Choose your mottos carefully, because …
“What you think, so shall you be.”
From Richard Carlson’s “The Big Stuff" & "Don't Sweat The Small Stuff"
“Seek the truth,
come whence it may,
cost what it will.”
Motto of
Protestant Episcopal Theological Seminary in
Alexandria, Virginia
Be wise enough not to wear yourself out trying to get rich.
Your
money can be gone in a flash,
as if it had grown wings and flown away
like an eagle.
Proverbs 23: 4-5
Peace comes to him who brings it; joy to him who gives it;
but perfect understanding only to him who loves perfectly.
from Elbert Hubbard’s Notebook
Strong men can always afford to be gentle.
Only the weak are
intent on “giving as good as they get.”
Elbert
Hubbard
Life consists of molting our illusions.
We form creeds today only
to throw them away tomorrow.
The eagle molts a feather because he
is growing a better one.
E. Hubbard
Live to love, to laugh, and to learn.
E. Hubbard
It’s nothing to give pension and cottage to the widow who has lost her
son;
it is nothing to give food and medicine to the workman who has
broken his arm,
or the decrepit woman wasting in sickness.
But it
is something to use your time and strength to war
with the waywardness
and thoughtlessness of mankind: to keep the erring workman
in your
service till you have made him an unerring one,
and to direct your
fellow-merchant to the opportunity
that his judgment would have lost.
John Ruskin
If you find the gold in someone, he will resist it to the last ounce of his strength.
This is why
we indulge in hero-worship so often.
It is much easier to admire
a Dr. Schweitzer from afar
than to be my own (lesser) version of those
qualities.
Robert A. Johnson, Owning Your
Own Shadow
Far better to dare mighty things,
to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure,
than to
rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer too much,
because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor
defeat.
Theodore Roosevelt
Men are rich only as they give.
He who gives great service gets great returns. Action and
reaction are equal, and the radiatory power of planets balances their
attraction. The love you keep is the love you give
away.
E. Hubbard’s Notebook, p. 143
Idleness is the only sin.
A blacksmith singing at his forge sparks a-flying, anvil ringing, the
man materializing an idea – what is finer!
E. Hubbard’s Notebook, p. 142
We need some one to believe in us.
If we do well, we want our work commended, our faith
corroborated. The individual who thinks well of you, who keeps
his mind on your good qualities, and does not look for flaws, is your
friend. Who is my brother? I’ll tell you: He is the
one who recognizes the good in me.
Fra Elbertus (a pen name of Elbert
Hubbard)
We are not sent into this world to do anything into which we cannot put
our hearts.
We have certain work to do for our bread and that is
to be done strenuously;
other work to do for our delight and that is to
be done heartily;
neither is to be done by halves or shifts, but with a
will;
and what is not worth this effort is not to be done at all.
John Ruskin
3 ingredients of a complete day:
something to laugh about,
something to cry about,
something to think about.
We have grown literally afraid to be poor.
We despise any one who elects to be poor in order to simplify and save
his inner life. We have lost the power of even imagining what the
ancient idealization of poverty could have meant; the liberation from
material attachments, the unbribed soul, the manlier indifference, the
paying our way by what we are or do, and not by what we have, the right
to fling away our life at any moment irresponsibly—the more athletic
trim; in short, the moral fighting shape. It is certain that the
prevalent fear of poverty among the educated classes is the worst moral
disease from which our civilization
suffers.
William James
Man has not yet reached his best.
He never will reach his best
until he walks the upward way side by side with woman.
Plato was
right in his fancy that man and woman are merely halves of humanity,
each requiring the qualities of the other in order to attain the
highest character. Shakespeare understood it when he made his
noblest women strong as men, and his best men tender as women.
The hands and breasts that nursed all men to life are scorned as the
forgetful brute proclaims his superior strength and plumes himself so
he can subjugate the one who made him what he is.
Eugene V. Debs
Life loves the liver of it.
Maya Angelou
“What men commonly call their fate is mostly only their own foolishness.”
Schopenhauer
Life may not be the party we hoped for,
but while we are here we might as well dance.
“A man has made a start on discovering the meaning of human life
when
he plants shade trees under which he knows full well he will never sit.”
D. Elton Trueblood
The path to personal freedom involves
two long and terrifying steps across the void.
Step One: Question authority.
Step two: Overthrow authority.
Sam Keen
"The mind can calculate, but the spirit yearns,
and the heart knows what the heart knows."
Stephen King
“What is the meaning of life?
To be happy and useful.”
H.H. the Dalai Lama
Our task
…
“It is … our task to create foretastes
of what life is meant to be,
which include art and music
and poetry and shared laughter
and picnics
and politics,
and moral outrage
and special privileges for children
only
and wonder and humor
and endless love,
to counterbalance the other
immobilizing realities
of tyrants, starving children,
death camps and
just plain greed.”
Robert McAfee Brown
“If a free society cannot help the many who are poor,
it cannot save
the few who are rich.”
John F.
Kennedy
You have reached the pinnacle of success
as soon as you become uninterested in money, compliments or publicity.”
G.A. Battista
Success is going from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.
Abraham Lincoln
Young people live in the future.
Old people live in the past.
Wise people live in the present.
(unknown)
“It’s right to be content with what you have,
but not with what you are.”
Unknown
“You do not have to be good
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves " Mary Oliver, Dreamworks
Dead flies make the perfumer’s ointment give off an evil odour;
so a little folly outweighs wisdom and honour.
Ecclesiastes 10:1
“The men who try to do something and fail are
infinitely better than those who try to
do nothing and
succeed.”
Lloyd Jones
People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life ….
I think that what we’re really seeking is an experience of being alive,
so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have
resonance within our innermost being and reality,
so that we can
actually feel the rapture of being alive.
Joseph Campbell
Process drives outcome
The way we do things, the way we can look at problems from every
possible angle, influences what means we may take to solve these
problems. When confronted by a challenge “bring analytical rigor,
sound information-gathering techniques, and real, cost-benefit analysis
to bear …” on what ought to be done.
Moving on instinct can mean
too many mistakes.
from The Price of Loyalty, The Education of Paul O’Neill, by Ron Suskind
It is strange … the way the
ignorant and inexperienced so often and so undeservedly succeed
when the
informed and the experienced fail.
Mark Twain, from his
Autobiography
“Do not seek to follow in
the footsteps of the wise.
Seek what they sought.”
Basho
Those who want the fewest
things
are nearest to the gods.
Socrates
Some books are to be tasted,
others to be swallowed, and some few to be
chewed and digested; that is some books are to be read only in parts; others to
be read but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence
and attention. Some books may also be read by deputy, and extracts made of them
by others.
Francis Bacon, Essays
"Of Studies"
"Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely
in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, thoroughly
used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming: 'Wow - what a Ride!’”
"Live Well, Laugh
Often, Love Much"
Roycroft slogan