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Acceptance Quotes and Quotations
 Some people confuse acceptance with apathy, but there's all the difference in the world. Apathy fails to distinguish between what can and what cannot be helped; acceptance makes that distinction. Apathy paralyzes the will-to-action; acceptance frees it by relieving it of impossible burdens.  Acceptance says, "True, this is my situation at the moment. I'll look unblinkingly at the reality of it. But I'll also open my hands to accept willingly whatever a loving Father sends me." It's not a very big step from contentment to complacency. The minute you settle for less than you deserve, you get even less than you settled for. "Good enough never is" has become the motto of this company. God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope. Acceptance is not submission; it is acknowledgement of the facts of a situation. Then deciding what you're going to do about it. Self-complacency is fatal to progress. You have to take it as it happens, but you should try to make it happen the way you want to take it. Never deny a diagnosis, but do deny the negative verdict that may go with it. All that is necessary is to accept the impossible, do without the indispensable, and bear the intolerable. The happy and efficient people in this world are those who accept trouble as a normal detail of human life and resolve to capitalize it when it comes along. For those who live neither with religious consolations about death nor with a sense of death (or of anything else) as natural, death is the obscene mystery, the ultimate affront, the thing that cannot be controlled. It can only be denied. Who except the gods can live without any pain? Misfortune comes to all men. The real world is not easy to live in. It is rough; it is slippery. Without the most clear-eyed adjustments we fall and get crushed. Life has no smooth road for any of us; and in the bracing atmosphere of a high aim the very roughness stimulates the climber to steadier steps 'til the legend, "over steep ways to the stars," fulfills self. Maturity is achieved when a person accepts life as full of tension. Yet man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward. - Bible Into each life some rain must fall, some days must be dark and dreary. There is no man in this world without some manner of tribulation or anguish, though he be king or pope. There is no armor against fate; death lays his icy hands on kings. There is no easy path leading out of life, and few are the easy ones that lie within it. A man shares his days with hunger, thirst, and cold, with the good times and the bad, and the first part of being a man is to understand that. It is arrogance to expect that life will always be music.... Harmony, like a following breeze at sea, is the exception. In a world where most things wind up broken or lost, our lot is to tack and tune. One cannot get through life without pain. ... What we can do is choose how to use the pain life presents to us. The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. If you have arthritis, calmly say, I was always complaining about the ruts in the road until I realized that the ruts are the road. "Okay, I have arthritis, and this is the way arthritis is." Take pain as it comes and you can better master it. It is right it should be so, Man was made for joy and woe; And when this we rightly know, Through the world we safely go. Anyone who proposes to do good must not expect people to roll stones out of his way, but must accept his lot calmly, even if they roll a few more upon it. Free man is by necessity insecure; thinking man by necessity uncertain. You have come into a hard world. I know of only one easy place in it, and that is the grave. Against necessity, against its strength, no one can fight and win. A wise man never refuses anything to necessity. When necessity speaks, it demands. How base a thing it is when a man will struggle with necessity! We have to die. Whatever is-is best. Anything in life that we don't accept will simply make trouble for us until we make peace with it. The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Much sheer effort goes into avoiding the truth; left to itself, it sweeps in like the tide. We win half the battle when we make up our minds to take the world as we find it, including the thorns. A man must live in the world and make the best of it, such as it is. There are some people that you cannot change, you must either swallow them whole or leave them alone. The world is not to be put in order, the world is order incarnate. It is for us to put ourselves in unison with this order. God asks no man whether he will accept life. This is not the choice. You must take it. The only question is how. There is no cure for birth or death save to enjoy the interval. No man can have society upon his own terms. The most popular persons are those who take the world as it is, who find the least fault. If you bear the cross unwillingly, you make it a burden, and load yourself more heavily; but you must bear it. There are two ways of meeting difficulties: you alter the difficulties, or you alter yourself to meet them. I find that it is not the circumstances in which