Vera Nazarian famous quotes

Whenever you read a good book, somewhere in the world a door opens to allow in more light.
-- Vera Nazarian

#Inspirational #Education #Book

Have you ever seen the dawn? Not a dawn groggy with lack of sleep or hectic with mindless obligations and you about to rush off on an early adventure or business, but full of deep silence and absolute clarity of perception? A dawning which you truly observe, degree by degree. It is the most amazing moment of birth. And more than anything it can spur you to action. Have a burning day.
-- Vera Nazarian

#Good Morning #Adventure #Sleep

Responsibility and Trust -- these two are like Yin and Yang, together perfectly complete, and each one requiring the presence of the other. The next time you mistrust someone, consider this -- does that person feel responsible for you in any way? If the answer is yes, then go ahead and trust them. Very likely, they are looking out for your best interest.
-- Vera Nazarian

#Responsibility #Two #Together

An optimist is neither naive, nor blind to the facts, nor in denial of grim reality. An optimist believes in the optimal usage of all options available, no matter how limited. As such, an optimist always sees the big picture. How else to keep track of all that’s out there? An optimist is simply a proactive realist.
-- Vera Nazarian

#Believe #Reality #Track

Was it you or I who stumbled first? It does not matter. The one of us who finds the strength to get up first, must help the other.
-- Vera Nazarian

#Guilt #Matter #Firsts

Being smart as a whip includes knowing when not to crack it.
-- Vera Nazarian

#Smart #Knowing #Cracks

Luck is not as random as you think. Before that lottery ticket won the jackpot, someone had to buy it.
-- Vera Nazarian

#Thinking #Luck #Tickets

If Music is a Place -- then Jazz is the City, Folk is the Wilderness, Rock is the Road, Classical is a Temple.
-- Vera Nazarian

#Rocks #Cities #Temples

Withhold a smile only when the smile can hurt someone. Otherwise, let it bloom forth in a riot.
-- Vera Nazarian

#Smile #Hurt #Hurts Someone

Sometimes, reaching out and taking someone's hand is the beginning of a journey. At other times, it is allowing another to take yours.
-- Vera Nazarian

#Inspirational #Sexy #Travel

Don't let a loud few determine the nature of the sound. It makes for poor harmony and diminishes the song.
-- Vera Nazarian

#Song #Sound #Harmony

The only thing faster than the speed of thought is the speed of forgetfulness. Good thing we have other people to help us remember.
-- Vera Nazarian

#People #Helping #Remember

Would you like to know your future? If your answer is yes, think again. Not knowing is the greatest life motivator. So enjoy, endure, survive each moment as it comes to you in its proper sequence -- a surprise.
-- Vera Nazarian

#Motivational #Thinking #Knowing

When you wake up from a dream you have only a few precious moments before the details of the dream begin to dissipate and the memory fades. Not all dreams are significant or worth remembering. But the ones that are . . . happen again. So, wait for the dream to return. And never be afraid. Instead, consider it an opportunity to learn something profound and possibly wondrous about yourself.
-- Vera Nazarian

#Dream #Memories #Opportunity

You cannot be fair to others without first being fair to yourself. Know that a well-honed sense of justice is a measure of personal experience, and all experience is a measure of self. Know that the highest expression of justice is mercy. Thus, as the supreme judge in your own court, you must have compassion for yourself. Otherwise, cede your gavel.
-- Vera Nazarian

#Compassion #Self #Expression

The master of the garden is the one who waters it, trims the branches, plants the seeds, and pulls the weeds. If you merely stroll through the garden, you are but an acolyte.
-- Vera Nazarian

#Weed #Garden #Water

Unlike a fountain that circulates the same water in an enclosed, perpetually recycling system, a human being circulates thoughts in an unlimited reservoir of self. Don't limit yourself to being a mere fountain when you contain an ocean.
-- Vera Nazarian

#Ocean #Self #Water

It's easier for a rich man to ride that camel through the eye of a needle directly into the Kingdom of Heaven, than for some of us to give up our cell phone.
-- Vera Nazarian

#Giving Up #Eye #Men

What is it about wearing a tuxedo or that little black dress, that makes us feel confident, beautiful, splendid, even invincible? We put on formal wear and suddenly we become extraordinary. On the days when you feel low and invisible, why not try this on for size: imagine you are wearing a fantastic tailored tuxedo or a stunning formal gown. And then proceed with your day.
-- Vera Nazarian

#Beautiful #Black #Trying

Dangling a carrot in front of a donkey—or anyone else for that matter—is not nice, and not fair, unless you eventually plan to give it up to them.
-- Vera Nazarian

