# Balance

Balance is a term referring to various forms of equilibrium which can exist among competing influences. Balance, in metaphysical context denotes a desirable point or region amidst two or more opposing forces, qualities, or values, including concepts of moral balance. Tools known as Balances are forms of weighing scales which measure the relative weights of substances. In biomechanics, balance is an ability to maintain the line of gravity of a body within the base of support with minimal postural sway. A sense of balance (Equilibrioception) permits animals to stably move or remain still. In international relations Balancing is often done in respect to perceptions of a necessary or desirable Balance of power. In financial terms, a Balance is an amount of money retained or owed after all payments or withdrawals have been accounted for.
Arranged alphabetically by author or source: A · B · C · D · E · F · G · H · I · J · K · L · M · N · O · P · Q · R · S · T · U · V · W · X · Y · Z · See also · External links

## A

* Sometimes you cannot believe what you see; you have to believe what you see.
** Mitch Albom, in “21 Keys to Work/Life Balance: Unlock Your Full Potential” p. 36.
* What it lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do
** Aristotle, quoted in “21 Keys to Work/Life Balance: Unlock Your Full Potential” p. 20.
* Our heaven is their hell, said God. I like a balanced universe.
** Margaret Atwood, in Brick, Issues 73-74 p. 9.

## B

* We will be able to depart this life with the quiet peace-giving notion, that we were permitted to contribute to the happiness of many who will live after us. In our long lives we endeavored to unfold the collective consciousness. In our lives we have known hell and heaven; the final balance, however, is that we helped pave the way to dynamic harmony in this earthly house. That, I believe, is the meaning of life.”
** R.W. van Bemmelen in #OneWord Thursday: How to Live in #Harmony (best small town USA).

## C

* Christianity got over the difficulty of combining furious opposites, by keeping them both, and keeping them both furious.
** G. K. Chesterton in Orthodoxy p. 125.
* To maintain the P/PC Balance, the balance between the golden egg (production) and the health and welfare of the goose (production capability) is often a difficult judgment call. But I suggest it is the very essence of effectiveness.
** Stephen R. Covey, in http://books.google.co.in/books?id=020TAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA67 The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change] p. 67.

## D

* My point is, life is about balance. The good and the bad. The highs and the lows. The pina and the colada.
** Ellen DeGeneres, in Seriously...I'm Kidding p. 92.

## E

* Nothing happens unless something moves.
** Albert Einstein quoted in “21 Keys to Work/Life Balance: Unlock Your Full Potential” p. 41.
* There is no hour that has not its births of gladness and despair, no morning brightness that does not bring new sickness to desolation as well as new forces to genius and love. There are so many of us, and our lots are so different, what wonder that Nature's mood is often in harsh contrast with the great crisis of our lives?”
** George Eliot, quoted by J. Russell Perkin in Theology and the Victorian Novel], p. 140.
* The best and safest thing is to keep a balance in your life, acknowledge the great powers around us and in us. If you can do that, and live that way, you are really a wise man.
** Euripides quoted by Michelle L. Casto in Get Smart! About Modern Stress Management: Your Personal Guide To Living A p. 162.

## F

* Be aware of wonder. Live a balanced life - learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.”
** Robert Fulghum, quoted by Jan Swanson, Alan Cooper in A Physician's Guide to Coping with Death and Dying p. 221.
* Human life is like that clay on the wheel. If there is too much of any one thing, life will be out of balance; it will fall.
** Robert Fulghum, in “A Physician's Guide to Coping with Death and Dying” p. 221.
* A balance life includes a healthy mix of work, exercise, eating, family and friends, leisure activities, spiritual practice, and sleep. To be healthy, health care providers need to find a balance among these parts of life.
** Robert Fulghum, in “A Physician's Guide to Coping with Death and Dying” p. 221.

## G

* The ingredients of both darkness and light are equally present in all of us,...The madness of this planet is largely a result of the human being's difficulty in coming to viruous balance with himself.
** Elizabeth Gilbert, in Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything p. 262.
* The great Sufi poet and philosopher Rumi once advised his students to write down the three things they most wanted in life. If any item on the list clashes with any other item, Rumi warned, you are destined for unhappiness. Better to live a life of single-pointed focus, he taught. But what about the benefits of living harmoniously among extremes? What if you could somehow create an expansive enough life that you could synchronize seemingly incongruous opposites into a worldview that excludes nothing?”
** Elizabeth Gilbert, in “Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything” p. 30.
* He showed me a sketch he'd drawn once during meditation. It was an androgynous human figure, standing up, hands clasped in prayer. But this figure had four legs, and no head. Where the head should have been, there was only a wild foliage of ferns and flowers. There was a small, smiling face drawn over the heart.
** Elizabeth Gilbert, in “Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything." p. 28.
* To find the balance you want, [Ketut spoke through his translator] this is what you must become. You must keep your feet grounded so firmly on the earth that it's like you have four legs, instead of two. That way, you can stay in the world. But you must stop looking at the world through your head. You must look through your heart, instead. That way, you will know God.
** Elizabeth Gilbert, in “Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything” p. 28.

