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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.”
the best possible way to prepare for tomorrow is to concentrate with all your intelligence, all your enthusiasm, on doing today’s work superbly today. That is the only possible way you can prepare for the future.
One step enough for me. Lead, kindly Light... Keep thou my feet: I do not ask to see The distant scene; one step enough for me.
‘Every day is a new life to a wise man.’
“The secret of being miserable is to have the leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not.”
I often think of an inscription on the ruins of a fifteenth-century cathedral in Amsterdam, Holland. This inscription says in Flemish: “It is so. It cannot be otherwise.”
As you and I march across the decades of time, we are going to meet a lot of unpleasant situations that are so. They cannot be otherwise.
I shall never forget the beautiful truths you taught me.
Wherever I am, or how far apart we may be, I shall always remember that you taught me to smile, and to take whatever comes, like a man.’
“It is so. It cannot be otherwise.”
“Teach me neither to cry for the moon nor over spilt milk.” The same thought is expressed by Schopenhauer in this way: “A good supply of resignation is of the first importance in providing for the journey of life.”
Jesus said that the kingdom of heaven is within you. That is where the kingdom of hell is, too.
“It is not miserable to be blind, it is only miserable not to be able to endure blindness.”
For every ailment under the sun. There is a remedy, or there is none; If there be one, try to find it; If there be none, never mind it.
“Try to bear lightly what needs must be.” Those words were spoken 399 years before Christ was born; but this worrying old world needs those words today more than ever before: “Try to bear lightly what needs must be.”
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.
How much does this thing I am worrying about really matter to me? At what point shall I set a “stop-loss” order on this worry—and forget it? Exactly how much shall I pay for this whistle? Have I already paid more than it is worth?
And, anyhow, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men can’t put the past together again.
“You are not,” said Norman Vincent Peale, “you are not what you think you are; but what you think, you are.”
The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a heaven of Hell, a hell of Heaven.
Napoleon and Helen Keller are perfect illustrations of Milton’s statement: Napoleon had everything men usually crave—glory, power, riches—yet he said at St. Helena: “I have never known six happy days in my life”; while Helen Keller-blind, deaf, dumb declared: “I have found life so beautiful.”
Montaigne, the great French philosopher, adopted these seventeen words as the motto of his life: “A man is not hurt so much by what happens, as by his opinion of what happens.” And our opinion of what happens is entirely up to us.
I had the blues because I had no shoes, Until upon the street, I met a man who had no feet.
As Schopenhauer said: “We seldom think of what we have but always of what we lack.”
Logan Pearsall Smith packed a lot of wisdom into a few words when he said: “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.”
Two men looked out from prison bars, One saw the mud, the other saw stars.
“The north wind made the Vikings. Wherever did we get the idea that secure and pleasant living, the absence of difficulty, and the comfort of ease, ever of themselves made people either good or happy? Upon the contrary, people who pity themselves go on pitying themselves even when they are laid softly on a cushion, but always in history character and happiness have come to people in all sorts of circumstances, good, bad, and indifferent, when they shouldered their personal responsibility. So, repeatedly the north wind has made the Vikings.”
At long last, I realise the wisdom of Santayana’s words: “Man is not made to understand life, but to live it.”
”There are no atheists in foxholes.”
No. He wouldn’t have been important enough then to have aroused jealousy.
“Our life is what our thoughts make it.” Those words are just as true today as they were eighteen centuries ago when Marcus Aurelius first wrote them in his book of Meditations. “Our life is what our thoughts make it.”
“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”
