The best things about winter that I love are Christmas or holiday movies like “It came upon a midnight clear,” “Frosty the Snowman,” and all the variations of “A Christmas Carol.” I loved watching them as a child and I’m not one bit bored watching them now. I wanted the Zen quotes in my newsletters to be that way. And a lot of you have written to me on how you really appreciate them so I’m compiling all the Zen quotes of 2008 into blog posts so that you can bookmark them or refer to them whenever you want! Since all the Zen quotes in one post will be cumbersome, I’m splitting them up into two editions, this being the first. Here they are:

January
1st week: “Move and the way will open.”
2nd week: Morrie Schwartz, of the “Tuesdays with Morrie” fame: “The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in.”
3rd week: Martin Luther King, Jr.: “Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it.”
4th week: Brendon Francis Behan: “A man is already halfway in love with any woman who listens to him.”

February
1st week: From a Fortune Cookie: “Your greatest fortune is the large number of friends you have.”
2nd week: Old proverb: “People come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime.”
3rd week: Buddha: “Kindness should become the natural way of life, not the exception.”
4th week: Old proverb: “God could not be everywhere, so he created mothers.”

March
1st week: Jim McMahon: “Yes, risk taking is inherently failure-prone. Otherwise, it would be called sure-thing-taking.”
2nd week: Irish blessing: “May you always have walls for the winds, a roof for the rain, tea beside the fire, laughter to cheer you, those you love near you, and all your heart might desire.”
3rd week: Henry David Thoreau: “If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put foundations under them.”
4th week: Henry Bergh: “Men will be just to men when they are kind to animals.”

April
1st week: Donna Williams: “Romance isn’t a quick cracker with cheese, it’s a Ferrero Rocher [a really expensive chocolate-wafer-hazelnut ball thingy].”
2nd week: Jefferson: “An injured friend is the bitterest of foes.”
3rd week: Eddie Albert: “What’s the most important thing in the world? It’s love, and I look at that as an energy, not a sentiment.”
4th week: Edgar Watson Howe: “If a friend is in trouble, don’t annoy him by asking if there is anything you can do. Think up something appropriate and do it.”

May
1st week: Florence Nightingale: “I attribute my success to this–I never gave or took any excuse.”
2nd week: Pearl S. Buck: “Some mothers are kissing mothers and some are scolding mothers, but it is love just the same, and most mothers kiss and scold together.”
3rd week: Henry David Thoreau: “The language of friendship is not words but meanings.”
4th week: Margaret Mead: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
5th week: Bette Midler: “Just remember, during the winter, far beneath the bitter snow, that there’s a seed that with the sun’s love in the spring becomes a rose.”

June
1st week: Zig Ziglar: “Expect the best. Prepare for the worst. Capitalize on what comes.”
2nd week: Sir Thomas Brown: “Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible sun within us.”
3rd week: Lucille Ball: “The secret to staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly, and lie about your age.”
4th week: Mark Twain: “Love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century.”