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The following Weekend thoughts have been selected by Brother Steven K. Robison, PM, Editor of the TrestleBoard for
Jackson Lodge #146, Seymour, Indiana. They have become a weekly tradition on The Philalethes e:mail list-server.
The mind is so rarely disturbed, but that the company of a friend will restore it to some degree of tranquility and
sedateness.
-Adam Smith
Familiar things happen, and mankind does not wonder about them. It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the
analysis of the obvious.
-Br. Alfred North Whitehead
The ideals that have lighted my way and, time after time, have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been
Kindness, Beauty, and Truth.
-Albert Einstein
Education: That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.
-Ambrose Bierce
The trouble with most of us is that we would rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism.
-Br. Norman Vincent Peale
The office of government is not to confer happiness, but to give men the opportunity to work out happiness for
themselves.
-William Ellery Channing
In any assembly the simplest way to stop transacting business and split the ranks is to appeal to a principle.
-Jacques Barzun
Kind words are the music of the world. They have a power which seems to be beyond natural causes, as if they were some
angel's song which had lost its way and come to earth.
-Friedrich W. Faber
A closed mind is an enigma, indeed.
Nothing ever goes in-but odd things are forever coming out.
-Lawrence Dunphy
It is only imperfection that complains of what is imperfect. The more perfect we are the more . . . quiet we become
toward the defects of others.
-Francois Fenelon
Truisms:
It's the absent who are judged guilty-and who are put on committees.
A chip on the shoulder is a sure sign of a blockhead.
To learn the worth of money, try borrowing some.
The man who can't make a choice makes a choice.
Tears are often the telescope through which men see far into heaven.
-Henry Ward Beecher
Love cannot stay at home; a man cannot keep it to himself.
Like light, it is constantly traveling.
A man
must spend it, must give it away.
-Alexander MacLeod
Men of sense often learn from their enemies. It is from their foes, not their friends, that cities learn the lesson of building
high walls and ships of war.
-Aristophanes
Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power; religion gives man wisdom which is
control.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
People who soar are those who refuse to sit back, sigh and wish things would change. They neither complain of their lot
nor passively dream of some distant ship coming in.
-Charles R. Swindoll
Truth may be stretched, but cannot be broken, and always gets above falsehood, as does oil above water.
-Miguel de Cervantes
Time is what prevents everything from happening at once.
-John Archibald Wheeler
A civil ruler dabbling in religion is as reprehensible as a clergyman dabbling in politics. Both render themselves odious as
well as ridiculous.
-James Cardinal Gibbons
An obstinate man does not hold opinions; they hold him.
-Samuel Butler
Opportunities are seldom labeled.
-John A. Shedd
It is not well to see everything, to hear everything; let many causes of offense pass by us unnoticed.
-Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Far away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them but I can look up and see their beauty,
believe in them and try to follow them.
-Louisa May Alcott
Life would be stunted and narrow if we could feel no significance in the world around us beyond that which can be
weighed and measured with the tools of the physicist or described by the metrical symbols of the mathematician.
-Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington
Too much sanity may be madness. And maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be!
-Miguel de Cervantes
Natural ability without education has more often attained to glory and virtue than education without natural
ability.
-Cicero
If virtue promises happiness, prosperity and peace, then progress in virtue is progress in each of these; for to whatever
point the perfection of anything brings us, progress is always an approach toward it.
-Epictetus
Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and
hostility to evaporate.
-Albert Schweitzer
If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in
certainties.
-Sir Francis Bacon
With the unlocking of the atom, mankind crossed one of the great watersheds of history. We have entered uncharted
lands. The maps of strategy and diplomacy by which we guided ourselves until yesterday no longer reveal the way. Fusion
and fission revolutionized the whole foundation of human affairs.
-Adlai Stevenson
[Could the same be said of the Internet?--SKR]
The rabble gather round the man of news, and listen with their mouths wide open; some tell, some hear, some judge of
news, some make it, and he that lies most loud, is most believed.
-John Dryden
I hate all bungling as I do sin, but particularly bungling in politics, which leads to the misery and ruin of many thousands
and millions of people.
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
A weak mind is like a microscope, which magnifies trifling things, but cannot receive great ones.
-Lord Chesterfield
Men, by associating in large masses, as in camps and cities, improve their talents but impair their virtues; and strengthen
their minds, but weaken their morals; thus a retrocession in the one, is too often the price they pay for a refinement of
the other.
-C. C. Colton
Learning is a dangerous weapon, and apt to wound its master if it be wielded by a feeble hand, or by one not well
acquainted with its use.
-Michel de Montaigne
Whatever makes the past or future predominate over the present, exalts us in the scale of thinking beings.
-Samuel Johnson
We never reach our ideals, whether of mental or moral improvement, but the thought of them shows us our deficiencies,
and spurs us on to higher and better things.
-Tryon Edwards
The hatred of those who are most nearly connected is the most inveterate.