we are placed, but the spirit in which we face them, that constitutes our comfort. It is almost more important how a person takes his fate than what it is. The individual who is best prepared for any occupation is the one ... able to adapt himself to any situation. To act with common sense, according to the moment, is the best wisdom; and the best philosophy is to do one's duties, to take the world as it comes, submit respectfully to one's lot, and bless the goodness that has given us so much happiness with it, whatever it is. The art of life lies in a constant readjustment to our surroundings. To repel one's cross is to make it heavier. Ask not that events should happen as you will, but let your will be that events should happen as they do, and you shall have peace. The survival of the fittest is the ageless law of nature, but the fittest are rarely the strong. The fittest are those endowed with the qualifications for adaptation, the ability to accept the inevitable and conform to the unavoidable, to harmonize with existing or changing conditions. The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of circumstances. He is happy whose circumstances suit his temper; but he is more excellent who can suit his temper to any circumstances. Life is 10 percent what you make it, and 90 percent how you take it. A mountain man tries to live with the country instead of against it. Vex not thy spirit at the course of things; they heed not thy vexation. How ludicrous and outlandish is astonishment at anything that may happen in life. If you can't fight, and you can't flee, flow. Today I know that I cannot control the ocean tides. I can only go with the flow.... When I struggle and try to organize the Atlantic to my specifications, I sink. If I flail and thrash and growl and grumble, I go under. But if I let go and float, I am borne aloft. One learns to adapt to the land in which one lives. She had believed the land was her enemy, and she struggled against it, but you could not make war against a land any more than you could against the sea. One had to learn to live with it, to belong to it, to fit into its seasons and its ways. Flow with whatever may happen and let your mind be free. Stay centered by accepting whatever you are doing. This is the ultimate. When you have got an elephant by the hind legs and he is trying to run away, it is best to let him run. Learn to drink the cup of life as it comes. Arrange whatever pieces come your way. Everything in life that we really accept undergoes a change. So suffering must become love. That is the mystery. You can't fight the desert... you have to ride with it. All I can do is play the game the way the cards fall. Don't be sad, don't be angry, if life deceives you! Submit to your grief; your time for joy will come, believe me. When we see ourselves in a situation which must be endured and gone through, it is best to meet it with firmness, and accommodate everything to it in the best way practicable. This lessens the evil, while fretting and fuming only increase your own torments. Always fall in with what you're asked to accept.... My aim in life has always been to hold my own with whatever's going. Not against: with. There is no quality of human nature so nearly royal as the ability to yield gracefully. The best thing we can do is to make wherever we're lost look as much like home as we can. Make a virtue of necessity. Cooperation is doing with a smile what you have to do anyhow. We must make the best of those ills which cannot be avoided. For so must it be, and help me do my part. There are no conditions to which a man cannot become accustomed. A private railroad car is not an acquired taste. One takes to it immediately. Man adapts himself to everything, to the best and the worst. Being unready and ill-equipped is what you have to expect in life. It is the universal predicament. It is your lot as a human being to lack what it takes. Circumstances are seldom right. You never have the capacities, the strength, the wisdom, the virtue you ought to have. You must always do with less than you need in a situation vastly different from what you would have chosen as appropriate for your special endowments. In the face of an obstacle which is impossible to overcome, stubbornness is stupid. Very few live by choice. Every man is placed in his present condition by causes which acted without his foresight, and with which he did not always willingly cooperate; and therefore you will rarely meet one who does not think the lot of his neighbor better than his own. To exist is to adapt, and if one could not adapt, one died and made room for those who could. Happy the man who early learns the wide chasm that lies between his wishes and his powers. Real life is, to most men ... a perpetual compromise between the ideal and the possible. People are lucky and unlucky ... according to the ratio between what they get and what they have been led to expect. He who cannot do what he wants must make do with what he can. - Terence What has always made a hell on earth has been that man has tried to make it his heaven. Good is not good, where better is expected. Nobody has things just as he would like them. The thing to do is to make a success with