| The unhappiness we
experience is not so much a result of the difficulties
encountered along our journey as it is of our
misperception of how life instructs us. We may see a
failed relationship as an indictment of our self-worth
when it is really a lesson in using better judgment, in
valuing ourselves more, in expressing greater
appreciation for our partner--lessons to prepare us for a
more loving and fulfilling union. If we are passed over
for a much-anticipated promotion, it may be just the push
we need to get more training or to venture out on our own
as an entrepreneur. As we rise to meet the challenges
that are a natural part of living, we awaken to our many
undiscovered gifts, to our inner power and our purpose.
Susan
L. Taylor |
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| Two
Tough Questions: A Lesson in Perspective
Question
1: If you knew a woman who was pregnant, who had 8 kids
already (three deaf, two blind, one mentally retarded) and she
had syphilis, would you recommend that she have an abortion?
Read
the next question before moving down to the answer of this
one.
Question
2: It is time to elect a new world leader, and your vote
counts. Here are the facts about the three leading candidates:
Candidate
A: Associates with crooked politicians, and consults with
astrologists. He's had two mistresses. He also chain smokes
and drinks 8 to 10 martinis a day.
Candidate
B: He was kicked out of office twice, sleeps until noon, used
opium in college and drinks a quart of whisky every
evening.
Candidate
C: He is a decorated war hero. He's a vegetarian, doesn't
smoke, drinks an occasional beer and hasn't had any
extramarital affairs.
Which
of these candidates would be your choice?
Decide
first--no peeking--then scroll down for the answer. |
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We think too small, like the frog at
the bottom of the well.
It thinks the sky is only
as big as the top of the well.
If it surfaced, it would have an entirely different view.
Mao
Tse-Tung |
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It is the mind which
creates the world around us,
and even though we stand
side by side in the same meadow,
my eyes will never see
what is beheld by yours,
my heart will never stir to the
emotions with which yours is touched.
George
Gissing |
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| Arthur Schopenhauer
Every person takes the limits of his
or her own
field of vision for the limits of the world. |
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Thomas
Kinkade
Whether
it's a pebble in a riverbed or a soaring mountain peak,
I
see everything in the world as the handiwork of the Lord.
When I paint, I try to represent the beauty of God's
creation in my art.
Many modern painters see the world as
a jumble of random lines
and shapes with no divine beauty
or order, and their works reflect their viewpoint.
Because I see God's peacefulness, serenity, and
contentment,
I work to capture those feelings on the
canvas.
My vision of God defines my vision of the world. |
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To
see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower:
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.
William Blake |
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A
flower unblown; a book unread;
A tree with fruit unharvested;
A path untrod; a house whose rooms
Lack yet the heart's divine perfumes;
A landscape whose wide border lies
In silent shade beneath the skies;
A wondrous fountain yet unsealed;
A casket with its gifts concealed--
This is the Year that for you waits
Beyond tomorrow's mystic gates.
Horatio Nelson Powers |
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| Ralph Waldo Emerson
Familiar as the voice of
the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to
Moses, Plato, and Milton is, that they set at naught
books and traditions, and spoke not what men but what
they thought. People should learn to detect and watch that
gleam of light which flashes across their minds from within,
more than the luster of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet they dismiss without notice their thought, because it
is theirs. |
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Our
environment, the world in which we live and work, is a
mirror of our attitude
and expectations. If we feel that
our environment could stand some improvement,
we can
bring about that change for the better by improving our
attitude.
The world plays no favorites. It's impersonal. It doesn't care who succeeds
and who fails. Nor does it
care if we change. Our attitude toward life
doesn't
affect the world and the people in it nearly as much as
it affects us.
Earl
Nightingale |
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The world
is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune.
William Wordsworth |
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Leonardo
da Vinci, one of the greatest creative thinkers of all
time,
strongly recommended the habit of meditation in the
dark. He wrote:
"For I have found in my own
experience that it is of no small benefit,
when you lie
in bed in the dark, to recall in imagination, one after
another,
the outlines of the form you have been studying." He often awoke to find
his problems solved. Da Vinci
would often stand silent and motionless
before a painting
for hours, without using his brush,
as though waiting for
spiritual guidance.
Wilferd
A. Peterson |
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If
we could shrink the earth's population to a village of
precisely 100 people,
with all the existing human ratios
remaining the same,
it would look something like the
following:
There would be:
57
Asians
21 Europeans
14 from the Western Hemisphere, both north and south
8 Africans
52 would be female
48 would be male
70 would be non-white
30 would be white
70 would be non-Christian
30 would be Christian
89 would be heterosexual
11 would be homosexual
6 people would possess 59% of the entire world's wealth
and all 6 would be from the United States.
