All you can

Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can. - John Wesley

The life not lived

Destructiveness is the outcome of an unlived life.
Eric Fromm

Let People Know

Deep within us-no matter who we are-there lives a feeling of wanting to be lovable, of wanting to be the kind of person that others like to be with. And the greatest thing we can do is to let people know that they are loved and capable of loving.

Fred Rogers (Mister Rogers)

Living in the Shadows

Darkness was cheap and Scrooge liked it.
Charles Dickens

Our decisions are us

The decision we make, make us.

Play to Learn

The day we stop playing is the day we stop learning.
William Glasser

Strategic Decievers

A group labeled "strategic deceivers" have a competitive advantage over other people. Researchers at Baylor University created a game giving players the opportunity to bid on an object for which they knew its true value, but the seller did not. Bidders fell into three groups. An honest group offered bids based on the true value, a conservative group made bids only casually related to the true value, while the 10 percent of the participants could be called strategists. They offered low bids when the real price was high and high bids when the price was low. By focusing on credibility, their bids seemed consistent and realistic to the sellers. Even more interesting, MRI's showed the strategists had different brain activity than the others in the regions related to complex decision-making. They made a greater effort to get into the mind of the other player and often bluffed. The people in this group also had above-average IQs.

Stephen Goforth

Cry, Laugh, Drink

Cry bitterly. Laugh Loudly. Drink Deeply.
Stephen Goforth

Letting Go

Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties. - Eric Fromm

Trust = Creativity

Creativity comes from trust. Trust your instincts.
Reta Mae Brown

Defining Courage

Courage is grace under pressure.
Ernest Hemingway

Stepping up

Courage is being scared to death - but saddling up anyway.
John Wayne

From a Distance

Don’t react when someone vents anger. Pretend you are watching from a distance.

By the Numbers

Count your blessings, not your troubles.

What Creativity Requires

Conditions for creativity are to be puzzled; to concentrate; to accept conflict and tension; to be born everyday; to feel a sense of self.

Erich Fromm

Coincidence

Coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous.

A Born Failure

I’ve never seen where a woman has given birth to a success or to a failure. It’s always either a boy or a girl.

Zig Ziglar (November 6, 1926 – November 28, 2012)

The Statistical View

Christianity is not a statistical view of life.
Malcolm Muggeridge

Ease and Quiet

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.

Helen Keller

Carpe diem!

Carpe diem! Rejoice while you are alive; enjoy the day; live life to the fullest; make the most of what you have. It is later than you think.

Horace

What’s ahead

The best way to predict the future is to invent it. -Alan Kay

The Best

The best things in life aren't things.

Character Welcome

The best index to a person's character is (a) how he treats people who can't do him any good, and (b) how he treats people who can't fight back.

Abigail Van Buren

a Cruel God

Belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man.
Thomas Paine

Qualifications

Be yourself. Who else is better qualified?
Frank J. Giblin

Be the Change

Be the change you wish to see in the world
Gandhi

The Heronie

Be the heroine of your life, not the victim. - Nora Ephron

The Art of Love

The art of love ... is largely the art of persistence.
Albert Ellis

Drawing the Line

Art like morality consists in drawing the line somewhere

G.K. Chesterton

Your Conqueror

Anyone who angers you, conquers you.

Right Anger

Anybody can become angry - that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and with the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way - that is not within everybody's power and is not easy - Aristotle

Admitting Error

Any man worth his salt will stick up for what he believes right, but it takes a slightly better man to acknowledge instantly and without reservation that he is in error.

General Peyton March

Suffering and overcoming

Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it. – Helen Keller

A better man

Any man worth his salt will stick up for what he believes right, but it takes a slightly better man to acknowledge instantly and without reservation that he is in error.

General Peyton March

Full of Suffering

Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.

Helen Keller

Acting from Dignity

Allow others to act out of dignity rather than forcing them to act from humiliation.

