Wicked Wednesday – Inspiration

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It’s Wicked Wednesday, when we all weigh in on a topic.

Some days, we all need inspiration. A lot of us need it EVERY day…so today we’re doing a round up of the best inspirational quotes you know. Or the best inspirational people in general — we’re not picky. We’ll take it where we can get it! And maybe we’ll create a giant inspirational board out of all of these, if enough readers leave their favorite. So let’s get to it!

Wickeds, tell us what quote or person most inspires you?

Jessie: “Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” Oscar Wilde

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Liz: “It’s a very funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.” W. Somerset Maugham

Edith: “Carpe Diem. Seize the day, boys. Make your lives extraordinary.” Character John Keating, played by Robin Williams, in Dead Poets Society.

IMG_5170Sherry: This relates to writing and sits on my desk: “Don’t tell me the moon is shining, show me the glint of light on broken glass.” Anton Chekhov

Barb: “It is never too late to be what you might have been.” George Eliot (attributed)

Julie: “You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’ You must do the thing you think you cannot do.” Eleanor Roosevelt

Readers, tell us yours!

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Published by Cate Conte / Liz Mugavero

Cate Conte writes the Cat Cafe Mysteries and the Full Moon Mysteries. As Liz Mugavero, she writes the Pawsitively Organic Mysteries, the first of which was an Agatha Award nominee for Best First Novel. She lives in the Boston area with her rescue pals.

50 Thoughts

  1. “Simply do each day what you know you should do, and do it at once.” Of course I don’t always follow this advice, but I like the quote. Heard it years ago on the Johnny Carson show.

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  2. “You can never go down the drain.” Fred Rogers
    I actually wear a bracelet that looks to some like a medical alert. For me it is. It reminds me, I can survive pretty much anything and to stop letting fear dictate my life. I never take it off.

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  3. My favorite is from Winston Churchill: “We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.”

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  5. One of my favorite quotes is from Mother Teresa: “Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes ae truly endless.”

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  6. I’m deep in my second interior design mystery: “Serious is a word that must be entirely avoided when it comes to decoration.” Kathryn M. Ireland

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    2. My favorite Interior design quote is “Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful” William Morris. As an Interior designer I use it a lot with clients!
      Liz Centola Hrul

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    2. My favorite quote from that movie isn’t so inspiring. “I have one job on this ship. It’s stupid. But I’m going to do it!”

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  8. A line that I often recall was said by Dorothy Sayers’ Peter Wimsey, about Bunter (heck, what do I call him? manservant?): “He braces me by a continual cold shower of silent criticism.” Sounds kind of like that annoying editor that lives in our head.

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  9. “How can you get very far,
    If you don’t know who you are?
    How can you do what you ought,
    If you don’t know what you’ve got?
    And if you don’t know which to do
    Of all the things in front of you,
    Then what you’ll have when you are through
    Is just a mess without a clue
    Of all the best that can come true
    If you know What and Which and Who.”
    ― Benjamin Hoff, The Tao of Pooh

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    1. Which reminds me of another favorite, by A. A.Milne (who wrote a mystery once!), that I memorized long ago:

      Halfway down the stairs
      is a stair
      where i sit.
      there isn’t any
      other stair
      quite like
      it.
      i’m not at the bottom,
      i’m not at the top;
      so this is the stair
      where
      I always
      stop.

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  12. For the writing life, always: “I only write when I am inspired.Fortunately, I become inspired every morning at 9 o’clock.” (Attributed to a few people. Faulkner is a leading contender)

    And for general encouragement, that wickedly wise New England writer Thoreau said “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined.”

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  13. One of my favorite quotes is from William Shatner: “As long as you’re able to say ‘yes,’ the opportunities keep coming, and with them, the adventures. Say ‘no’ to fear and complacency. Keep saying ‘yes’ and the journey will continue.” From Shatner Rules: Your Guide to Understanding the Shatnerverse and the World at Large. (BTW, if you haven’t read this book, say ‘yes’ and do it! It’s hysterical and full of great advice)

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  14. All of my favorite quotes tend to be funny more than inspiring.

    Right now, I’m inspired to get out the door and get to work so I keep getting a paycheck. But if inspiration for an inspiring quote strikes me later, I’ll be back.

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  16. “Hold your nose and write.” – Hallie Ephron

    “If not now, when?” – Hank Phillippi Ryan

    “Today not possible. Tomorrow possible.” – H.U. Lee (founder of Songham taekwondo)

    “First drafts don’t have to be right. They have to be written.” (This one I don’t know, but I love it.)

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  17. Just saw this at the gym: a step forward followed by a step backward isn’t disaster, it’s the cha-cha

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  18. I must add another one (well, three) from Mary Oliver:
    “As long as you’re dancing, you can break the rules.
    Sometimes breaking the rules is just extending the rules.
    Sometimes there are no rules.”

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  19. “Say what you mean, mean what you say” The Moody Blues
    “So much time and so little to do, Wait a minute. Strike that, reverse it. Thank you.” Willy Wonka
    “Imagination…it’s limits are only those of the mind it’s self.” Rod Serling

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  20. These are all so great! Thanks for stopping by, everyone!

    And in honor of Coco Chanel’s birthday, here’s one more: “In order to be irreplaceable, one must always be different.”

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