ABRAHAM LINCOLN:People who like this sort of thing will find
this the sort of thing they like.
ALBERT CAMUS:After all manner of professors have done their best
for us, the place we are to get knowledge is in books. The true
university of these days is a collection of books.
ALDOUS HUXLEY:A bad book is as much of a labour to write as a
good one; it comes as sincerely from the author's soul.
AMY LOWELL:For books are more than books, they are the life The
very heart and core of ages past, The reason why men lived and
worked and died, The essence and quintessence of their lives.
Boston Athenaeum
AMY LOWELL:All books are either dreams or swords, You can cut,
or you can drug, with words. Sword Blades and Poppy Seed
ANN RICHARDS:I have a real soft spot in my heart for librarians
and people who care about books.
ANNA GARLIN SPENCER :
The experience of the race shows that we get our most important
education not through books but through our work. We are developed
by our daily task, or else demoralized by it, as by nothing
else.
BARBARA TUCHMAN:Books are the carriers of civilization. Without
books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled,
thought and speculation at a standstill.
BERTRAND RUSSELL:There are two motives for reading a book: one,
that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.
CICERO:A room without books is like a body without a soul.
DANIEL J. BOORSTEIN:A wonderful thing about a book, in contrast
to a computer screen, is that you can take it to bed with you.
DENISE LEVERTOV:I don't think one can accurately measure the
historical effectiveness of a poem; but one does know, of course,
that books influence individuals; and individuals, although they
are part of large economic and social processes, influence history.
Every mass is after all made up of millions of individuals.
ELIZABETH DREW:The test of literature is, I suppose, whether we
ourselves live more intensely for the reading of it.
ELIZABETH HARDWICK:The greatest gift is a passion for reading.
It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites, it gives you
the knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind. It is a
moral illumination.
EMILY DICKINSON:There is no frigate like a book To take us lands
away.
FRANCIS BACON:Some books are to be tasted, others to be
swallowed, and some few to be chewed on and digested.
GEORG C. LICHTENBERG:A book is a mirror: if an ape looks into it
an apostle is hardly likely to look out.
HARRIET MARTINEAU:Readers are plentiful, thinkers are rare.
HENRY G. STRAUSS:I have every sympathy with the American who was
so horrified by what he had read about the effects of smoking that
he gave up reading.
HENRY MILLER:A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition.
Like money, books must be kept in constant circulation. Lend and
borrow to the maximum -- of both books and money! But especially
books, for books represent infinitely more than money. A book is
not only a friend, it makes friends for you. When you have
possessed a book with
mind and spirit, you are enriched. But when you pass it on you
are enriched threefold.
HENRY WARD BEECHER:Books are not made for furniture, but there
is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house.
JOHN RUSKIN:All books are divisible into two classes, the books
of the hour, and the books of all time.
JOHN RUSKIN:A book worth reading is worth buying.
KATHARINE MANSFIELD:The pleasure of all reading is doubled when
one lives with another who shares the same books.
KATHLEEN NORRIS:Just the knowledge that a good book is awaiting
one at the end of a long day makes that day happier.
LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU:No entertainment is so cheap as
reading, nor any pleasure so lasting.
LENORE HERSHEY:Do give books - religious or otherwise - for
Christmas. They're never fattening, seldom sinful, and permanently
personal.
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT:She is too fond of books, and it has turned
her brain.
MARGARET FULLER:A house is no home unless it contain food and
fire for the mind as well as for the body.
MARK TWAIN:There are some books that refuse to be written. They
stand their ground year after year and will not be persuaded. It
isn't because the book is not there and worth being written -- it
is only because the right form of the story does not present
itself. There is only one right form for a story and if you fail to
find that form the story will not tell itself.
MARK TWAIN:Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience:
this is the ideal life.
MORTIMER ADLER:In the case of good books, the point is not how
many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get
through to you.
MORTIMER ADLER:Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good
life.
MORTIMER ADLER:If you never ask yourself any questions about the
meaning of a passage, you cannot expect the book to give you any
insight you do not already possess.
NICK BANTOCK:Our house was a temple to The Book. We owned
thousands, nay millions of books. They lined the walls, filled the
cupboards, and turned the floor into a maze far more complex than
Hampton Court's. Books ruled our lives. They were our demigods.
NORMAN COUSINS:A library, to modify the famous metaphor of
Socrates, should be the delivery room for the birth of ideasa place
where history comes to life.
OSCAR WILDE:The difference between literature and journalism is
that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON:Books are the best of things, well used;
abused, the worst. What is the right use? What is the end which all
means go to effect? They are for nothing but to inspire. I had
better never see a book than be warped by its attraction clean out
of my own orbit, and made a satelite instead of a system.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON:Some books leave us free and some books make
us free.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON:We are too civil to books. For a few golden
sentences we will turn over and actually read a volume of four or
five hundred pages.
THEODORE PARKER:
The books that help you most are those which make you think the
most. The hardest way of learning is that of easy reading; but a
great book that comes from a great thinker is a ship of thought,
deep freighted with truth and beauty.
THEODORE PARKER:The books which help you most are those which
make you think the most. The hardest way of learning is by easy
reading: but a great book that comes from a great thinker -- it is
a ship of thought, deep freighted with truth and with beauty.
THOMAS JEFFERSON:[A] lawyer without books would be like a
workman without tools.
WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING:It is chiefly through books that we
enjoy the intercourse with superior minds... In the best books,
great men talk to us, give us their most previous thought, and pour
their souls into ours. God be thanked for books.
BELL HOOKS:Life-transforming ideas have always come to me
through books.
ARISTOTLE:Anybody can become angry, that is easy; but to be
angry with the right person, and to the right degree, and at the
right time, and for the right purpose, and in the right way, that
is not within everybody's power, that is not easy.
CARL SANDBURG:Choose The single clenched fist lifted and ready,
Or the open hand held out and waiting.
Choose: For we meet by one or the other.
D. H. LAWRENCE:The only justice is to follow the sincere
intuition of the soul, angry or gentle. Anger is just, and pity is
just, but judgement is never just.
ELIZABETH KENNY:He who angers you conquers you.
ELIZABETH KENNY:My mother used to say, "He who angers you,
conquers you!" But my mother was a saint.
EMILY DICKINSON:Anger as soon as fed is dead -'tis starving
makes it fat.
EPICTETUS :Reckon the days in which you have not been angry. I
used to be angry every day; now every other day; then every third
and fourth day; and if you miss it so long as thirty days, offer a
sacrifice of thanksgiving to God.
ERIC HOFFER:The remarkable thing is that we really love our
neighbor as ourselves: we do unto others as we do unto ourselves.
We hate others when we hate ourselves. We are tolerant toward
others when we tolerate ourselves. We forgive others when we
forgive ourselves. We are prone to sacrifice others when we are
ready to sacrifice ourselves.
FREDERICK BUECHNER:Of the Seven Deadly Sins, anger is possibly
the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over
grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of
bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome
morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back
-- in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is
that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the
feast is you.
JAMES THURBER:Let us not look back in anger or forward in fear,
but around in awareness.
JOHN DRYDEN:The intoxication of anger, like that of the grape,
shows us to others, but hides us from ourselves.
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT:I am angry nearly every day of my life, but I
have learned not to show it; and I still try to hope not to feel
it, though it may take me another forty years to do it. [Character
of Marmee in Little Women]
MARCUS AURELIUS:How much more grievous are the consequences of
anger than the causes of it.
THOMAS A KEMPIS:Be not angry that you cannot make others as you
wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to
be.
WILLIAM ARTHUR WARD:
Flying off the handle sometimes causes hammers and humans to
lose their heads, as well as their effectiveness.
WILLIAM BLAKE:I was angry with my friend I told my wrath, my
wrath did end. I was angry with my foe: I told it not, my wrath did
grow. A Poison Tree
ABRAHAM LINCOLN:When I'm getting ready to reason with a man, I
spend one-third of my time thinking about myself and what I am
going to say -- and two-thirds thinking about him and what he is
going to say.
COLETTE:My dear sir, they don't debate. Each of them merely
issues an ultimatum, and in what a tone! It all goes to show what
extraordinary people they are, each more unequivocal than the
other. - "The Old Lady and the Bear"
DANIEL DENNETT:There's nothing I like less than bad arguments
for a view that I hold dear.
DAVID HUME:Truth springs from argument amongst friends.
EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY:Life is a quest and love a quarrel
...
GAY HENDRICKS:Arguments are often like melodramas -- they have a
predictable beginning, middle, and end.
