• Columnists

Kathleen McCarthy, senior editor, Be Inkandescent magazine

A freelance editor and writer in the mental health field for the last 20 years, Kathleen McCarthy is the senior editor for Be Inkandescent Magazine, and also writes the magazine’s Parenting column.

In 2012, Kathleen became the manager of the new speakers bureau, InkandescentSpeakers.com, an international organization of small business experts that travel around the globe to provide best practices to entrepreneurs.

She also handles the editing, design, and layout for the monthly online newsletter of the American Mental Health Counselors Association.

As a freelance writer and editor, her clients have included government agencies, corporations, and universities. Before becoming a freelancer, she worked for several nonprofit associations, including the American Psychological Association, the National Association of College and University Business Officers, and the American Association for Engineering Education.

A deadline fanatic, Kathleen is zealous about the virtues of the serial comma and admires writers who can translate dense topics into artful prose. In her spare time, she likes to diagram sentences.

We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”

– Joseph Campbell

The world I believed in, back in my most innocent, uninformed, childish mind—is real.”

– Martha Beck

If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is compromise.”

– Robert Fritz

A lot of people have ideas, but few decide to do something about them now. Not next week. But today.”

– Nolan Bushnell, founder, Atari

Always look at what you have left. Never look at what you have lost.”

– Robert H. Schuller

In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.”

– Albert Einstein

To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life.”

– Robert Louis Stevenson

Of course there is no formula for success except perhaps an unconditional acceptance of life and what it brings.”

– Arthur Rubinstein

If you want to be busy, keep trying to be perfect. If you want to be happy, focus on making a difference.”

– Lisa Earle McLeod

At the center of your being you have the answer; you know who you are and you know what you want.”

– Lao Tzu

No matter how difficult and painful it may be, nothing sounds as good to the soul as the truth.”

– Martha Beck, from "Leaving the Saints"

I was taught at a very young age that you can do whatever you want to, but you have to make it happen — not just talk about it.”

– Kathleen Jo Ryan

A great secret of success is to go through life as a man who never gets used up.”

– Albert Schweitzer

I don’t do very well without fear. There needs to be a part of me saying, ‘That’s going to fail,’ so I can prove myself wrong.”

– Harry Potter's Daniel Radcliffe

There are risks and costs to a program of action. But they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.”

– JFK

That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”

– Friedrich Nietzsche

The dove descending breaks the air / With flame of inkandescent terror.”

– T.S. Eliott

Pretend that every single person you meet has a sign around his or her neck that says, ‘Make Me Feel Important.’ Not only will you succeed in sales, you will succeed in life.”

– Mary Kay Ash

Entrepreneurs willingly assume responsibility for the success or failure of a venture and are answerable for all its facets.”

– Victor Kiam

My task is really not to change myself but to become familiar with who I am.”

– Maureen Cook

Successful people are always looking for opportunities to help others. Unsuccessful people are always asking, ‘What’s in it for me?’”

– Brian Tracy

To find what you seek in the road of life, leave no stone unturned.”

– Edward Bulwer Lytton

What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?”

– Magical

I will pay more for the ability to deal with people than any other ability under the sun.”

– John D. Rockefeller

This is the age when magical technologies make more and more radically fun ideas plausible, even easy. You’re only limited by your creativity.”

– Martha Beck

The only dream worth having is to live while you’re alive and die only when you’re dead.”

– Arundhati Roy

Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence.”

– President Calvin Coolidge

If you would create something,
 you must be something.”

– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.”

– Eleanor Roosevelt

Ambition is the germ from which all growth of nobleness proceeds.”

– Thomas Dunn

If you look at what you have in life, you’ll always have more.
 If you look at what you don’t have in life, you’ll never have enough.”

– Oprah Winfrey

Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love.”

– Jalaluddin Rumi

Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing.”

– Abraham Lincoln

Inspiration and genius — one and the same.”

– Victor Hugo

Confidence is the most important thing you can teach someone… if you can teach them confidence, you don’t have to teach them anything else.”

– Vin Diesel

Always be on the lookout for the presence of wonder.”

– E.B. White

There is little success where there is little laughter.”

– Andrew Carnegie

Your own words are the bricks and mortar
of the dreams you want to realize.
 The words you choose and their use establish the life you experience.”

– Sonia Croquette

Don’t follow your dreams. Chase them.”

– Richard Dumb

You may ask me for anything you like except time.”

– Napoleon

Never never never never give up.”

– Winston Churchill

Sometimes the dreams that come true are the dreams you never even knew you had.”

– Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones

The mind is everything. What you think, you become.”

– Buddha

That which grows fast withers as rapidly; that which grows slowly endures.”

– J.G. Holland, novelist

If it isn’t good, let it die. If it doesn’t die, make it good.”

– Ajahn Chah

The best hobbies are the ones that take us furthest from our primary occupation.”

– Dr. Evelyn Vogel, Dexter

Ripeness is all.”

– William Shakespeare

You must learn to be still in the midst of activity 
and to be vibrantly alive in repose.”

– Indira Ghandi

Destiny is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.”

– William Jennings Bryan

When I dare to be powerful—to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.”

– Audre Lorde