Tam's Think Tank

Van Gogh Painting Sunflowers (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Words, written by others, that inspire me to think, dream, change, challenge, make art, contemplate, and live life as completely as I can. This page will be evolving and added to periodically as I continue to find words of inspiration.

Listen; there’s a hell of a good universe next door: let’s go.

~ E. E. Cummings

If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.

~ Mother Teresa

I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.

~ Vincent Van Gogh

Stop this day and night with me, and you shall possess the origin of all poems; You shall possess the good of the earth and sun—(there are millions of suns left) You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books; You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me: You shall listen to all sides, and filter them from yourself.

~ Walt Whitman

In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.

― Albert Camus

The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.

~  W.B. Yeats

“I am awaiting perpetually and forever a renaissance of wonder.”

― Lawrence Ferlinghetti

With an eye made quiet by the power of harmony, and the deep power of joy, we see into the life of things.

~ William Wordsworth

You can kiss your family and friends good-bye and put miles between you, but at the same time you carry them with you in your heart, your mind, your stomach, because you do not just live in a world but a world lives in you.

~ Frederick Buechner

A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.

~ Oscar Wilde

I learned I was not, as most Africans believed, the victim of my circumstances but the master of them.

~ Legson Kayira

We are shaped by our own thoughts; we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves.

~ Buddha

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.

― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Receive with simplicity everything that happens to you.

~ Rashi

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable.

~ Helen Keller

I experience a period of frightening clarity in those moments when nature is so beautiful. I am no longer sure of myself, and the paintings appear as in a dream.

~ Vincent Van Gogh

I shut my eyes in order to see.

~ Paul Gauguin

I believe the universe is one being; all its parts are different expressions of the same energy, and they are all in communication with each other, therefore parts of one organic whole … The whole is in all its parts so beautiful, and is felt by me to be so intensely in earnest, that I am compelled to love it, and to think of it as divine. It seems to me that this whole alone is worthy of the deeper sort of love; and there is peace, freedom, I might say a kind of salvation, in turning one’s affections outward toward this one God; rather than inwards on one’s self, or on humanity, or on human imaginations and abstractions- the world of spirits.

~ Robinson Jeffers

The forests are the flags of nature. They appeal to all and awaken inspiring universal feelings. Enter the forest and the boundaries of nations are forgotten. It may be that some time an immortal pine will be the flag of a united peaceful world.

~ Enos A. Mills

For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with the extension of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear.

~ Henry Beston

Each day affirm that there is nothing in this world that can stop you from transforming your life, opening your heart, loving yourself, and sharing your love with everyone you encounter.

~Yogi Amrit Desai

If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution

~ Emma Goldman

When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence.

~ Ansel Adams

May the poor find wealth,
Those weak with sorrow find joy,
May the forlorn find new hope,
Constant happiness and prosperity

May the frightened cease to be afraid,
And those bound be free,
May the weak find power,
And may their hearts join in friendship.

~ The Dalai Lama

The world is but a canvas to the imagination.

~ Henry David Thoreau

Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place.

~ Zora Neale Hurston

The lifetime crusade of your days must be to develop a new energy ethic to sustain life on earth. Cherish sunsets, wild creatures and wild places. Have a love affair with the wonder and beauty of the earth.

~ Stewart Udall