Meditations VI, xix

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

121 - 180 AD

If we first know where we are and wither we are tending, we could better judge what to do and how to do it

Abraham Lincoln

The will to do, the soul to dare

Lady of the Lake,        Canto I, Stanza 21

Sir Walter Scott           1810

No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.

Abraham Lincoln

All things are ready if our minds be so.

Henry V, Act IV, Scene iv

William Shakespeare

Our doubts are traitors,

And make us lose the good we oft might win,

By fearing to attempt.

Measure for Measure Act I, scene iv

William Shakespeare

Life is Change . . .

Growth is Optional . . .

Choose Wisely . . .

Karen Kaiser Clark

It is not that things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that things are difficult.

Seneca

Far better it is to dare great things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with the poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.

Theodore Roosevelt

April 10, 1899

From a movie called “A League of Their Own” concerning the All-American Girls Professional Base-Ball League: The two characters are Jimmy Duggan, manager, and Dottie Hinson, star catcher:

Duggan:           You quitting, just running out?

Hinson:            It just got too hard.

Duggan:           It is supposed to be hard, if it weren’t everyone would do it.  It’s the hard that makes it great.

Another favorite piece in literature is from John Donne:

From "Devotions upon Emergent Occasions" (1623), XVII: Nunc Lento Sonitu Dicunt, Morieris - "Now, this bell tolling softly for another, says to me: Thou must die."

In part, he writes:

No man is an island entire of itself.  Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.  If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less.  As well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or thine own were.  Any man’s death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind.  And therefore, never send to know for whom the bell tolls, It tolls for thee.

At dawn of day, when you dislike being called, have this thought ready: 'I am called to man's labor; why then do I make a difficult if I am going out to do what I was born to do and what I was brought into the world for?

Meditations V, v

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

121 - 180 AD

Nothing happens to anybody which he is not fitted to bear

Meditations V, xviii

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

121 - 180 AD

Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp.

Or what is a heaven for?

Andrea del Sarto   (1855)

Line 97

Robert Browning

Look at a day when you are extremely satisfied at the end.  It’s not a day when you lounge around doing nothing; it’s when you’ve had everything to do, and you’ve done it.

Margaret Thatcher

Former Prime Minister of Great Britain

The greatest glory in living lies not in ever falling, but in rising every time we fall

Nelson Mandela

Former President – South Africa

Too many people overvalue what they are not and undervalue what they are.

Malcolm Forbes

One cannot step twice into the same river; for other waters are ever flowing on to you

Nothing endures but change.

All is flux, nothing stays still

Heraclitus

540 to 480 BCE

Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them to become what they are capable of being.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

All we have to decide is what to do with the time we are given.

Gandalf to Frodo, The Fellowship of the Ring (movie)

 – J. R. R. Tolkein

He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever.

Chinese Proverb

Experience is not what happens to a man. It is what a man does with what happens to him.

Aldous Huxley

To the thoughtful mind, all phenomena have hidden meaning.

J. Dorman Steele

(From Engines of our Ingenuity

John Lienhard – Episode 1623)

One who knows how to show and to accept kindness will be a friend better than any possession.

Sophocles

You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.

William Greenough Thayer Shedd

High Calvinist of the American Presbyterian Church

(1820-1894)

No person was ever honored for what he received. Honor has been the reward for what he gave.

Calvin Coolidge

30th President of the United States

1923 to 1928

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.

Eleanor Roosevelt

Ability is what you're capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it.

Lee Holz

No matter what accomplishments you make, somebody helped you.

Althea Gibson

Unblest is he who thinks himself unblest.

Seneca

The thing that matters is not what you bear, but how you bear it

Seneca

Hope arouses, as nothing else can arouse, a passion for the possible.

William Sloane Coffin, Jr

Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish.

John Quincy Adams

So if we agree that data is atomic, information is patterns, knowledge is relationships, and insight is meaning, then we can all speak the same language.  In other words, the meanings are still defined by the result of question asked, not based upon who is doing the asking.

Fast Company Interview with

When you come to the end of all the light you know, and it’s time to step into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing that one of two things shall happen: Either you will be given something solid to stand on or you will be taught to fly.

Edward Teller

If you have the will to win, you have achieved half your success; if you don’t, you have achieved half your failure.

David V.A. Ambrose

Trouble is a part of your life, and if you don't share it, you don't give the person who loves you a chance to love you enough.

Dinah Shore

The greatest good you can do for another is not just share your riches, but to reveal to him his own.

Benjamin Disraeli

There is a tide in the affairs of men,

Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;

Omitted, all the voyage of their life

Is bound in shallows and in miseries.