Secret Destinations

All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware. - Martin Buber

Lunatics and delusions

All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher. - Ambrose Bierce

The end of music

The aim and final end of all music should be none other than the glory of God, and the refreshment of the soul. - Johann Sebastian Bach

You're on your own

You've got to do your own growing, no matter how tall your grandfather was. – Irish Saying

A better man

Any man worth his salt will stick up for what he believes right, but it takes a slightly better man to acknowledge instantly and without reservation that he is in error. – General Peyton March

The Chaos Within

You must carry the chaos within you in order to give birth to the dancing star.

Nietzsche

Judgment and Focus

You can't depend on your judgment when your imagination is out of focus.

Mark Twain

Connecting the Dots

You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.

Steve Jobs

Your Opponent's Victory

Write the victory speech of your opponent. If you can’t, look again at what you’re asking of them.

Write Bravely

What shall we do? Write bravely and live interesting lives.

Make Way

The world makes way for the man who knows where he is going.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Travel Pages

The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.

St. Augustine

Leaping

Without leaps of imagination or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.

Gloria Steinem

Life's Iceburgs

When you’re facing an iceberg, a kayak is safer than the titanic.

Lisa Williams

What you See

When will you begin to look past what you see?

Mary Poppins

What we Wish

What we wish, we readily believe, and what we ourselves think, we imagine others think also.

Julius Caesar

Be an Original

You were born an original. Don't die a copy.

John Mason

As we are

We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.

Anais Nin

The end of music

The aim and final end of all music should be none other than the glory of God, and the refreshment of the soul.

Johann Sebastian Bach

Direction and Time

Use a compass instead of a clock. It’s more important what direction you are going than how quickly you get there.

Making Peace

Until you make peace with who you are, you’ll never be content with what you have.

Doris Mortman

Stagnation

Unstirred waters lead to stagnation, and stagnation can't support life.

Ron Martoia

Treasure the Love

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

Og Mandino

A Broken Heart

This is a good sign, having a broken heart. It means we have tried for something.

Elizabeth Gilbert

Denying Others

To be manifestly loved, to be openly admired are human needs as basic as breathing. Why, then, wanting them so much ourselves, do we deny them so often to others?

Arthur Gordon

The Fight

To be nobody but yourself in a world that's doing its best to make you somebody else, is to fight the hardest battle you are ever going to fight. Never stop fighting.

ee cummings

The Test

The ultimate test of a relationship is to disagree but to hold hands.
Alexandra Penney

The beatific vision

To love another person is to see the face of God.
Victor Hugo in Les Miserables.

Without Hope

To live without Hope is to cease to live.
Fyodor Dostoevsky

What he really thinks of you

To obtain a man's opinion of you, make him mad.
Oliver Wendell Holmes

The Gift

To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift.
Steve Prefontaine

Rules of Work

Three rules of work:
1. Out of clutter, find simplicity
2. From discord, find harmony
3. In the middle of difficulty, lies opportunity.
Albert Einstein

Remembering the Adventure

Those who turn back know only the ordeal, but they who persevere remember the adventure.
Milo L. Arnold

Comedy or Tragedy

This world is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel.
Horace Walpole

Getting it Done

There's usually an inverse proportion between how much something is on your mind and how much it's getting done.

Decide

There will come a point in the race, when you alone will need to decide. You will need to make a choice. Do you really want it? You will need to decide.

Rolf Arands, a runner

Business Ethics

There is really no such thing as business ethics. There is only personal ethics.

S.Truett Cathy

Security and Opportunity

There is no security on this earth, there is only opportunity.
General Douglas MacArthur

Talking and Breathing

There is a time for talking.. and a time for just breathing. And each is equally important.

Crisis Management

There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full.
Henry Kissinger

Cause for Rejoicing

There is not one blade of grass, there is no colour in this world that is not intended to make us rejoice.
John Calvin

The tough stuff

There is no use saying you have community or love for each other if it does not get down into the tough stuff of life.

Francis Schaeffer

Greatness

And there is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness and truth.
Leo Tolstoy

Your Approach

There are only two ways to approach life – as a victim or as a gallant fighter – and you must decide if you want to act or react.. A lot of people forget that.

