How To Be Unhappy

• Make little things bother you. Don't just let them, MAKE them.
• Lose your perspective on things and keep it lost: don't put first things first.
• Get yourself a good worry, one about which you cannot do anything.
• Be a perfectionist, which means not that you work hard to do your best, but that you condemn yourself and others for not achieving perfection.
• Be right. Be always right. Be the only one who is always right, and be rigid in your rightness.
• Don't trust or believe people, or accept them at anything but their worst and weakest.
• Be suspicious. Insist that others always have hidden motives.
• Always compare yourself unfavourably to others. This guarantees instant misery.
• Take personally everything that happens to you.
• Don't give yourself whole-heartily to anyone or anything

Source unknown

And God said ‘No’

I asked God to take away my pride,
And God said, "No." He said it was not for Him to take away,
But for me to give up.
I asked God to make my handicapped child whole,
and God said "No." He said her spirit is whole,
Her body is only temporary.
I asked God to grant me patience,
And God said "No." He said that patience is a byproduct of tribulation,
It isn't granted, it's earned.
I asked God to give me happiness,
And God said "No." He said He gives blessings,
Happiness is up to me.
I asked God to spare me pain,
And God said, "No." He said "Suffering draws you apart from worldly cares and brings you closer to Me."
I asked God to make my spirit grow
And God said, "No." He said I must grow on my own.
But he will prune me to make me fruitful.
I asked God to help me love others,
As much as He loves me,
And God said "Ah, finally, you have the idea."

By Claudia Miden Weisz

The Cracked Pot

A water bearer in India had two large pots, each hung on each end of a pole which he carried across his neck. One of the pots had a crack in it, and while the other pot was perfect and always delivered a full portion of water at the end of the long walk from the stream to the master's house, the cracked pot arrived only half full.
For a full two years this went on daily, with the bearer delivering only one and a half pots full of water to his master's house. Of course, the perfect pot was proud of its accomplishments, perfect to the end for which it was made. But the poor cracked pot was ashamed of its own imperfection, and miserable that it was able to accomplish only half of what it had been made to do.
After two years of what it perceived to be a bitter failure, it spoke to the water bearer one day by the stream. "I am ashamed of myself, and I want to apologise to you." "Why?" asked the bearer. "What are you ashamed of?" "I have been able, for these past two years, to deliver only half my load because this crack in my side causes water to leak out all the way back to your master's house. Because of my flaws, you have to do all of this work, and you don't get full value from your efforts," the pot said.
The water bearer felt sorry for the old cracked pot, and in his compassion he said, "As we return to the master's house, I want you to notice the beautiful flowers along the path." Indeed, as they went up the hill, the old cracked pot took notice of the sun warming the beautiful wild flowers on the side of the path, and this cheered it some.
But at the end of the trail, it still felt bad because it had leaked out half its load, and so again it apologised to the bearer for its failure. The bearer said to the pot, "Did you notice that there were flowers only on your side of your path, but not on the other pot's side? That's because I have always known about your flaw, and I took advantage of it. I planted flower seeds on your side of the path, and every day while we walk back from the stream, you've watered them. For two years I have been able to pick these beautiful flowers to decorate my master's table. Without you being just the way you are, he would not have this beauty to grace his house."
Each of us has our own unique flaws. We're all cracked pots. But if we will allow it, God will use our flaws... In God's great economy, nothing goes to waste. So as God calls each one of us, don't be afraid of your flaws. Acknowledge them, and allow Him to take advantage of them, and you, too, can be the cause of beauty in His pathway. Go out boldly, knowing that in our weakness we find His strength.

Feel Like Giving Up?

This poem was written by Mother Teresa and is engraved on the wall of her home for children in Calcutta.

People are often unreasonable, illogical and self-centred. Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies. Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you. Be honest and frank anyway.
What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight. Build anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous. Be happy anyway.
The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow. Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough. Give the world the best you've got anyway. You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.

