Opinions

We must love them both - those whose opinions we share and those whose opinions we reject. For both have laboured in the search for truth, and both have helped us in the finding of it.

- St. Thomas Aquinas

Success and Failure

Success is nothing more than a few simple disciplines, practiced every day; while failure is simply a few errors in judgment, repeated every day. It is the accumulative weight of our disciplines and our judgments that leads us to either fortune or failure.

- Jim Rohn

True Love

What is TRUE LOVE? The late Father James Keller, founder of The Christophers, put it this way:
Love delights in giving attention rather than attracting it.
Love finds the element of good and builds on it.
Love does not magnify defects.
Love is a flame that warms but never burns.
Love knows how to disagree without becoming disagreeable.
Love rejoices at the success of others instead of being envious.

Decisions

You have to decide what your highest priorities are and have the courage - pleasantly, smilingly, non-apologetically - to say 'no' to other things. And the way you do that is by having a bigger 'yes' burning inside. The enemy of the 'best' is often the 'good.'

- Stephen Covey

African Proverb

Until lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunter.

- African proverb -

Wisdom

All truly wise thoughts have already been thought thousands of times, but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, till they take root in our personal experience

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Reason

I do not feel obligated to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forego their use.

- Galileo Galilei

Lesson from History

History has demonstrated that the most notable winners usually encountered heartbreaking obstacles before they triumphed. They won because they refused to become discouraged by their defeats.

- B. C. Forbes

Achievements

I have not the shadow of a doubt that any man or woman can achieve what I have, if he or she would make the same effort and cultivate the same hope and faith. What is faith if it is not translated into action

- Mahatma Gandhi

The Best Days

The most glorious moments in your life are not the so-called days of success, but rather those days when out of dejection and despair you feel rise in you a challenge to life, and the promise of future accomplishments

- Gustave Flaubert

The Harder Task

It is much harder to ask the right question than it is to find the right answer to the wrong question.

- E. E. Morison (1909 - 1995)

Researchers Develop Faster Ketchup Flow

An article in Time.com noted that ketchup flows out of a glass bottle at a rate of .028 miles per hour. That's slower than a Galapagos tortoise, which, according to the San Diego Zoo, zips along at a blazing 0.16 miles per hour, or almost six times faster than ketchup.
But impatiently tapping your ketchup bottle soon might be a thing of the past. Dave Smith, a PhD candidate at MIT, and a team of MIT mechanical engineers and nano-technologists have offered a possible solution to this ketchup flow problem. After months of research, Smith and his team developed LiquiGlide, which they define as a "kind of structured liquid [that's] rigid like a solid, but lubricated like a liquid." The researchers say that coating the inside of a bottle with LiquiGlide will cause ketchup and other sauces to slide out faster than a Galapagos tortoise. Smith claims that the sauce industry, which rakes in $17 billion a year, would love to get their hands on the invention.
The Time.com article concluded: "Let's hope some big [ketchup] companies bite. I'm tired of waiting five minutes for ketchup to land on my cheeseburger."
Possible Preaching Angles: This illustration shows the ridiculous level of impatience that sometimes exist in our culture--the desire to have everything we want (even spiritual transformation) right now.

Keith Wagstaff, "MIT Scientists Figure Out How to Get Ketchup Out of the Bottle," Time.com (22 May 2012)

Marriage Is Like a Formal Dinner in Reverse

Germans sometimes use a culinary metaphor for marriage, comparing the lifelong journey of marriage to a formal French or German dinner menu—except the courses are served in reverse order.
According to this analogy, marriage actually begins with the last course—dessert. There's a season of sweetness. But, sadly, the sweetness doesn't always last. Temptations and distractions often follow this dessert-like honeymoon phase. In a formal French dinner, the second course includes a seductive selection of cheeses. At times there are so many cheese selections that diners get focused on flirting from one plate to the next. The third course consists of a beautifully prepared salad that adds freshness and vitamins to the meal. The fourth and main dish is the red meat course, the long, substantial, satisfying and nutritious body of any good dinner or marriage. The fifth course consists of a light fish or seafood dish that can be fraught with dangerous bones. Finally, the menu of a marriage ends with an enjoyable tray of hors d'oeuvres. After decades of commitment, mastering all the earlier courses of marriage, a husband and wife are rewarded with the delight of remaining committed throughout the entire journey of life.
In the end, they've truly become one. The French might compare their union to the blend of two famous kinds of grapes—Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot. When these grapes are blended together they become the mellow Bordeaux wine that is loved around the world.

Matthias Pankau, Leipzig, Germany, "50th Wedding Anniversary Mediation for Gillian and Uwe Siemon-Netto" (May 12, 2012)

Winners

History has demonstrated that the most notable winners usually encountered heartbreaking obstacles before they triumphed. They won because they refused to become discouraged by their defeats.