what material I have. It is a sheer waste of time and soul-power to imagine what I would do if things were different. They are not different. We must like what we have when we don't have what we like. Better is the enemy of the good. - Voltaire If you aspire to the highest place, it is no disgrace to stop at the second, or even the third, place. - Cicero Genius does what it must, talent does what it can. Nature is what you may do. There is much you may not do. Results are what you expect; consequences are what you get. To expect life to be tailored to our specifications is to invite frustration. The resistance to the unpleasant situation is the root of suffering. - Ram Dass The chief pang of most trials is not so much the actual suffering itself as our own spirit of resistance to it. Each of us does, in effect, strike a series of "deals" or compromises between the wants and longings of the inner self, and an outer environment that offers certain possibilities and sets certain limitations. Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are and what they might have been. Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression. The chasm is never completely bridged. We all have the conviction, perhaps illusory, that we have much more to say than appears on the paper. The greatest and most important problems in life are all in a certain sense insoluble. They can never be solved, but only outgrown. We do not write as we want, but as we can. The art of living lies less in eliminating our troubles than in growing with them. A body shouldn't heed what might be. He's got to do with what is. The greatest evil which fortune can inflict on men is to endow them with small talents and great ambitions. We may fail of our happiness, strive we ever so bravely; but we are less likely to fail if we measure with judgment our chances and our capabilities. I One of the signs of maturity is a healthy respect for reality-a respect that manifests itself in the level of one's aspirations and in the accuracy of one's assessment of the difficulties which separate the facts of today from the bright hopes of tomorrow. Is life so wretched? Isn't it rather your hands which are too small, your vision which is muddled? You are the one who must grow up. Nothing you write, if you hope to be any good, will ever come out as you first hoped. Unhappiness is best defined as the difference between our talents and our expectations. Anxiety is that range of distress which attends willing what cannot be willed. There is a mortal breed most full of futility. In contempt of what is at hand, they strain into the future, hunting impossibilities on the wings of ineffectual hopes. - Pindar A life of frustration is inevitable for any coach whose man enjoyment is winning. No traveler e'er reached that blest abode who found not thorns and briers in his road. The trouble with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes rather than with their minds. It is a common observation that those who dwell continually upon their expectations are apt to become oblivious to the requirements of their actual situation. A hero is a man who does what he can. Life's under no obligation to give us what we expect. Buddha's doctrine: Man suffers because of his craving to possess and keep forever things which are essentially impermanent... this frustration of the desire to possess is the immediate cause of suffering. The point... is to dwell upon the brightest parts in every prospect, to call off the thoughts when turning upon disagreeable objects, and strive to be pleased with the present circumstances. Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content. Life is not always what one wants it to be, but to make the best of it, as it is, is the only way of being happy. The English know how to make the best of things. Their so-called muddling through is simply skill at dealing with the inevitable. I make the most of all that comes and the least of all that goes. We cannot conquer fate and necessity, yet we can yield to them in such a manner as to be greater than if we could. The idea came to me that I was, am, and will be, but perhaps will not become. This did not scare me. There was for me in being an intensity I did not feel in becoming. Here is a rule to remember when anything tempts you to feel bitter: not, "This is a misfortune," but "To bear this worthily is good fortune." There is no good in arguing with the inevitable. The only argument available with an east wind is to put on your overcoat. Trouble will come soon enough, and when he does come receive him as pleasantly as possible ... the more amiably you greet him, the sooner he will go away. Adapt yourself to the things among which your lot has been cast and love sincerely the fellow creatures with whom destiny has ordained that you shall live. When we accept tough jobs as a challenge to our ability and wade into them with joy and enthusiasm, miracles can happen. Love only what befalls you and is spun for you by fate. What you can't get out of, get into wholeheartedly. Let us train our minds to desire what the situation demands. Ride the horse in the direction that it's going. If one has to submit, it is wasteful not to do so with the best