For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin — real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be gotten through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin.
At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life.
–Attributed to Alfred D. Souza
The Essential Gandhi:
An Anthology of his Writings onhis Life, Work, and Ideas
by Mahatma Gandhi
or Mohandas K. Gandhi
Louis Fisher, Editor
[Items in square brackets are by Tony Mayo.]
{Items in fancy brackets are by the editor, Louis Fisher.}
p. 15 [As a boy, Gandhi confessed a petty theft to his father and was forgiven.] This was for me an object lesson in Ahimsa [Love and Non-Violence]. Then I could read in it nothing more than a father’s love but today I know that it was pure Ahimsa. When such Ahimsa becomes all-embracing it transforms everything it touches. There is no limit to its power.
This sort of sublime forgiveness was not natural to my father. I had thought he would be angry, say hard things and strike his forehead. But he was so wonderfully peaceful and I believe this was due to (more…)
Meaning is not something you stumble across, like the answer to a riddle or the prize in a treasure hunt. Meaning is something you build into your life. You build it out of your own past, out of your affections and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed on to you, out of your own talent and understanding, out of the things you believe in, out of the things and people you love, out of the values for which you are willing to sacrifice something.
The ingredients are there. You are the only one who can put them together into (more…)
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, concerned citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.
See also Gandhi on impact of minorities.
There is no reason to look down on any man unless you’re helping him up.
See also Gandhi on humiliation.
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
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…)
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
“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
I love quotations because it is a joy to find thoughts one might have, beautifully expressed with much authority by someone recognized wiser than oneself.
Marlene Dietrich
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