- B. C. Forbes

Success

The great difference between those who succeed and those who fail does not consist in the amount of work done by each but in the amount of intelligent work. Many of those who fail most ignominiously do enough to achieve grand success but they labour haphazardly at whatever they are assigned, building up with one hand to tear down with the other. They do not grasp circumstances and change them into opportunities. They have no faculty for turning honest defeats into telling victories. With ability enough and ample time, the major ingredients of success, they are forever throwing back and forth an empty shuttle and the real web of their life is never woven.

- Og Mandino

A Test

I am a big believer in the 'mirror test.' All that matters is if you can look in the mirror and honestly tell the person you see there, that you've done your best.

- John McKay

Patience

Patience serves as a protection against wrongs as clothes do against cold. For if you put on more clothes as the cold increases, it will have no power to hurt you. So in like manner you must grow in patience when you meet with great wrongs, and they will then be powerless to vex your mind.

- Leonardo da Vinci (1452 - 1519)

Gifts

We have been miseducated about gift giving. We believe gifts must always bear a price tag or be given for a particular reason...The real joy in giving comes when we give what we have spontaneously...

- Iyanla Vanzant

Value

To feed men and not to love them is to treat them as if they were barnyard cattle. To love them and not respect them is to treat them as if they were household pets.

- Mencius, philosopher (c. 380-289 BCE)

Remembrance Day Thought

War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children

- Jimmy Carter

Searching

In truth everything and everyone
Is a shadow of the Beloved,
And our seeking is His seeking
And our words are His words...
We search for Him here and there,
while looking right at Him.
Sitting by His side, we ask:
"O Beloved, where is the Beloved?"

- Rumi, poet and mystic (1207-1273)

The Important Moments

Sooner or later we all discover that the important moments in life are not the advertised ones, not the birthdays, the graduations, the weddings, not the great goals achieved. The real milestones are less prepossessing. They come to the door of memory unannounced, stray dogs that amble in, sniff around a bit and simply never leave. Our lives are measured by these

- Susan B. Anthony

Two Steps

All things are created twice. There's a mental or first creation, and a physical or second creation of all things. You have to make sure that the blueprint, the first creation, is really what you want, that you've thought everything through. Then you put it into bricks and mortar. Each day you go to the construction shed and pull out the blueprint to get marching orders for the day. You begin with the end in mind.

- Stephen Covey

What Brings Life

Life energy flows when we create, or when we help another person's creativity flower by encouraging them in some way.
Think of the sense of joy and satisfaction that one can derive from the simple act of planting flowers, cooking a meal, writing a poem, solving a problem, painting a picture, dressing with flair, or doing your job to the best of your abilities.
Creativity brings us life, and by using our creativity we help bring the world into being

- Joan Borysenko

What is produced

The soul attracts that which it secretly harbours; that which it loves, and also that which it fears; it reaches the height of its cherished aspirations; it falls to the level of its unchastened desires. Every thought-seed sown or allowed to fall into the mind, and to take root there, produces its own, blossoming sooner or later into act, and bearing its own furtive of opportunity and circumstance. Good thoughts bear good fruit; bad thought, bad fruit.

- James Allen

Great Things

It is not by muscle, speed, or physical dexterity that great things are achieved, but by reflection, force of character, and judgment; in these qualities old age is usually not only not poorer, but it is even richer

- Marcus Tullius Cicero

Have You Been Praying for Armadillos?

Christian comedian Ken Davis tells the following story about waiting for a "sign from God." A Christian gets on an empty city bus, walks to rear, and sits down. Lord, he prays, if you want me to speak to someone about you, please give me a sign. At the next stop another passenger boards the bus, goes all the way to the back, and sits down right next to the Christian. The passenger asks, "Do you know anything about Jesus?"
The Christian excuses himself for a moment and slowly bows his head and once again prays,
Lord, if you really want me to talk to this stranger, I need just one more sign. Please turn the bus driver into an armadillo.
Have you been praying for armadillos?
Have you been waiting for a sign from God you really hope never comes before you get serious about following him?

Clare De Graaf, The 10-Second Rule (Howard Books, 2013), page 51

The Better Option

Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though chequered by failure...than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in a grey twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.

- Theodore Roosevelt

Dreams

Dreams are renewable. No matter what our age or condition, there are still untapped possibilities within us and new beauty waiting to be born

- Dr. Dale Turner

Aiming high

To dream anything that you want to dream, that is the beauty of the human mind. To do anything that you want to do, that is the strength of the human will. To trust yourself, to test your limits, that is the courage to succeed

- Bernard Edmonds