New Year

"Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let each new year find you a better man." 

-- Benjamin Franklin

Strength

"A woman is like a tea bag- you never know how strong she is until she gets in hot water."

-- Eleanor Roosevelt

Character

"People grow through experience if they meet life honestly and courageously. This is how character is built."

-- Eleanor Roosevelt

Dreams

"Take away a person’s dream and take away their life."

-- Unknown

Self-Reliance

"Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish and he will eat for a lifetime."

-- Confucius 

Kindness

"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle." 

-- Plato

The Christmas Spirit

The Christmas Spirit
Is that hope
Which tenaciously clings
To the hearts of the faithful
And announces in the face
Of any Herod the world can produce
And all the inn doors slammed in our faces
And all the dark nights of our souls
That with God
All things are possible,
That even now
Unto us a Child is born

Vocation

“Every man has his own vocation. Talent is the call. There is one direction in which all space is open to him… He is like a ship in a river; he runs against obstructions on every side but one; on that side all obstruction is taken away and he sweeps serenely over a deepening channel into an infinite sea.”


-- Ralph Waldo Emerson, poet

Success

"What’s money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do."

-- Bob Dylan, singer/songwriter

Imagination

"The man who has no imagination has no wings."

--Muhammad Ali, boxer

Wisdom

"Wisdom is not wisdom when it is derived from books alone."

-- Horace, Roman poet (65 B.C. - 8 B.C.) 

Giving

"We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give."

-- Winston Churchill

Happiness

"Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony."

-- Mohandas Gandhi

Insanity

"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and
expecting different results."

-- Albert Einstein

Wisdom

"The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing."

-- Socrates

Dreams

"Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens."

-- Carl Jung, psychologist

Love

"At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet."

-- Plato

Dignity

"Let not a man guard his dignity, but let his dignity guard him."

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson, poet

Success

"Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it."

- Henry David Thoreau, author/poet

People

"People may not remember exactly what you did, or what you said, but they will always remember how you made them feel."

-- Maya Angelou

Actions

"For an outcome to truly matter, for it to have deep value in our lives, we have to be in control of the actions that get us there. We have to be the one steering the ship—the one deciding which way to tack and when, and how much reach to give the sails. If we simply let ourselves drift toward happiness or fulfillment, or any other goal—or if we let others determine the route that will get us there or what the goal itself will be—we have lost control of our journey and can never fully enjoy or even, at a subconscious level, embrace the outcome."

-- "The Leap" by Rick Smith, pages 173-4

Passion

“Every man has his own vocation. Talent is the call. There is one direction in which all space is open to him… He is like a ship in a river; he runs against obstructions on every side but one; on that side all obstruction is taken away and he sweeps serenely over a deepening channel into an infinite sea.”


--Ralph Waldo Emerson, poet

Pain

"Pain is inevitable.
But despair is optional."

-- Brad Margus, genetics expert for the National Advisory Neurological Disorders and Stroke Council

Why Not?

"Some men see things as they are and say, 'Why?'
I dream of things that never were and say, 'Why not?' "

-- George Bernard Shaw, Irish playwright

"The Road Not Taken"

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

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

-- "The Road Not Taken," Robert Frost, poet

Fear

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us."

-- Marianne Williamson, author

Psalm 23

1	The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.
2	He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
3	He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
4	Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
5	Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
6	Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.

Sorrow

"I walked a mile with Pleasure;
She chatted all the way;
But left me none the wiser
For all she had to say.

I walked a mile with Sorrow,
And ne'er a word said she;
But, oh! The things I learned from her,
When Sorrow walked with me.

-- Robert Browning Hamilton, 19th Century English poet

What is Rich?

He was born in 1917, and his parents were poor even by the day's modest standards. Albert's mother was a Lithuanian immigrant, and his father, a textile salesman, was always in and out of work. They lived in a cramped apartment building on Topping Avenue in the Bronx. Food was scarce. Young Albert would come home from school each day praying not to see the family's furniture out in the street.

As the oldest of three--a sister and a brother followed him-- he spent from sunrise to sunset in a religious academy called a yeshiva. He had no bicycles or fancy toys. Sometimes his mother would buy bread from the two-day-old bin, spread jam on it, and feed it to him with hot tea. He recalled that as "the most heavenly meal of my childhood."

As the Great Depression widened, Albert had but two sets of clothes, one for the weekdays, one for the Sabbath. His shoes were old and cobbled, his socks were washed out nightly. On the occasion of his Bar Mitzvah-- the day, in his religion, that he became a man-- his father gave him a new suit. He wore it as proudly as any kid could wear anything.

A few weeks later, wearing that same suit, he and his father took a trolley car to a relative's house, a well-to-do attorney. His father carried a cake that his mother had baked.

At the house, a teenage cousin came running up, took one look at Albert, and burst out laughing. "Al, that's my old suit!"

Albert was mortified. For the rest of the visit, he sat red-faced in humiliation. On the trolley ride home, he fought tears as he glared at his father, who had traded the cake for a suitcase full of clothes, an exchange the son now understood as rich relatives giving to poor ones.

Finally, when they got home, he couldn't hold it any longer. "I don't understand," Albert burst out to his father.

"You're a religious man. Your cousin isn't. You pray every day. He doesn't. They have everything they want. And we have nothing!"

His father nodded, then answered in Yiddish, in a slight singsong voice.

God and the decision he renders is correct.
God doesn't punish anyone out of the blue.
God knows what he is doing.

That was the last they spoke of it.

And the last time Albert Lewis judged life by what he owned.


-- "Have a Little Faith" by Mitch Albom, pages 113-115

Home

"A military chaplain told me the following story:

"A soldier's little girl, whose father was bring moved to a distant post, was sitting at the airport among her family's meager belongings.

"The girl was sleepy. She leaned against the packs and duffel bags.

"A lady came by, stopped, and patted her on the head.

" 'Poor child,' she said. 'You haven't got a home.'

"The child looked up in surprise.

" 'But we do have a home,' she said. 'We just don't have a house to put it in.' "


-- "Have a Little Faith" by Mitch Albom, page 111, "From a Sermon by the Reb, 1981"

The Still Voice Within

"The only tyrant I accept in this world is the still voice within."

-- Mohandas Gandhi