-Tacitus
If any man seeks for greatness, let him forget greatness and ask for truth, and he will find both.
-Horace Mann
Ill fortune never crushed that man whom good fortune deceived not.
-Ben Jonson
Growing old is like being increasingly penalized for a crime you have not committed.
-Anthony Powell
The man who does not work for the love of work but only for money is not likely to make money nor to find much fun in
life.
-Charles W. Schwab
Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote.
-Chicago government poster
Virtue knows that it is impossible to get on without compromise, and tunes herself, as it were, a trifle sharp to allow for
an inevitable fall in playing.
-Samuel Butler
Human affairs inspire in noble hearts only two feelings-admiration or pity.
-Anatole France
Some intermixture of vain-glorious tempers puts life into business, and makes a fit composition in grand enterprises and
hazardous undertakings. For men of solid and sober natures have more of the ballast than the sail.
-Sir Francis Bacon
Truth is established by investigation and delay; falsehood prospers by precipitancy.
-Tacitus
In the end, thought rules the world. There are times when impulses and passions are ore powerful, but they soon expend
themselves; while mind, acting constantly, is ever ready to drive them back and work when their energy is
exhausted.
-James McCosh
When once a man is determined to believe, the very absurdity of the doctrine does but confirm him in his faith.
-Junius
Such as thy words are, such will thine affections be esteemed; and such as thine affections, will be thy deeds; and such as
thy deeds will be thy life.
-Socrates
Every personal consideration that we allow, costs us heavenly state. We sell the thrones of angels for a short and turbulent
pleasure.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
To look back to antiquity is one thing; to go back to it another. If we look back to it, it should be as those who are
running a race, only to press forward the faster, and to leave the beaten way still further behind.
-C. C. Colton
There is no future pang can deal that justice on the self-condemned, he deals on his own soul.
-Lord Byron
Reason clears and plants the wilderness of the imagination to harvest the wheat of art.
-Austin O'Malley
There are three gates of perception upon the universe: the sensual, the intellectual, and the emotional.
-Blaise Pascal
To know oneself is a matter of great importance in the world, so also it is important to be able to estimate the strength of
one's mental and physical powers.
-Niccolo Machiavelli
The soul of man is divided into three parts: intelligence and passion are possessed by other animals as well, but reason by
man alone. The soul is distinct from life; it is immortal, since that from which it is detached is immortal. Reason is
immortal, all else mortal.
-Pythagoras
Audacity augments courage; hesitation fear.
-Publilius Syrus
Not everything should be speculation; you must also act.
-Baltasar Gracian
The talent of success is nothing more than doing what you can do well, and
doing well whatever you do, without a thought of fame.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
All loving emotions, like plants, shoot up most rapidly in the tempestuous atmosphere of life.
-Jean Paul Richter
In wise love each divines the high secret self of the other, and, refusing to believe in the mere daily self, creates a mirror
where the lover or the beloved sees an image to copy in daily life.
-William Butler Yeats
A crowd is not a company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk but a tinkling cymbal where there is no
love.
-Sir Francis Bacon
Some will never learn anything, for this reason, because they understand everything too soon.
-Sir Thomas Pope Blount
People seldom improve when they have no model but themselves to copy after.
-Oliver Goldsmith
I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious
endeavor.
-Henry David Thoreau
He who reins within himself and rules passions, desires, and fears is more than a king.
-John Milton
The real essence of work is concentrated energy. People who really have that in a superior degree by nature are
independent of the forms and habits and artifices by which less able and active people are kept up to their labors.
-Walter Bagehot
No one has a finer command of language than the person who keeps his mouth shut.
-Sam Rayburn
Wealth is not without its advantages and the case to the contrary, although it has often been made, has never proved
widely persuasive.
-John Kenneth Galbraith
When I was young I used to think that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old, I know it
is.
-Oscar Wilde
In recognition of the upcoming US presidential election, a political anecdote:
Virginia governor Claude A. Swanson, having made a long and rambling speech, was greeted by a woman who came up
to the speaker's platform to shake his hand.
"How did you like my speech?" he asked.
"I liked it fine," she answered. "But it seems to me that you missed several excellent opportunities."
This puzzled Swanson. "Several excellent opportunities to do what?"
"To quit," she replied.
I make progress by having people around who are smarter than I am-and listening to them. And I assume that everyone is
smarter about something than I am.
-Henry J. Kaiser
Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.
-Adam Smith
That which today calls itself science gives us more and more information, an indigestible glut of information, and less and
less understanding.
-Edward Abbey
Where there is a great deal of free speech there is always a certain amount of foolish speech.
-Winston Churchill
A page of history is worth a volume of logic.
-Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of it. The history of liberty is
the history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of limitations of governmental power, not the increase of
it.
-Woodrow Wilson
Democracy is based upon the conviction that there are extra ordinary possibilities in ordinary people.