On such a full sea are we now afloat;

And we must take the current when it serves,

Or lose our ventures.

Julius Caesar, Act IV, Scene iii

William Shakespeare

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it

George Santayana

The Life of Reason, Volume 1, 1905

. . . (As you) begin to look abroad into the world among whom (you) are to live.  To be good, and to do good, is all we have to do.

John Adams to his daughter Nabby

Winter 1777

Adams Family Correspondence L. H. Butterfield, Editor

It is difficulties that show what men are

Epictetus,

Greek Stoic Philosopher

The longer I live, the more I read, the more patiently I think, and the more anxiously inquire, the less I seem to know. . . .  Do justly.  Love mercy.  Walk humbly.  This is enough.

John Adams

To his granddaughter Catherine

Fall 1826

Adams Family Correspondence L. H. Butterfield, Editor

If [the] empire of superstition and hypocrisy should be overthrown, happy indeed will it be for the world; but if all religion and all morality should be over-thrown with it, what advantage will be gained? The doctrine of human equality is founded entirely in the Christian doctrine that we are all children of the same Father, all accountable to Him for our conduct to one another, all equally bound to respect each other’s love.

John Adams

Written in the margins of a book

written by Mary Woostoncraft’s French Revolution

For as I like a young man in whom there is something of the old, so I like an old man in whom there is something of the young; and he who follows this maxim, in body will possibly be an old man but he will never be an old man of the mind.

Cicero’s essay on growing old gracefully

Often quoted (by heart) by John Adams

When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, ‘til it seems as though you could not hang on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.

Harriet Beecher Stowe

It is everyman’s dream to find a shortcut to his heart’s desire

From the movie “Northwest Passage”,

Spoken by “Harvard” a character created by Kenneth Roberts about the real life/larger than life Major Robert Rogers at the end of the movie

Kenneth Roberts

If I won't be myself, who will?

Alfred Hitchcock

A slow sort of country!' said the Queen. `Now, HERE, you see, it takes all the running YOU can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!'

Lewis Carroll, 1872

Through the Looking Glass

My faith demands--this is not optional--my faith demands that I do whatever I can, wherever I am, whenever I can, for as long as I can with whatever I have to try to make a difference.

Jimmy Carter

Former President of the United States of America

Only those who dare to fail greatly can achieve greatly.

Robert F. Kennedy

A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.

Jackie Robinson

For it has always seemed to me that if we regretted and sought to avoid all the small movements that lie behind our misfortunes and disappointments, we’d spend our lives in regrets and our days in immovability.

Arundel

Kenneth Roberts

Spoken by Steven Nason in the wilds of

1930

It is easiest to stumble at the end of a journey.

Arundel

Kenneth Roberts

Spoken by Steven Nason quoting an Abenaki saying

1930

Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.

T.S. Eliot

Have patience with all things, but chiefly have patience with yourself.

St. Francis de Sales

Take rest; a field that has rested gives a bountiful crop.

Ovid

You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a fine spirit of hope of achievement. You are here to enrich the world and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand.

Woodrow Wilson

To understand music, listen to Mozart,

To understand humanity, listen to Beethoven,

But, to understand God, listen to Bach.

F. John Fatigati

Living well and beautifully and justly are all one thing.

Socrates

Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die

Life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly.

Langston Hughes

A ruffled mind makes a restless pillow.

Charlotte Bronte

We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give.

Winston Churchill

Only I can change my life. No one can do it for me.

Carol Burnett

To stand at the edge of the sea, to sense the ebb and flow of the tides, to feel the breath of a mist moving over a great salt marsh... is to have knowledge of things that are as nearly eternal as any earthly life can be.

Rachel Carson

The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury.

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

121 - 180 AD

The universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it.

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

121 - 180 AD

Slowly I came to know that the depth of our heartbreaks determines the depth of our faith. God gives us everything to conquer the big and the little hurts of life.

Gertrude Ederle

1907 - 2003

I have no complaints. I am comfortable and satisfied. I am not the kind of person who reaches for the moon as long as I have the stars.

Gertrude Ederle

1907 - 2003

I gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which I must stop and look fear in the face...I say to myself, I’ve lived through this and can take the next thing that comes along.

Eleanor Roosevelt

1884 - 1962

Do all the good you can, in all the ways you can, as long as ever you can.

John Wesley

1703 – 1791

Destiny is no matter of chance. It is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.

William Jennings Bryan

Every man is the architect of his own fortune.

Sallust

You're braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.

Christopher Robin to Pooh