80 would live in substandard housing
70 would be unable to read
50 would
suffer from malnutrition
1 would be near death
1 would be near birth
1 (yes, only 1) would have a college education
1 would own a computer
When one considers our world from such a compressed
perspective,
the need for acceptance, understanding
and education becomes glaringly apparent.
thanks, noelle
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It amazes me, and I know the wind will
surely someday blow it all away
It amazes me, and I'm so very grateful that You made the
world this way
John Denver |
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We
believe we can change things according to our wishes
because
that's the only happy solution we can see. We don't
think
of what usually happens and what is also a happy
solution;
things don't change, but by and by our wishes
change.
Marcel
Proust |
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Before
we set our hearts too much upon anything, let us examine
how happy
they are who already possess it.
Francois de la Rochefoucauld |
What makes us discontented with our
condition is the absurdly exaggerated idea
we have of the
happiness of others.
Anon. |
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A child on a farm sees a plane fly
overhead and dreams of a faraway place.
A traveler on the
plane sees the farmhouse and dreams of home.
Carl Burns |
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Perspective
is one of the most important aspects of our lives.
How we see things determines more of our happiness our
unhappiness, positive or negative feelings, than we might
ever imagine. One person's undefeatable obstacle is another
person's stumbling block; what I see as an insult another
person may see as a funny joke. The way we react to things
is usually a reflection of how we've seen them.
tom walsh |
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Education
is more than schooling. It is a cast of mind, a willingness to
see the world with an endless sense of curiosity and wonder.
If you would be truly educated, you must adopt this cast
of mind. You must open yourself to the richness of your everyday
experience--to your own emotions, to the movements of the heavens and
the languages of birds, to the privations
and successes of people in
other lands and other times, to the artistry in the hands of the
mechanic and the typist and the child. There is no limit to the
learning that appears before us. It is enough to fill us each
day a thousand times over.
Kent
Nerburn
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There's
something special for everyone to do.
Remember, no experience is
a bad experience
unless you gain nothing from it.
Lyndon
Baines Johnson |
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It's not
what they do to you, it's what you do
with what they do to you, that
counts.
Jean-Paul Sartre |
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The
world is round and the place
which may seem like the end,
may also be
only the beginning.
Ivy
Baker Priest |
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Things
are only worth
what you make them worth.
Moliere |
Beware,
as long as you live,
of judging people by appearances.
Jean de
la Fontaine |
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Help
others solve their problems; standing farther away,
you can often see
matters more clearly than they do. . .
The greatest service you can
render someone else is
helping him or her help themselves.
Baltasar Gracian |
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One is
never as fortunate or as unfortunate as one imagines.
Francois
la Rochefoucauld |
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There
are defeats more
triumphant than victories.
Michel
de Montaigne |
The
wealth of the soul is
the only true wealth.
Lucian |
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A youth is to
be regarded with respect.
How do you know that his or her future
will not be equal to our present?
Confucius |
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Close your
eyes and you will see clearly
Cease to listen and you will hear the truth.
Taoist Poem |
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| Answers:
Candidate
A is Franklin D. Roosevelt
Candidate B is Winston Churchill
Candidate C is Adolph Hitler
And
the answer to the abortion question: If you said yes, you just
killed Ludwig von Beethoven.
Never
be afraid to try something new. Remember: amateurs built
the ark; professionals built the Titanic. |
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If we
could read the secret history of our enemies,
we should find in each
person's life sorrow and suffering
enough to disarm all hostility.
Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow |
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Perhaps
it would be a good idea, fantastic
as it sounds, to muffle every
telephone,
stop every motor and halt all activity
for an hour some day to give people
a chance to ponder for a few minutes
on what it is all
about, why they
are living and what they really want.
James
Truslow Adams
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Look
at everything as though you were seeing it
either for the first or
last time. Then your time
on earth will be filled with glory.
Betty Smith |
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They who will live for others
shall have great troubles, but they shall seem to them small.
Those who will live for themselves shall have small troubles, but they
shall seem to them great.
William R. Inge
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Perhaps
we only think we know where we are going as all the while we are
really
going somewhere quite different.
I have done many things in order to achieve
a valued goal only
to discover in time that the real goal my choices have led me toward
is something else entirely.
Something I could not even have known existed
when I first set
foot upon the path.
The purpose underlying life often wears the mask
of whatever
has our attention at the time.
The very reason we were born, our greatest blessing,
or our way
to serve may come into our lives looking like a new car, a chance to
travel,
or a cup of the finest coffee.
The truth is that we are always moving toward mystery
and so we
are far closer to what is real when we do not see our destination
clearly.
Rachel Naomi Remen |
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