-Harry Emerson Fosdick
God gives every bird its food, but He does not throw it into the nest.
-J. G. Holland
A country losing touch with its own history is like an old man losing his glasses. A distressing sight, at once vulnerable,
unsure, and easily disoriented.
-George Walden
Responsibilities gravitate to the person who can shoulder them; power flows to the man who knows how.
-Elbert Hubbard
Scholars are men of peace; they bear no arms, but their tongues are sharper than the sword; their pens carry further and
give a louder report than thunder. I had rather stand in the shock of a basilisk than in the fury of a merciless pen.
-Sir Thomas Browne
If we would have anything of benefit, we must earn it, and earning it become shrewd, inventive, ingenious, active,
enterprising.
-Henry W. Beecher
Truly wise you are not unless your wisdom be constantly changing from your childhood on to your death.
-Maurice Maeterlinck
Our humanity were a poor thing were it not for the divinity which stirs within us.
-Sir Francis Bacon
The older I become, the more I realize that dreams are something which do not fade.
-Jean Cocteau
There is only one real failure in life that is possible, and that is, not to be true to the best one knows.
-Frederick W. Farrar
Nothing is more useful to man than those arts which have no utility.
-Ovid
It matters not what you are thought to be, but what you are.
-Publilius Syrus
Love is but the heart's immortal thirst to be completely known and all forgiven.
-Henry Van Dyke
A word grows to a thought, a thought to an idea, an idea to an act. The change is slow, and the present is a sluggish
traveler loafing in the path tomorrow wants to take.
-Beryl Markham
Do the duty which lieth nearest to thee! The second duty will already have become clearer.
-Thomas Carlyle
Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness.
-Lucretius
Never violate the sacredness of your individual self-respect. Be true to your own mind and conscience, your heart and
your soul; so only can you be true to God.
-Theodore Parker
Nature holds an immense uncollected debt over every man's head.
-Henry Ward Beecher
Reputation is what men and women think of us; character is what God and angels know of us.
-Thomas Paine
In a free and republican government, you cannot restrain the voice of the multitude. Every man will speak as he thinks,
or, more properly, without thinking, and consequently will judge of effects without attending to their causes.
-George Washington
Of the present state, whatever it be, we feel and are forced to confess the misery; yet when the same state is again at a
distance, imagination paints it as desirable.
-Samuel Johnson
All persons possessing any portion of power ought to be strongly and awfully impressed with an idea that they act in trust,
and that they are to account for their conduct in that trust to the one great Master, Author and founder of
society.
-Edmund Burke
Philosophy alone makes the mind invincible, and places us out of the reach or fortune, so that all her arrows fall short of
us.
-Seneca
Politics, and the fate of mankind, are shaped by men without ideals and without greatness.
-Albert Camus
The lower classes of men, though they do not think it worthwhile to record what they perceive, nevertheless perceive
everything that is worth noting; the difference between them and a man of learning often consists in nothing more than
the latter's facility for expression.
-G. C. Lichtenberg
What is morality in any given time or place? It is what the majority then and there happen to like, and immorality is
what they dislike.
-Alfred North Whitehead
He who would do good to another must do it in minute particulars; general good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite
and flatterer. For art and science cannot exist but in minutely organized particulars.
-William Blake
A belief in hell and the knowledge that every ambition is doomed to frustration at the hands of a skeleton have never
prevented the majority of human beings from behaving as though death were no more than an unfounded rumor, and
survival a thing not beyond the bounds of possibility.
-Aldous Huxley
Few people have ever seriously wished to be exclusively rational. The good life which most desire is a life warmed by
passions and touched with that ceremonial grace which is impossible without some affectionate loyalty to traditional forms
and ceremonies.
-Joseph Wood Kurtch
Ah! On Thanksgiving day, when from the East and from the West,
From North and South, come the pilgrim and guest,
When the gray-haired New Englander sees round his board
The old broken links of affection restored,
When the care wearied man seeks his mother once more,
And the worn matron smiles where the girl smiled before,
What moistens the lips and what brightens the eye?
What calls back the past, like the rich pumpkin pie?
-John Greenleaf Whittier
[Happy Thanksgiving to US Brethren on the List!]
Positive attitudes-optimism, high self-esteem, an outgoing nature, joyousness, and the ability to cope with stress-may be
the most important bases for continued good health.
-Helen Hayes
Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.
-Cicero
To dazzle let the vain design; to raise the thought, and touch the heart, be thine.
-Alexander Pope
Right is more beautiful than private affection, and is compatible with universal wisdom.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
Creativity can solve almost any problem. The creative act, the defeat of habit by originality, overcomes everything.
-George Lois
A mediocre idea that generates enthusiasm will go further than a great idea that inspires no one.
-Mary Kay Ash
In spite of illness, in spite even of the archenemy sorrow, one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if
one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways.