grace possible. Since God has been pleased to give us the Papacy, let us enjoy it. It is no use to grumble and complain; It's just as cheap and easy to rejoice; When God sorts out the weather and sends rain-Why, rain's my choice. When a dog runs at you, whistle for him. An oak and a reed were arguing about their strength. When a strong wind came up, the reed avoided being uprooted by bending and leaning with the gusts of wind. But the oak stood firm and was torn up by the roots. - Aesop The grass must bend when the wind blows across it. He who attempts to resist the wave is swept away, but he who bends before it abides. - Bible Adapt or perish, now as ever, is nature's inexorable imperative. One does not have to stand again the gale. One yields and becomes part of the wind. - Emmanuel I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do. Nature magically suits a man to his fortunes, by making them the fruit of his character. Better bend than break. The secret of success is to be in harmony with existence, to be always calm ... to let each wave of life wash us a little farther up the shore. There is only one way to happiness, and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will. The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it emotionally. Happiness ... can exist only in acceptance. Happiness comes from within a man, from some curious adjustment to life. Happy he who learns to bear what he cannot change! Contentment, and indeed usefulness, comes as the infallible result of great acceptances, great humilities-of not trying to conform to some dramatized version of ourselves. My advice to you is not to inquire why or whither, but just enjoy your ice cream while it's on your plate. It is not necessarily those lands which are the most fertile or most favored in climate that seem to me the happiest, but those in which a long struggle of adaptation between man and his environment has brought out the best qualities of both. Life is not always what one wants it to be, but to make the best of it, as it is, is the only way of being happy. Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content. I accept life unconditionally. ... Most people ask for happiness on condition. Happiness can only be felt if you don't set any condition. Happiness is a function of accepting what is. One's first step in wisdom is to question everything; one's last is to come to terms with everything. If you are wise, live as you can; if you cannot, live as you would. Wisdom never kicks at the iron walls it can't bring down. For this is wisdom: to live, to take what fate, or the Gods, may give. Acceptance and Work If you have a job without aggravations, you don't have a job. When I decided to go into politics I weighed the costs. I would get criticism. But I went ahead. So when virulent criticism came I wasn't surprised. I was better able to handle it. Every job has drudgery. ... The first secret of happiness is the recognition of this fundamental fact. The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore. He who doesn't accept the conditions of life sells his soul. Greatness of soul consists not so much in soaring high and in pressing forward, as in knowing how to adapt and limit oneself. The beauty of the soul shines out when a man bears with composure one heavy mischance after another, not because he does not feel them, but because he is a man of high and heroic temper. The great soul surrenders itself to fate. The mind which renounces, once and forever, a futile hope, has its compensations in ever-growing calm. I not only bow to the inevitable, I am fortified by it. I have accepted all and I am free. The inner chains are broken, as well as those outside. The most beautiful thing is inevitability of events, and the most ugly thing is trying to resist inevitability. Peace of mind is that mental condition in which you have accepted the worst. If we can recognize that change and uncertainty are basic principles, we can greet the future and the transformation we are undergoing with the understanding that we do not know enough to be pessimistic. We cannot change anything unless we accept it. Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequence of any misfortune. Almost any event will put on a new face when received with cheerful acceptance. What it is forbidden to be put right becomes lighter by acceptance. - Horace One completely overcomes only what one assimilates. If you cast away one cross, you will certainly find another, and perhaps a heavier. To repel one's cross is to make it heavier. Science says: "We must live," and seeks the means of prolonging, increasing, facilitating and amplifying life, of making it tolerable and acceptable; wisdom says: "We must die," and seeks how to make us die well. True freedom lies in the realization and calm acceptance of the fact that there may very well be no perfect answer. As the soft yield of water cleaves obstinate stone, So to yield with life solves the insolvable: To yield, I have learned, is to come back again. - Lao-Tzu Things turn out best for people who make the best of the way things turn out. And acceptance is the answer to all my problems