#Nice #Giving #Matter

The nutcracker sits under the holiday tree, a guardian of childhood stories. Feed him walnuts and he will crack open a tale...
-- Vera Nazarian

#Christmas #Holiday #Childhood

Sometimes, being true to yourself means changing your mind. Self changes, and you follow.
-- Vera Nazarian

#Mean #Self #Growth

To every rule there is an exception—and an idiot ready to demonstrate it. Don't be the one!
-- Vera Nazarian

#Idiot #Ready #Exception

In the plains the grass grows tall, since there is no one to cut it. There is no one to water it either.
-- Vera Nazarian

#Cutting #Water #Grass

The compass rose is nothing but a star with an infinite number of rays pointing in all directions.It is the one true and perfect symbol of the universe.And it is the one most accurate symbol of you.Spread your arms in an embrace, throw your head back, and prepare to receive and send coordinates of being. For, at last you know—you are the navigator, the captain, and the ship.
-- Vera Nazarian

#Stars #Numbers #Perfect

When hope is fleeting, stop for a moment and visualize, in a sky of silver, the crescent of a lavender moon. Imagine it -- delicate, slim, precise, like a paper-thin slice from a cabochon jewel. It may not be very useful, but it is beautiful. And sometimes it is enough.
-- Vera Nazarian

#Beautiful #Moon #Jewels

Passion and courtesy are two polar opposite traits that serve to balance each other into a full-blooded whole. Without socialization, passion is a crude barbarian, and without passion, the elegant and polite are dead. Allow both passion and courtesy into your life in equal measure, and be complete.
-- Vera Nazarian

#Passion #Opposites #Two

Don't be afraid of the dark. Shine!
-- Vera Nazarian

#Fear #Dark #Shining

Don't bother to argue anything on the Internet. And I mean, ANYTHING.... The most innocuous, innocent, harmless, basic topics will be misconstrued by people trying to deconstruct things down to the sub-atomic level and entirely miss the point.... Seriously. Keep peeling the onion and you get no onion.
-- Vera Nazarian

#Mean #People #Missing

The heartland lies where the heart longs to be. Sometimes it takes a lifetime to find the true place to plant it.
-- Vera Nazarian

#Lying #Heart #Sometimes

A woman is human. She is not better, wiser, stronger, more intelligent, more creative, or more responsible than a man. Likewise, she is never less. Equality is a given. A woman is human.
-- Vera Nazarian

#Men #Intelligent #Meditation

Sunrise paints the sky with pinks and the sunset with peaches. Cool to warm. So is the progression from childhood to old age.
-- Vera Nazarian

#Sunset #Sky #Childhood

Whenever you go on a trip to visit foreign lands or distant places, remember that they are all someone's home and backyard.
-- Vera Nazarian

#Travel #Home #Land

Frost grows on the window glass, forming whorl patterns of lovely translucent geometry. Breathe on the glass, and you give frost more ammunition. Now it can build castles and cities and whole ice continents with your breath’s vapor. In a few blinks you can almost see the winter fairies moving in . . . But first, you hear the crackle of their wings.
-- Vera Nazarian

#Moving #Winter #Glasses

Use this day to do something daring, extraordinary and unlike yourself. Take a chance and shape a different pattern in your personal cloud of probability!
-- Vera Nazarian

#Clouds #Different #Use

Stick around long enough to be someone's friend. Because true friendship, once recognized, in its essence is effortless.
-- Vera Nazarian

#True Friend #Essence #Long

Not every puzzle is intended to be solved. Some are in place to test your limits. Others are, in fact, not puzzles at all...
-- Vera Nazarian

#Facts #Tests #Limits

Instructions are never included. They vary with the strength of your ability to see, the measure of your selective blindness, the limits of your mercy, and the intensity of your desire.
-- Vera Nazarian

#Soulmate #Desire #Limits

A choir is made up of many voices, including yours and mine. If one by one all go silent then all that will be left are the soloists. Don’t let a loud few determine the nature of the sound. It makes for poor harmony and diminishes the song.
-- Vera Nazarian

#Song #Voice #Unity

It is interesting that we call something good a “dream,” but being called a “dreamer” is somewhat of a putdown. Without dreamers, no dream would ever be given reality, and we would live in a very small and shallow world. If you are a secret dreamer, it’s your time to announce yourself.
-- Vera Nazarian

#Dream #Reality #Interesting

When you reach for the stars, you are reaching for the farthest thing out there. When you reach deep into yourself, it is the same thing, but in the opposite direction. If you reach in both directions, you will have spanned the universe.
-- Vera Nazarian

