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“Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.”
“Give us this day our daily bread.”
“Take therefore, no thought for the morrow; for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”
Lead, kindly light … Keep thou my feet: I do not ask to see The distant scene; one step enough for me.
‘One grain of sand at a time … One task at a time.’
“Live in day-tight compartments.”
“Anyone can carry his burden, however hard, until nightfall,” wrote Robert Louis Stevenson.
“Anyone can do his work, however hard, for one day. Anyone can live sweetly, patiently, lovingly, purely, till the sun goes down. And this is all that life really means.”
“Every day is a new life to a wise man.”
Happy the man, and happy he alone, He, who can call to-day his own: He who, secure within, can say: “To-morrow, do thy worst, for I have liv’d to-day.”
Why are we such fools, such tragic fools?
life “is in the living, in the tissue of every day and hour.”
SALUTATION TO 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 splendour of beauty, For yesterday is but a dream And tomorrow is only a vision, But today 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 to the dawn.
Shut the iron doors on the past and the future. Live in Day-tight Compartments.
Omar: Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend, Before we too into the Dust descend; Dust into Dust, and under Dust, to lie, Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and—sans End!
Those who do not know how to fight worry die young. DR ALEXIS CARREL
The most relaxing recreating forces are a healthy religion, sleep, music, and laughter. Have faith in God—learn to sleep well— Love good music—see the funny side of life— And health and happiness will be yours.
“Businessmen who do not know how to fight worry die young.”
“The Lord may forgive us our sins,” said William James, “but the nervous system never does.”
“Those who keep the peace of their inner selves in the midst of the tumult of the modern city are immune from nervous diseases.”
“If a man will devote his time to securing facts in an impartial, objective way, his worries will usually evaporate in the light of knowledge.”
“There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the labour of thinking”—if
“I must lose myself in action, lest I wither in despair.”
“A certain comfortable security, a certain profound inner peace, a kind of happy numbness, soothes the nerves of the human animal when absorbed in its allotted task.”
Osa Johnson had discovered the same truth that Tennyson had sung about a century earlier: “I must lose myself in action, lest I wither in despair.”
“It was wonderful,” he says, “to be able to dole out time in this way. It brought me an extraordinary sense of command over myself… .” And he adds, “Without that or an equivalent, the days would have been without purpose; and without purpose they would have ended, as such days always end, in disintegration.”
“As a physician, I have had the happiness of seeing work cure many persons who have suffered from trembling palsy of the soul which results from overmastering doubts, hesitations, vacillation and fear… . courage given us by our work is like the self-reliance which Emerson has made forever glorious.”
“The secret of being miserable is to have the leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not.”
Keep busy. The worried person must lose himself in action, lest he wither in despair.
Here we are on this earth, with only a few more decades to live, and we lose many irreplaceable hours brooding over grievances that, in a year’s time, will be forgotten by us and by everybody. No, let us devote our life to worth-while actions and feelings, to great thoughts, real affections and enduring undertakings. For life is too short to be little.”
“If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you”—he
Pericles said, twenty-four centuries ago: “Come, gentlemen, we sit too long on trifles.” We do, indeed!
Rule 2: Let’s not allow ourselves to be upset by small things we should despise and forget. Remember “Life is too short to be little.”
Rule 3: “Let’s examine the record.” Let’s ask ourselves: “What are the chances, according to the law of averages, that this event I am worrying about will ever occur?”
“It is so. It cannot be otherwise.”
Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.
“Teach me neither to cry for the moon nor over spilt milk.”
“A good supply of resignation is of the first importance in providing for the journey of life.”
If I lost all five of my senses, I know I could live on inside my mind. For it is in the mind we see, and in the mind we live, whether we know it or not.”
as John Milton discovered, that “It is not miserable to be blind, it is only miserable not to be able to endure blindness.”
Walt Whitman: Oh, to confront night, storms, hunger, Ridicule, accident, rebuffs as the trees and animals do.
This priceless prayer was written by Dr Reinhold Niebuhr. God grant me the serenity To accept the things I cannot change, The courage to change the things I can; And the wisdom to know the difference.
Rule 4 is: Cooperate with the inevitable.
“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.”
Whenever we are tempted to throw good money after bad in terms of human living, let’s stop and ask ourselves these three questions: 1. How much does this thing I am worrying about really matter to me? 2. At what point shall I set a “stop-loss” order on this worry—and forget it? 3. Exactly how much shall I pay for this whistle? Have I already paid more than it is worth?
“Wise men ne’er sit and wail their loss, but cheerily seek how to redress their harms.”
Rule 6: Don’t try to saw sawdust.
“A man is what he thinks about all day long.” How could he possibly be anything else?
“You are not,” said Norman Vincent Peale, “you are not what you think you are; but what you think, you are.”
Yes, 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.
