Life

Photo By: Mr. Dickie

Anne Arundel Community College, Fall 2015

This is the true joy in life … being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one … being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy … I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die. For the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me. It's a sort of splendid torch which I've got to hold up for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to the future generations.

(Words of George Bernard Shaw, page 49, in First Things First, by Stephen R. Covey)

Dying is something we human beings do continuously, not just at the end of our physical lives on this earth. The stages of dying apply equally to any significant change, e.g., retirement, moving to a new city, changing jobs, divorce; change is a regular occurrence in human existence. If you can face and understand your ultimate death, perhaps you can learn to face and deal productively with each change that presents itself in your life.

(Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, in The Art of the Possible, by Alexandra Stoddard, page 142.)

To know how to grow old is the masterwork of wisdom, and one of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living.

(Henri Frederic Amiel, 8 Feb)

5 January 2016

True Joy In Life

This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one ... the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.
(George Bernard Shaw, playwright in Words That Matter by The Editors of The Oprah Magazine, p. 65)
13 December 2015

Imagination

Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine, and at last you create what you will.
(George Bernard Shaw, playwright, in Words That Matter by the editors of The Oprah Magazine, p. 2)
13 September 2015

Five Quotes

I finished reading the book, Pocket Positives - For Our Times. The last five quotes were so good I'm going to post all of them today.

You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the things you cannot do. Eleanor Roosevelt, 1884-1962, First Lady of the United States of America.

When we do the best we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life or the life of another.  Helen Keller, 1880-1968, American Writer and Lecturer.

You know by the time you've reached my age you've made plenty of mistakes if you've lived your life properly. Ronald Reagan, b. 1911, President of the United States. 

I think these difficult times have helped me to understand better than before how infinitely rich and beautiful life is in every way and that so many things that one goes around worrying about are of not importance whatsoever. Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen), 1885-1962, Danish Writer. 

If there were nothing wrong in the world, there wouldn't be anything for us to do. George Bernard Shaw, 1856-1950, Irish Dramatist, Writer and Critic. 

7 April 2013