God is awake

Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones; and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace. God is awake.

-- Victor Hugo (1802 1885)

Power

We touch the lives of others in ways we often never know. People sometimes come into our personal world for fleeting moments and can leave us forever changed. We have more power to create or to destroy than we can imagine.

We can leave things or individuals better or worse than we found them.

-- Gail Pursell Elliott

C-ing it through

" Confidence, curiosity, courage and constancy. ...the secrets of making dreams come true. "

-- Walt Disney

Therefore..

Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime,
Therefore, we are saved by hope.
Nothing true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history;
Therefore, we are saved by faith.
Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone.
Therefore, we are saved by love.
No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as from our own;
Therefore, we are saved by the final form of love, which is forgiveness.

-- Reinhold Niebuhr

Worries

As for worrying about what other people might think - forget it. They aren't concerned about you. They're too busy worrying about what you and other people think of them.

-- Michael le Boeuf

Taking charge

When we know that the cause of something is in ourselves, and that we (ourselves) are one of the few things in the universe that we have the right and ability to change, we begin to get a sense of the choices we really do have, an inkling of the power we have, a feeling of being in charge... of our lives, of our future, of our dreams.

- John-Roger and Peter McWilliams

Death by John Dunne

DEATH, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so:
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death; nor yet canst thou kill me.
From Rest and Sleep, which but thy picture be,
Much pleasure, then from thee much more must flow;
And soonest our best men with thee do go--
Rest of their bones and souls' delivery!
Thou'rt slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell;
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke. Why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And Death shall be no more: Death, thou shalt die!


Came across this beautiful poem recently, in Fortunes of War; Guy Pringle reading it aloud to Harriet as their ship leaves Athens for Cairo.

Inside you

Be thine own palace, or thy own jail.

Nothing Is Worthy Of Great Anxiety

Nothing in the affairs of men is worthy of great anxiety.

-- Plato