Merle Shain

The Old and the New

There are two kinds of fools: one says, "This is old, therefore it is good"; the other says, "This is new, therefore it is better."
William R. Inge

Risking and Rashing

Take calculated risks. That is quite different from being rash.
George S. Patton

The Best Evidence

Surely what a man does when taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of a man he is.
CS Lewis

Building Blocks

A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him.
David Brinkley

Sucess Defined

Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.
Winston Churchill

Fire in the Belly

Stay hungry. Stay foolish.
Steve Jobs

God and Nations

Sometimes a nation abolishes God, but fortunately, God is more tolerant.

Taking an Angle

Some things and some people have to be approached obliquely at an angle.

Andre Gide

Justice and Mercy

Since we have been the recipients of maximum mercy, who are we to suddenly demand justice from others? Charles Swindoll

Simple

Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains. Steve Jobs

The Secret

The secret of man's being is not only to live but to have something to live for.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Acting like a Grown up

Rising above the fray is a grown up thing to do.

The Ingredients of Progress

Restlessness and discontent are the first necessities of progress.
Thomas A. Edison

Resistance

Remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it. Henry Ford

Honorable Failure

Rather fail with honor than success by fraud.

Solphocles

The Quest

The quest for truth, at least the truth about the most important things, cannot be divorced from the quest to become the kind of person we need to become.

C. Stephen Evans

Frowning on Fun

A Puritan is someone who is deathly afraid that someone, somewhere, is having fun.

Talk about What you Care About

The Psalmists in telling everyone to praise God are doing what all men do when they speak of what they care about. CS Lewis

Generous Words

Perhaps you will forget tomorrow the kind words you say today, but the recipient may cherish them over a lifetime.

Dale Carnegie

Majoring in the Majors

Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand
Thomas Carlyle

Persistence against Pleasure

Francis Galton, the 19th century British polymath spent decades amassing biographical information on the lives of eminent judges, politicians, poets, musicians and wrestlers. Although Galton hoped to identify the hereditary origins of genius – he wanted to lend support to his cousin Charles Darwin’s new theory of evolution – he eventually concluded that innate intelligence was not sufficient for high-achievement. Rather, these successful men needed to also be blessed with “zeal and with capacity for hard labour.”

(Recent brain studies indicate) these diligent souls seem to get a bit more pleasure from the possibility of reward, but they also seem less sensitive to their inner complainer, that disruptive voice reminding them that minesweeper is more fun than editing, or that the ballgame on television is much more entertaining than their homework. At any given moment, there is a tug of war unfolding in our head, determining whether or not we’re willing to put in the effort.

Jonah Lehrer

The Price of Illusions

Our illusions can ravage us as mercilessly as violence or disease. And the illusions of others, when they take on lives of their own, are even more dangerous.
Nicholas Christopher

Opportunity in Disguise

Opportunity often comes disguised in the form of misfortune - or temporary defeat.

The Noise of Opportunity

Opportunity knocks! Quit complaining about the noise!

Missing Opportunity

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.
Thomas Edison

Improving on Silence

Open your mouth only when you can improve on the silence.

The Cure for Suffering

The only cure for suffering is to face it head on, grasp it around the neck and use it.

Mary Craig

Someone Else's Sins

Oh, how horrible our sins look when they are committed by someone else!

Chuck Smith

Restless Hearts

O God, Thou hast made us for thyself, and ours hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee.
Augustine

Nothing

Nothing to prove. Nothing to lose.

First Preference

Nothing is to be preferred before justice
Socrates

Being Understood

Nothing is more validating and affirming than feeling understood. And the moment a person beings feeling understood, that person becomes far more open to influence and change.
Stephen Convey

Bringing Enthusiam

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Giving Others Room to Walk

No man walks with dignity who’s steps are rushed.

Being Good

No man knows how bad he is until he has tried to be good. There is a silly idea about that good people don't know what temptation means.