How to promote the absence of God

(some tips from C. S. Lewis)

“Avoid silence, avoid solitude, avoid any train of thought that leads off the beaten track. Concentrate on money, sex, status, health and (above all) on your own grievances. Keep the radio on. Live in a crowd. Use plenty of sedation. If you must read books, select them very carefully. But you’d be safer to stick to the papers. You’ll find the advertisements helpful; especially those with a sexy or snobbish appeal.

Old Age, I Decided, is a Gift

I am now, probably for the first time in my life, the person I have always wanted to be. Oh, not my body! I sometime despair over my body ... the wrinkles, the baggy eyes, and the sagging butt.
And often I am taken aback by that old person that lives in my mirror, but I don't agonize over those things for long.
I would never trade my amazing friends, my wonderful life, my loving family for less gray hair or a flatter belly. As I've aged, I've become more kind to myself, and less critical of myself. I've become my own friend. I don't chide myself for eating that extra cookie, or for not making my bed, or for buying that silly cement gecko that I didn't need, but looks so avante garde on my patio. I am entitled to overeat, to be messy, to be extravagant. I have seen too many dear friends leave this world too soon; before they understood the great freedom that comes with aging.
Whose business is it if I choose to read or play on the computer until 4 a.m., and sleep until noon?
I will dance with myself to those wonderful tunes of the 60's, and if I, at the same time, wish to weep over a lost love... I will.
I will walk the beach in a swim suit that is stretched over a bulging body, and will dive into the waves with abandon if I choose to, despite the pitying glances from the bikini set.
They, too, will get old.
I know I am sometimes forgetful. But there again, some of life is just as well forgotten . and I eventually remember the important things.
Sure, over the years my heart has been broken.
How can your heart not break when you lose a loved one, or when a child suffers, or even when a beloved pet gets hit by a car? But broken hearts are what give us strength and understanding and compassion. A heart never broken is pristine and sterile and will never know the joy of being imperfect.
I am so blessed to have lived long enough to have my hair turn gray, and to have my youthful laughs be forever etched into deep grooves on my face. So many have never laughed, and so many have died before their hair could turn silver. I can say "no", and mean it. I can say "yes", and mean it.
As you get older, it is easier to be positive.
You care less about what other people think.
I don't question myself anymore.
I've even earned the right to be wrong.
So, to answer your question, I like being old.
It has set me free.
I like the person I have become.
I am not going to live forever, but while I am still here,
I will not waste time lamenting what could have been, or worrying about what will be. And I shall eat dessert every single day.

Author unknown

Letting Go

To let go is not to care for, but to care about,
To let go is not fix, but to be supportive.
To let go is not to judge, but to allow another to be a human being.
To let go is not to be protective, it is to permit another to face reality.
To let go is not to deny but to accept.
To let go is not to adjust everything to my desires but to take each day as it comes and to cherish the moment.
To let go is not to regret the past but to grow and live for the future.
To let go is to fear less and love more.

The Making of Fire - An Arabian Folk Tale

Once there was a man who discovered how to make fire.
This man, named Nour, travelled from one community to another teaching his discovery. Some received the knowledge gladly; others drove him away thinking he must be dangerous before they could learn how valuable fire could be; finally a tribe became so panic-stricken by the fire that they killed him, fearing that he was a demon.
Centuries passed, and a wise man and his disciples passing through the lands discovered that one tribe reserved the secret fire for their priests, who were warm and wealthy while the people froze; another tribe had forgotten the art but worshiped the instruments and the ashes; a third worshiped the image of Nour, who once made the fire, but had forgotten the secret; a fourth retained the story and the method in their legends but noone believed or tried it; a fifth used the fire to cook, to give warmth, and to manufacture all kinds of useful goods, even bronze and iron.
The disciples were amazed at the variety of rituals and said, "But all these procedures are in fact related to the making of fire, nothing else. We should reform these people." The teacher said, "Very well, then. We shall retrace our journey. By the end of it, those who survive will know the real problems in teaching people and how to suggest change."
So the teacher and the disciples attempted to teach as Nour had taught. They too were scorned, abused, driven away. At the end of their journey, the master said, "One must learn how to teach, for no one wants to be taught. First you must teach people that there is still something to be learned. Then you must teach them how to learn. Then you must wait until they are ready to learn. Then you will find that they learn what they imagine is to be learned, not what they really must learn. When you have learned all this, then you can devise a way to teach."

from David Augsburger, Pastoral Counseling Across Cultures

Times of Growth

But as I look back at my life, it is easy to see that the times when my wisdom and understanding grew to new levels; those times when I approached becoming the person I long to be; it was always the times that followed negative circumstances.