GAY HENDRICKS:Most couples have not had hundreds of arguments;
they've had the same argument hundreds of times.
GAY HENDRICKS:One of the first things a relationship therapist
learns is that couples argue to burn up energy that could be used
for something else. In fact, arguments often serve the purpose of
using up energy, so that the couple do not have to take the
courageous, creative leap into an unknown they fear. Arguing serves
the function of being a zone of familiarity into which you can
retreat when you are afraid of making a creative breakthrough.
JACK LYNCH:Arguments over grammar and style are often as fierce
as those over IBM versus Mac, and as fruitless as Coke versus Pepsi
and boxers versus briefs.
JONATHAN KOZOL:Pick battles big enough to matter, small enough
to win. On Being a Teacher
JONATHAN SWIFT:Argument is the worst sort of conversation.
LEONARDO DA VINCI:
Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not
using his intelligence; he is just using his memory.
MARIE EBNER VON ESCHENBACH:Whenever two good people argue over
principles, they are both right.
MARIE VON EBNER-ESCHENBACH:Fear not those who argue but those
who dodge.
MARY PETTIBONE POOLE:To repeat what others have said, requires
education, to challenge it, requires brains.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON:Nor knowest thou what argument Thy life to
thy neighbor's creed has lent. All are needed by each one; Nothing
is fair or good alone.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON:Put the argument into a concrete shape, into
an image, some hard phrase, round and solid as a ball, which they
can see and handle and carry home with them, and the cause is half
won.
SAM ADAMS:It is no dishonor to be in a minority in the cause of
liberty and virtue.
VIRGINIA WOOLF:
When an arguer argues dispassionately he thinks only of the
argument.
DAVID HUME:When men are most sure and arrogant they are commonly
most mistaken, giving views to passion without that proper
deliberation which alone can secure them from the grossest
absurdities.
DUC DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD:The true means of being misled is to
believe oneself finer than the others.
FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT:Early in life I had to choose between honest
arrogance and hypocritical humility. I chose honest arrogance and
have seen no occasion to change.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE:The demand to be loved is the greatest of
all arrogant presumptions.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE:A person unlearns arrogance when he knows he
is always among worthy human beings; being alone fosters
presumption. Young people are arrogant because they always
associate with their own peers, those who are all really nothing
but who would like to be very important.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE:One who is unassuming in dealing with people
exhibits his arrogance all the more strongly in dealing with things
(city, state, society, age, mankind). That is his revenge.
GEORGE ELIOT:He was like a cock who thought the sun had risen to
hear him crow.
LAURA TERESA MARQUEZ:Arrogance and rudeness are training wheels
on the bicycle of life -- for weak people who cannot keep their
balance without them.
SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR:No one is more arrogant toward women, more
aggressive or scornful, than the man who is anxious about his
virility.
STEPHEN JAY GOULD:The most important scientific revolutions all
include, as their only common feature, the dethronement of human
arrogance from one pedestal after another of previous convictions
about our centrality in the cosmos.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS:Nobody can be so amusingly arrogant as a young
man who has just discovered an old idea and thinks it is his
own.
THEODORE BIKEL:All too often arrogance accompanies strength, and
we must never assume that justice is on the side of the strong. The
use of power must always be accompanied by moral choice.
WILLIAM SLOANE COFFIN, JR.:Love measures our stature: the more
we love, the bigger we are. There is no smaller package in all the
world than that of a man all wrapped up in himself.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN:Always bear in mind that your own resolution to
succeed is more important than any other one thing.
ANNE FRANK:Then, without realizing it, you try to improve
yourself at the start of each new day; of course, you achieve quite
a lot in the course of time. Anyone can do this, it costs nothing
and is certainly very helpful. Whoever doesn't know it must learn
and find by experience that a quiet conscience makes one
strong.
CARL ROGERS:If we value independence, if we are disturbed by the
growing conformity of knowledge, of values, of attitudes, which our
present system induces, then we may wish to set up conditions of
learning which make for uniqueness, for self-direction, and for
self-initiated learning.
CARLOS CASTANEDA:The trick is in what one emphasizes. We either
make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves happy. The amount of
work is the same.
COLLEEN C. BARRETT:Work is either fun or drudgery. It depends on
your attitude. I like fun.
CONFUCIUS:To put the world right in order, we must first put the
nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must first put the
family in order; to put the family in order, we must first
cultivate our personal life; we must first set our hearts
right.
DEMOSTHENES:
Small opportunities are often the beginning of great
enterprises.
DEMOSTHENES:Nothing is easier than self-deceit. For what each
man wishes, that he also believes to be true.
ECCLESIASTES:For everything there is a season, And a time for
every matter under heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; A
time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; A time to
kill, and a time to heal; A time to break down, and a time to build
up; A time to weep, and a time to laugh; A time to mourn, and a
time to dance; A time to throw away stones, and a time to gather
stones together; A time to embrace, And a time to refrain from
embracing; A time to seek, and a time to lose; A time to keep, and
a time to throw away; A time to tear, and a time to sew; A time to
keep silence, and a time to speak; A time to love, and a time to
hate, A time for war, and a time for peace. Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
EDWIN H. FRIEDMAN:The colossal misunderstanding of our time is
the assumption that insight will work with people who are
unmotivated to change. Communication does not depend on syntax, or
eloquence, or rhetoric, or articulation but on the emotional
context in which the message is being heard. People can only hear
you when they are moving toward you, and they are not likely to
when your words are pursuing them. Even the choices words lose
their power when they are used to overpower. Attitudes are the real
figures of speech.
ELLA WILLIAMS:
Bite off more than you can chew, then chew it.
ERIC HOFFER:The remarkable thing is that we really love our
neighbor as ourselves: we do unto others as we do unto ourselves.
We hate others when we hate ourselves. We are tolerant toward
others when we tolerate ourselves. We forgive others when we
forgive ourselves. We are prone to sacrifice others when we are
ready to sacrifice ourselves.
FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT:The thing always happens that you really
believe in; and the belief in a thing makes it happen.
H.H. THE DALAI LAMA:The basic thing is that everyone wants
happiness, no one wants suffering. And happiness mainly comes from
our own attitude, rather than from external factors. If your own
mental attitude is correct, even if you remain in a hostile
atmosphere, you feel happy.
HELEN KELLER:When one door of happiness closes, another opens;
but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the
one which has been opened for us.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU:Thought is the sculptor who can create the
person you want to be.
HENRY FORD:If you think you can, you can. And if you think you
can't, you're right. also attributed to Mary Kay Ash
JAMES A. FROUDE:You cannot dream yourself into a character; you
must hammer and forge yourself one.
JAMES YORKE:The most successful people are those who are good at
plan B.
M. SCOTT PECK:The truth is that our finest moments are most
likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy,
or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our
discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start
searching for different ways or truer answers.
MARCUS AURELIUS:If you are distressed by anything external, the
pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it;
and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.
MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN:No one, Eleanor Roosevelt said, can make
you feel inferior without your consent. Never give it.
MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN:You really can change the world if you
care enough.
MARIANNE WILLIAMSON:And as we let our own light shine, we
unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we
are liberated from our fear, our presence automatically liberates
others.
MARTHA WASHINGTON:The greatest part of our happiness depends on
our dispositions, not our circumstances.
MAYA LIN:To fly, we have to have resistance.
MICHAEL KORDA:To succeed, we must first believe that we can.
MOHANDAS K. GANDHI:My life is an indivisible whole, and all my
attitudes run into one another; and they all have their rise in my
insatiable love for mankind.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON:There is no beautifier of complexion, or
form, or behavior, like the wish to scatter joy and not pain around
us. 'Tis good to give a stranger a meal, or a night's lodging. 'Tis
better to be hospitable to his good meaning and thought, and give
courage to a companion. We must be as courteous to a man as we are
to a picture, which we are willing to give the advantage of a good
light.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON:Life is a train of moods like a string of
beads; and as we pass through them they prove to be many colored
lenses, which paint the world their own hue, and each shows us only
what lies in its own focus.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON:So is cheerfulness, or a good temper, the
more it is spent, the more remains.
RICHARD BACH:Sooner or later, those who win are those who think
they can.
SPINOZA:Peace is not the absence of war; it is a virtue; a state
of mind; a disposition for benevolence; confidence; and
justice.
SUSAN J. BISSONETTE:An optimist is the human personification of
spring.
THOMAS ALVA EDISON:Opportunity is missed by most because it is
dressed in overalls and looks like work.
THOMAS JEFFERSON:I'm a great believer in luck and I find the
harder I work, the more I have of it.
