community - community 2 - community 4

When the world seems large and
complex, we need to remember
that great world ideals all begin
in some home neighborhood.

Konrad Adenauer

   

It is the individual who is not interested in his or her fellow people who has the greatest difficulties in life and provides the greatest injury to others.  It is from among such individuals that all human failures spring.

Alfred Adler

      

Community is composed of that which we don't attempt to measure, for which we keep no record and ask no recompense.  Most are things we cannot measure no matter how hard we try.

Dee Hock
One from Many

  

You may not have saved a lot of money in your life, but if you have saved a lot of heartaches for other folks, you are a pretty rich person.

Seth Parker
  
  
No soul is desolate as long as there is a human being for whom it can feel trust and reverence.

George Eliot

   

Set about doing good to somebody.  Put on your hat and go and visit the sick and poor of your neighborhood; inquire into their circumstances and minister to their wants.  Seek out the desolate and afflicted and oppressed. . .  I have often tried this method, and have always found it the best medicine for a heavy heart.

Howard

  

Our highest calling is to the world around us, to the people with whom
we share this world of ours.  We learn about life through our interactions
with others, even if that interaction is reading words written by others.
While life in a monastery or convent, shut off from the rest of the world,
may be right for some people, we never get to know our potential and
limitations if we don't deal with other human beings, if we don't
do our "duty," which is the task before us.

tom walsh

  

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A child's kiss
Set on thy sighing lips shall make thee glad;
A poor man served by thee shall make thee rich;
A sick man helped by thee shall make thee strong;
Thou shalt be served thyself by every sense
Of service which thou renderest.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  

The markets of the world are flowing with goods and services
produced by the interplay of sun and earth, air and water,
and the inexhaustible imagination and energy of human beings.
Wherever you touch an object made or conveyed by humans,
you are touched by all the people who have reached their
hands to make this possible for you.  Daily use is daily communion.

Arthur P. Moor

  

Many people are good at talking about what they are doing, but in fact
do little.  Others do a lot but don't talk about it; they are
the ones who make a community live.

Jean Vanier
Community and Growth

   

We can scarcely hate anyone that we know.

William Hazlitt

   

Each one of us is bound to make the little circle in
which he or she lives better and happier.  Bound
to see that out of that small circle
the widest good may flow.

A.P. Stanley

   

  
Community, then, is an indispensable term in any discussion of the connection
between people and land.  A healthy community is a form that includes all the
local things that are connected by the larger, ultimately mysterious form of the
Creation.  In speaking of community, then, we are speaking of a complex
connection not only among human beings or between humans and their
homeland but also between human economy and nature, between forest
or prairie and field or orchard, and between troublesome creatures and
pleasant ones.  All neighbors are included.

Wendell Berry
The Art of the Commonplace
  

The foundations of civilization are no stronger and no more enduring
than the corporate integrity of the homes on which they rest.
If the home deteriorates, civilization will crumble and fall.

Billy Graham

  

This is the true joy in life, the being used up for a purpose recognized
by yourself as a mighty one; the being a force of nature instead of
a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that
the world will not devote itself to making you happy.  I am of the opinion
that my life belongs to the community, and as long as I live, it is my privilege
to do for it whatever I can.  I want to be thoroughly used up when I die,
for the harder I work the more I live.  I rejoice in life for its own sake.
Life is no “brief candle” to me.  It is a sort of splendid torch which I have
got hold of for a moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly
as possible before handing it on to future generations.

George Bernard Shaw

  

Unless we give part of ourselves away, unless we can live
with other people and understand them and help them,
we are missing the most essential part of our own lives.

Harold Taylor

  

To complain that life has no joys while there is a single person whom
we can relieve by our bounty, assist by our counsels or enliven
by our presence, is to lament the loss of that which we possess,
and is just as rational as to die of thirst with the cup in our hands.

Thomas Fitzosborne

  

When you learn to live for others, they will live for you.

Paramahansa Yogananda

   

   

Only a life lived for others is a life worth while.

Albert Einstein

Quotes on unity and oneness.

Life becomes harder for us when we live for others,
but it also becomes richer and happier.

Albert Schweitzer

True happiness consists in making others happy.

Hindu proverb

  

Try to forget yourself in the service of others.  For when we think too much
of ourselves and our own interests, we easily become despondent.
But when we work for others, our efforts return to bless us.

