I found this collection of quotes and thoughts recently. I had collected and disseminated these to my children around 1990. At the time I attributed these to the original authors when I knew who originally published it. I find these are still thought provoking more than twenty years later.
On Contentment: It is the capacity to accept what one cannot avoid. " one can live magnificently in this world if one knows how to work and how to love, to work for the person one loves, and to love one's work."--Leo Tolstoy
New Directions:
I want to travel as far as I can go,
I want to reach the joy that's in my soul,
And change the limitations that I know,
And feel my mind and spirit grow;
I want to live, exist, "to be"
And hear the truths inside of me.
The essence of greatness is the ability to choose personal fulfillment in circumstances where others choose madness.
Feelings are not just emotions that happen to you. Feelings are reactions you choose to have. If you are in charge of your own emotions, you don't have to choose self-defeating reactions.
You alone control what enters your head as thought.
You make yourself unhappy because of the thoughts you have about the people or things in your life.
A thought becomes a belief when you've worked on it repeatedly, not when you simply try it once and use your initial inability as the rationale for giving up.
Taking charge of yourself involves more than simply trying on new thoughts for size. It requires a determination to be happy, and to challenge and destroy each and every thought that creates a self-immobilizing unhappiness in you.
Self-worth cannot be verified by others. You are worthy because you say it is so. If you depend on others for your values it is other-worth.
Love: the ability and willingness to allow those that you care for to be what they choose for themselves, without any insistence that they satisfy you.
Complaining is the refuge of those who have no self-reliance.
Complaining about yourself is a useless activity and one which keeps you from effectively living your life. It encourages self-pity and immobilizes you in your efforts at giving and receiving love.
If you notice things in yourself that you dislike, rather than complaining you can actively set about taking the necessary corrective steps.
On Forgiveness:
While forgiving may seem to be a generous, magnanimous thing to do, it is also self-serving in a very real sense. Forgiving promotes good fellowship, it strengthens ties with family and friends, and best of all, it is good for one's blood pressure, digestive system and general health.
When we hate our enemies we give them power over us.. power over our sleep, our appetites and our happiness. They would dance with joy if they knew how much they were upsetting us. Our hate is not hurting them at all, but it is turning our own days and nights into a hellish turmoil.
"The more people who believe something, the more apt it is to be wrong, while the one who is right often has to stand alone"...Kierkegaard.
This only appears to get more true as time goes by,
Half the trouble in the world comes from people being cheerful when they should be concerned.
I just read that teaching relaxation to surgical patients may not be doing them any favor. It appears patients are better able to deal with surgical tensions if they are anxious.
"one is rarely lucky enough to be hated for oneself alone."
We may hate a person because he reminds us of someone we feared and disliked when younger, or because we see in him some gross caricature of what we find repugnant in ourself, or because he symbolizes an attitude that seems to threaten us.
"Once you have a clearly defined sense of direction and values, you will find harmony, a balance of giving and receiving. Soon you recognize the destruction that is inseparable from yielding to extremes." Marietta Hartley
On Dreams:
If travel occurs in one's dreams, it can mean a suppressed longing to get away from the boredom of life and to expand one's horizons of experience.
"There are too many of them in the world lately, the hopeful ladies who married grown-up boy children and soon lost all hope. They are the secretaries and nurses and switchboard people, the store clerks, schoolteachers, cab drivers, and Avon ladies. They lead the singles life. Lots of laughs and lots of barren mornings. Skilled sex, mod conversations and all heartaches carefully concealed. They are not ardent libbers, yet at the same time they are not looking for some man to 'take care'. God knows they are expert in taking care of themselves. They just want a grown-up man to share their life with, each of them taking care. But there are one hell of a lot more grown-up ladies than grown-up men." Travis McGee in The Dreadful Lemon Sky by John D. McDonald.
"Life, as we find it, is too hard for us; it entails too much pain, too many disappointments, impossible tasks. We cannot do without palliative remedies. There are perhaps three of these means: Powerful diversions of interest, which lead us to care little about out miseries; substitutive gratifications, which lessen it; and intoxicating substances, which make us insensitive to it. Something of this kind is indispensable." Sigmund Freud.
"Life was probably no different in the Stone Age or the Renaissance than it is in the computer age. Such "diversions" as painting on the cave walls or painting by the numbers, or 'substitutive gratifications' like Christians vs. lions in the Colosseum, or the Raiders vs. the Eagles in the Super Bowl, were and are never the real answer. The closes thing to a panacea has been the use of intoxicating substances." Joseph Pursch.
It is impossible to feel the equal of someone who has been awake longer than you.
Whereas people don't mind loving others for the love of God or humanity, no one wants to be loved only because of a general, undiscriminating love. (See Kurt Vonnegut's God Bless You , Mr. Rosewater. )
The world seems more cheerful if, when we wake up in the morning, we find we are no longer alone and that there is another human being beside us in the half-dark." Vincent Van Gogh
"Life is a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death." Auntie Mame.
