The human voice can never reach the distance
that is covered by the still small voice of conscience.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi
Do real life people actually fall in love
with the idea of being in love?
Unfortunately, it is actually quite common.
Someone wants desperately to have
the husband or wife of their dreams.
They visualize the vine-covered cottage
with the white picket fence.
They choose the colors for the nursery.
They design all the aspects of their married life.
A real person stands no chance of measuring up to those fantasies.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
The River of Life has no judgments.
The River flows with no concept of good and bad - right and wrong.
The fields and dreams of men may be nourished by the River of Life,
or flooded and covered with silt, and the River just flows.
Men may catch fish and live on the River of Life,
or they may founder in a storm and drown, and the River just flows.
The River of Life is timeless.
It is not unchanging, but it is timeless,
and it changes in its own time.
The River of Life knows no obstacles.
The River can cut through solid rock - in its own time.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Training - training is everything; training is all there is to a person.
We speak of nature; it is folly; there is no such thing as nature;
what we call by that misleading name is merely heredity and training.
We have no thoughts of our own, no opinions of our own;
they are transmitted to us, trained into us.
All that is original in us, and therefore fairly creditable
or discreditable to us, can be covered up and hidden
by the point of a cambric needle, all the rest being atoms
contributed by, and inherited from, a procession of ancestors
that stretches back a billion years to the Adam-clam
or grasshopper or monkey from whom our race has been
so tediously and ostentatiously and unprofitably developed.
And as for me, all that I think about in this plodding sad pilgrimage,
this pathetic drift between the eternities,
is to look out and humbly live a pure and high and blameless life,
and save that one microscopic atom in me that is truly me:
the rest may land in Sheol and welcome for all I care.
- Mark Twain in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
Today is a day to cover your best weapons in velvet.
Go gently into the world.
Hold your anger.
Keep your competitive spirit in check.
Some day you will need your fierce weapons,
but not today.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Most truths are so naked
that people feel sorry for them
and cover them up,
at least a little bit.
- Edward R. Murrow
Be avid.
Create apart from perfection.
Risk failure.
Cover your words with sweat.
Run a little
Touch excruciatingly.
Laugh until you cry.
Dance with your eyes closed.
Care.
Understand you die a little in every moment.
Be Enlivened
- Mary Anne Radmacher
No one ever found wisdom without also being a fool.
Writers, alas, have to be fools in public,
while the rest of the human race can cover its tracks.
- Erica Jong
The grand aim of all science is to cover
the greatest number of empirical facts
by logical deduction from
the smallest number of hypotheses or axioms.
- Albert Einstein
It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts,
than to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi
Martyrdom covers a multitude of sins.
- Mark Twain
Buddhism has the characteristics of what would be expected
in a cosmic religion for the future:
It transcends a personal God, avoids dogmas and theology;
it covers both the natural and the spiritual,
and it is based on a religious sense
aspiring from the experience of all things,
natural and spiritual, as a meaningful unity.
- Albert Einstein
In truth, politeness is artificial good humor,
it covers the natural want of it,
and ends by rendering habitual a substitute
nearly equivalent to the real virtue.
- Thomas Jefferson
Although prepared for martyrdom,
I preferred that it be postponed.
- Winston Churchill
Let us all be brave enough
to die the death of a martyr,
but let no one lust for martyrdom.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi
I wrap the potential for bitterness,
resentment, martyrdom in the blanket of forgiveness
and just set it down.
Then it just melts in the warmth. And goes away.
- Mary Anne Radmacher
Give your time and efforts freely or not at all.
When you are tempted to say,
"Oh, if I have to, I'll skip my golf game
and watch my daughter play soccer," don't do it.
Either generate the heart-felt emotion
to make the free-will gift,
"I'd love to watch your game today, Sandy,"
or the honesty to decline the request gracefully.
Martyrdom doesn't create happiness
for any of the parties involved.
An honest, "No" is preferable to a coerced "Yes."