- Vic Johnson

Obstacles

Let a person rejoice when he is confronted with obstacles, for it means that he has reached the end of some particular line of indifference or folly, and is now called upon to summon up all his energy and intelligence in order to extricate himself, and to find a better way; that the powers within him are crying out for greater freedom, for enlarged exercise and scope.

- James Allen

Anger

I have learned through bitter experience the one supreme lesson to conserve my anger, and as heat conserved is transmuted into energy, even so our anger controlled can be transmuted into a power that can move the world.

- Mahatma Gandhi

Faith

Faith becomes the one wholly inflexible ground for resistance to violence, precisely because it teaches us how to face death—not in excited expectation of reward, but in the sober letting-go of our fantasies in the sure hope that a faithful God holds us firmly in life and death alike. This is the hope that allows us to recognise power for what it is and isn't: As what is given us for the setting-free of each other, not as the satisfying of our passion for control.

- Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury

Forgiveness

Forgiveness is the key that unlocks the door of resentment and the handcuffs of hate. It is a power that breaks the chains of bitterness and the shackles of selfishness.

- William Arthur Ward

A Parable on Management

Once upon a time, there lived a man named Clarence who had a pet frog named Felix. Clarence lived a modestly comfortable existence on what he earned working at the Wal-Mart, but he always dreamed of being rich. “Felix!" he said one day, hit by sudden inspiration, “We're going to be rich! I will teach you to fly!"
Felix, of course, was terrified at the prospect. “I can't fly, you twit! I'm a frog, not a canary!"
Clarence, disappointed at the initial response, told Felix: “That negative attitude of yours could be a real problem. I'm sending you to class." So Felix went to a three-day course and learned about problem solving, time management, and effective communication - but nothing about flying.
On the first day of the “flying lessons," Clarence could barely control his excitement (and Felix could barely control his bladder).
Clarence explained that their apartment building had 15 floors, and each day Felix would jump out of a window, starting with the first floor and eventually getting to the top floor.
After each jump, Felix would analyse how well he flew, isolate the most effective flying techniques, and implement the improved process for the next flight. By the time they reached the top floor, Felix would surely be able to fly.
Felix pleaded for his life, but his pleas fell on deaf ears. “He just doesn't understand how important this is," thought Clarence. “He can't see the big picture."
So, with that, Clarence opened the window and threw Felix out. He landed with a thud.
The next day, poised for his second flying lesson, Felix again begged not to be thrown out of the window. Clarence opened his pocket guide to “Managing More Effectively," and showed Felix the part about how one must always expect resistance when introducing new, innovative programs.
With that, he threw Felix out the window - THUD!
On the third day (at the third floor), Felix tried a different ploy: stalling. He asked for a delay in the “project" until better weather would make flying conditions more favourable.
But Clarence was ready for him: He produced a timeline and pointed to the third Milestone and asked. “You don't want to slip up the schedule, do you?"
From his training, Felix knew that not jumping today would only mean that he would have to jump TWICE tomorrow. So he just muttered, “OK, yeeha, let's go." And out the window he went.
Now this is not to say that Felix wasn't trying his best. On the fifth day he flapped his legs madly in a vain attempt at flying. On the sixth day, he tied a small red cape around his neck and tried to think “Superman" thoughts.
It didn't help.
By the seventh day, Felix, accepting his fate, no longer begged for mercy. He simply looked at Clarence and said, “You know you're killing me, don't you?"
Clarence pointed out that Felix's performance so far had been less than exemplary, failing to meet any of the milestone goals he had set for him. With that, Felix said quietly, “Shut up and open the window," and he leaped out, taking careful aim at the large jagged rock by the corner of the building.
And Felix went to that great lily pad in the sky.
Clarence was extremely upset, as his project had failed to meet a single objective that he had set out to accomplish. Felix had not only failed to fly, he hadn't even learned to steer his fall as he dropped like a sack of cement, nor had he heeded Clarence's advice to “Fall smarter, not harder."
The only thing left for Clarence to do was to analyse the process and try to determine where it had gone wrong.
After much thought, Clarence smiled and said, “Next time, I'm getting a smarter frog!"

