Avoid loud and aggressive persons,
they are vexations to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain and bitter;
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.

Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs;
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals;
and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself.
Especially, do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love;
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment
it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.

You are a child of the universe,
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be,
and whatever your labours and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful.
Strive to be happy.

Max Ehrmann, Desiderata, Copyright 1952.

From http://hobbes.ncsa.uiuc.edu/desiderata.html

He grew up in another village, where he worked in a carpenter's shop until he was thirty
Then for three years he became a wandering preacher

He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never had a family or owned a house
He didn't go to college. He never visited a big city

He never travelled more than two hundred miles from the place where he was born
He did none of those things one usually associates with greatness

He had no credentials but himself.

He was only thirty-three when the tide of public opinion turned against him. His friends ran away. One of his friends denied him

He was turned over to his enemies and went through a mockery of a trial. He was executed by the state, nailed to a cross between two thieves

While he was dying, his executioners gambled for his clothing, the only property he had on earth
When he was dead he was laid in a borrowed grave through the pity of a friend.

Twenty One centuries have come and gone, and today he is the central figure of the human race and the leader of mankind's progress

All the armies that ever marched, all the navies that ever sailed
All the parliaments that ever sat, all the kings that ever reigned, put together
have not affected the life of mankind on this earth as much as that One Solitary Life

(c) 1926 by Dr James Allan Francis in “The Real Jesus and Other Sermons” Judson Press of Philadelphia

Adapted from: http://www.anointedlinks.com/one_solitary_life_original.html

My non-religious, very productive Motto !!

  Seek and you will find

    Ask and you will receive

      Knock and you will enter...

From Matthew 7:7

You Are What You Think !!

Pay attention to your thoughts, because they become words

  Pay attention to your words, because they become actions

    Pay attention to your actions, because they become habits

      Pay attention to your habits, because they become your character

        Pay attention to your character, because it is your fate...

The Talmud

You Are What You Think !!

We are what we think
    All that we are arises with our thoughts
        With our thoughts we make the world

Speak or act with an impure mind   And trouble will follow you   As the wheel follows the ox that draws the cart

We are what we think
    All that we are arises with our thoughts
        With our thoughts we make the world

Speak or act with a pure mind   And happiness will follow you   As your shadow, unbreakable

How can a troubled mind Understand the way?
    Your worst enemy cannot harm you   As much as your own thoughts, unguarded
        But once mastered,   No one can help you as much,   Not even your father or your mother

The Words of the Buddha, from the Dhammapada

"To attain knowledge, add things every day; to obtain wisdom, remove things every day..." - Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu from Tao Te Ching

"How do you change the world? By one Act of Random Kindness at a time..." - Morgan Freeman as God in "Evan Almighty"

"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate... Returning violence for violence multiples violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: Only love can do that.." - Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968)

"Violence has no way to conceal itself except by lies, and lies have no way to maintain themselves except through violence. Anyone who has proclaimed violence his method inexorably must choose lying as his principle" - Alexander Solzhenitsyn in his speech accepting the Nobel Prize

"Success isn't something you chase. It's something you have to put forth the effort for constantly. Then maybe it'll come when you least expect it. Most people don't understand that" - Michael Jordan

"Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm" — Sir Winston Churchill

"We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give" - Sir Winston Churchill

"The fascists of the future will be the anti-fascists" not a Churchill quote

The toughest thing about success is that you've got to keep on being a success - Irving Berlin

“Good judgment comes from experience, but experience usually comes from poor judgment”

"It is error alone which needs the support of government, truth can stand by itself" - Thomas Jefferson

"The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases" - Thomas Jefferson

"I have seen great intolerance shown in support of tolerance" - Samuel Taylor Coleridge

"If you meet all your goals, you have probably chosen too easy ones..." - Herbert von Karajan

"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power" - Abraham Lincoln

"Turn your face to the sun and the shadows will fall behind you" - Old sundial motto

"Like fire in a piece of flint, knowledge exists in the mind"
           "Suggestion is the friction which brings it out" - Vivekananda

"A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul" - George Bernard Shaw

"I like your Christ, I dislike your Christians, for they are unlike your Christ" - Ghandi

"Beware of those with a desire to punish" - Goethe

"The EU is the old Soviet Union dressed in Western clothes" - Mikhail Gorbachev

"The most puzzling development in politics during the last decade is the apparent determination of Western European leaders to re-create the Soviet Union in Western Europe" - Mikhail Gorbachev

"I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me" - Sir Isaac Newton

"If I have seen further [than others], it is by standing on the shoulders of giants" - Sir Isaac Newton

"N’´ecrire jamais rien qui de soi ne sortit, Et modeste d’ailleurs, se dire mon petit, Soit satisfait des fleurs, des fruits, mˆeme des feuilles, Si c’est dans ton jardin `a toi que tu les cueilles!
Ne pas monter bien haut, peut-ˆetre, mais tout seul!

Never to write anything that does not proceed from the heart, and, moreover, to say modestly to myself, “My dear, be content with flowers, with fruits, even with leaves, if you gather them in your own garden!”
Not to climb very high perhaps, but to climb all alone!" - Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac, Act II, Scene 8

"I always tried to turn every disaster into an opportunity" - John D Rockafeller Snr

"To learn who rules over you simply find out who you are not allowed to criticise" - Voltaire

"It isn't the votes that count, It is who is counting the votes that counts" - Stalin

"In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not" - Anonymous

"I generally avoid temptation unless I can't resist it" - Mae West

Do you believe in a forthcoming "Technological Singularity"? See 2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal

"C makes you think that C is the world's greatest language -- Forth makes you think that you're the world's greatest programmer...." - Dr. Peter Knaggs