The single observation I would offer for your consideration is that some things are beyond your control. You can lose your health to illness or accident, you can lose your wealth to all manner of unpredictable sources. What is not easily stolen from you without your cooperation is your principles and your values. They are […]
There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better or for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through […]
As to methods there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.
The greatest gift one can give is thanksgiving. In giving gifts, we give what we can spare, but in giving thanks we give ourselves. David Steindl-Rast Gratefulness, the Heart of Prayer
We are what we think. All that we are arises in our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world.
If you want to feel proud of yourself, you’ve got to do things you can be proud of. It’s heartwarming to know that good, selfless people still exist in our society. One such person was Oseola McCarty, who died at the age of 91. Her obituary in the New York Times stated that, in anticipation […]
Each time a person stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, she sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest of walls of resistance. Robert […]
When I was a young boy in Plains, Georgia, a beloved teacher, Miss Julia Coleman, introduced me to Leo Tolstoy’s novel, War and Peace. She interpreted that powerful narrative as a reminder that the simple human attributes of goodness and truth can overcome great power. She also taught us that an individual is not swept along […]
In college, during the summer months, I was employed as a forestry firefighter. On wildfires, working with hand tools like shovels, heavy rakes and axe-like hoes, we formed up in lines to cut firebreaks before the advancing fires. We were always told by out growling boss to “take a swipe, kid,” at the vegetation with […]
The life of a man (or woman) consists not in seeing visions, and in dreaming dreams, but in active charity and in willing service. – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Kavanaugh
