"The art of education is to continue to grow as long as you live. Every moment brings its lesson. Every person is a teacher. Grow in all directions. Develop a desire for goodness, an eagerness for knowledge, a capacity for friendship, an appreciation of beauty, a concern for others. Grow; man is never finished! Man never arrives. Education never stops!"

The Road Less Traveled  . . . . . .M. Scott Peck

     "Sooner or later, if people are to be healed, they must learn that the entirety of one’s adult life is a series of personal choices, decisions. If they can accept this totally, then they become free people. To the extent that they do not accept this they will forever feel themselves victims."

Lent  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Anonymous

     "Lent is our spring-time of new growth and renewed life. Lent is the season to realize that God is continually creating; that God’s grace is continually moving through us; that the man or woman who can be open to this creative power and can feel a sense of movement and expansion within is the one who experiences God’s life- giving Spirit most fully."

Life’s Meaning  . . . . . . . . . . . . Og Mandino

     "‘Every Herman Hesse book has the same theme: ‘If you have not confronted the question of your life’s meaning, if you have not found the purpose of your existence, you haven’t found anything. You are nowhere.’

     A good thought for us all, as well."

Winners/Losers  . . . . . . . . . William Arthur Ward

     "Winners overcome their circumstances and enhance their chances; losers minimize their abilities and emphasize their liabilities."

"To live content with small means;
To seek elegance rather than luxury
     and refinement rather than fashion;
To be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich;
To listen to stars and birds, babes and sages
     with an open heart;
To study hard;
To think quietly, act frankly, talk gently,
     await occasions, hurry never;
In a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious,
     grow up through the common —
This is my symphony."

Observe & Do  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Isaiah 56:1

"Observe what is right;
do what is just."

Just For Today . . . . . . . . . . . Anonymous

     "Just for today, be kind, cheerful, agreeable, responsive, caring and understanding. Be your best, dress your best, talk softly, look for the bright side of things. Praise people for what they do and don’t criticize them for what they cannot do. If someone does something stupid, forgive and forget. After all, it’s just for one day. Who knows, it might turn out to be a nice day."

     "As I forgive myself and others, I remove any inner obstacles that might prevent me from being whole and well. Forgiveness establishes me in peace. Seeming slights and hurts begin to fade away when I do not reinforce them. I live in the present moment, in an atmos-phere of love and forgiveness."

An Inhabited Garden  . . . . . . . . . . Goethe

     "The world is so empty if one only thinks of mountains, cities and rivers. To know someone here and there who thinks and feels with us and who, though distant, is close to us in spirit makes the world for us an inhabited garden."

    "Celtic spirituality was a practice in which ordinary people in their daily lives took the tasks that lay to hand but treated them sacramentally, as pointing to a greater reality which lay beyond them. It is an approach to life which we have been in danger of losing, this sense of allowing the extraordinary to break in on the ordinary. Perhaps it is something which we can rediscover, something which Celtic spirituality can give to us if we would let it renew our vision by teaching our eyes to see again, our ears to hear, our hands to handle."

Your Life  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cardinal Newman

"Fear not that your life shall come to an end,
but rather fear that it shall never have a beginning."

Plucky People . . . . . . . . Soundings, Vol. 2, # 12

     "Someone once said that there’s a silent ‘p’ in the word ‘luck.’ All those who are lucky are really plucky. They are the kind of people who don’t stop trying in trying times. They don’t succeed because they are destined to succeed; they succeed because they are determined to succeed. They know that the best way out of difficulty is through it."

Sow/Reap . . . . . . . William Arthur Ward

"Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap
but by the seeds you plant."

Good-Finders . . . . . . . . . . . Bits & Pieces, Vol. 21, # 2

     "A chief executive who has done an amazing job of transforming a run-down company into an outstanding success instructs each department head to submit every Monday morning a report of all the good things that have happened in his department during the preceding week."

     "One of the principles in life is that whatever you get excited about gets excited about you.…I’m inviting you to get excited and turned on about your life and not wait one more day for somebody to come along to get excited.…Let me ask you: Who is responsible for the excitement or lack of it in your life? You are. If anybody here is bored and unhappy and stuck and does not have an exciting life, let me tell you that you can have an exciting life as soon as you get excited."

Anger  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Anonymous

     "Anger is often the source of a waterfall of words without a drop of common sense."

Mission in Life . . . . . . . . . . . Bill Bethel

     "People need a mission in life that matters. When you’ve got that then the spark of divinity bursts into a forest fire."

Working Hard . . . . . . . . . . . "Easy Ed" Macauley

    "If you’re not working to the utmost of your ability and, you’re not practicing hard, just remember somebody else somewhere else is, and when you two meet, all things being equal, he will win."

Know How to Read  . . . . . . . . . . . Aldous Huxley

     "Every man who knows how to read has it in his power to magnify himself, to multiply the ways in which he exists, to make his life full, significant and interesting."

Creative Problem Solving . . . . . . . . Anon.

     Thomas A. Edison hired a young engineer just graduated from a prestigious university. He told the young expert to determine the cubic content of a light bulb. After a day of careful measurements and mathematical calculations the young engineer went to the famous inventor and proudly told him the answer he had arrived at.

     But Edison said, "No, I don’t think that is correct." He picked up a light bulb, gently knocked a tiny hole in the end of it, and filled the bulb with water. Then he poured the water into a measuring cup and quickly proved that his expert’s answer was about twelve percent off.