VICTOR FRANKL:Everything can be taken from a man but ... the
last of the human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given
set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.
VIKTOR FRANKL:We who lived in concentration camps can remember
the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away
their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but
they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man
but one thing: the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's
attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own
way.
WILLIAM JAMES:The greatest discovery of any generation is that a
human being can alter his life by altering his attitude.
WILLIAM JAMES:The greatest discovery of our generation is that
human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of
mind. As you think, so shall you be.
ALDOUS HUXLEY:Every individual is at once the beneficiary and
the victim of the linguistic tradition into which he has been born
- the beneficiary inasmuch as language gives access to the
accumulated records of other people's experience, the victim in so
far as it confirms him in the belief that reduced awareness is the
only awareness and as it bedevils his sense of reality, so that he
is all too apt to take his concepts for data, his words for actual
things.
ANAS NIN:We don't see things as they are, we see them as we
are.
ANNE WILSON SCHAEF:Differences challenge assumptions.
BUDDHA:If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly,
our whole life would change.
CONFUCIUS:When you meet someone better than yourself, turn your
thoughts to becoming his equal. When you meet someone not as good
as you are, look within and examine your own self.
DAVID BOHM:Indeed, to some extent it has always been necessary
and proper for man, in his thinking, to divide things up, if we
tried to deal with the whole of reality at once, we would be
swamped. However when this mode of thought is applied more broadly
to man's notion of himself and the whole world in which he lives,
(i.e. in his world-view) then man ceases to regard the resultant
divisions as merely useful or convenient and begins to see and
experience himself and this world as actually constituted of
separately existing fragments. What is needed is a relativistic
theory, to give up altogether the notion that the world is
constituted of basic objects or building blocks. Rather one has to
view the world in terms of universal flux of events and
processes.
DEMOSTHENES:Nothing is easier than self-deceit. For what each
man wishes, that he also believes to be true.
DENISE LEVERTOV:Very few people really see things unless they've
had someone in early life who made them look at things. And name
them too. But the looking is primary, the focus.
ELEANOR CHAFFEE:Tact is the ability to describe others as they
see themselves.
ELIAS CANETTI:People love as self-recognition what they hate as
an accusation.
GARRISON KEILLOR:I believe in looking reality straight in the
eye and denying it.
H. H. THE DALAI LAMA:
To be aware of a single shortcoming in oneself is more useful
than to be aware of a thousand in someone else.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU:We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves
awake, not by mechanical aid, but by an infinite expectation of the
dawn.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU:Nature will bear the closest inspection. She
invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an
insect view of its plain.
HENRY MILLER:The moment one gives close attention to anything,
even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome,
indescribably magnificent world in itself.
HERB GOLDBERG:The struggle of the male to learn to listen to and
respect his own intuitive, inner prompting is the greatest
challenge of all. His conditioning has been so powerful that it has
all but destroyed his ability to be self-aware.
JAMES THURBER:Let us not look back in anger or forward in fear,
but around in awareness.
JESSAMYN WEST:A religious awakening which does not awaken the
sleeper to love has roused him in vain. The Quaker Reader, 1962
KALIDASA:
Listen to the Exhortation of the Dawn! Look to this Day! For it
is Life, the very Life of Life. In its brief course lie all the
Verities and Realities of your Existence. The Bliss of Growth, The
Glory of Action, The Splendor of Beauty; For Yesterday is but a
Dream, And To-morrow is only a Vision; But To-day well lived makes
Every Yesterday a Dream of Happiness, And every Tomorrow a Vision
of Hope. Look well therefore to this Day! Such is the Salutation of
the Dawn!
LINDA HOGAN:There is a way that nature speaks, that land speaks.
Most of the time we are simply not patient enough, quiet enough, to
pay attention to the story.
M. SCOTT PECK:The truth is that our finest moments are most
likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy,
or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our
discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start
searching for different ways or truer answers.
MOHANDAS K. GANDHI:To forget how to dig the earth and to tend
the soil is to forget ourselves.
MONICA BALDWIN:The moment when you first wake up in the morning
is the most wonderful of the twenty-four hours. No matter how weary
or dreary you may feel, you possess the certainty that, during the
day that lies before you, absolutely anything may happen.
And the fact that it practically always doesn't, matters not a
jot. The possibility is always there.
NIETZSCHE:'I have done that,' says my memory. 'I cannot have
done that' -- says my pride, and remains adamant. At last -- memory
yields.
RACHEL CARSON:If I had influence with the good fairy who is
supposed to preside over the christening of all children, I should
ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder
so indestructible that it would last throughout life.
THICH NHAT HANH:People usually consider walking on water or in
thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk
either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we
are engaged in a miracle which we don't even recognize: a blue sky,
white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child --
our own two eyes. All is a miracle.
THICH NHAT HANH:May our heart's garden of awakening bloom with
hundreds of flowers.
WILLA CATHER:The miracles of the church seem to me to rest not
so much upon faces or voices or healing power coming suddenly near
to us from afar off, but upon our perceptions being made finer, so
that for a moment our eyes can see and our ears can hear what is
there about us always. (Death Comes for the Archbishop, 1927)
ALBERT CAMUS:Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair,
offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should
like to stretch out over the whole of time.
ALBERT EINSTEIN:The ideals which have lighted me on my way and
time after time given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have
been Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. . . . The ordinary objects of
human endeavour -- property, outward success, luxury -- have always
seemed to me contemptible.
ALBERT EINSTEIN:The most beautiful experience we can have is the
mysterious - the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of
true art and true science. Living Philosophies, 1931
ALBERT EINSTEIN:A human being is a part of the whole called by
us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences
himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the
rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This
delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal
desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task
must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle
of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of
nature in its beauty.
ANAIS NIN:The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of
wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery.
ANNE LAMOTT:Joy is the best makeup.
BUCKMINSTER FULLER:
When I am working on a problem I never think about beauty. I
only think about how to solve the problem. But when I have
finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.
CANDACE BERGEN:People see you as an object, not as a person, and
they project a set of expectations onto you. People who don't have
it think beauty is a blessing, but actually it sets you apart.
CHINESE PROVERB:When you have only two pennies left in the
world, buy a loaf of bread with one, and a lily with the other.
CLAUDETTE COLBERT:It matters more what's in a woman's face than
what's on it.
D. H. LAWRENCE:Sex and beauty are inseparable, like life and
consciousness. And the intelligence which goes with sex and beauty,
and arises out of sex and beauty, is intuition.
FREDERICK TURNER:To those who followed Columbus and Cortez, the
New World truly seemed incredible because of the natural
endowments. The land often announced itself with a heavy scent
miles out into the ocean. Giovanni di Verrazano in 1524 smelled the
cedars of the East Coast a hundred leagues out. The men of Henry
Hudson's Half Moon were temporarily disarmed by the fragrance of
the New Jersey shore, while ships running farther up the coast
occasionally swam through large beds of floating flowers. Wherever
they came inland they found a rich riot of color and sound, of game
and luxuriant vegetation. Had they been other than they were, they
might have written a new mythology here. As it was, they took
inventory.
GEORGIA O'KEEFFE:I said to myself -- I'll paint what I see --
what the flower is to me but I'll paint it big and they will be
surprised into taking time to look at it -- I will make even busy
New Yorkers take time to see what I see of flowers.
HELEN KELLER:The best and most beautiful things in the world
cannot be seen, nor touched ... but are felt in the heart.
HENRY MILLER:The moment one gives close attention to anything,
even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome,
indescribably magnificent world in itself.
JEAN KERR:I'm tired of all this nonsense about beauty being only
skin-deep. That's deep enough. What do you want, an adorable
pancreas?
JOHN KEATS:A thing of beauty is a joy forever.
JOHN RUSKIN:Remember that the most beautiful things in the world
are the most useless; peacocks and lilies, for example.
KAHLIL GIBRAN:Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a
mirror.
KALIDASA:
Listen to the Exhortation of the Dawn! Look to this Day! For it
is Life, the very Life of Life. In its brief course lie all the
Verities and Realities of your Existence. The Bliss of Growth, The
Glory of Action, The Splendor of Beauty; For Yesterday is but a
Dream, And To-morrow is only a Vision; But To-day well lived makes
Every Yesterday a Dream of Happiness, And every Tomorrow a Vision
of Hope. Look well therefore to this Day! Such is the Salutation of
the Dawn!
KENNETH PATTON:The day I see a leaf is a marvel of a day.
OSCAR HAMMERSTEIN, II:Do you love me because I'm beautiful, or
am I am beautiful because you love me?
