Sometimes I find that I need a sort of mantra.

When I was younger my favorite was from Dune.
“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain. “

Then came the classic from Sir Winston Churchill.
“Never, never, never give up.”

Now that I am older, I am more concerned, not with fear or quitting before my time, but with living a life I do not regret.
I have been gathering a few quotes here and there.
Some of them are posted below.

By Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense.”

and

“Learn how to carry a friendship greatly, whether or not it is returned. Why should one regret if the receiver is not equally generous? It never troubles the sun that some of his rays fall wide and vain into ungrateful space, and only a small part on the reflecting planet. Let your greatness educate the crude and cold companion. If he is unequal, he will presently pass away; but thou art enlarged by thy own shining.”

My current favorite is by Rainer Maria Rilke.

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will find them gradually, without noticing it, and live along some distant day into the answer.”

How have your mantras changed over the years? Do you have any sayings that are associated with specific times in your life? Have you found them helpful or comforting?