The characteristic of genuine heroism is its persistency. All men have wandering impulses, fits and starts of generosity. But when you have resolved to be great, abide by yourself, and do not try to reconcile yourself with the world. The heroic cannot be common, nor the common heroic.
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at best, if he wins,knows the thrills of high achievement, and, if he fails, at least fails daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.
—John F. Kennedy
on Theodore Roosevelt
New York City, December 5, 1961
Fun happens when you are intellectually excited. It’s people interacting with each other – with one idea leading to another. It’s the struggle, and even the failures that go with the struggle, that make work fun.
Founder & Chairman of AES
market capitalization: $6 billionin FastCompany
This child — he thought —
has this child heroically persevered under all doubts and dangers, struggled with poverty and suffering, upheld and sustained by strong affection and the consciousness of rectitude alone! And yet the world is full of such heroism. Have I yet to learn that the hardest and best-borne trials are those which are never chronicled in any earthly record, and are suffered every day!
Live your life each day as you would climb a mountain. An occasional glance towards the summit keeps the goal in mind, but many beautiful scenes are to be observed from each new vantage point.
–Harold B. Melchart
No wind serves him who addresses his voyage to no certain port.
French humanist essayist 1533-92
Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal.
—Henry Ford, 1863-1947
I am an artist…It’s self-evident that what that word implies is looking for something all the time without ever finding it in full.
It is the opposite of saying, “I know all about it. I’ve already found it.”
As far as I’m concerned, the word means, “I am looking. I am hunting for it. I am deeply involved.”
–Vincent van Gogh
The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own. You do not blame them on your mother, the ecology, or the president. You realize that you control your own destiny.
— Albert Ellis
Spirituality is an awareness of the gap between what you can experience and what you can describe.
–Doug Muder via uuworld.org
before words:
the spirituality of humanism.
Recent Comments