PIERRE AUGUSTE RENOIR:The pain passes, but the beauty
remains.
RACHEL CARSON:Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find
reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.
RACHEL CARSON:
It is a wholesome and necessary thing for us to turn again to
the earth and in the contemplation of her beauties to know of
wonder and humility.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON:Truth, and goodness, and beauty are but
different faces of the same all.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON:What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have
not yet been discovered.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON:The moral sense reappears today with the
same morning newness that has been from of old the fountain of
beauty and strength. You say there is no religion now. 'Tis like
saying in rainy weather, There is no sun, when at that moment we
are witnessing one of its superlative effects.
ROBERT C. FULLER :Spirituality exists wherever we struggle with
the issue of how our lives fit into the greater cosmic scheme of
things. This is true even when our questions never give way to
specific answers or give rise to specific practices such as prayer
or meditation. We encounter spiritual issues every time we wonder
where the universe comes from, why we are here, or what happens
when we die. We also become spiritual when we become moved by
values such as beauty, love, or creativity that seem to reveal a
meaning or power beyond our visible world. An idea or practice is
"spiritual" when it reveals our personal desire to establish a
felt-relationship with the deepest meanings or powers governing
life.
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON:It is a golden maxim to cultivate the
garden for the nose, and the eyes will take care of themselves.
RUDYARD KIPLING:
Our England is a garden, and such gardens are not made By
singing: -- "Oh, how beautiful!" and sitting in the shade.
SIR WALTER SCOTT:Nothing is more the child of art than a
garden.
SOPHIA LOREN:Sex appeal is fifty percent what you've got and
fifty percent what people think you've got.
THOMAS F. HEALEY:Don't strew me with roses after I'm dead. When
Death claims the light of my brow, No flowers of life will cheer
me: instead You may give me my roses now!
VIRGINIA WOOLF:The beauty of the world has two edges, one of
laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder.
WILLA CATHER:Oh, this is the joy of the rose: / That it blows, /
And goes.
ANDREW KUNTZ:I find working with glass meditative, almost
therapeutic. I can leave the world behind, and focus... The
simplicity of form, the drama of rich, intense colour, the joy
of challenge, and the challenge of endurance... The piece, when
it is over, is not what is made, but how it is made.
EDWIN H. FRIEDMAN:The colossal misunderstanding of our time is
the assumption that insight will work with people who are
unmotivated to change. Communication does not depend on syntax, or
eloquence, or rhetoric, or articulation but on the emotional
context in which the message is being heard. People can only hear
you when they are moving toward you, and they are not likely to
when your words are pursuing them. Even the choices words lose
their power when they are used to overpower. Attitudes are the real
figures of speech.
FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT:When you come to the end of your rope, tie
a knot and hang on.
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE:When you get into a tight place and
everything goes against you, till it seems as though you could not
hang on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the
place and time that the tide will turn.
HUGH MILLER:Problems are only opportunities with thorns on
them.
MARGARET CHASE SMITH:When people keep telling you that you can't
do a thing, you kind of like to try it.
MARY PETTIBONE POOLE:To repeat what others have said, requires
education, to challenge it, requires brains.
MARY PICKFORD: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.
MAY SARTON:... without darkness Nothing comes to birth, As
without light Nothing flowers.
MAYA ANGELOU:History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be
unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.
MITSUGI SAOTOME:If you were all alone in the universe with no
one to talk to, no one with which to share the beauty of the stars,
to laugh with, to touch, what would be your purpose in life? It is
other life, it is love, which gives your life meaning. This is
harmony. We must discover the joy of each other, the joy of
challenge, the joy of growth.
STEVEN FOSTER:You may wonder, 'How can I leave it all behind if
I am just coming back to it? How can I make a new beginning if I
simply return to the old?' The answer lies in the return. You will
not come back to the 'same old thing.' What you return to has
changed because you have changed. Your perceptions will be altered.
You will not incorporate into the same body, status, or world you
left behind. The river has been flowing while you were gone. Now it
does not look like the same river. [The Book of the Vision
Quest]
WALTER LINN:
It is surprising what a man can do when he has to, and how
little most men will do when they don't have to.
WARREN BENNIS:The manager accepts the status quo; the leader
challenges it.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN:The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to
the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and
we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must
think anew and act anew.
ALAN COHEN:It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and
seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security
in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the
adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in
change there is power.
ALBERT EINSTEIN:Technological change is like an axe in the hands
of a pathological criminal.
ALDOUS HUXLEY:There's only one corner of the universe you can be
certain of improving, and that's your own self.
ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD:The art of progress is to preserve order
amid change and to preserve change amid order.
ALICE WALKER:
One thing that never ceases to amaze me, along with the growth
of vegetation from the earth and of hair from the head, is the
growth of understanding.
ALICE WALKER:No person is your friend who demands your silence,
or denies your right to grow.
ALICE WALKER:This is how change happens, though. It is a relay
race, and we're very conscious of that, that our job really is to
do our part of the race, and then we pass it on, and then someone
picks it up, and it keeps going. And that is how it is. And we can
do this, as a planet, with the consciousness that we may not get
it, you know, today, but there's always a tomorrow. (interview
broadcast on Nov. 11, 2008)
ALVIN TOFFLER:In describing today's accelerating changes, the
media fire blips of unrelated information at us. Experts bury us
under mountains of narrowly specialized monographs. Popular
forecasters present lists of unrelated trends, without any model to
show us their interconnections or the forces likely to reverse
them. As a result, change itself comes to be seen as anarchic, even
lunatic.
AMERICAN PROVERB:It doesn't work to leap a twenty-foot chasm in
two ten-foot jumps.
ANAIS NIN:We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow
sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow
partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in
another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward,
forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells,
constellations.
ANAIS NIN:
Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have
to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state
and remain in it. This is a kind of death.
ANAIS NIN:When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system,
a literary dogma, we become automatons. We cease to grow.
ANAIS NIN:There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the
bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
ANDY WARHOL:They say that time changes things, but you actually
have to change them yourself.
ANNE FRANK:How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single
moment before starting to improve the world.
ANNE FRANK:Then, without realizing it, you try to improve
yourself at the start of each new day; of course, you achieve quite
a lot in the course of time. Anyone can do this, it costs nothing
and is certainly very helpful. Whoever doesn't know it must learn
and find by experience that a quiet conscience makes one
strong.
ANNE WILSON SCHAEF:Life is a process. We are a process. The
universe is a process.
ANTHONY J. D'ANGELO:
Become a student of change. It is the only thing that will
remain constant.
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER:Change alone is eternal, perpetual,
immortal.
AUDRE LORDE :The master's tools will never dismantle the
master's house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his
own game, but they will never allow us to bring about genuine
change.
BARACK OBAMA:Change will not come if we wait for some other
person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for.
We are the change that we seek.
CHARLES DARWIN:It is not the strongest of the species that
survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to
change.
CHARLES DUBOIS:The important thing is this: To be able at any
moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become.
CHARLES KETTERING:If you have always done it that way, it is
probably wrong.
CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN:... while we flatter ourselves that
things remain the same, they are changing under our very eyes from
year to year, from day to day.
EDWIN H. FRIEDMAN:The colossal misunderstanding of our time is
the assumption that insight will work with people who are
unmotivated to change. Communication does not depend on syntax, or
eloquence, or rhetoric, or articulation but on the emotional
context in which the message is being heard. People can only hear
you when they are moving toward you, and they are not likely to
when your words are pursuing them. Even the choices words lose
their power when they are used to overpower. Attitudes are the real
figures of speech.
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT:People grow through experience if they meet
life honestly and courageously. This is how character is built.
ELLEN GLASGOW:All change is not growth; as all movement is not
forward.
EMILY DICKINSON:All but Death, can be Adjusted Dynasties
repaired Systemssettled in their Sockets Citadelsdissolved Wastes
of Livesresown with Colors By Succeeding Springs Deathunto
itselfException Is exempt from Change
EPICTETUS:It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he
already knows.
ERIC HOFFER:
In times of change, learners inherit the Earth, while the
learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world
that no longer exists.
FELIX ADLER:We cannot adopt the way of living that was
satisfactory a hundred years ago. The world in which we live has
changed, and we must change with it.
FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT:When you come to the end of your rope, tie
a knot and hang on.
G. K. CHESTERTON:The object of a new year is not that we should
have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul.
G. K. CHESTERTON:All conservatism is based upon the idea that if
you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not.
If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change.