origin unknown

Being Responsible

This is a story about four people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody and Nobody.
There was an important job to be done and Everybody was asked to do it. Everybody was sure Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it. Somebody got angry about that, because it was Everybody's job. Everybody thought Anybody could do it but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn't do it. It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done.

origin unknown

All I Need to know about Life I Learned from Trees

It's important to have roots.
In today's complex world, it pays to branch out.
Don't pine away over old flames.
If you really believe in something, don't be afraid to go out on a limb.
Be flexible so you don't break when a harsh wind blows.
Sometimes you have to shed your old bark in order to grow.
If you want to maintain accurate records, keep a log.
To be politically correct, don't wear firs.
Grow where you're planted.
It's perfectly okay to be a late bloomer.
Avoid people who would like to cut you down.
Get all spruced up when you are meeting friends.
If the party gets boring, just leaf.
You can't hide your true colours as you approach the autumn of your life.
It's more important to be honest than poplar.

author unknown

A Subtle Difference

To be well informed, one must read quickly a great number of merely instructive books. To be cultivated, one must read slowly and with a lingering appreciation the comparatively few books that have been written by men who lived, thought, and felt with style.

- Aldous Huxley

The Biggest Mistake

The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.

- Elbert G. Hubbard

The Dangers of "Self-Esteem Résumés"

Note: This illustration could easily be adapted based on details from your own life. When I was at school, my mother kept saying things like, "You know, honey, you ought to join the chess club." I would say, "Mom, I hate chess." "Yes, I know," she would say, "but it will look so good on your college application." She would try again. "Don't they feed the homeless and hungry downtown, every Saturday morning? Why don't you volunteer for that?" "Mom," I'd say, "I hate that kind of thing." I would get the same response, "I know, honey, but it will look so good on your college application." So, at school, I did all kinds of things that I had absolutely no interest in doing for themselves. I was simply putting together a résumé.
That is what our egos are doing all the time. Doing jobs we have no pleasure in, doing diets we take no pleasure in. Doing all kinds of things, not for the pleasure of doing them, but because we are trying to put together an impressive curriculum vitae. By comparing ourselves to other people and trying to make ourselves look better than others, we are …. trying to create a self-esteem résumé because we are desperate to fill our sense of inadequacy and emptiness. The ego is busy. So busy all the time.

Tim Keller, The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness, (10 Publishing, 2012), pp. 19-20

Life

There are no mistakes, no coincidences. All events are blessings given to us to learn from.

- Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Friends

Treat your friends as you do your pictures, and place them in their best light.

- Jennie Jerome Churchill (1854-1921) Mother of Winston Churchill

Know Yourself

How can you come to know yourself? Never by thinking; always by doing. Try to do your duty, and you'll know right away what you amount to. And what is your duty? Whatever the day calls for.

- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832)

Belonging

Give something to the community in one way or another. It doesn't have to be dramatic, it doesn't have to be in the newspapers. But you need to have the satisfaction of knowing you're helping make somebody else's life a little brighter.

- George Bush

A New Adventure

Many live in the ivory tower called reality; they never venture on the open sea of thought.

- Francois Gautier

Excellence

Excellence can be attained if you...
* Care more than others think is wise.
* Risk more than others think is safe.
* Dream more than others think is practical.
* Expect more than others think is possible.

- Jim Gentil

Power

One person with a belief is a social power equal to ninety-nine who have only interests.

