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Carlyle wrote that every noble work seems at first impossible.”
We are all here to help one another.”
book spines—Will Durant’s Caesar And Christ, Gibran’s The Prophet, Plutarch’s Lives Of Great Men, Fulton’s Physiology Of The Nervous System, Goldstein’s The Organism, Eiseley’s The Unexpected Universe, Cervantes’ Don Quixote, Aristotle’s Works, Franklin’s Autobiography, Menninger’s The Human Mind, Kempis’ The Imitation of Christ, The Talmud, several Bibles …
Each in its own way deals with and explains some aspect of the greatest miracle in the world and so I call them ‘hand of God’ books.”
truly believe that He has sent, to every generation, special people, talented people, brilliant people … all bearing the same message in one form or another … that every human is capable of performing the greatest miracle in the world.
Most humans, in varying degrees, are already dead. In one way or
another they have lost their dreams, their ambitions, their desire for a better life. They have surrendered their fight for self-esteem and they have compromised their great potential. They have settled for a life of mediocrity, days of despair and nights of tears. They are no more than living deaths confined to cemeteries of their choice. Yet they need not remain in that state.
would imagine that a ragpicker or junk man could do quite well for himself. However, I am not that sort of ragpicker. I seek more valuable materials than old newspapers and aluminum beer cans. I search out waste materials of the human kind, people who have been discarded by others, or even themselves, people who still have great potential but have lost their self-esteem and their desire for a better life. When I find them I try to change their lives for the better, give them a new sense of hope and direction, and help them return from their living death … which to me is the greatest miracle in
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am not playing God. What you will learn, sooner or later, is that God very often plays man. God will do nothing without man and whenever He works a miracle it is always done through man.”
whatever we allow to enter our minds will always bear fruit.”
Put negative material in … and that’s what you’ll reap. On the other hand, if you program in, or plant, beautiful, positive, correct thoughts and ideas, that’s what you’ll harvest. So it’s simple, you see. You can actually become whatever you are thinking. As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. Allen wrote, ‘Man is made or unmade by himself; in the armory of thought he forges the weapons by which he destroys himself; he also fashions the tools with which he builds for himself heavenly mansions of joy and strength and peace.
“We become what we think?”
resolved to stop hiding in my small apartment, to stop feeling sorry for what life had given me, and to begin giving some of myself to others after all the years of self-pity. Actually, you see, it was a selfish decision because the feeling that went through me, when that grateful girl kissed me, was one I had not known for many years.
the feeling that only comes when one has helped another with no thought of personal gain. I have been a ragpicker ever since.”
“Coleridge wrote that chance is but the pseudonym of God for those particular cases which He does not choose to subscribe to openly with His own signature.”
our lack of self-esteem which produced our failure is a universal sickness always originating from the complex of either anxiety, guilt, or inferiority
still two who care: God … and me. One in heaven … and one on earth.” “Then what?” “Once I have convinced them that we truly care and wish to help, once I know they have confidence in me, I tell them that I am going to give them a very special document which contains a message from God. I tell them that all I want from them is twenty minutes of their time each day, to read their message from God … just before they go to sleep. And this is to continue for one hundred consecutive evenings. In exchange for these few daily minutes, a small price to pay, especially for people where time no longer
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I pull these people from their own living hells. They have already deserted this life in their minds. They are positive that they can do nothing to help themselves and so they are willing to grasp at any hand that reaches out to help them. It is a hand of hope.”
we all had more than enough ability to change our lives for the better … and that God had never placed any of us in a hole from which we could not grow. And, if we had locked ourselves in a prison of failure and self-pity, we were the only jailers … we had the only key to our freedom.
Simon did not believe that one should continue to work at a job which made him or her unhappy or miserable. He quoted Faulkner to reinforce his argument, trying to imitate the great writer’s southern drawl: “One of the saddest things in life is that the only thing we can do for eight hours a day, day after day, is work. We can’t eat for eight hours a day, nor drink for eight hours a day, nor make love for eight hours a day … all we can do for eight hours is work. Which is the reason why man makes himself and everybody else so miserable and unhappy.” Then, to summarize that particular lecture,
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you have all the fresh water you want to drink and all the food you want to eat, you ought never to complain about anything.”
when you begin feeling sorry for yourself, remember the tiny couplet, ‘I had the blues … because I had no shoes … until upon the street, … I met a man who had no feet’ .”
most humans quit too soon in life.
his concern about the growing lack of self-esteem in man and its usual end-product, a living death.
all of us know that we can be better than we are.
a second conscience, continues to remind us at the most unexpected moments of our dull lives that we are not living up to our potential.
“Why are we unhappy? I will repeat it for you. We are unhappy because we no longer have our self-esteem. We are unhappy because we no longer believe we are a special miracle, a special creation of God. We have become cattle, numbers, punch cards, slaves, ghetto residents all. We look in our mirrors and no longer see the godlike qualities that once were so evident. We have lost faith in ourselves.
light burning inside them. It may be very diminished, in some, but this I tell you … it never, never goes out! So long as there is a breath of life remaining there is still hope … and that’s what we ragpickers count on. Just give us a chance and we can provide the fuel that will be ignited by any pilot light, no matter how diminished it may be. A human being, my friend, is an amazing and complex and resilient organism capable of resuscitating itself from its own living death, many times, if it is given the opportunity and shown the way.”
‘Our strength grows out of our weakness.
Still there are times when teachers must be taught, doctors must be cured, lawyers must be defended, comedians must be amused, and even ragpickers must be loved.
Remember that the most difficult tasks are consummated, not by a single explosive burst of energy or effort, but by consistent daily application of the best you have within you.
change their own life for the better and thus, joined together, change their world.
to receive love it must be given with no thought of its return.
What rich man, old and sick, feeble and helpless, would not exchange all the gold in his vault for the blessings you have treated so lightly.
Know then the first secret to happiness and success—that you possess, even now, every blessing necessary to achieve great glory. They are your treasure, your tools with which to build, starting today, the foundation for a new and better life.
Therefore, I say unto you, count your blessings and know that you already are my greatest creation. This is the first law you must obey in order to perform the greatest miracle in the world, the return of your humanity from living death. And be grateful for your lessons learned in poverty. For he is no...
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the things one has but in the things one ...
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Proclaim your rarity.
Count your blessings! Proclaim your rarity!
whomsoever shall compel ye to go with him one mile … go with him two.
Go another mile!
The only certain means of success is to render more and better service than is expected of you, no matter what your task may be.
the surest way to doom yourself to mediocrity is to perform only the work ...
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To go another mile is a privilege you must appropriate by your own initiative. You cannot, you must not avoid it. Neglect it, do only as little as the others, and the responsibility for your failure is yours alone.
Cause and effect, means and ends, seed and fruit, these cannot be separated.
You cannot command success, you can only deserve it
Count your blessings! Proclaim your rarity! Go another mile!
Be patient with your progress. To count your blessings with gratitude, to proclaim your rarity with pride, to go an extra mile and then another, these acts are not accomplished in the blinking of an eye. Yet, that which you acquire with most difficulty you retain the longest; as those who have earned a fortune are more careful of it than those by whom it was inherited.
I gave you the power to think. I gave you the power to love. I gave you the power to will. I gave you the power to laugh. I gave you the power to imagine. I gave you the power to create. I gave you the power to plan. I gave you the power to speak. I gave you the power to pray.
Thus we come to the fourth law of success and happiness … for I gave you one more power, a power so great that not even my angels possess it. I gave you … the power to choose.