today. ... I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing, or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment. Resistance causes pain and lethargy. It is when we practice acceptance that new possibilities appear. To oppose something is to maintain it. No life is so hard that you can't make it easier by the way you take it. Anything in life that we don't accept will simply make trouble for us until we make peace with it. Often the prudent, far from making their destinies, succumb to them. - Voltaire Things past redress are now with me past care. What we call reality is an agreement that people have arrived at to make life more livable. He who has calmly reconciled his life to fate ... can look fortune in the face. - Boethius No rose without a thorn. Life leaps like a geyser for those who drill through the rock of inertia. If you want a place in the sun, you've got to put up with a few blisters. Those who aim at great deeds must also suffer greatly. - Plutarch Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed. The first step toward change is acceptance. Once you accept yourself, you open the door to change. That's all you have to do. Change is not something you do, it's something you allow. Keep doing what you're doing and you'll keep getting what you're getting. Everything in life that we really accept undergoes a change. So suffering must become love. That is the mystery. We cannot change anything unless we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses. When you make your peace with authority, you become authority. Ours must be the first age whose great goal, on a nonmaterial plane, is not fulfillment but adjustment. Woman must not accept; she must challenge. We have fought this fight as long, and as well, as we know how. We have been defeated. There is now but one course to pursue. We must accept the situation. Competition is about passion for perfection, and passion for other people who join in this impossible quest. Better to accept whatever happens. - Horace If we cannot do what we will, we must will what we can. Every man must be content with that glory which he may have at home. - Boethius Every new adjustment is a crisis in self-esteem. What cannot be avoided, t'were childish weakness to lament or fear. I will not meddle with that which I cannot mend. I have learned to live with it all... whatever happens ... all of it. - Edelgard There is no such thing as pure pleasure; some anxiety always goes with it. - Ovid If a ship has been sunk, I can't bring it up. If it is going to be sunk, I can't stop it. I can use my time much better working on tomorrow's problem than by fretting about yesterday's. Besides, if I let those things get me, I wouldn't last long. One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is that things are what they are and will be what they will be. Part of the happiness of life consists not in fighting battles, but in avoiding them. A masterly retreat is in itself a victory. A flower falls even though we love it. A weed grows even though we don't love it. - Dogen Acceptance says, True, this is my situation at the moment. I'll look unblink-ingly at the reality of it. But I'll also open my hands to accept willingly whatever a loving Father sends me. Man is a pliant animal, a being who gets accustomed to anything. The unknown is what it is. And to be frightened of it is what sends everybody scurrying around chasing dreams, illusions, wars, peace, love, hate, all that. Unknown is what it is. Accept that it's unknown, and it's plain sailing. Happiness is experienced when your life gives you what you are willing to accept. Acceptance is the truest kinship with humanity. What must be shall be; and that which is a necessity to him that struggles, is little more than choice to him that is willing. Acceptance makes any event put on a new face. There is no sense in the struggle, but there is no choice but to struggle. Boys, this is only a game. But it's like life in that you will be dealt some bad hands. Take each hand, good or bad, and don't whine and complain, but play it out. If you're men enough to do that, God will help and you will come out well. Practice easing your way along. Don't get het up or in a dither. Do your best; take it as it comes. You can handle anything if you think you can. Just keep your cool and your sense of humor. Accept that all of us can be hurt, that all of us can-and surely will at times-fail. Other vulnerabilities, like being embarrassed or risking love, can be terrifying too. I think we should follow a simple rule: if we can take the worst, take the risk. Do not weep; do not wax indignant. Understand. We must learn to accept life and to accept ourselves ... with a shrug and a smile ... because it's all we've got. I have accepted fear as a part of life -specifically the fear of change ... I have gone ahead despite the pounding in the heart that says: turn back. ... There are things I can't force. I must adjust. - CM. Ward Let a man accept his destiny. No pity and no tears. Wood may remain ten years in the water, but it will never become a crocodile. No matter how much you feed a wolf, he will always return to the forest. Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? - Bible 
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