GENERAL ERIC SHINSEKI:If you don't like change, you're going to
like irrelevance even less. [Chief of Staff, U. S. Army]
GEORG C. LICHTENBERG:I cannot say whether things will get better
if we change; what I can say is they must change if they are to get
better.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW:
Some men see things as they are and say, "Why?" I dream of
things that never were and say, "Why not?" frequently attributed to
Robert F. (Bobby) Kennedy, who used it in a speech which his
brother, Edward F. (Teddy) Kennedy quoted at RFK's funeral.
GEORGE WILL:The future has a way of arriving unannounced.
GLORIA STEINEM:The first problem for all of us, men and women,
is not to learn, but to unlearn.
GLORIA STEINEM:If the shoe doesn't fit, must we change the
foot?
HARRIET LERNER:Although the connections are not always obvious,
personal change is inseparable from social and political
change.
HARRIET TUBMAN:Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always
remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the
passion to reach for the stars to change the world.
HELEN KELLER:The heresy of one age becomes the orthodoxy of the
next.
HENRI BERGSON:
To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to
go on creating oneself endlessly.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU:Things do not change, we change.
HENRY STEELE COMMAGER:Change does not necessarily assure
progress, but progress implacably requires change. Education is
essential to change, for education creates both new wants and the
ability to satisfy them.
HERACLITUS:You cannot step twice into the same river, for other
waters are continually flowing in. ca. 500 BCE
HERACLITUS:All is flux; nothing stays still.
HERAKLIETOS OF EPHESOS:Whosoever wishes to know about the world
must learn about it in its particular details. Knowledge is not
intelligence. In searching for the truth be ready for the
unexpected. Change alone is unchanging. The same road goes both up
and down. The beginning of a circle is also its end. Not I, but the
world says it: all is one. And yet everything comes in season.
IRENE PETER:
Just because everything is different doesn't mean that
everything has changed.
IVY BAKER PRIEST:The world is round and the place which may seem
like the end may also be the beginning.
JAMES BALDWIN:For nothing is fixed, forever and forever and
forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light
is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock.
Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them
because we are the only witnesses they have. The sea rises, the
light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us.
The moment we cease to hold each other, the sea engulfs us and the
light goes out.
JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE:We are either progressing or retrograding
all the while. There is no such thing as remaining stationary in
this life.
JAMES YORKE:The most successful people are those who are good at
plan B.
JOHN DEWEY:The aim of education is to enable individuals to
continue their education ... (and) the object and reward of
learning is continued capacity for growth. Now this idea cannot be
applied to all the members of a society except where intercourse of
man with man is mutual, and except where there is adequate
provision for the reconstruction of social habits and institutions
by means of wide stimulation arising from equitably distributed
interests. And this means a democratic society.
JOHN F. KENNEDY:
Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past
or present are certain to miss the future.
KALIDASA:Listen to the Exhortation of the Dawn! Look to this
Day! For it is Life, the very Life of Life. In its brief course lie
all the Verities and Realities of your Existence. The Bliss of
Growth, The Glory of Action, The Splendor of Beauty; For Yesterday
is but a Dream, And To-morrow is only a Vision; But To-day well
lived makes Every Yesterday a Dream of Happiness, And every
Tomorrow a Vision of Hope. Look well therefore to this Day! Such is
the Salutation of the Dawn!
KATHARINE BUTLER HATHAWAY:A person needs at intervals to
separate from family and companions and go to new places. One must
go without familiars in order to be open to influences, to
change.
KENNETH KAUNDA:The inability of those in power to still the
voices of their own consciences is the great force leading to
change.
LEO TOLSTOY:Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one
thinks of changing himself.
M. SCOTT PECK:
The whole course of human history may depend on a change of
heart in one solitary and even humble individual - for it is in the
solitary mind and soul of the individual that the battle between
good and evil is waged and ultimately won or lost.
M. SCOTT PECK:The truth is that our finest moments are most
likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy,
or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our
discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start
searching for different ways or truer answers.
MADAME DE STAEL:The human mind always makes progress, but it is
a progress in spirals. (L'esprit humain fait progres toujours, mais
c'est progres en spirale.)
MAIREAD MAGUIRE:\We frail humans are at one time capable of the
greatest good and, at the same time, capable of the greatest evil.
Change will only come about when each of us takes up the daily
struggle ourselves to be more forgiving, compassionate, loving, and
above all joyful in the knowledge that, by some miracle of grace,
we can change as those around us can change too.
MARCUS AURELIUS:The universe is transformation; our life is what
our thoughts make it.
MARGARET MEAD:Never doubt that a small, group of thoughtful,
committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only
thing that ever has.
MARIA MITCHELL:
We have a hunger of the mind which asks for knowledge of all
around us, and the more we gain, the more is our desire; the more
we see, the more we are capable of seeing.
MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN:You really can change the world if you
care enough.
MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN:If you don't like the way the world is,
you change it. You have an obligation to change it You just do it
one step at a time.
MARILYN FERGUSON:It's not so much that we're afraid of change or
so in love with the old ways, but it's that place in between that
we fear . . . . It's like being between trapezes. It's Linus when
his blanket is in the dryer. There's nothing to hold on to.
MARK TWAIN:Loyalty to a petrified opinion never yet broke a
chain or freed a human soul.
MARY ANTIN, 1912:We are not born all at once, but by bits. The
body first, and the spirit later; and the birth and growth of the
spirit, in those who are attentive to their own inner life, are
slow and exceedingly painful. Our mothers are racked with the pains
of our physical birth; we ourselves suffer the longer pains of our
spiritual growth.
MAXINE HONG KINGSTON:To me success means effectiveness in the
world, that I am able to carry my ideas and values into the world
-- that I am able to change it in positive ways.
MAYA ANGELOU:History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be
unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.
MITSUGI SAOTOME:If you were all alone in the universe with no
one to talk to, no one with which to share the beauty of the stars,
to laugh with, to touch, what would be your purpose in life? It is
other life, it is love, which gives your life meaning. This is
harmony. We must discover the joy of each other, the joy of
challenge, the joy of growth.
MORTIMER ADLER:The purpose of learning is growth, and our minds,
unlike our bodies, can continue growing as we continue to live.
NANCY ASTOR:The main dangers in this life are the people who
want to change everything or nothing.
NELSON MANDELA:Education is the most powerful weapon which you
can use to change the world.
NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI:I'm not interested in preserving the status
quo; I want to overthrow it.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES:A man may fulfill the object of his
existence by asking a question he cannot answer, and attempting a
task he cannot achieve.
OVID:All things change; nothing perishes.
PABLO PICASSO:I am always doing that which I can not do, in
order that I may learn how to do it.
PAULO FREIRE:Education either functions as an instrument which
is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into
the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it
becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women
deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to
participate in the transformation of their world.
PEARL S. BUCK:A good marriage is one which allows for change and
growth in the individuals and in the way they express their
love.
PEARL S. BUCK:You can judge your age by the amount of pain you
feel when you come in contact with a new idea.
PEARL S. BUCK:I am comforted by life's stability, by earth's
unchangeableness. What has seemed new and frightening assumes its
place in the unfolding of knowledge. It is good to know our
universe. What is new is only new to us.
PEARL S. BUCK:Growth itself contains the germ of happiness.
PETER F. DRUCKER:Society, community, family are all conserving
institutions. They try to maintain stability, and to prevent, or at
least to slow down, change. But the organization of the
post-capitalist society of organizations is a destabilizer. Because
its function is to put knowledge to work -- on tools, processes,
and products; on work; on knowledge itself -- it must be organized
for constant change.
PETER SENGE:New insights fail to get put into practice because
they conflict with deeply held internal images of how the world
works ... images that limit us to familiar ways of thinking and
acting. That is why the discipline of managing mental models
-surfacing, testing, and improving our internal pictures of how the
world works -promises to be a major breakthrough for learning
organizations.
RACHEL CARSON:Only within the moment of time represented by the
present century has one species -- man -- acquired significant
power to alter the nature of his world.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON:Life is a progress, and not a station.
RICHARD BACH:What the caterpillar calls the end of the world,
the master calls a butterfly.
ROBERT F. KENNEDY: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 FROST:Most of the change we think we see in life Is due
to truths being in and out of favor.
ROBERT FROST:Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers today; And give
us not to think so far away As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.
SAUL ALINSKY:Change means movement. Movement means friction.
Only in the frictionless vacuum of a nonexistent abstract world can
movement or change occur without that abrasive friction of
conflict.
STEPHEN NACHMANOVITCH:There are no prescriptive solutions, no
grand designs for grand problems. Life's solutions lie in the
minute particulars involving more and more individual people daring
to create their own life and art, daring to listen to the voice
within their deepest, original nature, and deeper still, the voice
within the earth.
