“You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars. In the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul.”

— Max Ehrmann

Variant: Be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.

Last update May 1, 2022. History

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Max Ehrmann7

American writer, poet, and attorney 1872–1945

Max Ehrmann (1872–1945) American writer, poet, and attorney

Source: Desiderata: A Poem for a Way of Life

“If you figured out why making a list reduces overwhelm & confusion, you'd keep nothing in your head the rest of your life.”

David Allen (1945) American productivity consultant and author

12 May 2010 https://twitter.com/gtdguy/status/13858760270 <br class="br"> Official Twitter profile (@gtdguy) https://twitter.com/gtdguy

“The tides are in our veins, we still mirror the stars, life is your child, but there is in me
Older and harder than life and more impartial, the eye that watched before there was an ocean.”

Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962) American poet

"Continent's End" in Tamar and Other Poems (1924)

“You are an Universe of Universes and your soul a source of songs.”

Rubén Darío (1867–1916) Nicaraguan poet and writer

“Slowly the human beings have arise n-guided by a glimmering light — and have climbed spiritually from the earth and the clod, from the shrub and tree up the broad walls of the arched sky, to stars, and moon, and sun, and then beyond the sun, for the divinity seeldng and striving imagination stretches away to the invisible, all powerful, all-controlling, all-loving. One who permeates the universe, lives in it, and breathes His life through it, the eternal life to be taken into the human soul. The myth is the obscure image, in the child's soul, of God Himself.”

Francis Wayland Parker (1837–1902) Union Army officer

Source: Talks on Pedagogics, (1894), p. 10

“So what is true for life itself is no less true for the universe: knowing where you came from is no less important than knowing where you are going.”

Neil deGrasse Tyson (1958) American astrophysicist and science communicator

2000s
Context: No matter who you are, engaging in the quest to discover where and how things began tends to induce emotional fervor—as if knowing the beginning bestows upon you some form of fellowship with, or perhaps governance over, all that comes later. So what is true for life itself is no less true for the universe: knowing where you came from is no less important than knowing where you are going.