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January 9 - February 2, 2024
“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
Happiness comes from within, and happiness comes from without.
For what the flesh desires is opposed to the Spirit, and what the Spirit desires is opposed to the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you want. —ST. PAUL, GALATIANS 5:171
If Passion drives, let Reason hold the Reins. —BENJAMIN FRANKLIN1,2
This finding, that people will readily fabricate reasons to explain their own behavior, is called “confabulation.”
we can think consciously about one thing at a time only—but
“Nothing is miserable unless you think it so; and on the other hand, nothing brings happiness unless you are content with it.”
“We are not so sensible of the greatest Health as of the least Sickness.”
“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.”
“When a man knows the solitude of silence, and feels the joy of quietness, he is then free from fear and sin.”
“This above all, to thine own self be true.”
“the great majority of mankind are satisfied with appearances, as though they were realities, and are often more influenced by the things that seem than by those that are.”
“So convenient a thing is it to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for every thing one has a mind to do.”
It is the pleasure of taking responsibility for your own behavior. It is the feeling of honor.
In other words, when it comes to goal pursuit, it really is the journey that counts, not the destination.
Pleasure comes more from making progress toward goals than from achieving them.
“Things won are done; joy’s soul lies in the doing.”
“There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear” (I JOHN 4:18).
I saw the right way and approved it, but followed the wrong, until an emotion came along to provide some force.
Work on your strengths, not your weaknesses.
Life offers so many chances to use one tool instead of another, and often you can use a strength to get around a weakness.
When community standards are enforced, there is constraint and cooperation.
When everyone minds his own business and looks the other way, there is freedom and anomie.
The intrinsically moral term “character” fell out of favor and was replaced by the amoral term “personality.”
The celebration of pluribus should be balanced by policies that strengthen the unum.
Then one day something happens that makes no sense in our two-dimensional world, and we catch our first glimpse of another dimension.
There are many reasons for democratic Western societies to oppose such fundamentalism, but I believe that the first step in such opposition must be an honest and respectful understanding of its moral motives.
If you know that you have divinity in you, you will act accordingly: You will treat people well, and you will treat your body as a temple.
People really do respond emotionally to acts of moral beauty, and these emotional reactions involve warm or pleasant feelings in the chest and conscious desires to help others or become a better person oneself.
The split between the Christian left and the Christian right could be, in part, that some people see tolerance and acceptance as part of their nobler selves; others feel that they can best honor God by working to change society and its laws to conform to the ethic of divinity, even if that means imposing religious laws on people of other faiths.
The New England transcendentalist movement was based directly on the idea that God is to be found in each person and in nature, so spending time alone in the woods is a way of knowing and worshiping God.
Many religions teach that egoistic attachments to pleasure and reputation are constant temptations to leave the path of virtue.
For the religious right, hell on earth is a flat land of unlimited freedom where selves roam around with no higher purpose than expressing and developing themselves.
can live magnificently in this world, if one knows how to work and how to love, to work for the person one loves and to love one’s work.”
I may fall, but I do not die, for that which is real in me goes forward and lives on in the comrades for whom I gave up my life.
Psychology and religion can benefit by taking each other seriously, or at least by agreeing to learn from each other while overlooking the areas of irreconcilable difference.