STEPHEN SIGMUND:Learn wisdom from the ways of a seedling. A
seedling which is never hardened off through stressful situations
will never become a strong productive plant.
STEVEN FOSTER:You may wonder, 'How can I leave it all behind if
I am just coming back to it? How can I make a new beginning if I
simply return to the old?' The answer lies in the return. You will
not come back to the 'same old thing.' What you return to has
changed because you have changed. Your perceptions will be altered.
You will not incorporate into the same body, status, or world you
left behind. The river has been
flowing while you were gone. Now it does not look like the same
river. [The Book of the Vision Quest]
TERRY TEMPEST WILLIAMS:I have inherited a belief in community,
the promise that a gathering of the spirit can both create and
change culture. In the desert, change is nurtured even in stone by
wind, by water, through time.
THOMAS HARDY:Time changes everything except something within us
which is always surprised by change.
THOMAS JEFFERSON:I am not an advocate for frequent changes in
laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in
hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more
developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new
truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change
of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with
the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat
which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever
under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.
THOMAS JEFFERSON:We are not to expect to be translated from
despotism to liberty in a featherbed.
THOMAS A KEMPIS:Be not angry that you cannot make others as you
wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to
be.
TOM ROBBINS:
The bottom line is that (a) people are never perfect, but love
can be, (b) that is the one and only way that the mediocre and vile
can be transformed, and (c) doing that makes it that. We waste time
looking for the perfect lover, instead of creating the perfect
love. Still Life With Woodpecker
TONY ROBBINS:If we habitually focus on how to improve things
that are already great, can you see how this spirit can transform
ourselves, our organizations, families and communities?
TRYON EDWARDS:He that never changes his opinions, never corrects
his mistakes, and will never be wiser on the morrow than he is
today.
UNKNOWN:In his later years Pablo Picasso was not allowed to roam
an art gallery unattended, for he had previously been discovered in
the act of trying to improve on one of his old masterpieces.
UNKNOWN:Change is inevitable, except from vending machines.
V. S. NAIPAUL:The world is always in movement.
VICTOR FRANKL:What man actually needs is not a tensionless state
but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him.
What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the
call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.
W.E.B. DU BOIS:The most important thing to remember is this: To
be ready at any moment to give up what you are for what you might
become.
WASHINGTON IRVING:There is a certain relief in change, even
though it be from bad to worse! As I have often found in travelling
in a stagecoach, that it is often a comfort to shift one's
position, and be bruised in a new place.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE:We know what we are, but know not what we
may be.
WOODROW WILSON:If you want to make enemies, try to change
something.
ABIGAIL VAN BUREN:The best index to a person's character is (a)
how he treats people who can't do him any good, and (b) how he
treats people who can't fight back.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN:Character is like a tree and reputation like a
shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real
thing.
ALBERT EINSTEIN:Try not to become a man of success but rather
try to become a man of value.
ANNE FRANK:
Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right
paths, but the final forming of a person's character lies in their
own hands.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN:There never was a good knife made of bad
steel.
CICERO:It is virtue, virtue, which both creates and preserves
friendship. On it depends harmony of interest, permanence,
fidelity.
CLARENCE DARROW:With all their faults, trade unions have done
more for humanity than any other organization of men that ever
existed. They have done more for decency, for honesty, for
education, for the betterment of the race, for the developing of
character in men, than any other association of men.
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT:People grow through experience if they meet
life honestly and courageously. This is how character is built.
FAITH BALDWIN:Character builds slowly, but it can be torn down
within incredible swiftness.
GOETHE:Character develops itself in the stream of life.
H. JACKSON BROWN:
Good character is more to be praised than outstanding talent.
Most talents are, to some extent, a gift. Good character, by
contrast, is not given to us. We have to build it, piece by piece
-- by thought, choice, courage, and determination.
HELEN KELLER:Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet.
Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be
strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success
achieved.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU:Dreams are the touchstones of our
character.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU:How can we expect a harvest of thought who
have not had a seedtime of character?
JAMES A. FROUDE:You cannot dream yourself into a character; you
must hammer and forge yourself one.
LILLIAN HELLMAN:I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit
this year's fashions, even though I long ago came to the conclusion
that I was not a political person and could have no comfortable
place in any political group. [Letter to the US House of
Representatives Committee on Un-American Activities, 1952]
MARGARET CHASE SMITH:Moral cowardice that keeps us from speaking
our minds is as dangerous to this country as irresponsible talk.
The right way is not always the popular and easy way. Standing for
right when it is unpopular is a true test of moral character.
MARGARET CHASE SMITH:The right way is not always the popular and
easy way. Standing for right when it is unpopular is a true test of
moral character.
MARK TWAIN:To arrive at a just estimate of a renowned man's
character one must judge it by the standards of his time, not
ours.
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.:I look forward confidently to the day
when all who work for a living will be one with no thought to their
separateness as Negroes, Jews, Italians or any other distinctions.
This will be the day when we bring into full realization the
American dream -- a dream yet unfulfilled. A dream of equality of
opportunity, of privilege and property widely distributed; a dream
of a land where men will not take necessities from the many to give
luxuries to the few; a dream of a land where men will not argue
that the color of a man's skin determines the content of his
character; a dream of a nation where all our gifts and resources
are held not for ourselves alone, but as instruments of service for
the rest of humanity; the dream of a country where every man will
respect the dignity and worth of the human personality.
MOHANDAS K. GANDHI:The Roots of Violence: Wealth without work,
Pleasure without conscience, Knowledge without character, Commerce
without morality, Science without humanity, Worship without
sacrifice, Politics without principles.
RABBI ZUSYA:
In the world to come, I shall not be asked, "Why were you not
Moses?" I shall be asked, "Why were you not Zusya?"
RALPH WALDO EMERSON:Judge of your natural character by what you
do in your dreams.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON:People seem not to see that their opinion of
the world is also a confession of character.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON:It is the duty of men to judge men only by
their actions. Our faculties furnish us with no means of arriving
at the motive, the character, the secret self. We call the tree
good from its fruits, and the man, from his works. (sermon, October
15, 1826)
RALPH WALDO EMERSON:A person will worship something, have no
doubt about that. We may think our tribute is paid in secret in the
dark recesses of our hearts, but it will out. That which dominates
our imaginations and our thoughts will determine our lives, and our
character. Therefore, it behooves us to be careful what we worship,
for what we are worshipping we are becoming.
ROBERT COLES:Abraham Lincoln did not go to Gettysburg having
commissioned a poll to find out what would sell in Gettysburg.
There were no people with percentages for him, cautioning him about
this group or that group or what they found in exit polls a year
earlier. When will we have the courage of Lincoln?
SAM ADAMS:It is no dishonor to be in a minority in the cause of
liberty and virtue.
SCOTT ALEXANDER:All good is hard. All evil is easy. Dying,
losing, cheating, and mediocrity is easy. Stay away from easy.
THOMAS CARLYLE:Instead of saying that man is the creature of
circumstance, it would be nearer the mark to say that man is the
architect of circumstance.
VICTOR FRANKL:What man actually needs is not a tensionless state
but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him.
What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the
call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.
WILLIAM LYON PHELPS:This is the final test of a gentleman: his
respect for those who can be of no possible value to him.
WOODROW WILSON:If you will think about what you ought to do for
other people, your character will take care of itself. Character is
a by-product, and any man who devotes himself to its cultivation in
his own case will become a selfish prig.
ALDOUS HUXLEY:Your true traveller finds boredom rather agreeable
than painful. It is the symbol of his liberty - his excessive
freedom. He accepts his boredom, when it comes, not merely
philosophically, but almost with pleasure.
BERT LESTON TAYLOR:
A bore is a man who, when you ask him how he is, tells you.
BETTE MIDLER:Cherish forever what makes you unique, cuz you're
really a yawn if it goes.
CHARLOTTE WHITTON:Boredom is like a pitiless zooming in on the
epidermis of time. Every instant is dilated and magnified like the
pores of the face.
ELLEN PARR:The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure
for curiosity.
ERIC HOFFER:When people are bored, it is primarily with their
own selves that they are bored.
FRITZ REDL:Boredom will always remain the greatest enemy of
school disciplines. If we remember that children are bored, not
only when they don't happen to be interested in the subject or when
the teacher doesn't make it interesting, but also when certain
working conditions are out of focus with their basic needs, then we
can realize what a great contributor to discipline problems boredom
really is. Research has shown that boredom is closely related to
frustration and that the effect of too much frustration is
invariably irritability, withdrawal, rebellious opposition or
aggressive rejection of the whole show. When We Deal With
Children
GEORGE BUSH:What's wrong with being a boring kind of guy?