Sidney Powell

  

  

  

The true joy of humankind is in doing that which is most proper
to our nature; and the first property of people is to be kindly affected
towards them that are of one kind with ourselves.

Marcus Aurelius

 

When indeed shall we learn that we are all related one to the other,
that we are all members of one body?  Until the spirit of love for our
fellow people, regardless of race, color, or creed, shall fill the world,
making real in our lives and our deeds the actuality of human brother-
and sisterhood, until the great mass of the people shall be filled with
the sense of responsibility for each other's welfare,
social justice can never be attained.

Helen Keller

   

We will recognize that each person needs to nourish and be nourished by many
persons. . . . It is right, even necessary, to make yourselves available to one
another in new loving, caring, and fulfilling ways--without the spectres of old guilts.

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community - community 2 - community 4

I think we need to teach children the importance of others, and
that they cannot grow in this world without taking in others.
The more worlds they take in, these unique worlds, the more
they can become.  We need to teach them to trust others again,
because we're all frightened to death of each other.  We're building
higher and higher walls, stronger and stronger locks.  Tear down
the walls!  Every day I see how we're distrusting and it hurts.

Leo Buscaglia
   

If we could but recognize our common humanity, that we do belong together,
that our destinies are bound up in one another's, that we can be free only together,
that we can be human only together, then a glorious world would come into being
where all of us lived harmoniously together as members of one family, the human family.

Desmond Tutu

  

Culture makes people understand each other better.  And if they
understand each other better in their soul, it is easier to overcome
the economic and political barriers.  But first they have to
understand that their neighbor is, in the end, just like them,
with the same problems, the same questions.

Paulo Coelho

  
  

    

To see the earth as it truly is, small and blue and beautiful in that eternal
silence where it floats, is to see riders on the earth together, brothers
and sisters on that bright loveliness in the eternal cold--people who
know now they are truly brothers and sisters.

Archibald MacLeish

   

You are, whether with reluctance or with commitment, a unit of this community.
   The community you live in is not an entity separate from your life.  It is a
representation of your life.  You are the individual unit, the multiple of which
is us.
   Sometimes we feel alienated from our culture, as if it moved separately from
the people who compose it.  It cannot move without us.  We shape its values
and its quality each and every moment.
   How are your values shaping your community?  Stop a moment and imagine
all the people whom you identify as part of your community.  Decide what your
contribution to their quality of life will be.  The quality of your life will be closely
attuned to the quality of theirs.

Jennifer James
Success Is the Quality of Your Journey

Quotes on unity and oneness.

You know, we're all going in the same direction, or at least
trying to.  So we need to live together, get along together,
and give each other enough space to be comfortable on that road.

Lillian Gideon

   

Community cannot take root in a divided life.  Long before community
assumes external shape and form, it must be present as seed in the
undivided self:  only as we are in communion with ourselves can we
find community with others.  Community is an outward and visible sign
of an inward and invisible grace, the flowing of personal identity and
integrity into the world of relationships.

Parker J. Palmer
The Courage to Teach

  

We are each other's harvest; we are each other's business;
we are each other's magnitude and bond.

Gwendolyn Brooks

  

People must not choose their neighbors; they must take the neighbors that
God sends them.  The neighbor is just the person who is next to you at the
moment, the person with whom any business has brought you into contact.


George Macdonald

   

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If God is thy father, human beings are thy brothers and sisters.

Alphonse de Lamartine

  

God grant that not only the love of liberty but a thorough knowledge
of the rights of humans may pervade all the nations of the earth, so that
a philosopher may set his or her foot anywhere on its surface and say:
"This is my country."

Benjamin Franklin

  

Find out how much God has given you and take from it
what you need; the remainder is needed by others.

Saint Augustine

  

           
    

Alone in his car heading west, it's easy for Jason
to feel sorry for himself and mad at the world.  But
then he gives a ride to Hector and learns that life
isn't nearly as negative as we sometimes see it,
and that the prejudice and discrimination that
he's experiencing aren't unique to him--and aren't
impossible to overcome.  The friendship between
this young man and his 70-year-old passenger is
an inspiring story of love and dealing with
obstacles in our lives.    
Book - Kindle

    
   

      

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