#Success #Stars #Opposites

There's a difference between playing and playing games. The former is an act of joy, the latter — an act.
-- Vera Nazarian

#Lying #Games #Differences

The world is shaped by two things — stories told and the memories they leave behind.
-- Vera Nazarian

#Memories #Two #Acting

Never look directly at the sun. Instead, look at the sunflower.
-- Vera Nazarian

#Vision #Sunflower #Looks

A boomerang returns back to the person who throws it. But first, while moving in a circle, it hits its target. So does gossip.
-- Vera Nazarian

#Moving #Circles #Gossip

It is life that fights and struggles and rages; life, that tears at you in its last agonizing throes to hold on, even if but for one futile instant longer... Whereas I, I come softly when it is all done. Pain and death are an ordered sequence, not a parallel pair. So easy to confuse the correlations, not realizing that one does not bring the other.
-- Vera Nazarian

#Pain #Struggle #Fighting

Love - not dim and blind but so far-seeing that it can glimpse around corners, around bends and twists and illusion; instead of overlooking faults love sees through them to the secret inside.
-- Vera Nazarian

#True Love #Secret #Glimpse

No Temple made by mortal human hands can ever compare to the Temple made by the gods themselves. That building of wood and stone that houses us and that many believe conceals the great Secret Temple from prying eyes, somewhere in its heart of hearts, is but a decoy for the masses who need this simple concrete limited thing in their lives. The real Temple is the whole world, and there is nothing as divinely blessed as a blooming growing garden.
-- Vera Nazarian

#Real #Believe #Blessed

The ocean is a place of skin, rich outer membranes hiding thick juicy insides, laden with the soup of being.
-- Vera Nazarian

#Ocean #Skins #Juicy

In the desert, the only god is a well.
-- Vera Nazarian

#Water #Desert #Wells

Imagine a delicious glass of summer iced tea. Take a long cool sip. Listen to the ice crackle and clink. Is the glass part full or part empty? Take another sip. And now?
-- Vera Nazarian

#Summer #Ice #Glasses

It does not take a great supernatural heroine or magical hero to save the world.We all save it every day, and we all destroy it -- in our own small ways -- by every choice we make and every tiniest action resulting from that choice.The next time you feel useless and impotent, remember what you are in fact doing in this very moment. And then observe your tiny, seemingly meaningless acts and choices coalesce and cascade together into a powerful positive whole.The world -- if it could -- will thank you for it.And if it does not... well, a true heroine or hero does not require it.
-- Vera Nazarian

#Powerful #Hero #Choices

Why is wisdom so fair? Why is beauty so wise? Because all else is temporary, while beauty and wisdom are the only real and constant aspects of truth that can be perceived by human means. And I don't mean the kind of surface beauty that fades with age, or the sort of shallow wisdom that gets lost in platitudes. True beauty grips your gut and squeezes your lungs, and makes you see with utmost clarity exactly what is before you. True wisdom then steps in, to interpret, illuminate, and form a life-altering insight.
-- Vera Nazarian

#Wise #Real #Mean

Relief is a great feeling.It's the emotional and physical reward we receive from our bodies upon alleviation of pain, pressure and struggle. A time to bask in the lack of the negative.And yet, think about it—relief is really the status quo, a negation of the suffering, a nothing in itself. It is the way things were before the pressure and struggle began.So, is it a step back? A regression?Or is it an opportunity to regroup, start over, and move in a different direction?Use your moment of relief well.
-- Vera Nazarian

#Pain #Struggle #Moving

A boomerang returns back to the person who throws it.
-- Vera Nazarian

#Karma #Return #Boomerang

Thoughts are slippery fish in a cold shallow stream.If you are intent on capturing a worthwhile one, you need to stand very still, focus very hard on somewhere outside yourself, and then simply ignore it until it gets so close that it tickles your ankles.Then, pounce.
-- Vera Nazarian

#Focus #Needs #Ankles

The Gingerbread House has four walls, a roof, a door, a window, and a chimney. It is decorated with many sweet culinary delights on the outside.But on the inside there is nothing-only the bare gingerbread walls.It is not a real house-not until you decide to add a Gingerbread Room.That's when the stories can move in.They will stay in residence for as long as you abstain from taking the first gingerbread bite.
-- Vera Nazarian

#Sweet #Wall #Real

The weight of the world is a trifle, if we all put our two fingers under it and try to lift together.
-- Vera Nazarian

#Two #Trying #Together

Close your eyes and turn your face into the wind. Feel it sweep along your skin in an invisible ocean of exultation. Suddenly, you know you are alive.
-- Vera Nazarian