C.S. Lewis

Smile

The nice part about wearing a smile is that one size fits all.

Taking the opportunity

Never miss a good chance to shut up.

Looking forward

Never let the sense of failure corrupt your new action.
Oswald Chambers

Going against the flow

Never forget that only dead fish swim with the stream. Malcolm Muggeridge

Clever and Pleasent

"My mother used to say to me, 'Elwood' - she always called me Elwood - 'Elwood, in this world you must be oh-so clever, or oh-so pleasant.' For years I was clever. I'd recommend pleasant - and you may quote me." Jimmy Stewart as Elwood P. Dowd in HARVEY

A complete life

My life would be complete if, before I die, I...

Your project

The most important do-it-yourself project is your life.

If it feels easy, then you’re doing it wrong

Jonah Lehrer has some advice for would-be creative thinkers, said Brian Braiker in USA Today. In his new book, Imagine, the Wall Street Journal’s brain-science columnist explores how innovation occurs. To activate the areas of the brain responsible for creativity, says Lehrer, it’s best to find an escape from stress. “When we’re not relaxed—when we’re really vigilant—our attention is focused on the problem,” he says. “That means we can’t hear the quiet voice in the back of our head trying to tell us what the answer is.” The best artists and innovators, from Bob Dylan to Steve Jobs, says Lehrer, have a sense of when to focus and when to take a shower or drink a cup of coffee and wait for that voice to come.

That’s not to say that you can down an espresso and come up with the iPod, said Bill Tipper in BNRreview.com. Lehrer says that the capacity to create isn’t just about the “aha” moment. “Because creativity has long been associated with the Muses, we’ve assumed that it should feel easy and effortless, that if we’re truly inventive then the gods will take care of us,” he says. “But nothing could be further from the truth.” Lehrer argues instead that creativity is a talent that, like any other human talent, can only be developed through an expenditure of effort. “Even after we’ve learned to effectively wield the imagination, we still have to invest the time and energy needed to fine-tune our creations,” he says. “If it feels easy, then you’re doing it wrong.”

The Week magazine

Mental Health

Mental health is an on-going process of dedication to reality at all costs. M Scott Peck

A Wish

May you live all the days of your life.

Jonathan Swift

Really in Love

A man (really in love) really hasn’t leisure to think of sex. He is too busy thinking of a person. The fact that she is a woman is far less important than the fact that she is herself.

CS Lewis

Going with Our Gut

Every feeling is like a summary of data, a quick encapsulation of all the information processing that we don’t have access to. When it comes to making predictions about complex events, this extra information is often essential. It represents the difference between an informed guess and random chance.

How might this work in everyday life? Let’s say, for example, that you’re given lots of information about how twenty different stocks have performed over a period of time. You’ll soon discover that you have difficulty remembering all the financial data. If somebody asks you which stocks performed the best, you’ll probably be unable to give a good answer. You can’t process all the information. However, if you’re asked which stocks trigger the best feelings – your emotions are now being quizzed – you will suddenly be able to identify the best stocks. According to Tilmann Betsch, the psychologist who performed this clever little experiment, your feelings will “reveal a remarkable degree of sensitivity” to the actual performance of all of the different securities. The investments that rose in value will be associated with the most positive emotions, while the shares that went down in value will trigger a vague sense of unease.

But this doesn’t meant we can simply rely on every fleeting whim. The subjects had to absorb all that ticker-tape data, just as Pham’s volunteers seemed to only benefit from the emotional oracle effect when they had some knowledge of the subject. If they weren’t following college football, then their feelings weren’t helpful predictors of the BCS championship game.

The larger lesson, then, is that our emotions are neither stupid nor omniscient. They are imperfect oracles. Nevertheless, a strong emotion is a reminder that, even when we think we know nothing, our brain knows something. That’s what the feeling is trying to tell us.

Jonah Lehrer

Darkness

A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word, 'darkness' on the walls of his cell.

