Heart

The heart of a fool is in his mouth, but the mouth of the wise man is in his heart.

~Benjamin Franklin~

One Reality, Many Points of View

There are three children in my family. If they were to confront a spiderweb in the garden, each would react differently. The first child would examine the web and wonder how the spider wove it. The second would worry a great deal about where the spider was at that particular moment. And the third would exclaim, "Oh, look! a trampoline.

~Phyllis Theroux~

Footprints

A man leaves all kinds of footprints when he walks through life. Some you can see, like his children and his house. Other are invisible, like the prints he leaves across other people's lives, the help he gives them and what he has said - his jokes, gossip that has hurt other, encouragement. A man doesn't think about it, but everywhere he passes, he leaves some kind of mark. All these marks added together are what man means.

~Margaret Lee Runbeck~

The Tailor

The only person who behaves sensibly is my tailor. He takes my measure anew everytime he sees me. All the rest go on with their old measurements.

~Bernard Shaw~

Brave

Sir Henry Morton Stanley was asked if he had been frightened of the incredible, horrifying jungle that daunted previous explorers. He said, "I did not see the whole. I only saw this rock ahead of me; I only saw this poisonous snake which I had to kill in order to take the next step. I only saw the problem directly in front of me. If I had seen the whole thing I would have been too overwhelmed to have attemped this."

~George Lang~

Break

Two men cut wood all the day long. One worked straight through, without stopping to rest. At the end of the day he had a sizable pile of logs. The other would chop for 50 minutes and then take a ten minutes break. At the end of the day he had a much larger pile.

"How could you chop more?" asked the man who'd worked continously. His friend replied, "When I stopped for rest, I also sharpened my ax."

~Thomas B. Weilch. Jr~

Perspective

It is said that sheep may get lost simply by nibbling away at grass and never looking up. That can be true for any of us. We can focus so much on what is immediately before us that we fail to see life in larger perspective.

~The Rev. Donald Bitsberger~

Caution

Too much caution is bad for you. By avoiding things you fear, you may let yourself in for unhappy consequences. It is usually wiser to stand up to a scaryseeming experience and walk right into it, risking the bruises or hard knocks. You are likely to find it is not as tough as you had thought. Or you may find it plenty tough, but also discover you have what it takes to handle it.

~Norman Vincent Peal~

Blows

I look at a stonecutter hammering away at a rock a hundred times without so much as a crack showing in it. Yet, at the hundred-and-first blow it splits in two. I know it was not the one blow that did it, but all that had gone before.

~Jacob Rits~

Be Good To Yourself

Many people go through life commiting partial suicide - destroying their talents, energies, creative qualities.  To learn how to be good to oneself is often more difficult than to learn how to be good to others.

~Joshua Loth Liebman~

Value!

My father once looked through one of my information-crammed books and asked, "How did you learn all this, Isaac?"

"From you, Papa."

"From me? I don't know any of this."

"You didn't have to, Papa. You valued learning and you taught me to value it. All the rest came without trouble."

~Isaac Asimov~

Yesterday

My mother, God bless her, taught me when I was little never to carry yesterday on my back. It didn't matter what had happened - yesterday was dead. I remember her saying: "There is nothing you can do about it now. If you get in the habit of carrying yesterday around on your back, you'll be bent double by the time you're 21."

 ~Danny Thomas~

Life

Life is a journey from one miracle to another miracle.

~avds~

Progress

We should live and labor in our time that what came to us as seed may go to the next generation as blossom, and that what came to us as blossom may go to them as fruit. This is what we mean by progress.

~Henry Ward Beecher~

Not The Glory But The Goodness

Remember that the opportunity for great deeds may never come,

but the opportunity for good deeds is renewed day by day. 

The thing for us to long for is the goodness, not the glory.

~F. W. Faber~

Persistence

Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence.

Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men of talent.

Genius will not...the world is full of educated derelicts.

Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.

The slogan "press on" has solved and always will solve the problems of human race.

~Calvin Coolidge~

Prejudices

Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilized by education: they grow there, firm as weeds among stones.

~Charlotte Bronte~

Grievances

When you talk about your troubles, your ailments, your diseases, your hurts, you give longer life to what makes you unhappy. Talking about your grievances merely adds to those grievances. Give recognition only to what you desire. Think and talk only about the good things that add to your enjoyment of your work and life. If you don't talk about your grievances, you'll be delighted to find them disappearing quickly.

~Thomas Deier~

Discipline

My father taught me that only through self-discipline can you achieve freedom. Pour water in a cup and you can drink. Without the cup, the water would splash all over. The cup is discipline.

~Ricardo Montalban~

Philosophy of Life

No one should pay attention to a man delivering a lecture or a sermon on his "philosophy of life" untuil we know exactly how he treats his wife, his children, his neighbors, his friends, his subordinates and his enemies.

~Sydney J. Harris~