"Great things can happen today! This day becomes special for me as I become open to its possibilities. Today has been freely given to me. I share it freely with others by being generous with my time, attention, and activities. I give back to this day my gifts of hope, trust, life, love and creativity."

     "My own experience leads me to believe that a change in undesirable emotional patterns can come only with a change in thinking — with a change in one’s perception of reality, or vision.

     Our emotional reactions grow out of the way we see ourselves, other people, life, the world, and God. Our perceptions become the habitual frame of reference within which we act and react. Our ideas and attitudes generate our emotional responses. Persistently negative is an indication that there is a distortion or delusion in our thinking."

Americanism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Theodore Roosevelt

     "Americanism means the virtues of courage, honor, justice, truth and sincerity — the virtues that made America. The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love-of-soft-living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life."

Prepare Everyday . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mike Iuzzolino

     "Prepare every day of your life to be the best that you can be, and that’s all that will ever matter in life. Everything else will take care of itself."

Turn Fear into Fire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Fr. Brian, TOR

     "Turn your fear into fire; burn with a passion to accomplish your mission in life. It has been given to you alone and to no one else. May your life burn brightly with a fire-filled passion to build up God’s kingdom ‘here on earth as it is in heaven.’"

Life’s Truths . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . William Arthur Ward

     "Life’s greatest truths teach us to put service above selfishness, generosity above greed, sacrifice above security, and conscience above creed."

     "Many people, without question, have gone from being unfulfilled and frustrated with their lives to feeling their lives have taken on deeper significance through volunteering. Volunteering, particularly when you can see directly and concretely the results of what you have done, can provide an incredibly powerful high.

     The bottom line is that people do get great emotional and spiritual satisfaction from helping to change the world through volunteering."

Do a Kindness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ralph Waldo Emerson

"You cannot do a kindness too soon because
you never know how soon it will be too late."

     "St. Francis’ whole life in Christ was a making of peace, after having been a maker of war as a young man. He made peace among the factions in Assisi, between towns, between people and wild animals, between sultans and kings. His Canticle of the Creatures is itself a song of praise and reconciliation.

     But the prayer of reconciliation most people associate with St. Francis is: ‘Make Me an Instrument of Your Peace.’ Unfortunately this prayer can only be found in twentieth-century sources and is therefore not an authentic prayer of St. Francis. It does, however, express most poignantly who St. Francis was and how he lived. It is indeed a Franciscan Peace Prayer.

A Successful Person . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Winning Words

"A successful person is one who went ahead and did the thing
he rest of us never quite got around to."

     "Although I am only one out of a million, I am somebody, and that makes me as good as the next person. There is nothing in this life I cannot do. There is no goal I cannot tackle and, have success! If I feel deep down inside that something is important to me, then I can do it. If my mind can conceive it, and my head believe it, then I know I can achieve it. No longer will I drift through life feeling sorry for myself, because self-pity is the seed of destruction.

     I will search for a goal, and with enough hard work, total commitment, determination, dedication, and self-sacrifice, I know I will reach it. I know there will be many times when it will seem that all the odds are against me, and I will have to fight one battle after another — but I will not give up!

On Disagreements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Earl Nightingale

     "…Just as an occasional hot disagreement is normal, so is the passing of the disagreement — if we’ll let it pass.…

     But people will cling to a miserable, moth- eaten, little grudge for dear life, feeding it, nourishing it, keeping it alive despite all its attempts to die, whipping it back to life and maintaining their misery and the misery of others at all costs. These people have the depth and breadth of a teaspoonful of tepid canal water, and the sense of humor of a hungry shrew and the lines of bitterness become etched about their mouths.…"

Moral Courage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Robert F. Kennedy

     "Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a world which yields most painfully to change."

A Modern Epiphany . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Daily Study Bible

     Cecil Northcote in A Modern Epiphany tells of a discussion in a camp of young people where representatives of many nations were gathered. "One wet night the campers were discussing various ways of telling people about Christ. They turned to a girl from Africa. ‘Maria,’ they asked, ‘what do you do in your country?’

     ‘Oh,’ said Maria, ‘we don’t have missions or give pamphlets away. We just send one or two Christian families to live and and work in a village, and when people see what Christians are like, then they want to be Christians.’"

     In the end the only all-conquering argument is the argument of a Christian life.