Memento Motive
I can only hope you will realize the import of what you are doing. And if you do, your path will be easy–easy because you will take delight in difficulties and you will laugh in hope when everybody is in despair.
–Gandhi
Power of Praise
I prithee tell me;
cram us with praise, and make us
As fat as tame things.
One good deed dying tongueless
Slaughters a thousand waiting upon that.
Your praises are our wages.
You may ride us
With one soft kiss a thousand furlongs ere
With spur we heat an acre.
–Queen Hermione in
Shakespeare’s A Winter’s Tale
The Thinker by Berton Braley
Back of the beating hammer
By which the steel is wrought,
Back of the workshop’s clamor
The seeker may find the Thought,
The Thought that is ever master
Of iron and steam and steel,
That rises above disaster
And tramples it under heel!
The drudge may fret and tinker
Or labor with lusty blows,
But back of him stands (more…)
The Inexhaustible Wealth of Possibility
If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible…what wine is so sparkling, so fragrant, so intoxicating, as possibility!
–Søren Kierkegaard
Rilke Poem on Spirituality
I live my life in growing orbits
That move out over the things of the world
Perhaps I can never achieve the last,
but that will be my attempt.
I am circling around God,
Around the ancient tower.
And I have been circling for a thousand years,
And I still don’t know
If I am a falcon or
a great storm.
Rainer (René) Maria Rilke
1875-1926 Austro-German poet
Theory at Work
“Success is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.”
–Thomas A. Edison
“If Edison needed to find a needle in a haystack, he would not stop to reason where the needle
might be, but rather would examine every straw, straw after straw like a diligent bee until he found the object of his search. I was almost a sorry witness of his doings, knowing that just a little theory and calculation would have saved him 90 percent of his labor.”
–Nikola Tesla
“That’s fine in practice but what about your theory?”
–Popular tee shirt on
University of Chicago campus
“In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.”
–Yogi Berra
Shame
No one can embarrass you without your permission.
–Tony Mayo
Reward only results–and lose your right to judge the means
Only the modern age’s conviction that man can know only what he makes, that his allegedly higher capacities depend upon making and that he therefore is primarily homo faber and not an animal rationale, brought forth the much older implications of violence inherent in all interpretations of the realm of human affairs as a sphere of making. [p. 228]
We are perhaps the first generation which has become fully aware of the murderous consequences inherent in (more…)
Struggle is overrated
Happiness is like a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.
widely attributed to Nathaniel Hawthorne
Don’t aim at success–the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long run–in the long run, I say–success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think of it.
Viktor Frankl (1905 – 1997) in
Man’s Search for Meaning
Be Kind
80% of success is showing up.
–Woody Allen
.jpeg "Woody Allen by colin swan")
I was angry. My business day had barely begun and I was livid. I had an important presentation and my whiteboard was not installed. The office manager had promised several times over the past month to get it done but there it sat, useless on the floor. I was calculating whether I had time to drive home to get my own tools when she (more…)
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