-Edith Wharton
The weakness of human reason appears more evidently in those who know it not than in those who know it.
-Blaise Pascal
Nature is an infinite sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.
-Blaise Pascal
I think that, as life is action and passion, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of his
time.
-Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
We are, perhaps uniquely among the earth's creatures, the worrying animal.
We worry away our lives, fearing the future, discontent with the present, unable to take in the idea of dying, unable to sit
still.
-Lewis Thomas
People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on
in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make
them.
-George Bernard Shaw
We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us happy is
something to be enthusiastic about.
-Charles Kingsley
It must be borne in mind that the tragedy of life does not lie in not reaching your goals; the tragedy of life lies in not
having any goals to reach.
-Benjamin I. Mays
Foolish men mistake transitory semblances for eternal fact, and go astray more and more.
-Thomas Carlyle
Money is a wonderful thing, but it is possible to pay too high a price for it.
-Alexander Bloch
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The purest treasure mortal times afford
Is spotless reputation; that away,
Men are but gilded loam or painted clay.
-William Shakespeare
The weak have one weapon: the errors of those who think they are strong.
-George Bidault
First doubt, then inquire, then discover. This has been the process with all our great thinkers.
-H. T. Buckle
There is no belief too foolish or too debased to excite enthusiasm or self-sacrifice.
-Raymond Mortimer
If the Creator had a purpose in equipping us with a neck, He surely meant us to stick it out.
-Arthur Koestler
We are incredibly heedless in the formation of our beliefs, but find ourselves with an illicit passion for them when anyone
proposes to rob us of their companionship. It is obviously not the ideas themselves that are dear to us, but our self-esteem
that is threatened.
-James Harvey
The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when
he compares the volume as it is with what he hoped to make it.
-James M. Barrie
Great men stand like solitary towers in the city of God, and secret passages, running deep beneath external nature, give
their thoughts intercourse with higher intelligence, which strengthens and consoles them, and of which the laborers on the
surface do not even dream.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
These are a few "bon mots" of Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
Circles.
Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force; that thoughts rule the world.
Progress of Culture. Phi Beta Kappa Address, July 18, 1867.
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.
Self-Reliance
To be great is to be misunderstood.
Ibid.
A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of Nature.
Friendship.
The hearing ear is always found close to the speaking tongue.
English Traits. Race.
Life is not so short but that there is always time enough for courtesy.
Letters and Social Aims. Social Aims.
Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it.
Quotation and Originality
By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote.
Ibid.
If we believe in magic, we'll live a magical life. If we believe our life is defined by narrow limits, we've suddenly made
those beliefs real.
-Anthony Robbins
Reason is our soul's left hand, Faith her right; by these we reach divinity.
-John Donne
The habit of being happy enables one to be freed, or largely freed, from the domination of outward conditions.
-Robert Louis Stevenson
Apply discipline to your thoughts when they become anxious over the outcome of a goal. Impatience breeds anxiety, fear,
discouragement and failure. Patience creates confidence, decisiveness and a rational outlook, which eventually leads to
success.
-Brian Adams
Principles are like seeds; they are little things which do much good, if the mind that receives them has the right
attitudes.
-Seneca
Truisms:
The universe is simple-it's the explanation of it that's complex.
In a perfect world, we would find our young years and our old friends.
The world has much more to fear from the bungling of its fools than from the deliberate mischief of its wicked.
A fool and his guilt are soon parted.
For purposes of action, nothing is more useful than narrowness of thought combined with energy of will.
-Henri F. Amiel
To have a crisis and act on it, is one thing. To dwell in perpetual crisis is another.
-Barbara Harrison
May I govern my passions with absolute sway,
And grow wiser and better as life wears away.
-Isaac Watts
If the soul be happily disposed, everything becomes capable of affording entertainment, and distress will almost want a
name.
-Oliver Goldsmith
It is not only arrogant, but profligate, for a man to disregard the world's opinion of himself.
-Cicero
It is certain that either wise bearing, or ignorant carriage is caught, as men take diseases, one from another; therefore let
men take heed of their company.
-William Shakespeare
I never knew an early-rising, hard-working, prudent man, careful of his earnings, and strictly honest, who complained of
bad luck. A good character, good habits, and iron industry are impregnable to the assaults of all the ill-luck that fools
ever dreamed of.
-Joseph Addison
Happiness . . . loves to see men work. She loves sweat, weariness, self-sacrifice. She will not be found in the palaces, but
lurking in cornfields and factories, and hovering over littered decks.
-David Grayson
Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what
things are and what they might have been.
-William Hazlitt
Seek those who find your road agreeable, your personality and mind stimulating, your philosophy acceptable, and your
experiences helpful. Let those who do not, seek their own kind.
-Jean-Henri Fabre
Only those means of security are good, are certain, are lasting, that depend on yourself and your own vigor.
