intuition

“The opposite of languishing is actually flourishing"... Donnovan says we need to get good at detecting whether we are flourishing or languishing by asking ourselves, "Do I have an enriching life? Do I have a life that has growth? Do I feel curiosity? Do I have juicy issues to wrestle with? Do I experience occasional states of flow (a sign of engaging work/activities)? Do I engage in work that gives me a sense of purpose? Do I know my 'why'? Do I feel a sense of connection with others? Do I feel I am part of a community?"... Donnovan says if we're having trouble getting ourselves out of a repeating pattern, we need to consult with someone. "You've got to get your car moving.”
― Julie Lythcott-Haims, Your Turn: How to Be an Adult

“It is no longer enough to simply explore how to survive while sharing space with the structure that threatens to eliminate you; one must ask how to redesign the structure.”
― Kenneth N Ngwa, Let My People Live: An African Reading of Exodus

“Liberation is not just about movement from one place to another, but especially about how Exodus’ multiple movements become mechanisms for bringing liberation to the material and ideological structures of oppression in Egypt, the Wilderness, the Mountain, and beyond. The catalyst for exodus liberation movement (“let my people go”) serves a larger goal: “let my people live” —the hermeneutical and material transition from erased, marginalized, and singularized existence to creative freedom, wholeness, and community that enshrines the full flourishing of the material and interpretive soul/life.”
― Kenneth N Ngwa, Let My People Live: An African Reading of Exodus

“I don’t know if I’ve written about this and I haven’t talked about this much, so in a way what I’m about to say is self-condemnatory, but I think it is one of the greatest tragedies of the American evangelical church—and I think in large measure the British evangelical church—that in our focus on how to get saved, we completely lost the sense of what it meant not to be saved, but to be created. And so many Christians grew up with very little appreciation of the idea that we are made as the image of God. And so long as that was true, I think—and I’m not saying it was inevitable—but I think that made it far more likely that the law of God would be detached from the person of God. And then in understanding the whole of Scripture, the imperatives of the gospel would be detached from the indicatives of the gospel.

The truest Reformed faith did not see the teaching of Scripture in the somewhat narrower spectrum of—for example, Martin Luther, or that stage of the reformation. Luther says things are either law or they’re gospel... But it seems to me that in the best Reformed tradition, the story of the Bible is not law and gospel; the story of the Bible is actually—the way I would put it, and I could demonstrate this from the literature—is the grace of creation as the image of God. Now, we use the word grace and we’ve almost defined it in terms of sin. The Reformed fathers didn’t define it in terms of sin. They defined it in terms of God—his graciousness—so that creation is an act of condescension—his relationship with Adam and Eve, making them as his image. We are non-existence that he brings into existence, and he didn’t need to bring them into existence...

The creation of man and woman as the image of God and all that that means is an act of infinite grace. It’s nothingness being brought into creation to be a miniature likeness of God. And so the whole story is one of graciousness and promise implied in the statements that are made—now, that’s another long story. And therefore, in order that the man and the woman would grow and would grow in fulfilling their commission to, as I say, garden the whole earth. They’re given this little garden and they’re to extend it to the end of the earth, which for all I know, might have taken millennia of their family, but probably speedier development of technology than there has actually been. All of this sets our existence within the context of the person of God, the generosity of God, the integrity of God. But then comes the fall. The restoration, therefore... is always a means of answering the question, How does God restore us to what we were originally created to be and then take us on to what we were ultimately destined to be?”
― Sinclair B. Ferguson

“Choose to put persistence and faith into action, daily, to maintain focus and live in inner peace. Day-to-day choices guided by persistence and faith are an opportunity to grow and develop daily, while thriving and flourishing in a life of inner peace.”
― Sandra C Bibb

“This rabbi," said Merlyn, "went on a journey with the prophet They walked all day, and at nightfall they came to the sumble cotage of a poor man, whose only treasure was a cow.
The poor man ran out of his cottage, and his wife ran too, to welcome the strangers for the night and to offer them all the simple hospitality which they were able to give in straitened circumstances.
Elijah and the Rabbi were entertained with plenty of the cow's milk, sustained by home-made bread and butter, and they were put to sleep in the best bed while their kindly hosts lay down before the kitchen fire. But in the morning the poor man's cow was dead."
"Go on."
"They walked all the next day, and came that evening to the house of a very wealthy merchant, whose hospitality they craved.
The merchant was cold and proud and rich, and all that he would do for the prophet and his companion was to lodge them in a cowshed and feed them on bread and water. In the morning, however, Elijah thanked him very much for what he had done, and sent for a mason to repair one of his walls, which happened to be falling down, as a return for his kindness.
"The Rabbi Jachanan, unable to keep silence any longer, begged the holy man to explain the meaning of his dealings with human beings.
"In regard to the poor man who received us so hospitably,' replied the prophet, 'it was decreed that his wife was to die that night, but in reward for his goodness God took the cow instead of the wife. I repaired the wall of the rich miser because a chest of gold was concealed near the place, and if the miser had repaired the wall himself he would have discovered the treasure. Say not therefore to the Lord: What doest thou? But say in thy heart:
Must not the Lord of all the earth do right?'"
"It is a nice sort of story," said the Wart, because it seemed to be over.”
― T.H. White, The Sword in the Stone

“Culture doesn't just change because it ought to. It changes because we decide to honestly assess the values, behaviours, and systems that are not working for us—not helping us thrive and flourish as a community—and replace them with ones that do.”
― Diane Kalen-Sukra, Save Your City: How Toxic Culture Kills Community & What to Do About It

“When authority and vulnerability are combined, you find true flourishing. Not just the flourishing of the gifted or affluent, but the needy and limited as well… In the end, this is what love longs to be: capable of meaningful action in the life of the beloved, so committed to the beloved that everything meaningful is at risk.”
― Andy Crouch, Strong and Weak: Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing