Tuesday - December 16, 2014

Be selective about whom you take on as friends, colleagues, and neighbors. All of these people can have an effect on your destiny. The world is full agreeable and talented folk. the key is to keep company only with people who uplift you, whose presence calls forth your best. But remember that our moral influence is a two-way street, and we should make sure by your own thoughts, words, and deeds to be a positive influence on those we deal with. The real test of personal excellence lies in the attention we give to the often neglected small details of our conduct. Make it your business to draw out the best in others by being an exemplar yourself.


(Epictetus, 55 - 135)

Monday ~ April 7, 2014

It is very rare to find ground which produces nothing. If it is not covered with flowers, fruit trees, and grains, it produces briars and pines. It is the same with human beings; if they are not virtuous, they become vicious.

Jean de la Bruyere ( 1645 - 1696 )

Sunday ~ April 6, 2014

Does the news bother you? Do you worry about things out of your control? Then take the time to concentrate your mind in the acquisition of some new and useful knowledge and stop it from flitting about. By the same token, guard against making the mistake of those who keep themselves so busy trying to gain control that they wear themselves out and lose their sense of direction, having no purpose to guide their actions or even their thoughts.

( Marcus Aurelius, 121 - 180 )

Saturday ~ March 14, 2014

If you stay in comfort too long
you will not know
the weight of a water pot
on the bald head of a village women...
If you stay in comfort too long
you will not know the pain
of childbirth without a nurse in white...
You will forget
the unfeeling bare feet
gripping the warm soil turned by the plow
You will forget
the voice of the season talking to the oxen.

(Chenjerai Hove, 1956 -    )

Wednesday ~ February 12, 2014

To be bored is to turn down cold whatever life happens to be offering you at the moment. It is to cast a jaundiced eye at life in general including most of all your own life. You feel nothing is worth getting excited about because you are yourself not worth getting excited about. To be bored is a way of making the least of things you often have a sneaking suspicion you need the most. To be bored is a form of suicide.

(Frederick Buechner, 1926 - )

Tuesday ~ February 11, 2014

There is a quiet courage that comes from an inward spring of confidence in the meaning and significance of life. Such courage is an underground river, flowing far beneath the shifting events of one's experience, keeping alive a thousand little springs of action. It has neither trumpet to announce it nor crowds to applaud it; it is best seen in the lives of men and women who do their work from day to day without hurry and without fever. It is the patient waiting of the humble ones whose integrity keeps their spirits sweet and their hearts strong. Wherever one encounters it, a lift is given to life and vast reassurance invades one's being. To walk with such a person in the daily round is to keep company with angels.

(Howard Thurman, 1899 - 1981)

Friday ~ February 7, 2014

Remember how long you have procrastinated, and how consistently you have failed to put to good use your suspended sentence from the gods. It is about time you realized the nature of the universe (of which you are a part) and the power that rules it (to which your part owes its existence). Your days are numbered. Use them to throw open the windows of your soul to the sun. If you do not, the sun will soon set, and you with it.

(Marcus Aurelius, 121 - 180)

Monday ~ February 3, 2014

If enough people think of a thing and work hard enough at it, I guess it's pretty nearly bound to happen, wind and weather permitting.

(Laura Ingalls Wilder, 1867 - 1957)

Friday ~ January 31, 2014

Our nature imposes on us a certain pattern of development which we must follow if we are to fulfill our best capacities and achieve at least the partial happiness of being human. This pattern must be properly understood and it must be worked out in essential elements. Otherwise, we fail. But it can be stated very simply, in a single sentence: We must know the truth, and we must love the truth we know, and we must act according to the measure of our love.What are the elements of this "pattern" I speak of? First, and most important of all: I must adapt myself to objective reality, Second, this adaptation is achieved by the work of my highest spiritual faculties - intelligence and will. Third, it demands expression when my whole being, commanded by my will, produces actions which, by their moral vitality and fruitfulness, show that I am living in harmony with true order of things.

(Thomas Merton, 1915 - 1968)

Thursday ~ January 30, 2014

Youth is not a time of life - it is a state of mind. It is not a matter of ripe cheeks, red lips and supple knees; it is a temper of will, a quality of imagination, a vigor of emotions; it is a freshness of the deep spring of life. Youth means a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite of adventure over love of ease.

(Samuel Ullman, 1840 - 1924)

Tuesday ~ January 28, 2014

A house is not a home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as for the body.


(Margaret Fuller, (1810 - 1850)

Monday ~ January 27, 2014

The summer's flower is to the summer sweet,
Though to itself it only live and die,
But if that flower with base infection meet,
The basest weed outbraves its dignity:
For sweetest things turn sour est by their deeds;
Likes that fester smell far worse than weeds.

(William Shakespeare, 1564 - 1676)

Sunday ~ January 26, 2014

Love, like truth or beauty, is concrete. Love is not fundamentally a sweet feeling, not, at heart, a matter of sentiment, attachment or being "drawn toward." Love is active, effective, a matter of making reciprocal and mutually beneficial relation with one's friends and enemies. Love creates righteousness, or justice, here on earth...For this reason, loving involves commitment. We are not automatic lovers of self, others, world, or God. Love does not just happen. We're not love machines, puppets on the strings of a deity called "love." Love is a choice - not simply, or necessarily, a rational choice, but rather a willingness to be present to others without pretense or guile. Love is a convention to humility - a willingness to participate with others in the healing of a broken world and broken broken lives.

(Carter Heyward, 1945 - )

Friday ~ January 24, 2014

All that is necessary to break the spell of inertia and frustration is this: Act as if it were impossible to fail. That is the talisman, the formula, the command of right-about-face which turns us from failure towards success.

(Dorothea Brande, 1893 - 1948)

Thursday ~ January 23, 2014

It's good to have money and the things that money can buy, but it's good too, to check up once in a while and make sure you haven't lost the things that money can't buy.

(George Horace Lorimer, 1867 - 1937)

Wednesday ~ January 22, 2014

A happiness that is sought for ourselves alone There is false and momentary happiness in self -satisfaction, but i can never be found: for a happiness that is diminished by being shared is not big enough to make us happy. There is a false and momentary happiness in self-satisfaction, but it always leads to sorrow because it is narrows and deadens our spirit. True happiness is found in unselfish love, a love which increases in proportion as it is shared. There is no end to sharing of love and, therefore, the potential happiness of such love is without limit.

(Thomas Merton, 1915 - 1968)

January 21, 2014

Tuesday


Genius is only the power of making continuous efforts. The line between failure and success is so fine that we scarcely know when we pass it: so fine that we are often on the line and do not know it. How many people have thrown up their hands at a time when a little more effort, a little more patience, would have achieved success. As the tide goes clear out, so it comes clear in. In business, sometimes, prospects may seem darkest when really they are on the turn. A little more persistence, a little more effort, and what seemed hopeless failure may turn to glorious success. There is no failure except in no longer trying. There is no defeat except from within, no really insurmountable barrier save our own inherent weakness of purpose.

January 21. 2014
(Elbert Hubbard, 1856 – 1915)

January 20, 2014

Monday

Never, never be afraid to do what's right, especially if the well-being of a person or animal is at stake. Society's punishments are small compared to the wounds we inflict on our soul when we look the other way.

(Martin Luther King, Jr. 1929 – 1968)

Saturday ~ January 18, 2014

Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not. It is the first lesson that ought to be learned.

(Thomas H. Huxley, 1825 – 1895)

January 17, 2014

Friday

Some there are that torment themselves afresh with the memory of what is past; others, again, afflict themselves with the apprehension of evils to come; and very ridiculously both – for the one does not now concern us, and the other not yet… One should count each day a separate life.

(Seneca, 4 BCE – 65 CE)

Thursday ~ January 16, 2014

The moment I have defined another being as my enemy, I lose part of myself, the complexity and subtlety of my vision. I begin to exist in a closed system. When anything goes wrong, I blame my enemy. If I wake troubled, my enemy had led me to this feeling. If I cannot sleep, it is because of my enemy. Slowly all the power in my life begins to be located outside. And my whole being is defined in relation to this outside force, which becomes daily more monstrous, more evil, more laden with all the qualities in myself I no longer wish to own. The quality of my thought then is diminished. My imagination grows small. My self seems meager. For my enemy has stolen all of these.

(Susan Griffin, 1943 - )

January 15, 2013

Wednesday

All that a person does outwardly is but the expression and completion of inward thought. To work effectively, we must think clearly; to act nobly, we must think nobly.

(William Ellery Channing, 1780 – 1842)

Monday ~ January 13, 2014

Thank God every morning when you get up that you have something to do which must be done, whether you like it or not. Being forced to work, and forced to do your best, will breed you in temperance, self-control, diligence, strength of will, contentment, and a hundred other virtues which the idle never know.


Thank God every morning when you get up that you have something to do