## H

* The major work of the world is not done by geniuses. It is done by ordinary people, with balance in their lives, who have learned to work in an extraordinary manner.
** Gordon B. Hinckley, quoted by Michael Thomas Sunnarborg in 21 Keys to Work/Life Balance: Unlock Your Full Potential p. 51.
* There is no secret to balance. You just have to feel the waves.
** Frank Herbert quoted in “21 Keys to Work/Life Balance: Unlock Your Full Potential” p. 10.

## I

* The quality of health care continues to improve, and people are living longer, but these developments mean that we’re likely to eventually find ourselves in a situation in which we’re forced to make difficult choices about our parents, other loved ones, or even ourselves that ultimately boil down to calculations of worth and value.
** Sheena Iyengar in The Art of Choosing: The Decisions We Make Everyday - What They Say About Us ... p. 190.

## J

* Successful entrepreneurs find the balance between listening to their inner voice and staying persistent in driving for success - because sometimes success is waiting right across from the transitional bump that's disguised as failure.
** Naveen Jain, quoted in MLM Tips: The Importance of Being Persistent

## K

* Toleration is the greatest gift of the mind; it requires the same effort of the brain that it takes to balance oneself on a bicycle.
** Helen Keller, in [Quotation by Helen Keller
* In judging of others a man laboreth in vain…How seldom we weigh our neighbor in the same balance with ourselves.
** Thomas à Kempis, in “Treasury Of Spiritual Wisdom A Collection Of 10,000 Powerful Quotations For” p. 281.
* Living means constantly growing closer to death. Satisfaction only temporarily relieves hunger. Find the balance, and plant your feet.
** Jackie Morse Kessler, in Hunger p. 58.
* There should be a balance in all our actions, to be either extreme or lukewarm is equally bad
** Hazrat Inayat Khan, quoted in “Treasury Of Spiritual Wisdom A Collection Of 10,000 Powerful Quotations For” p. 326.
* Balance is not a passive resting place—it takes work, balancing the giving and the taking, the raking out and the putting in.
** Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. Milkweed Editions. 16 September 2013. p. 94. ISBN 978-1-57131-871-8.
* Balance, peace, and joy are the fruit of a successful life. It starts with recognizing your talents and finding ways to serve others by using them.
** Thomas Kinkade quoted in “A Physician's Guide to Coping with Death and Dying” p. 18.

## L

* An excellent man, like precious metal, is in every way invariable; A villain, like the beams of a balance, is always varying, upwards and downwards.
** Csoma de Koros quoted by Evans-Wentz in Stanza 74 Tibeton Yoga & Its Secret Doctrine p. 61.

## M

* Life is a balanced system of learning and evolution. Whether pleasure or pain; every situation in your life serves a purpose. It is up to us to recognize what that purpose could be.”
** Steve Maraboli, in Steve Maraboli:Inspiration
* Perhaps there could be no joy on this planet without an equal weight of pain to balance it out on some unknown scale.
** Stephenie Meyer in The Host] p. 497.
* You see, we cannot draw lines and compartments and refuse to budge beyond them. Sometimes you have to use your failures as stepping-stones to success. You have to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair. He paused, considering what he had just said. 'Yes', he repeated. 'In the end, it's all a question of balance.”
** Rohinton Mistry, in the book review of “A Fine Balance” quoted in A Fine Balance]
* The Triforce...the sacred triangle...it is a balance that weighs the three forces: Power, Wisdom and Courage. If the heart of the one who holds the sacred triangle has all three forces in balance, that one will gain the True Force to govern all. But, if that one's heart is not in balance, the Triforce will separate into three parts: Power, Wisdom and Courage.
** The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time written by Shigeru Miyamoto Toru Osawa and Yoshiaki Koizumi
* Nothing relinquished is lost; everything finds its true balance, its equilibrium in God...
** Elsie Morgan, quoted in “Treasury Of Spiritual Wisdom A Collection Of 10,000 Powerful Quotations For” p. 459.

## N

* Our environment, the world in which we live, is a mirror of our attitudes and expectations.
** Earl Nightingale, quoted in “21 Keys to Work/Life Balance: Unlock Your Full Potential” p. 30.
* Something is always born of excess: great art was born of great terror, great loneliness, great inhibitions, instabilities, and it always balances them.
** Anaïs Nin, in The Diary of Anais Nin, Vol. 4: 1944-1947
* If death did not exist, there would be an unbearable accumulation of memories. People come and go, the memories are wiped out therefore, there is sense of balance…
** Nisargadatta “Treasury Of Spiritual Wisdom A Collection Of 10,000 Powerful Quotations For” p. 77.

## O

* He (the American Indian) believes profoundly in silence – the sign of a perfect equilibrium. Silence is the absolute poise or balance of the body, mind and spirit...
** Ohiyesa, quoted in “Treasury Of Spiritual Wisdom A Collection Of 10,000 Powerful Quotations For” p. 429.
* But for 30 years, Orthodox leaders have tipped the balance between hawks and doves, and have been in a position to determine who forms a coalition and who runs the country.
** Amos Oz, in reply to an interviewer of News Week staff’s query “How do you explain the rising tension between religious and secular Israelis? Quoted in Israel Under The Volcano

## P

* Here's a nice image for a life in balance,” she said. “You're juggling these four balls that you've named work, family, friends, spirit. Now, work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it bounces back. The other balls they're made of glass.
** James Patterson in Roses are Red (Alex Cross 6)]
* I've dropped a few of those glass balls in my day. Sometimes they chip, sometimes they shatter to pieces.”
** James Patterson in “Roses are Red (Alex Cross 6)” p. 164.
* Faith gives you an inner strength and a sense of balance and perspective in life.
** Gregory Peck, quoted by Don Farrell] in The Good Book of Business: The Most Redeeming Book of Answers to Questions ...p.1559.
* Prosperity is no just scale; adversity is the only balance to weigh friends.
** Plutarch quoted in Treasury Of Spiritual Wisdom A Collection Of 10,000 Powerful Quotations For p. 13.

## R

* Your grief for what you have lost lifts a mirror up to where You’re bravely working. Expecting the worst, you look, and instead, here’s is the joyful face youh’ve wanting to see. Your hand opens and closes, opens and closes. If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralysed. Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as birds' wings.
** Rumi, in A Collection of Powerful Poems

## S

* Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it.
** George Santayana, The Life of Reason, Vol. 5 (1906), Ch. 8
* How one walks through the world, the endless small adjustments of balance, is affected by the shifting weights of beautiful things.”
** Elaine Scarry, quoted by Kristie S. Fleckenstein in Embodied Literacies: Imageword and a Poetics of Teaching p. 36.
* There are moments when i wish i could roll back the clock and take all the sadness away, but i have a feeling that if i did, the joy would be gone as well. So i take the memories as they come, accepting them all, letting them guide me whenever i can.”
** Nicholas Sparks, in A Walk to Remember p. 6.
* Balanced relationships are always based in freedom, not obligation.”
** Michael Thomas Sunnarborg, in 21 Steps to Better Relationships: Find More Balance with Others
* Bringing passion to your life will help you maintain better balance and happiness in all that you do
** Michael Thomas Sunnarborg, in “A Physician's Guide to Coping with Death and Dying” p. 46.
* Writing and speaking about finding better balance and happiness in life is extremely fulfilling.
** Michael Thomas Sunnarborg in “21 Keys to Work/Life Balance: Unlock Your Full Potential” p. 3.
* To change your work/life balance, consider changing your environment.
** Michael Thomas Sunnarborg, in “21 Keys to Work/Life Balance: Unlock Your Full Potential” p. 30.

## T

* Balance should not be confused with symmetry. Balance and symmetry are important in the foot, but they are not the same thing. Hoof balance is not static; it is three-dimensional and ever changing as the horse moves. It’s balance in motion.
** Heather Smith Thomas in Understanding Equine Hoof Care: Your Guide to Horse Health Care and Management p. 30.
* Just as your car runs more smoothly and requires less energy to go faster and farther when the wheels are in perfect alignment, you perform better when your thoughts, feelings, emotions, goals, and values are in balance.
** Brian Tracy, quoted by Marilyn Tam in The Happiness Choice: The Five Decisions That Will Take You From Where You... p. 42.

## V

* Bodies which contain a greater proportion of water than is necessary to balance the other elements, are speedily corrupted, and lose their virtues and properties.
** Vitruvius Pollio, in The Architecture of Marcus Vitruvius Pollio: In Ten Books p. 15.
* Balancing a nominal budget will solve nothing, and attempting to achieve such a spurious balance will produce much mischief.
** William Spencer Vickrey, in Full Employment and Price Stability p. 4.

## W

* The trick...is to find the balance between the bright colors of humour and the serious issues of identity, self-loathing, and the possibility for intimacy and love when it seems no longer possible or, sadder yet, no longer necessary.”
** Wendy Wasserstein , quoted by Yong-Nam Park in "The Melting Pot where Nothing Melted": The Politics of Subjectivity in the ... p. 135.

## Y

* I don't personally try to balance my work because I operate under the assumption that anyone reading or watching my stuff isn't having a particularly balanced day anyway. But negative attitudes just amuse me more than positive ones.
** Lev Yilmaz in an interview with Matt Baume|Matt Baume of “The San Francisco Appeal” in Interview: Tales of Mere Existence’s Lev Yilmaz

## Z

* Accentuated plainness and accentuated vice ought to bring about harmony. Beauty lies in harmony, in style, whether it be the harmony of ugliness or beauty, vice or virtue.”
** Yevgeny Zamyatin, in Islanders: And, the Fisher of Men p. 37.
* If the blood humor is too strong and robust, calm it with balance and harmony.
** Xun Zi, in Xun Zi p. 31.
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