- John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)

Catalyst for Change

The most powerful thing you can do to change the world is to change your own beliefs about the nature of life, people and reality to something more positive...and begin to act accordingly.

- Shakti Gawain

Enthusiasm

If we seize each opportunity with enthusiasm, someone will surely notice. The "little extra" that is the automatic byproduct of enthusiasm marks the distinction between average and excellence.

- Neil Eskelin

Poetry

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those we have personality and emotion know what it means to want to escape from these things.

- Emily Dickinson

Challenge

When Alexander the Great visited Diogenes and asked whether he could do anything for the famed teacher, Diogenes replied: 'Only stand out of my light.' Perhaps some day we shall know how to heighten creativity. Until then, one of the best things we can do for creative men and women is to stand out of their light.

- John W. Gardner

The Finest Hour

I've never known a man worth his salt who in the long run, deep down in his heart, didn't appreciate the grind, the discipline... I firmly believe that any man's finest hour - this greatest fulfillment to all he holds dear - is that moment when he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle, victorious.

- Vince Lombardi

The Beginning of Change

You don't have to change that much for it to make a great deal of difference. A few simple disciplines can have a major impact on how your life works out in the next 90 days, let alone in the next 12 months or the next 3 years.

- Jim Rohn

A Step Forward

We must move beyond tolerance, beyond acceptance, to celebration of our diversity. Only in celebration do we truly embrace the gifts we each are, and empower our own lives with the gifts of others.

- Jim Chandler

Challenge

Let us not be content to wait and see what will happen, but give us the determination to make the right things happen.

- Peter Marshall

Who We Are

The soul is the same in all living creatures, although the body is different.

- Hippocrates, physician (460-c.377 BCE)

Focus

I endeavour to be wise when I cannot be merry, easy when I cannot be glad, content when I cannot be mended and patient when there be no redress.

- Elizabeth Montagu

Life

Life is made up, not of great sacrifices or duties, but of little things, in which smiles and kindness and small obligations, given habitually, are what win and preserve the heart and secure comfort.

- Humphry Davy (1778-1829)

Strength

The weakest living creature, by concentrating his powers on a single object, can accomplish something; whereas the strongest, by dispersing his over many, may fail to accomplish anything.

- Thomas Carlyle

Love

Love that ends is the shadow of love; true love is without beginning or end.

- Hazrat Inayat Khan (1882-1927)

The Stronger Base

A decision is made with the brain. A commitment is made with the heart. Therefore, a commitment is much deeper and more binding than a decision.

- Nido Qubein

The Highest Ethic

Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.

- Thomas Edison

The Difference

Education is when you read the fine print. Experience is what you get if you don't.

- Pete Seeger

Teachers

The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.

- William Arthur Ward

Followers

Example has more followers than reason. We unconsciously imitate what pleases us, and approximate to the characters we most admire.

- Christian Nevell Bovee

Moving Forward

No one lives long enough to learn everything they need to learn starting from scratch. To be successful, we absolutely, positively have to find people who have already paid the price to learn the things that we need to learn to achieve our goals.

- Brian Tracy

Mistakes

If you have made mistakes...there is always another chance for you...you may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing we call "failure" is not the falling down, but the staying down.

- Mary Pickford

The Greatest Masterpiece

To compose our character is our duty, not to compose books, and to win, not battles and provinces, but order and tranquility in our conduct. Our great and glorious masterpiece is to live appropriately. All other things, ruling, hoarding, building, are only little appendages and props, at most.

- Michel Eyquem de Montaign

Character

Character is always lost when a high ideal is sacrificed on the alters of conformity and popularity.

- William Arthur Ward

Security

The search for static security - in the law and elsewhere - is misguided. The fact is security can only be achieved through constant change, adapting old ideas that have outlived their usefulness to current facts.

- William O. Douglas

Success

Success has nothing to do with what you gain in life or accomplish for yourself. It's what you do for others.