C.S. Lewis

Discovering Yourself

Make things and you will discover yourself. The act of creation reveals who you are.

Love's Goal

Love seeks not only to fight for the good, but constantly to be reconciled with the ones we have had to oppose as we struggle for the good.
C. Stephen Evans

God's Favorites

The Lord prefers common-looking people. That is the reason he made so many of them.
Abraham Lincoln

The Gardeners

Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.
Marcel Proust

Expanding life

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.
Anais Nin

Easy Street

Life only gets easier when you’re going downhill.

The sum of life

Life is painting a picture, not creating a sum.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Course Corrections

Life is about change, whether good or bad, and being able to adjust accordingly.
Okechukwu Keke

Our Moment

Let me not pass you by in quest of some rare and perfect tomorrow. Let me hold you while I may, for it will not always be so.
Mary Jean Irion.

Taking a Refresher

Laughter is like an instant vacation.

Deleting Memory with a Pill

The careful application of inhibitors and other chemicals that interfere with reconsolidation should allow scientists to selectively delete aspects of a memory. The end result will be a menu of pills capable of erasing different kinds of memories—the scent of a former lover or the awful heartbreak of a failed relationship. These thoughts and feelings can be made to vanish, even as the rest of the memory remains perfectly intact. Being able to control memory doesn’t simply give us admin access to our brains. It gives us the power to shape nearly every aspect of our lives. There’s something terrifying about this. Long ago, humans accepted the uncontrollable nature of memory; we can’t choose what to remember or forget. But now it appears that we’ll soon gain the ability to alter our sense of the past. The problem with eliminating pain, of course, is that pain is often educational. We learn from our regrets and mistakes; wisdom is not free. If our past becomes a playlist—a collection of tracks we can edit with ease—then how will we resist the temptation to erase the unpleasant ones? Even more troubling, it’s easy to imagine a world where people don’t get to decide the fate of their own memories. Those scenarios aside, the fact is we already tweak our memories—we just do it badly. Reconsolidation constantly alters our recollections, as we rehearse nostalgias and suppress pain. We repeat stories until they’re stale, rewrite history in favor of the winners, and tamp down our sorrows with whiskey.

Jonah Lehrer 
Wired Magazine

Choosing

The last of the human freedoms is to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances.
Victor Frankle

Last Gasp

The last act of a dying organization is to get out a new rule and enlarged edition of the rulebook.

Painful Memories

So many of our assumptions about the human mind—what it is, why it breaks, and how it can be healed—are rooted in a mistaken belief about how experience is stored in the brain. According to a recent survey, 63 percent of Americans believe that human memory “works like a video camera, accurately recording the events we see and hear so that we can review and inspect them later.” We want the past to persist, because the past gives us permanence. It tells us who we are and where we belong. But what if your most cherished recollections are also the most ephemeral thing in your head?

Because our memories are formed by the act of remembering them, controlling the conditions under which they are recalled can actually change their content. The… worst time to recall a traumatic event is when people are flush with terror and grief. They’ll still have all the bodily symptoms of fear—racing pulse, clammy hands, tremors—so the intense emotional memory is reinforced. It’s the opposite of catharsis. But when people wait a few weeks before discussing an event… they give their negative feelings a chance to fade. The volume of trauma is dialed down; the body returns to baseline. As a result, the emotion is no longer reconsolidated in such a stressed state. Subjects will still remember the terrible event, but the feelings of pain associated with it will be rewritten in light of what they feel now.

“When therapy heals, when it helps reduce the impact of negative memories, it’s really because of reconsolidation,” neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux says. “Therapy allows people to rewrite their own memories while in a safe space, guided by trained professionals…”

Jonah Lehrer
Wired Magazine

Just Because

Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do doesn't mean it's useless.
Thomas Edison

Your Inadequacies

It isn’t that those who love you ignore your inadequacies. Instead, they will pitch in and cheer you along.. and allow you the opportunity to grow and chances to fail.  

Stephen Goforth

The Educated Mind

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.   