-Niccolo Machiavelli
The present time is seldom able to fill desire or imagination with immediate enjoyment, and we are forced to supply its
deficiencies by recollection or anticipation.
-Samuel Johnson
Truisms:
Money is the root of all evil-but man needs roots.
No one ever lost money betting on the stupidity of mankind.
People who fly into a rage always land poorly.
Policy is, at best, a poor substitute for reason and thinking.
We promise according to our hopes, and perform according to our fears.
Happy is the man who ventures boldly to defend what he holds dear.
-Ovid
No matter how much a man can do, no matter how engaging his personality may be, he will not advance far in business if
he cannot work through others.
-John Craig
How poor are they that have not patience?
What wound did ever heal but by degrees?
-William Shakespeare
It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has
worked on it.
-John Steinbeck
A preoccupation with the future not only prevents us from seeing the present as it is, but often prompts us to rearrange
the past.
-Eric Hoffer
Every man must at last accept himself for his portion, and learn to do his work with the tools and talents with which he
has been endowed.
-Charles A. Hawley
The only faith that wears well and holds its color in all weather is that which is woven of conviction.
-James Russell Lowell
There is no wealth but life.
-John Ruskin
The soul attracts that which it secretly harbors; that which it loves, and also that which it fears; it reaches the height of its
cherished aspirations; it falls to the level of its unchastened desires.
Every thought-seed sown or allowed to fall into the mind, and to take root there, produces its own, blossoming sooner or
later into act, and bearing its own furtive of opportunity and circumstance. Good thoughts bear good fruit; bad thoughts,
bad fruit.
-James Allen
Home shall men come,
To an older place than Eden
And a taller town than Rome.
To the end of the way of the wandering star,
To the things that cannot be and that are,
To the place where God was homeless
And all men are at home.
-G. K. Chesterton
Mighty, praised beyond compare,
Rock of my salvation,
Build again my house of prayer,
For thy habitation!
-Hanukkah hymn
Thirty days make up the month,
And yet, as God's Qur'an doth tell,
In degree the Night of Merit doth
A thousand months excel.
-Asadi Abu Nasr Ahmed (Persian poet 11th Century)
**For all List members, at this Holiday Season, may you have the blessings of Home, Health, Happiness, Family, and
Peace.**
[What can be added to the happiness of a man who is in health, out of debt, and has a clear conscience?
-Adam Smith]
The unsaid part is the best of every discourse.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
We flatter those we scarcely know,
We please the fleeting guest,
And deal full many a thoughtless blow
To those who love us best.
-Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Oh, Mr. President, do not let so great an achievement suffer from any taint of legality.
-Philander Chase Knox (attrib. response to President Theodore Roosevelt's request
for legal justification for US acquisition of Panama Canal Zone)
The sublime and the ridiculous are often so nearly related, that it is difficult to class them separately. One step above the
sublime, makes the ridiculous; and one step above the ridiculous makes the sublime again.
-Thomas Paine
It is enough that we set out to mold the motley stuff of life into some form of our own choosing; when we do, the
performance is itself the wage.
-Learned Hand
Habit, if not resisted, soon becomes necessity.
-St. Augustine
Here is a rule to remember in the future, when anything tempts you to be bitter: Not, "This is a misfortune," but, "To
bear this worthily is good fortune."
-Marcus Aurelius
Remember this, that very little is needed to make a happy life.
-Marcus Aurelius
Wickedness is always easier than virtue, for it takes the short cut to everything.
-James Boswell
My own experience and development deepen every day my conviction that our moral progress may be measured by the
degree in which we sympathize with individual suffering and individual joy.
-George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans)
Few men are of one plain, decided color; most are mixed, shaded, or blended; and vary as much from different situations,
as changeable silks do from different lights.
-Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield
Good nature is more agreeable in conversation than wit and gives a certain air to the countenance which is more amiable
than beauty.
-Joseph Addison
A man's first care should be to avoid the reproaches of his own heart, and his next to escape the censures of the
world.
-Joseph Addison
Possessions, outward success, publicity, luxury-to me these have always been contemptible. I assume that a simple and
unassuming manner of life is best for everyone, best for both the body and the mind.
-Albert Einstein
A multitude of laws in a country is like a great number of physicians, a sign of weakness and malady.
-Francois M. A. Voltaire
[I hope I will be forgiven for including a political (albeit nonpartisan) selection in this issue. The following poem appears
at footnote 16 of the Supreme Court of Florida's December 22, 2000 opinion (Pariente, J., concurring) responding to the
remand from the US Supreme Court in the 2000 US election case; and, I think, speaks volumes as to the essence of
democratic government. The poem transcends, in my opinion, US politics; and, captures the spirit of free elections:]
The Poor Voter on Election Day
To-day, of all the weary year,
A king of men am I.
To-day, alike are great and small,
The nameless and the known;
My palace is the people's hall,
The ballot-box my throne!