#Ocean #Eye #Wind

What is blood but the wine of life?
-- Vera Nazarian

#Wine #Blood

A wise person is like a smoothly polished rock: it takes time to become either.
-- Vera Nazarian

#Wise #Rocks #It Takes Time

Each letter of the alphabet is a steadfast loyal soldier in a great army of words, sentences, paragraphs, and stories. One letter falls, and the entire language falters.
-- Vera Nazarian

#Fall #Army #Soldier

Strange dreams are better than no dreams at all.
-- Vera Nazarian

#Dream #Strange

If you have never changed your mind about some fundamental tenet of your belief, if you have never questioned the basics, and if you have no wish to do so, then you are likely ignorant.
-- Vera Nazarian

#Ignorant #Mind #Wish

The sand in the hourglass runs from one compartment to the other, marking the passage of moments with something constant and tangible.If you watch the flowing sand, you might see time itself riding the granules.Contrary to popular opinion, time is not an old white-haired man, but a laughing child.And time sings.
-- Vera Nazarian

#Running #Children #Men

The great miraculous bell of translucent ice is suspended in mid-air. It rings to announce endings and beginnings. And it rings because there is fresh promise and wonder in the skies.
-- Vera Nazarian

#New Year #Air #Ice

For, what is order without common sense, but Bedlam's front parlor? What is imagination without common sense, but the aspiration to out-dandy Beau Brummell with nothing but a bit of faded muslin and a limp cravat? What is Creation without common sense, but a scandalous thing without form or function, like a matron with half a dozen unattached daughters? And God looked upon the Creation in all its delightful multiplicity, and saw that, all in all, it was quite Amiable.
-- Vera Nazarian

#Daughter #Order #Common Sense

Karma has been a pop culture term for ages. But really, what the heck is it?
-- Vera Nazarian

#Karma #Age #Culture

Once upon a time, began the story of you.Many perilous, wonderful, harrowing, brilliant, delightful, profound things happened.And yet—the most exciting twists and best turns are yet to come. And it absolutely does not matter how old or young you are.Like a bright carpet of wonders, enjoy the unrolling of your story.
-- Vera Nazarian

#Profound #Once Upon A Time #Doe

SUN, MOON, AND STARRY SKY Early summer evenings, when the first stars come out, the warm glow of sunset still stains the rim of the western sky. Sometimes, the moon is also visible, a pale white slice, while the sun tarries. Just think -- all the celestial lights are present at the same time! These are moments of wonder -- see them and remember.
-- Vera Nazarian

#Summer #Stars #Sunset

Who says you cannot hold the moon in your hand? Tonight when the stars come out and the moon rises in the velvet sky, look outside your window, then raise your hand and position your fingers around the disk of light. There you go . . . That was easy!
-- Vera Nazarian

#Stars #Moon #Light

If you are faced with a mountain, you have several options. You can climb it and cross to the other side. You can go around it. You can dig under it. You can fly over it. You can blow it up. You can ignore it and pretend it’s not there. You can turn around and go back the way you came. Or you can stay on the mountain and make it your home.
-- Vera Nazarian

#Inspirational #Home #Blow

Ice is most welcome in a cold drink on a hot day. But in the heart of winter, you want a warm hot mug with your favorite soothing brew to keep the chill away. When you don’t have anything warm at hand, even a memory can be a small substitute. Remember a searing look of intimate eyes. Receive the inner fire.
-- Vera Nazarian

#Memories #Heart #Eye

Respect the young and chastise your elders. It's about time the world was set aright.
-- Vera Nazarian

#World #Young #Elders

Listen to the trees as they sway in the wind. Their leaves are telling secrets. Their bark sings songs of olden days as it grows around the trunks. And their roots give names to all things. Their language has been lost. But not the gestures.
-- Vera Nazarian

#Inspirational #Song #Wind

When tough times come, it is particularly important to offset them with much gentle softness. Be a pillow.
-- Vera Nazarian

#Tough Times #Important #Gentle

A tornado of thought is unleashed after each new insight. This in turn results in an earthquake of assumptions. These are natural disasters that re-shape the spirit.
-- Vera Nazarian

#Earthquakes #Shapes #Tornadoes

Neither sugar nor salt tastes particularly good by itself. Each is at its best when used to season other things. Love is the same way. Use it to "season" people.
-- Vera Nazarian

#Love Is #People #Use

Most of us have nicknames-annoying, endearing, embarrassing.But what about your true name?It is not necessarily your given name. But it is the one to which you are most eager to respond when called.Ever wonder why?Your true name has the secret power to call you.
-- Vera Nazarian

#Names #Secret #Annoying