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Personally, I'm always ready to learn,
although I do not always like being taught.
- Winston Churchill
I don't believe in the after life,
although I am bringing a change of underwear.
- Woody Allen
Although personally I am quite content with existing explosives,
I feel we must not stand in the path of improvement.
- Winston Churchill
I am always ready to learn
although I do not always like being taught.
- Winston Churchill
Although the world is full of suffering,
it is full also of the overcoming of it.
- Helen Keller
Although I cannot move and I have to speak through a computer,
in my mind I am free.
- Stephen Hawking
Although the world is full of suffering,
it is full also of the overcoming of it.
My optimism, then, does not rest on the absence of evil,
but on a glad belief in the preponderance of good
and a willing effort always to cooperate with the good,
that it may prevail.
- Helen Keller
Truth cannot be defined,
although it can certainly be experienced.
But experience is not a definition.
A definition is made by the mind,
experience comes through participating.
If somebody asks, "What is a dance?" how can you define it?
But you can dance and you can know the inner feel of it.
God is the ultimate dance.
- Osho
"Mother Teresa Prayer"
People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered;
... 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.
We can do no great things - only small things with great love.
- although commonly attributed to Mother Teresa,
who kept a copy of this prayer on
the wall of her Calcutta orphanage,
this prayer was actually written by Kent Keith.
Although nature commences with reason and ends in experience
it is necessary for us to do the opposite,
that is to commence with experience
and from this to proceed to investigate the reason.
- Leonardo da Vinci
The Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace,
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
- although attributed to St. Francis of Assisi,
this prayer first appeared (written in French) in 1912
Morality is simply the attitude we adopt
towards people whom we personally dislike.
- Oscar Wilde
I personally think we developed language
because of our deep need to complain.
- Lily Tomlin
Don't Take Anything Personally.
Nothing others do is because of you.
- Miguel Angel Ruiz (don Miguel Ruiz)
Don't take it personally -
it's not usually about you.
- Mary Anne Radmacher
Not everyone is always going to like what you do.
Your job application, your book proposal,
your offer of marriage is going to
get rejected sometimes - perhaps often.
Your boss, your spouse, even the person
behind you in the supermarket checkout line
is occasionally going to think that you are doing it all wrong.
Don't take it personally.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Personal importance, or taking things personally,
is the maximum expression of selfishness
because we make the assumption that everything is about me.
- don Miguel Ruiz
Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery,
I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.
- Abraham Lincoln
Don't take anything personally.
- don Miguel Ruiz
Don't take rejection personally.
Don't let someone else's bad day spoil your day.
As long as you never reject yourself, you'll be fine.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
The Four Agreements
1.Be impeccable with your word.
2.Don't take anything personally.
3.Don't make assumptions.
4.Always do your best.
- don Miguel Ruiz
I must admit that I personally measure success
in terms of the contributions
an individual makes to her or his fellow human beings.
- Margaret Mead
The whole world can gossip about you,
and if you don't take it personally you are immune.
- don Miguel Ruiz
Personally, I have fond memories of playing
on slippery rocks on the banks of a rushing river
as a child and hitchhiking in college.
To those who say, "But times are different now,"
I reply that statistically life is much safer now
than in the 1950s, with regard to both crime and accidents.
What has changed is our attitudes.
In those years, a broken leg from falling off a swing
or the back of a tractor was just part of childhood -
an excuse for gathering autographs.
Today that broken leg would be a source
of outrage and probably lawsuits.
I long for a simpler time when life was taken less seriously.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
If all of us acted in unison as I act individually
there would be no wars and no poverty.
I have made myself personally responsible
for the fate of every human being who has come my way.
- Anais Nin
We are finally driven to monogamy
not by morality but by exhaustion.
- Erica Jong
Morality which depends upon the helplessness
of a man or woman has not much to recommend it.