LEO TOLSTOY:Boredom: the desire for desires. Anna Karenina
LIN YUTANG:Probably the difference between man and the monkeys
is that the monkeys are merely bored, while man has boredom plus
imagination.
METALLICA:Boredom comes from a boring mind.
SAUL STEINBERG:The life of the creative man is lead, directed
and controlled by boredom. Avoiding boredom is one of our most
important purposes.
SIR CECIL BEATON:Perhaps the world's second worst crime is
boredom. The first is being a bore.
SOREN KIERKEGAARD:Since boredom advances and boredom is the root
of all evil, no wonder, then, that the world goes backwards, that
evil spreads. This can be traced back to the very beginning of the
world. The gods were bored; therefore they created human
beings.
SUSAN SONTAG:Boredom is just the reverse side of fascination:
both depend on being outside rather than inside a situation, and
one leads to the other. On Photography
VIRGINIA WOOLF:Yet it is in our idleness, in our dreams, that
the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top.
VOLTAIRE:All kinds are good except the kind that bores you.
FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT:Be sincere; be brief; be seated.
GRACIN:Good things, when short, are twice as good.
HORACE:Whatever advice you give, be brief.
MARK TWAIN:To get the right word in the right place is a rare
achievement. To condense the diffused light of a page of thought
into the luminous flash of a single sentence, is worthy to rank as
a prize composition just by itself...Anybody can have ideas--the
difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper
on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering
paragraph.
MARK TWAIN:I notice that you use plain, simple language, short
words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English - it is
the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don't let fluff and
flowers and verbosity creep in. When you catch an adjective, kill
it. No, I don't mean utterly, but kill most of them - then the rest
will be valuable. They
weaken when they are close together. They give strength when
they are wide apart. An adjective habit, or a wordy, diffuse,
flowery habit, once fastened upon a person, is as hard to get rid
of as any other vice.
SOPHOCLES:A short saying often contains much wisdom.
WOODROW WILSON:If I am to speak ten minutes, I need a week for
preparation; if fifteen minutes, three days; if half an hour, two
days; if an hour, I am ready now.
AFRICAN PROVERB:It takes a village to raise a child.
AMBROSE BIERCE:Childhood: The period of human life intermediate
between the idiocy of infancy and the folly of youth -- two removes
from the sin of manhood and three from the remorse of age.
ANNA QUINDLEN:Recently a young mother asked for advice. What,
she wanted to know, was she to do with a 7-year-old who was
obstreperous, outspoken, and inconveniently willful? "Keep her," I
replied.... The suffragettes refused to be polite in demanding what
they wanted or grateful for getting what they deserved. Works for
me.
ANNE FRANK:Parents can only give good advice or put them on the
right paths, but the final forming of a person's character lies in
their own hands.
ANNIE SULLIVAN:
Children require guidance and sympathy far more than
instruction.
BILL COSBY:Human beings are the only creatures that allow their
children to come back home.
BILL VAUGHN:A three-year-old child is a being who gets almost as
much fun out of a fifty-six dollar set of swings as it does out of
finding a small green worm.
BUREAU OF SOCIAL HYGIENE STUDY, 1928:It is very difficult and
expensive to undo after you are married the things that your mother
and father did to you while you were putting your first six
birthdays behind you.
CHINESE PROVERB:One generation plants the trees; another gets
the shade.
CLARENCE DARROW:The first half of our lives is ruined by our
parents, and the second half by our children.
COLETTE:It is not a bad thing that children should occasionally,
and politely, put parents in their place.
DOROTHY PARKER:The best way to keep children home is to make the
home atmosphere pleasant -and let the air out of the tires.
EDA LESHAN:Becoming responsible adults is no longer a matter of
whether children hang up there pajamas or put dirty towels in the
hamper, but whether they care about themselves and others -- and
whether they see everyday chores as related to how we treat this
planet.
ELIZABETH STONE:Making the decision to have a child - it's
momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking
outside your body.
ELLEN GALINSKY:Cultural expectations shade and color the images
that parents-to-be form. The baby product ads, showing a woman
serenely holding her child, looking blissfully and mysteriously
contented, or the television parents, wisely and humorously solving
problems, influence parents-to-be.
ERMA BOMBECK:There's nothing sadder in this world than to awake
Christmas morning and not be a child. I Lost Everything in the
Post-Natal Depression
FLORIDA SCOTT-MAXWELL:No matter how old a mother is, she watches
her middle-aged children for signs of improvement.
FRANKLIN P. JONES:You can learn many things from children. How
much patience you have, for instance.
GARRISON KEILLOR:
Nothing you do for children is ever wasted. They seem not to
notice us, hovering, averting our eyes, and they seldom offer
thanks, but what we do for them is never wasted.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW:If you must hold yourself up to your
children as an object lesson, hold yourself up as a warning and not
as an example.
GEORGE SANTAYANA:A child educated only at school is an
uneducated child.
GEORGE W. BUSH:I've been to war. I've raised twins. If I had a
choice, I'd rather go to war.
GEORGE WASHINGTON CARVER:How far you go in life depends on your
being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged,
sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong.
Because someday in life you will have been all of these.
GOLDA MEIR:At work, you think of the children you have left at
home. At home, you think of the work you've left unfinished. Such a
struggle is unleashed within yourself. Your heart is rent.
GROUCHO MARX:A child of five would understand this. Send someone
to fetch a child of five.
HARRY S TRUMAN:
I have found the best way to give advice to your children is to
find out what they want and then advise them to do it.
HERBERT HOOVER:Children are our most valuable natural
resource.
HODDING CARTER:There are only two lasting bequests we can hope
to give our children. One is roots; the other, wings.
JACQUELINE KENNEDY ONASSIS:If you bungle raising your children,
I don't think whatever else you do well matters very much.
JAMES BALDWIN:Children have never been very good at listening to
their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.
JAMES BALDWIN:For nothing is fixed, forever and forever and
forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light
is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock.
Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them
because we are the only witnesses they have. The sea rises, the
light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us.
The moment we cease to hold each other, the sea engulfs us and the
light goes out.
JANE NELSON:Where did we ever get the crazy idea that in order
to make children do better, first we have to make them feel worse?
Think of the last time you felt humiliated or treated unfairly. Did
you feel like cooperating or doing better?
JILL BENSLEY:The most effective form of birth control I know is
spending the day with my kids.
JOHN ADAMS:I must study politics and war that my sons may have
liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study
mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval
architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give
their children a right to study painting, poetry, music,
architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.
JOHN J. PLOMP:You know children are growing up when they start
asking questions that have answers.
JOHN WILMOT, EARL OF ROCHESTER:Before I got married I had six
theories about bringing up children; now I have six children and no
theories.
KAHLIL GIBRAN:Your children are not your children. / They are
the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
KORAN:Wealth and children are the adornment of life.
LEO ROSTEN:You can understand and relate to most people better
if you look at them -- no matter how old or impressive they may be
-- as if they are children. For most of us never
really grow up or mature all that much -- we simply grow taller.
O, to be sure, we laugh less and play less and wear uncomfortable
disguises like adults, but beneath the costume is the child we
always are, whose needs are simple, whose daily life is still best
described by fairy tales.
LOUIS PASTEUR:When I approach a child, he inspires in me two
sentiments; tenderness for what he is, and respect for what he may
become.
LYDIA MARIA CHILD:Blessed indeed is the man who hears many
gentle voices call him father!
MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN:If you as parents cut corners, your
children will too. If you lie, they will too. If you spend all your
money on yourselves and tithe no portion of it for charities,
colleges, churches, synagogues, and civic causes, your children
won't either. And if parents snicker at racial and gender jokes,
another generation will pass on the poison adults still have not
had the courage to snuff out.
MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN:If we don't stand up for children, then we
don't stand for much.
MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN:The old notion that children are the
private property of parents dies very slowly. In reality, no parent
raises a child alone. How many of us nice middle-class folk could
make it without our mortgage reduction?
MARILYN FRENCH:To nourish children and raise them against odds
is in any time, any place, more valuable than to fix bolts in cars
or design nuclear weapons.
MARK TWAIN:Adam and Eve had many advantages, but the principal
one was, that they escaped teething.
MARK TWAIN - ATTRIBUTED IN ERROR:When I was a boy of fourteen,
my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man
around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how
much the old man had learned in seven years.
MAUREEN HAWKINS:Before you were conceived I wanted you Before
you were born I loved you Before you were here an hour I would die
for you This is the miracle of life.