The rich is level with the poor,
The weak is strong to-day;
And sleekest broadcloth counts no more
Than homespun frock of gray.
To-day let pomp and vain pretense
My stubborn right abide;
I set a plain man's common sense
Against the pendant's pride.
The wide world has not wealth to buy
The power in my right hand!
-John Greenleaf Whittier
When friendship disappears then there is a space left open to that awful loneliness of the outside world which is like the
cold space between the planets. It is an air in which men perish utterly.
-Hillaire Belloc
The degree of one's emotion varies inversely with one's knowledge of the facts-the less you know the hotter you
get.
-Bertrand Russell
Many a man fails to become a great thinker only because his memory is too good.
-F. W. Nietzsche
True enjoyment comes from activity of the mind and exercise of the body; the two are ever united.
-Baron Alexander von Humboldt
Laughter is the cipher key wherewith we decipher the whole man.
-Thomas Carlyle
So long as we love we serve; so long as we are loved by others, I would almost say we are indispensable; and no man is
useless while he has a friend.
-Robert Louis Stevenson
Human felicity is produced not as much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen as by little advantages that
occur every day.
-Benjamin Franklin
As civilization progresses, we should improve our laws basically, not superficially. Many things that are lawful are highly
immoral and some things which are moral are unlawful.
-Henry L. Doherty
Each of us is an impregnable fortress that can be laid waste only from within.
-Timothy Flynn
Every person is responsible for all the good within the scope of his abilities, and for no more, and none can tell whose
sphere is the largest.
-Gail Hamilton
To give real service you must add something which cannot be bought or measured with money, and that is sincerity and
integrity.
-Donald A. Adams
Anger, if not restrained, is frequently more hurtful to us than the injury that provokes it.
-Seneca
Year's end is neither an end nor a beginning but a going on, with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us.
--Hal Borland
Now the New Year reviving old Desires,
The thoughtful Soul to Solitude retires.
--Omar Khayyam
Whatever the past year may have meant to you, make it dead history. But let the new year be a living issue. With a big,
fresh sponge, dripping with the clear water of forgiveness, wipe clean the slate of your heart. Enter the year with a kind
thought for every one. You need not kiss the hand that smote you, but grasp it in cordial good feeling, and let the
electricity of your own resolves find its connecting current-which very often exists where we think it not. Make the new
year a happy one in your home; be bright of disposition; carry your cares easy; let your heart be as sunshine, and your
life will give warmth to all around you. And thus will you and yours be happy.
-Ladies' Home Journal
The wave is breaking on the shore-
The echo fading from the chime-
Again the shadow moveth o'er
The dial-plate of time.
-John Greenleaf Whittier
Every day is a fresh beginning,
Listen, my soul, to the glad refrain,
And spite of old sorrow, and older sinning,
And troubles forecasted, and possible pain,
Take heart with the day, and begin again.
-Susan Coolidge
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 'neath silent skies;
. . .
This is the Year that for you waits
Beyond Tomorrow's mystic gates.
-Horatio Nelson Powers
Look not mournfully into the past. It comes not back again.
Wisely improve the present. It is thine.
Go forth to meet the shadowy future, without fear, and with a manly heart.
--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
If I wanted to become a tramp, I would seek information and advice from the most successful tramp I could find. If I
wanted to become a failure I would seek advice from men who have never succeeded. If I wanted to succeed in all things,
I would look around me for those who are succeeding, and do as they have done.
-Joseph Marshall Wade
The men who try to do something and fail are infinitely better than those who try nothing and succeed.
-Lloyd Jones
It is not love of self, but hatred of self, which is at the root of the troubles that afflict our world.
-Eric Hoffer
A nation without dregs and malcontents is orderly, peaceful and pleasant-but perhaps without the seed of things to
come.
-Eric Hoffer
If you do what you should not, you must bear what you would not.
-Benjamin Franklin
Truisms:
Any fool can complain, criticize, and condemn. Most do.
No one ever lost money betting on the stupidity of mankind.
The only proper angle for approaching a problem: the try-angle.
Nothing is more terrifying than ignorance in action.
It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you place the blame.
Life has not taught me to expect nothing, but she has taught me not to expect success to be the inevitable result of my
endeavors.
-Alan Paton
True hope is swift,
and flies with swallow's wings.
Kings it makes gods,
and meaner creatures kings.
-William Shakespeare
Fight! Be somebody! If you have lost confidence in yourself, make believe you are somebody else, somebody that's got
brains, and act like him.
-Sol Hess
Man must be arched and buttressed from within, else the temple will crumble to dust.
-Marcus Aurelius
Every man is worth just as much as the things he busies himself with.
-Marcus Aurelius
He who has learning without imagination has feet but no wings.
-Stanley Goldstein
If there were no falsehood in the world, there would be no doubt; if there were no doubt, there would be no inquiry; if no
inquiry, no wisdom, no knowledge, no genius.