Morality is rooted in the purity of our hearts.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi
Morality is the theory that every human act
must be either right or wrong,
and that 99 % of them are wrong.
- H. L. Mencken
Force always attracts men of low morality.
- Albert Einstein
Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality.
- Arthur Schopenhauer
BERLIN: PROCLAMATION TO THE GERMAN NATION FEBRUARY 1, 1933
The National Government will regard it as its first and foremost duty
to revive in the nation the spirit of unity and co-operation.
It will preserve and defend those basic principles
on which our nation has been built.
It regards Christianity as the foundation of our national morality,
and the family as the basis of national life....
- Adolf Hitler
To say that authority, whether secular or religious,
supplies no ground for morality
is not to deny the obvious fact that it supplies a sanction.
- Joseph Addison
Compassion is the basis of morality.
- Arthur Schopenhauer
Do not be too moral.
You may cheat yourself out of much life.
So aim above morality.
Be not simply good;
be good for something.
- Henry David Thoreau
Morality is the basis of things
and truth is the substance of all morality.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi
A man does what he must - in spite of personal consequences,
in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures -
and that is the basis of all human morality.
- John F. Kennedy
Truth is certainly a branch of morality
and a very important one to society.
- Thomas Jefferson
Aim above morality.
Be not simply good,
be good for something.
- Henry David Thoreau
Morality is contraband in war.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi
Morality is of the highest importance -
but for us, not for God.
- Albert Einstein
I reject any religious doctrine that does not appeal
to reason and is in conflict with morality.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi
Money, not morality, is the principle commerce of civilized nations.
- Thomas Jefferson
A system of morality which is based
on relative emotional values
is a mere illusion, a thoroughly vulgar conception
which has nothing sound in it and nothing true.
- Socrates
Reverence for life affords me my fundamental principle of morality.
- Albert Schweitzer
If the Great Way perishes, there will be morality and duty.
When cleverness and knowledge arise, great lies will flourish.
When relatives fall out with one another,
there will be filial duty and love.
When states are in confusion there will be faithful servants.
- Lao Tzu
The Four Stages of Public Opinion
I (Just after publication): The novelty is absurd
and subversive of Religion and Morality.
The propounder both fool and knave.
II (Twenty years later): The Novelty is absolute Truth
and will yield a full and satisfactory
explanation of things in general -
The propounder a man of sublime genius and perfect virtue.
III (Forty years later): The Novelty won't explain
things in general after all, and therefore is a wretched failure.
The propounder a very ordinary person advertised by a clique.
IV (A century later): The Novelty a mixture of truth and error.
Explains as much as could reasonably be expected.
The propounder worthy of all honor
in spite of his share of human frailties,
as one who has added to the permanent possessions of science.
- Thomas Henry [T. H.] Huxley
There are four stages in a marriage.
First there's the affair,
then the marriage,
then children
and finally the fourth stage,
without which you cannot know a woman, the divorce.
- Norman Mailer
Though force can protect in emergency,
only justice, fairness, consideration and cooperation
can finally lead men to the dawn of eternal peace.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
A man who as a physical being
is always turned toward the outside,
thinking that his happiness lies outside him,
finally turns inward and
discovers that the source is within him.
- Soren Kierkegaard
You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep
because reality is finally better than your dreams.
- Dr. Seuss
Count your blessings. Once you realize
how valuable you are and how much you have going for you,
the smiles will return, the sun will break out,
the music will play, and you will finally
be able to move forward the life that God intended
for you with grace, strength, courage, and confidence.
- Og Mandino
And finally I twist my heart round again,
so that the bad is on the outside
and the good is on the inside,
and keep on trying to find a way of becoming
what I would so like to be, and could be,
if there weren't any other people living in the world.
- Anne Frank
One good reason to only maintain a small circle of friends
is that three out of four murders
are committed by people who know the victim.
- George Carlin
The four most important words in any marriage...
"I'll do the dishes."
- Anonymous
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May the world be kind to you,
and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
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