MICHAEL LEVINE:Having children makes you no more a parent than
having a piano makes you a pianist.
P. J. O'ROURKE:You know your children are growing up when they
stop asking you where they came from and refuse to tell you where
they're going.
PABLO PICASSO:All children are artists. The problem is how to
remain an artist once he grows up.
PAMELA GLENCONNER:
Bitter are the tears of a child: Sweeten them. Deep are the
thoughts of a child: Quiet them. Sharp is the grief of a child:
Take it from him. Soft is the heart of a child: Do not harden
it.
PEARL S. BUCK:I love people. I love my family, my children . . .
but inside myself is a place where I live all alone and that's
where you renew your springs that never dry up.
RABBINICAL SAYING:Don't limit a child to your own learning, for
he was born in another time.
RACHEL CARSON:If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of
wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can
share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of
the world we live in.
RACHEL CARSON:If I had influence with the good fairy who is
supposed to preside over the christening of all children, I should
ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder
so indestructible that it would last throughout life.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON:There never was a child so lovely, but his
mother was glad to get him asleep.
ROGER LEWIN:Too often we give our children answers to remember
rather than problems to solve.
SARAH NORCLIFFE CLEGHORN:
The golf links lie so near the mill That almost every day The
laboring children can look out And see the men at play. [from
"Through the Needle's Eye," 1916]
SIDONIE GRUENBERG:Home is the place where boys and girls first
learn how to limit their wishes, abide by rules, and consider the
rights and needs of others.
SIDONIE GRUENBERG:To value his own good opinion, a child has to
feel that he is a worthwhile person. He has to have confidence in
himself as an individual.
ST. FRANCIS XAVIER:Give me the children until they are seven and
anyone may have them afterward.
THEODORE HESBURGH:The most important thing a father can do for
his children is to love their mother.
THICH NHAT HANH:People usually consider walking on water or in
thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk
either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we
are engaged in a miracle which we don't even recognize: a blue sky,
white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child --
our own two eyes. All is a miracle.
THOMAS MOORE:Family life is full of major and minor crises --
the ups and downs of health, success and failure in career,
marriage, and divorce -- and all kinds of characters. It is tied
to
places and events and histories. With all of these felt details,
life etches itself into memory and personality. It's difficult to
imagine anything more nourishing to the soul.
UNKNOWN:- from the Institute for Stork Research and Science Two
different theories exist concerning the origin of children: the
theory of Sexual reproduction, and the theory of the stork. Many
people believe in the theory of sexual reproduction because they
have been taught this theory at school. In reality, however, many
of the world's leading scientists are in favor of the theory of the
stork. If the theory of sexual reproduction is taught in schools,
it must only be taught as a theory and not as the truth.
Alternative theories, such as the theory of the stork, must also be
taught.
This entry continued ...
UNKNOWN:Some children's answers to church school questions -
from the Church of England:
This entry continued ...
VICTORIA WAGNER:A young child is, indeed, a true scientist, just
one big question mark. What? Why? How? I never cease to marvel at
the recurring miracle of growth, to be fascinated by the mystery
and wonder of this brave enthusiasm.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE:It is a wise father that knows his own
child.
ANDR GIDE:The most decisive actions of our life ... are most
often unconsidered actions.
BARBARA DE ANGELIS:
Love is a choice you make from moment to moment.
BARRY LOPEZ:How is one to live a moral and compassionate
existence when one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent
in life, when one finds darkness not only in one's culture but
within oneself? If there is a stage at which an individual life
becomes truly adult, it must be when one grasps the irony in its
unfolding and accepts responsibility for a life lived in the midst
of such paradox. One must live in the middle of contradiction,
because if all contradiction were eliminated at once life would
collapse. There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing
questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy
expression of leaning into the light. Arctic Dreams
C. WRIGHT MILLS:Freedom is not merely the opportunity to do as
one pleases; neither is it merely the opportunity to choose between
set alternatives. Freedom is, first of all, the chance to formulate
the available choices, to argue over them -- and then, the
opportunity to choose.
CARL ROGERS:If we value independence, if we are disturbed by the
growing conformity of knowledge, of values, of attitudes, which our
present system induces, then we may wish to set up conditions of
learning which make for uniqueness, for self-direction, and for
self-initiated learning.
CARL SANDBURG:Choose The single clenched fist lifted and ready,
Or the open hand held out and waiting. Choose: For we meet by one
or the other.
CARTER HEYWARD:Love, like truth and 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.
This entry continued ...
ECCLESIASTES:For everything there is a season, And a time for
every matter under heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; A
time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; A time to
kill, and a time to heal; A time to break down, and a time to build
up; A time to weep, and a time to laugh; A time to mourn, and a
time to dance; A time to throw away stones, and a time to gather
stones together; A time to embrace, And a time to refrain from
embracing; A time to seek, and a time to lose; A time to keep, and
a time to throw away; A time to tear, and a time to sew; A time to
keep silence, and a time to speak; A time to love, and a time to
hate, A time for war, and a time for peace. Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
ELAINE MAXWELL:My will shall shape the future. Whether I fail or
succeed shall be no man's doing but my own. I am the force; I can
clear any obstacle before me or I can be lost in the maze. My
choice; my responsibility; win or lose, only I hold the key to my
destiny.
ELISABETH KBLER-ROSS:I believe that we are solely responsible
for our choices, and we have to accept the consequences of every
deed, word, and thought throughout our lifetime.
ELIZABETH DOLE:What you always do before you make a decision is
consult. The best public policy is made when you are listening to
people who are going to be impacted. Then, once policy is
determined, you call on them to help you sell it.
ELLA WHEELER WILCOX:One ship sails East, And another West, By
the self-same winds that blow, Tis the set of the sails And not the
gales, That tells the way we go.
This entry continued ...
GERDA LERNER:We can learn from history how past generations
thought and acted, how they responded to the demands of their time
and how they solved their problems. We can learn by analogy, not by
example, for our circumstances will always be different than theirs
were. The main thing history can teach us is that human actions
have consequences and that certain choices, once made, cannot be
undone. They foreclose the possibility of making other choices and
thus they determine future events.
INGRID BERGMAN:You must train your intuition -- you must trust
the small voice inside you which tells you exactly what to say,
what to decide.
JOHN DEWEY:The self is not something ready-made, but something
in continuous formation through choice of action.
JOHN KENNETH GALBRAITH:Politics is not the art of the possible.
It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the
unpalatable.
KENNETH PATTON (ADAPTED):By the choices and acts of our lives,
we create the person that we are and the faces that we wear. By the
choices and acts of our lives we give to the world wherein our
lives are lived, hoping that our neighbors will find our
contributions to be of worth, and hoping that the world will be a
little more gracious for our time in it.
LEO BUSCAGLIA:What we call the secret of happiness is no more a
secret than our willingness to choose life.
MAE WEST:When choosing between two evils, I always like to try
the one I've never tried before.
MARGARET SANGER:When motherhood becomes the fruit of a deep
yearning, not the result of ignorance or accident, its children
will become the foundation of a new race.
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.:The ultimate measure of a man is not
where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he
stands at times of challenge and controversy.
MOHANDAS K. GANDHI:Forgiveness is choosing to love. It is the
first skill of self-giving love.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES:Consciously or unconsciously we all strive
to make the kind of a world we like.
ORIGEN:The power of choosing good and evil is within the reach
of all.
OSCAR WILDE:I can resist everything except temptation.
PAUL TILLICH:Decision is a risk rooted in the courage of being
free.
RACHEL CARSON:Only within the moment of time represented by the
present century has one species -- man -- acquired significant
power to alter the nature of his world.
RENE DESCARTES:The greatest minds are capable of the greatest
vices as well as of the greatest virtues.
ROBERT COLES:Abraham Lincoln did not go to Gettysburg having
commissioned a poll to find out what would sell in Gettysburg.
There were no people with percentages for him, cautioning him about
this group or that group or what they found in exit polls a year
earlier. When will we have the courage of Lincoln?
SIMONE WEIL:
Liberty, taking the word in its concrete sense, consists in the
ability to choose.
THEODORE BIKEL:All too often arrogance accompanies strength, and
we must never assume that justice is on the side of the strong. The
use of power must always be accompanied by moral choice.
VIKTOR FRANKL:We who lived in concentration camps can remember
the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away
their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but
they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man
but one thing: the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's
attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own
way.
W. H. AUDEN:To choose what is difficult all one's days, as if it
were easy, that is faith.
ALFRED ADLER:We only regard those unions as real exampl