- Danny Thomas

Fullness of Life

Everything that is full of life loves change, for the characteristic of life is movement toward a new goal, and urges toward new pleasures.

- Fulton J. Sheen (1895-1979)

Life Stages

You know your children have grown up when they stop asking you where they came from and refuse to tell you where they are going.

- Jim McQain

Responsibility

One of the annoying things about believing in free choice and individual responsibility is the difficulty of finding somebody to blame your problems on. And when you do find somebody, it's remarkable how often his picture turns up on your driver's license.

- P.J. O'Rourke

Environment

We have enslaved the rest of the animal creation, and have treated our distant cousins in fur and feathers so badly that beyond doubt, if they were able to formulate a religion, they would depict the Devil in human form.

-William R. Inge, clergyman, scholar, and author (1860-1954)

Possibilities

Men are often capable of greater things than they perform. They are sent into the world with bills of credit, and seldom draw to their full extent.

- Horace Walpole, novelist and essayist (1717-1797)

Happiness

Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action.

- Benjamin Disraeli

Success

You don't have to be a fantastic hero to do certain things - to compete. You can be just an ordinary chap, sufficiently motivated to reach challenging goals.

- Sir Edmund Hillary

A Daily Gift

One ought every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.

- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Freedom

Freedom's enemies are waste, lethargy, indifference, immorality, and the insidious attitude of something for nothing.

- William Arthur Ward

New Ideas

A new idea is first condemned as ridiculous and then dismissed as trivial, until finally, it becomes what everybody knows.

- William James (1842-1920)

Work

The man who does not work for the love of work but only for money is not likely to make money nor find much fun in life.

- Charles M. Schwab

Struggle

To have striven, to have made the effort, to have been true to certain ideals - this alone is worth the struggle.

- Sir William Osler

Life Value

When you're in your 90s and looking back, it's not going to be how much money you made or how many awards you've won. It's really "What did you stand for? Did you make a positive difference for people?"

- Elizabeth Dole

Instinct

The instinct of a man is to pursue everything that flies from him, and to fly from all that pursue him.

- Voltaire

Life

I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.

- Agatha Christie

Identity

There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Connections

Every man, however obscure, however far removed from the general recognition, is one of a group of men impressible for good, and impressible for evil, and it is in the nature of things that he cannot really improve himself without in some degree improving other men.

- Charles Dickens

Wisdom

True wisdom is less presuming than folly. The wise man doubteth often, and changeth his mind; the fool is obstinate, and doubteth not; he knoweth all things but his own ignorance.

- Akhenaton

Leadership

To act and act wisely when the time for action comes, to wait and wait patiently when it is time for repose, put man in accord with the rising and falling tides (of affairs), so that with nature and law at his back, and truth and beneficence as his beacon light, he may accomplish wonders. Ignorance of this law results in periods of unreasoning enthusiasm on the one hand, and depression on the other. Man thus becomes the victim of the tides when he should be their master.

- Helena Petrova Blavatsky

Perspective

Can there be anything worse than blindness? Oh yes...for the most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight, but has no vision.

- Helen Keller

Understanding

Understanding a person does not mean condoning; it only means that one does not accuse him as if one were God or a judge placed above him.

- Erich Fromm

The source of greatness

Buried deep within each of us is a spark of greatness, a spark than can be fanned into flames of passion and achievement. That spark is not outside of you it is born deep within you.

- James A. Ray

Engagement

A painter told me that nobody could draw a tree without in some sort becoming a tree; or draw a child by studying the outlines of its form merely...but by watching for a time his motions and plays, the painter enters into his nature and can then draw him.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Search for Truth

If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.

- Rene Descartes

Decisions

It isn't really important to decide when you are very young just exactly what you want to become when you grow up. It is much more important to decide on the way you want to live.

- Golda Meir (1898-1978) Israeli Prime Minister

In Whose Image?

If God created us in his own image, we have more than reciprocated.

- Voltaire

Paradox

The greater the happiness, the greater could be the sadness. The more exciting the achievement, the more devastating could be the failure. These are the chances we take when we reach for something worthwhile.