-Walter S. Landor
In every object there is inexhaustible meaning; the eye sees in it what the eye brings means of seeing.
-Thomas Carlyle
The man who has acquired the power of keeping his mind filled with the thoughts which uplift and encourage, the
optimistic thought, the cheerful, hopeful thought, has solved one of the great riddles of life.
-Orison S. Marden
One must know how to sail with a contrary wind and to tack until one meets a wind in the right direction.
-Fortune de Felice
Only the brave know how to forgive. A coward never forgives. It is not his nature.
-Robert Muller
Life is the only game where the object of the game is to figure out what the rules are.
-Tom Seeley
Power undirected by high purpose spells calamity.
-Theodore Roosevelt
Nine times out of ten, in the arts as in life, there is actually no truth to be discovered; there is only error to be
exposed.
-H. L. Mencken
Not armies, not nations, have advanced the race; but here and there, in the course of the ages, an individual has stood up
and cast his shadow over the world.
-Edwin H. Chapin
He is free who knows how to keep in his own hands the power to decide, at each step, the course of his life, and who lives
in a society which does not block the exercise of that power.
-Salvador de Madariaga
If there be any truer measure of a man than by what he does, it must be by what he gives.
-Robert South
When the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers.
-Oscar Wilde
An army of stags led by a lion is more to be feared than an army of lions led by a stag.
-Chabrias
Every reform, however necessary, will by weak minds be carried to an excess, that itself will need reforming.
-Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The learned fool writes his nonsense in better language than the unlearned, but still 'tis nonsense.
-Benjamin Franklin
Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those whom we cannot resemble.
-Samuel Johnson
The aim of life is some way of living, as flexible and gentle as human nature; so that ambition may stoop to kindness, and
philosophy to candor and humor. Neither prosperity nor empire nor heaven can be worth winning at the price of a
virulent temper, bloody hands, an anguished spirit, and a vain hatred of the rest of the world.
-George Santayana
If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations
under them.
-Henry David Thoreau
Mistakes are lessons in wisdom. The past cannot be changed. The future is yet in your power.
-Hugh White
Truisms:
The essential rule of happiness is something challenging to do, someone nice to love, and something good to hope
for.
The best time to relax is when you don't have time for it.
The best way to forget your problems is to help other people with theirs.
We are here on earth to do good for others, but what the others are here for isn't clear at all.
When all is said and done, more usually is said than done.
The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and the will to carry on.
-Walter Lippmann
Sin is a dangerous toy in the hands of the virtuous. It should be left to the congenitally sinful, who know when to play
with it and when to let it alone.
-H. L. Mencken
First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.
-Epictetus
It is a sign of a dull mind to dwell upon the cares of the body, to prolong exercise, eating and drinking, and other bodily
functions. These things are best done by the way; all your attention must be given to the mind.
-Epictetus
The secret of happiness is this: Let your interests be as wide as possible, and let your reactions to things and persons that
interest you be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile.
-Bertrand Russell
A desire to be observed, considered, esteemed, praised, beloved, and admired by his fellows is one of the earliest as well
as the keenest dispositions discovered in the heart of man.
-John Adams
Fate gives us the hand, and we play the cards.
-Arthur Schopenhauer
The work an unknown good man has done is like a vein of water flowing hidden underground, secretly making the ground
green.
-Thomas Carlyle
Great ideals and principles do not live from generation to generation just because they are right, nor even because they
have been carefully legislated. Ideals and principles continue from generation to generation only when they are built into
the hearts of the children as they grow up.
-George S. Benson
Toleration is good for all or it is good for none.
-Edmund Burke
I've never known a man worth his salt who in the long run, deep down in his heart, didn't appreciate the grind, the
discipline. . . . I firmly believe that any man's finest hour-this greatest fulfillment to all he holds dear-is that moment
when he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle-victorious.
-Vince Lombardi
Has justice ever grown in the soil of absolute power? Has not justice always come from the heart and spirit of men who
resist power?
-Woodrow Wilson
Contentment . . . comes as the infallible result of great acceptances, great humilities-of not trying to make ourselves this
or that . . . but of surrendering ourselves to the fullness of life-of letting life flow through us.
-David Grayson
Precept is instruction written in the sand. The tide flows over it, and the record is gone. Example is graven on the rock,
and the lesson is not soon lost.
-William E. Channing
The perfect man employs his mind as a mirror. It grasps nothing; it refuses nothing; it receives, but doesn't keep. Thus
he can triumph over matter, without injury to himself.
-Lao-tzu
We have many second chances in life, sometimes even tenth chances. Let no man give up hope till the last breath is
drawn.
-Charles F. Potter
Intolerance is natural and logical, for in every dissenting opinion lies an assumption of superior wisdom.
-Ambrose Bierce
No man of honor ever quite lives up to his code, any more than a moral man manages to avoid sin.
