Quotes by Barbara Sher

“When you play it too safe, youre taking the biggest risk of your life. Time is the only wealth were given.”

“And our dreams are who we are”

“We are like violins. We can be used as doorstops, or we can make music.”

“Every single one of us can do things that no one else can, love things that no one else can love...We are like violins. We can be used for doorstops, or we can make music. You know what to do.”

“Resentment is weak and lowers your self-esteem.”

“I believe you can have whatever you really want in this life, in one form or another, sooner or later. All you have to do is take care of your health and be lucky enough to live for a while. But you cant have it all at once and you cant have it forever. No life has the room for everything in it, not on the same day.”

“Now is the operative word. Everything you put in your way is just a method of putting off the hour when you could actually be doing your dream. You dont need endless time and perfect conditions. Do it now. Do it today. Do it for twenty minutes and watch your heart start beating.”

“Isolation is a dream killer”

Start small.Start now.Start everything.And don’t bother to finish any of it.

And be grateful that you’re a Scanner. Not everyone can have this much fun with nothing but what’s between her ears.

Let’s end the notion that ideas have no value unless they turn into a business or have some other practical use. Save them all in a beautiful book like Leonardo did. You might want to give them away someday, perhaps to someone who needs an idea. Or your great-great-grandchildren might love knowing what a fascinating mind you had. Or your biographer might be very happy after you’re gone.

Since then I’ve come to believe you don’t always have to use things you love, and it’s not always so practical to be so practical. Now that I’ve grown up, I realize that all that delicious dilettantism pays its way as much as any degree in medicine or engineering, by making me remember every day—whenever I pick up a book or watch the Science Channel or try to read a map of Asia for no particular reason—that life is amazing and there is no end to the wonder of it.

How can families harm us when they love us? Very easily, unfortunately. Most of us overlook one important fact when we think love is enough: Love and respect arent the same thing.Love is fusion. As a baby, you belong to your parents, youre extension of them. Respect is differentiation: you belong to yourself, and youre an extension of no one. Differentiation is essential for happiness of adults.

You can waste a perfectly good life trying to meet the standards of someone who thinks you’re not good enough because they can’t understand who you are.

You can learn new things at any time in your life if youre willing to be a beginner. If you actually learn to like being a beginner, the whole world opens up to you.

What youre really supposed to be doing is whatever makes your heart sing.

Every time you have to make a choice about anything, think Does this go toward or away from what I want? Always choose what goes toward what you want.

Every time you worry that you could get trapped in some kind of work you dont care about, youre dealing with the problem of meaningfulness. I guarantee that in the back of your mind is the thought that somehow you have to make a contribution to something, be acknowledged, do something that matters--or youre just fooling around.

Down deep we really know our worth but we dont have easy access to that knowledge. We need to hear praise coming from outside ourselves or we wont remember that we deserve it.

You can learn new things at any time in your life if youre willing to be a beginner. If you actually learn to like being a beginner the whole world opens up to you.