Thankfulness

There is no better opportunity to receive more than to be thankful for what you already have. Thanksgiving opens the windows of opportunity for ideas to flow you way.

- Jim Rohn

Finding Life

Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favorite wishes every day, and death to your whole body in the end: submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find him, and with him everything else thrown in

- C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

The Crucified God

The symbol of the cross in the church points to the God who was crucified not between two candles on an altar, but between two thieves in the place of the skull, where the outcasts belong, outside the gates of the city. It does not invite thought, but a change of mind. It is a symbol which therefore leads out of the church and out of religious longing into the fellowship of the oppressed and abandoned. On the other hand, it is a symbol which calls the oppressed and godless into the church and through the church into the fellowship of the crucified God.

Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God

Blind Spots

Just as the hand, held before the eye, can hide the tallest mountain, so the routine of everyday life can keep us from seeing the vast radiance and the secret wonders that fill the world.

- 18th-century Chasidic saying

Ignorance

The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible, and achieve it, generation after generation.

- Pearl S. Buck

Beginnings

Start by doing what's necessary, then what's possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible.

- St. Francis of Assisi (1181-1226)

Beginnings

Ordinary people believe only in the possible. Extraordinary people visualise not what is possible or probable, but rather what is impossible. And by visualising the impossible, they begin to see it as possible.

- Cherie Carter-Scott

Choice

What is the most important thing that you should do right now? It's easy to figure out the answer - the most important thing is usually the item you least want to do. So jump on it. Get it out of the way. Then go on to the next thing you don't want to do and get rid of that item by completing it. You'll be amazed at how it frees your spirit not to have them hanging over you.

- Tom Hopkins

Challenge

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Growth

We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.

- George Bernard Shaw

Perspective

Every now and again take a good look at something not made with hands - a mountain, a star, the turn of a stream. There will come to you wisdom and patience and solace and, above all, the assurance that you are not alone in the world.

- Sidney Lovett

Wisdom

A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.

Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

The Road Less Travelled

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

- Robert Frost

Change

When Thomas Edison invented the lightbulb, he didn't start by trying to improve the candle. He decided that he wanted better light and went from there.

- Wendy Kopp, Founder and president, Teach for America

D-I-Y

Building a deck is NOT as hard as you think! I've watched TV personality Bob Vila do it many times, and he is a regular 'do-it-yourselfer' just like you, except that he has knowledge, skill, an unlimited budget and a large staff of experts.

- Dave Barry

The Power of Speech

Watch your manner of speech if you wish to develop a peaceful state of mind. Start each day by affirming peaceful, contented and happy attitudes and your days will tend to be pleasant and successful.

- Norman Vincent Peale

Living in the Moment

If I look back at my first forty years on this planet, and take away all the times I was living in the past or the future, I'd say I really existed for maybe a month.

- Al Franken "I'm Good Enough, I'm Smart Enough, and Doggone It, People Like Me!" Dell

Body, Mind and Soul

Treat your body like a temple, not a woodshed. The mind and body work together. Your body needs to be a good support system for the mind and spirit. If you take good care of it, your body can take you wherever you want to go, with the power and strength and energy and vitality you will need to get there.

People

There are some people who live in a dream world, and there are some who face reality; and then there are those who turn one into the other.

- Douglas Everett

Living

There are those of us who are always about to live. We are waiting until things change, until there is more time, until we are less tired, until we get a promotion, until we settle down - until, until, until. It always seems as if there is some major event that must occur in our lives before we begin living.

- George Sheehan