- Freddie Mitman

Changing History

Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation.

- Robert F. Kennedy

The next step

Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow that talent to the dark place where it leads.

- Erica Jong

Progress

Progress, however, of the best kind, is comparatively slow. Great results cannot be achieved at once; and we must be satisfied to advance in life as we walk, step by step.

- Samuel Smiles

Trivia

Between falsehood and useless truth there is little difference. As gold which he cannot spend will make no man rich, so knowledge which cannot apply will make no man wise.

- Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

What is Valued

What people get admired and appreciated for in community are their soft skills: their sense of humour and timing, their ability to listen, their courage and honesty, their capacity for empathy.

- M. Scott Peck

Perspective

Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men. Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for powers equal to your tasks.

- Phillips Brooks

Understanding

If one is master of one thing and understands one thing well, one has at the same time, insight into and understanding of many things.

- Vincent Van Gogh

Value

No matter what age you are, or what your circumstances might be, you are special, and you still have something unique to offer. Your life, because of who you are, has meaning.

- Barbara De Angelis

Influence

One life stamps and influences another, which in turn stamps and influences another, on and on until the soul of human experience breathes on in generations we'll never even meet.

- Mary Kay Blakely

Doubting Oneself

A person who doubts himself is like a man who would enlist in the ranks of his enemies and bear arms against himself. He makes his failure certain by himself being the first person to be convinced of it.

- Alexandre Dumas

Understanding

There are some things you don't have to know how it works - only that it works. While some people are studying the roots, others are picking the fruit. It just depends on which end of this you want to get in on.

- Jim Rohn

Which side of the Ledger?

The Bible gives us a list of human stories on both sides of the ledger. One list of human stories is used as examples - do what these people did. Another list of human stories is used as warnings - don't do what these people did. So if your story ever gets in one of these books, make sure they use it as an example, not a warning.

- Jim Rohn

Perspective

The decent moderation of today will be the least of human things tomorrow. At the time of the Spanish Inquisition, the opinion of good sense and of the good medium was certainly that people ought not to burn too large a number of heretics; extreme and unreasonable opinion obviously demanded that they should burn none at all.

- Maurice Maeterlinck, poet, dramatist, and Nobel laureate (1862-1949)

Creativity

Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.

- Charles Mingus

Giving Honour

If you roll out the red carpet for a billionaire, they won't even notice it. If you roll out the red carpet for a millionaire, they expect it. If you roll out the red carpet for a thousandaire, they appreciate it. If you roll out the red carpet for a hundredaire, they tell everybody they know.

- Patricia Fripp

Identity

How different our lives are when we really know what is deeply important to us, and keeping that picture in mind, we manage ourselves each day to be and to do what really matters most.

- Stephen Covey

Journeys

The journey to discovery of your strength and your beauty begins as a tiny seed nurtured through the droughts and the harsh winters struggling towards the light to form a single bud which slowly opens its petals to reveal its beauty for the world to gaze in wonder.

Perspective

We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations.

- Charles Swindoll

Choices

Keep in mind that you are always saying 'no' to something. If it isn't to the apparent, urgent things in your life, it is probably to the most fundamental, highly important things. Even when the urgent is good, the good can keep you from your best, keep you from your unique contribution, if you let it.

- Stephen Covey

Putting things in order

To put the world in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must put the family in order; to put the family in order, we must cultivate our personal life; and to cultivate our personal life, we must first set our hearts right.

- Confucius

Options

It is better to be prepared for an opportunity and not have one than to have an opportunity and not be prepared.

- Whitney Young, Jr.

The Cost of Quitting

Have you ever considered the cost of quitting? For a real eye opener...ask Thomas Edison...Steve Jobs...Michael Jordan...or Jim Carrey...ask them how much it would have cost them if they had quit...what about you?

- Doug Firebaugh

Your greatest asset

Your decision to be, have and do something out of ordinary entails facing difficulties that are out of the ordinary as well. Sometimes your greatest asset is simply your ability to stay with it longer than anyone else.

- Brian Tracy