-H. L. Mencken
If a man look sharply and attentively, he shall see Fortune; for though she is blind, she is not invisible.
-Francis Bacon
Knowledge is the treasure; but judgment is the treasurer of a wise man.
-William Penn
Truisms:
When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth.
The way some people find fault, you'd think there was a reward for it.
Any person who owns a telephone is at the mercy of any fool who knows how to use one.
The world is full of surprises-precious few of them are pleasant.
One usually is most tolerant of the things that least affect him.
It is impossible for a man to be cheated by anyone but himself.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
There is no passion so much transports the sincerity of judgment as doth anger.
-Michel de Montaigne
A criminal is a person with predatory instincts who has not sufficient capital to form an insurance company.
-Howard Scott (ad.)
To believe in the things you see and touch is no belief at all; but to believe in the unseen is a triumph and a
blessing.
-Abraham Lincoln
Characters live to be noticed; people with character notice how they live.
-Nancy Moser
The easiest thing of all is to deceive oneself, for what a man wishes, he generally believes to be true.
-Demosthenes
Vanity will set a crown upon its own head and wonder why all men do not rush to acknowledge it king. It will bray like
an ass and imagine itself singing in a grand opera.
-Julian P. Johnson
There is no difference between an enlightened man and an ignorant one. What makes the difference, is that the one
realizes it, while the other is kept in ignorance of it.
-Hui-Neng
Minds are of three kinds: One is capable of thinking for itself; another is able to understand the thinking of others; and, a
third can neither think for itself nor understand the thinking of others. The first is of the highest excellence; the second is
excellent; and, the third is worthless.
-Niccolo Machiavelli
We must always change, renew, rejuvenate ourselves; otherwise, we harden.
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The power of choice must involve the possibility of error-that is the essence of choosing.
-Herbert Samuel
Courage is very important; like a muscle, it is strengthened by use.
-Ruth Gordon
Nothing is so bitter that a calm mind cannot find comfort in it.
-Seneca
Truisms:
Verbal agreements cause verbal disagreements.
Poverty of material goods is easily cured; poverty of the mind is irreparable.
Ever notice that the man with time to burn seldom seems to give the world much light?
You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time. That usually is sufficient.
Don't believe in superstition-it brings bad luck.
We must never throw away a bushel of truth because it happens to contain a few grains of chaff.
-Arthur Stanley
There is no wealth but life; that country is the richest which nourishes the greatest number of noble and happy human
beings.
-John Ruskin
Though a man be learned, if he does not apply his knowledge, he resembles the blind man, who, lamp in hand, cannot see
the road.
-Tibetan saying
We have too many high-sounding words, and too few actions that correspond with them.
-Abigail Adams
The grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never all dried at once; a shower is forever falling;
vapor is ever rising.
Eternal sunrise, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth
rolls.
-John Muir
All happy families resemble one another; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
-Leo Tolstoy
Kindness is more important than wisdom; and, the recognition of this is the beginning of wisdom.
-Theodore Isaac Rubin
There are two kinds of charity, remedial and preventive. The former is often injurious in its tendency; the latter is always
praiseworthy and beneficial.
-Tryon Edwards
What is a child? An experiment. A fresh attempt to produce the just man . . . that is to make humanity divine. . . . And
if you should try to shape this new being in your idea of a godly man or a godly woman, you will destroy its own holiest
expectation and perhaps create a monster.
-George Bernard Shaw
Conscience warns us as a friend before it punishes us as a judge.
-Leszczynski Stanislaw
We should take care not to make the intellect our God.
-Albert Einstein
If I were to name the three most precious resources of life, I would say books, friends, and nature; and the greatest of
these, at least the most important and always at hand, is nature.
-John Burroughs
Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.
-William Shakespeare
Never let yourself hate any person. It is the most devastating weapon of one 's enemies.
-Dr. Thomas N. Hepburn (in letter to daughter, Katherine)
If we could be twice young and twice old we could correct all our mistakes.
-Euripides
Knowledge is a comfortable and necessary retreat and shelter for us in an advanced age; and if we do not plant it while
young, it will give us no shade when we grow old.
-Lord Chesterfield
Most of life is routine-dull and grubby, but routine is the momentum that keeps a man going. If you wait for inspiration
you'll be standing on the corner after the parade is a mile down the street.
-Ben Nicholas
Truisms:
Ever notice that those who cannot find the diamonds in life are usually satisfied with cheap, shiny glass?
An error is more dangerous, the more truth contained in it.
A man begins cutting his wisdom teeth the first time he bites off more than he can chew.
In many matters, we begin by wanting to save the world, and end by just wishing to be able to leave the room with a little
dignity.
Peanut prizes inspire monkey contestants.
Hunger is my native place in the land of passions. Hunger for friendship, hunger for righteousness for a fellowship
founded on righteousness, and a righteousness attained in fellowship.
-Dag Hammarskjold
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