I'm going to put this here because it is something I need to remember --
Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another you have only an extemporaneous half possession. --Ralph Waldo Emerson
I wish I could learn to remember this, to make it really part of me (translated by Thomas Merton) --
When an archer is shooting for nothing
He has all his skill.
If he shoots for a brass buckle
He is already nervous.
If he shoots for a prize of gold
He goes blind
Or sees two targets--
He is out of his mind!
His skill has not changed. But the prize
Divides him. He cares.
He thinks more of winning
Than of shooting--
And the need to win
Drains him of power.
In a similar vein --
No use fretting over gold, beauty or fame;
Nurturing these, how can we calm
Our fluttering heart?Non attachment brings deep truth,
And a truthful nature brings immortality.Empty your heart,
Sit quietly on a mat.In meditation we become one with All;
Tao billows like the vapors
In a mountain valley,
And its supernatural power wafts into our soul.
-- Loy Ching-Yuen (1873-1960)
John F. Kennedy:
Every man can make a difference and everyone should try.
Woodrow Wilson:
You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand. Woodrow Wilson
In recent days I have found the following quotation returning to my mind over and over again --
"I, who am truly no zaddik, no one assured in God, rather a man endangered before God, a man wrestling ever anew for God's light, ever anew engulfed in God's abysses, . . .
-- Martin Buber, Tales of the Hasidim
I need to remember that I too am "endangered before God, wrestling ever anew for the His Light." It is helpful to know that someone of Buber's stature felt the same.
We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects.
— Herman Melville
You will probably like the Daily Celebrations site. I like especially to find my way around by using this directory.
I don't entirely agree with this statement, but it is nonetheless a good reminder --
To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man's life. -- T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)
And then there is this --
Finally, I am chuffed to learn that Goethe and I agree in the following --One ought everyday to hear a song, read a fine poem, and, if possible, speak a few reasonable words. -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)
In all things it is better to hope than to despair.
Mark Kingwell, a Canadian professor, wrote the following a few years ago --
I once wrote a book about happiness. . . . [A]t the end of the day, I kept coming back to old, old insights about happiness and world affairs, ones missed by too many psych studies and the people they poll.
Happiness, said Aristotle, is not a feeling or an experience, it is an ethical state of being. It means judging that you have made the right choices and done the right things, and enjoyed a measure of luck along the way. Where and when you are born, how the play of daily contingency affects you, do not determine your happiness, but they do constrain it. And so it often seems as though the choices of everyday life, cosmically small though they are, matter far more than events in distant capitals and war zones.
But here is the key point. You must live your entire life with honour and commitment. You must try to build something larger than yourself: a community of citizens, a community of reason, a just and peaceful world. You may be defeated, because violence, arrogance and unreason are powerful forces in history. But that does not diminish your responsibility.
(Note: The above paragraphs came from a column by Professor Kingwell in the National Post, a Canadian newspaper. The original column is, alas, no longer available at the NP's website. The book to which Kingwell refers is apparently In Pursuit of Happiness, now out of print, but still availabe at Amazon.com and, I trust, elsewhere on the Web.)
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