Archives - December 2003

Honest criticism is hard to take --- especially when it comes from a relative, a friend, an acquaintance, or a stranger.

What some call health, if purchased by perpetual anxiety about diet, isn't much better than tedious disease.

Never explain --- your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyway.

Treasure the love you receive above all. It will survive long after your good health has vanished.

Let the fear of danger be a spur to prevent it; he that fears not, gives advantage to the danger.

There are no mistakes, no coincidences. All events are blessings given to us to learn from.

To endure is greater than to dare; to tire out hostile fortune; to be daunted by no difficulty; to keep heart when all have lost it --- who can say this is not greatness?

Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

My riches consist not in the extent of my possessions, but in the fewness of my wants.

Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go.

Money may kindle, but it cannot by itself, and for very long, burn.

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. That is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.

Ideas pull the trigger, but instinct loads the gun.

Most people give up just when they're about to achieve success. They quit on the one yard line. They give up at the last minute of the game one foot from a winning touchdown.

An insincere and evil friend is more to be feared than a wild beast; a wild beast may wound your body, but an evil friend will wound your mind.

Humor is perhaps a sense of intellectual perspective: an awareness that some things are really important, others not; and that the two kinds are most oddly jumbled in everyday affairs.

Fear is that little darkroom where negatives are developed.

Feelings are not supposed to be logical. Dangerous is the man who has rationalized his emotions.

Humor is not a postscript or an incidental afterthought; it is a serious and weighty part of the world's economy. One feels increasingly the height of the faculty in which it arises, the nobility of things associated with it, and the greatness of services it renders.

The great art of giving consists in this: the gift should cost very little and yet be greatly coveted, so that it may be the more highly appreciated.

There is a privacy about it which no other season gives you ... In spring, summer and fall people sort of have an open season on each other; only in the winter, in the country, can you have longer, quiet stretches when you can savor belonging to yourself.

The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it.

Success will not lower its standard to us. We must raise our standard to success.

What is Christmas? It is tenderness for the past, courage for the present, hope for the future. It is a fervent wish that every cup may overflow with blessings rich and eternal, and that every path may lead to peace.

Christmas --- that magic blanket that wraps itself about us, that something so intangible that it is like a fragrance. It may weave a spell of nostalgia. Christmas may be a day of feasting, or of prayer, but always it will be a day of remembrance --- a day in which we think of everything we have ever loved.

The most wasted day of all is that during which we have not laughed.

Most of the things we decide are not what we know to be the best. We say yes, merely because we are driven into a corner and must say something.

To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years. To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day.

The observation of others is coloured by our inability to observe ourselves impartially. We can never be impartial about anything until we can be impartial about our own organism.

Never believe that a few caring people can't change the world. For, indeed, that's all who ever have.

Youth is when you're allowed to stay up late on New Year's Eve. Middle age is when you're forced to.