Aristotle

The Strong and Weak

It is the characteristic excellence of the strong man that he can bring momentous issues to the fore and make a decision about them. The weak are always forced to decide between alternatives they have not chosen themselves.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Boundaries

Boundaries help us to define what is not on our property and what we are not responsible for. We are not, for example, responsible for other people. In short, boundaries help us keep the good in and the bad out. Sometimes, we have bad on the inside and good on the outside. In these instances, we need to be able to open up our boundaries to let the good in and the bad out. Boundaries are not walls.

The Bible does not say that we are to be 'walled off' from others; in fact it says that we are to be 'one' with them. We are to be in community with them. But in every community, all members have their own space and property. The important thing is that property lines be permeable enough to allow pass and strong enough to keep out danger.

Boundaries are anything that helps to differentiate you from someone else, or show where you begin and end. The most basic boundary that defines you is your physical skin. The most basic boundary-setting word is no. It lets others know that you exist apart from them and that you are in control of you. Setting boundaries inevitably involves taking responsibility for your choices.

Setting limits on others is a misnomer. We can’t do that. What we can do is set limits on our own exposure to people who are behaving poorly; we can’t change them or make them behave right. The other aspect of limits that is helpful when talking about boundaries is setting our own internal limits. We need to have spaces inside ourselves where we can have a feeling, an impulse, or a desire, without acting it out. We need self-control without repression. We need to be able to say no to ourselves.

Henry Cloud and John Townsend
Boundaries

What Counts

It is not what you accomplish but how you behave that counts.

Becoming a Person

It is not simply that we can approach and encounter God only as individuals, or that God addresses us only as individuals, but that only by virtue of our relationship with God do we ever become individuals.

Stephen Dunning

Knowing Oneself

It is not only the most difficult thing to know oneself, but the most inconvenient one, too.

Josh Billings

Bring it On!

Instead of wishing the ball would be hit to someone else, yearn for the ball to be hit your way.   

Stephen Goforth

On Your Own

Independent but not adrift.
John Gardner

Scary Dreams

If your dreams don't scare you, they're not big enough.

Renewal

If we must have some continuity in our lives – and we must – let it be of the sort that does not prevent renewal.   

John Gardner

Run Away

I used to coach children's soccer, and I would tell my players, "Stand away from the pack, and sooner or later the ball will come to you." In your career choices too: Get away from the pack.  

Robert Shiller

Motivation to Create

I have never thought of writing for reputation and honor. What I have in my heart must come out; that is the reason why I compose. 

Ludwig van Beethoven

Progress

I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.

Thomas Edison

a New Philosophy

I have a new philosophy. I'm only going to dread one day at a time. Charlie Brown in "Peanuts"

The Key to Failure

I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.
Bill Cosby

Even when

I believe in the sun when it's not shining, I believe in love even when I feel it not, I believe in God even when he is silent.
Irish Saying

I believe because..

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.
C.S. Lewis

Luck

I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work the more I seem to have of it.
Thomas Jefferson

Humor sneaks in

Humor can get in under the door while seriousness is still fumbling at the handle.
GK Chesterson

No Waiting

How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.
Anne Frank

Talents Unused

Hide not your talents, they for use were made. What's a sun-dial in the shade?
Benjamin Franklin

Your Mission

Here is the test to find whether your mission on earth is finished. If you're alive, it isn't.
Richard Bach

The Busy Man

He not busy being born is busy dying. Bob Dylan

Open Minds

Having an open mind is nothing; the object of opening the mind, as the opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.
GK Chesterton

The Unexpected Visitor

Happiness often sneaks in through a door you didn't know you left open. John Barrymore

Success

He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much; who has enjoyed the trust of pure women, the respect of intelligent men and the love of little children; who has filled his niche and accomplished his task; who has left the world better than he found it whether by an improved poppy, a perfect poem or a rescued soul; who has never lacked appreciation of Earth's beauty or failed to express it; who has always looked for the best in others and given them the best he had; whose life was an inspiration; whose memory a benediction.