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“There is only one way to happiness,” Epictetus taught the Romans, “and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.”
“When we stop fighting the inevitable,” said Elsie Mac-Cormick in a Reader’s Digest article, “we release energy which enables us to create a richer life.”
“Try to bear lightly what needs must be.” Those words were spoken 399 years before Christ was born;
“The cost of a thing is the amount of what I call life, which is required to be exchanged for it immediately or in the long run.”
“more chagrin than the whistle gave him pleasure.”
And so did the immortal Leo Tolstoy, author of two of the world’s greatest novels, War and Peace and Anna Karenina.
There is only one way on God’s green footstool that the past can be constructive; and that is by calmly analysing our past mistakes and profiting by them-and forgetting them.
“Don’t cross your bridges until you come to them” and “Don’t cry over spilt milk.”
knowledge isn’t power until it is applied;
“A man is what he thinks about all day long.” ... How could he possibly be anything else?
almost the only problem we have to deal with-is choosing the right thoughts.
eight words that can determine your destiny: “Our life is what our thoughts make it.”
if we cherish creative thoughts of courage and calmness, we can enjoy the scenery while sitting on our coffin, riding to the gallows; or we can fill our tents with “ringing songs of cheer", while starving and freezing to death.
The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a heaven of Hell, a hell of Heaven.
taught me anything at all, it has taught me that “Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.”
the closing words of his essay on “Self-Reliance” : “A political victory, a rise in rents, the recovery of your sick, or the return of your absent friend, or some other quite external event, raises your spirits, and you think good days are preparing for you. Do not believe it. It can never be so. Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.”
“A man is not hurt so much by what happens, as by his opinion of what happens.”
“Much of what we call Evil ... can often be converted into a bracing and tonic good by a simple change of the sufferer’s inner attitude from one of fear to one of fight.”
When we hate our enemies, we are giving them power over us: power over our sleep, our appetites, our blood pressure, our health, and our happiness. Our enemies would dance with joy if only they knew how they were worrying us, lacerating us and getting even with us! Our hate is not hurting them, but our hate is turning our own days and nights into a hellish turmoil.
“Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith.”
George Rona
“To be wronged or robbed,” said Confucius, “is nothing unless you continue to remember
“every man will pay the penalty for his own misdeeds. The man who remembers this will be angry with no one, indignant with no one, revile no one, blame no one, offend no one, hate no one.”
“To know all is to understand all, and this leaves no room for judgment and condemnation.”
“Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.”
“An angry man,” said Confucius, “is always full of poison.”
“Gratitude is a fruit of great cultivation. You do not find it among gross people.”
Samuel Leibowitz, who was a famous criminal lawyer before he became a judge, saved seventy- eight men from going to the electric chair! How many of these men, do you suppose, stopped to thank Samuel
“I am going to meet people today who talk too much-people who are selfish, egotistical, ungrateful. But I won’t be surprised or disturbed, for I couldn’t imagine a world without such people.”
but the only way in this world that they can ever hope to be loved is to stop asking for it and to start pouring out love without hope of return.
“takes joy in doing favours for others; but he feels ashamed to have others do favours for him. For it is a mark of superiority to confer a kindness; but
why should children be thankful-unless we train them to be? Ingratitude is natural- like weeds. Gratitude is like a rose. It has to be fed and watered and cultivated and loved and protected.
Writing a note to his doctor, he asked: “Will I live?” The doctor replied: “Yes.” He wrote another note, asking: “Will I be able to talk?” Again the answer was yes. He then wrote another note, saying: “Then what in hell am I worrying about?”
“The best doctors in the world,” he declared, “are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman.”
“We seldom think of what we have but always of what we lack.” Yes, the tendency to “seldom think of what we have but always of what we lack”
“The habit of looking on the best side of every event,” said Dr. Johnson, “is worth more than a thousand pounds a year.”
“There are two things to aim at in life: first, to get what you want; and, after that, to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second.”
Angelo Patri has written thirteen books and thousands of syndicated newspaper articles on the subject of child training, and he says: “Nobody is so miserable as he who longs to be somebody and something other than the person he is in body and mind.”
and he has written a book entitled 6 Ways to Get a Job. He replied: “The biggest mistake people make in applying for jobs is in not being themselves. Instead of taking their hair down and being completely frank, they often try to give you the answers they think you want.”
twenty-four chromosomes contributed by your father and twenty-four chromosomes contributed by your mother. These forty-eight chromosomes comprise everything that determines what you inherit. In each chromosome there may be, says Amran Sheinfeld, “anywhere from scores to hundreds of genes -with a single gene, in some cases, able to change the whole life of an individual.” Truly, we are “fearfully and wonderfully” made.
You and Heredity, by Amran Scheinfeld.
Two men looked out from prison bars, One saw the mud, the other saw stars.
“The best things are the most difficult.”
“The most important thing in life is not to capitalise on your gains. Any fool can do that. The really important thing is to profit from your losses. That requires intelligence; and it makes the difference between a man of sense and a fool.”
Today Ben Fortson-still in his wheel-chair-is Secretary of State for the State of Georgia!
“not only to bear up under necessity but to love it”.
Dostoevsky and Tolstoy had not led tortured lives, they would probably never have been able to write their immortal novels.
“There is a Scandinavian saying which some of us might well take as a rallying cry for our lives: ‘the north wind made the Vikings.’
“You can be cured in fourteen days if you follow this prescription. Try to think every day how you can please someone.”
What Life Should Mean to You.
