®   Volume 21, # 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . September, 2005

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Take No Thought… . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . William Osler, The Practical Cogitator, p.99

    "Take no thought for the morrow. Live neither in the past nor in the future, but let each day’s work absorb your entire energies and satisfy your widest ambition."

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Fibre of Character . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . James Buckham, POSITIVE PRESS

"Trials, temptations, disappointments—all these are helps instead of hindrances, if one uses them rightly. They not only test the fibre of a character, but strengthen it. Every conquered temptation represents a new fund of moral energy. Every trial endured and weathered in the right spirit makes a soul nobler and stronger than it was before."

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As a Man Thinketh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . James Allen, p. 50

"As a man thinks, so he is;
as he continues to think, so he remains."

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Think & Grow Rich . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Napoleon Hill, p. 27

    "We refuse to believe that which we do not understand. We foolishly believe that our own limitations are the proper measure of limitations."

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Kindle the Flame . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . William Arthur Ward

"If the room of your life is filled with the darkness of despair, it need not remain so. You have the power to kindle the flame of faith, to light a candle of hope, to turn on the lamp of love, to pull back the curtains of fear, to raise the windows of doubt, to unlock the doors of defeat, and to step out into the street of service."

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God Shows Us More . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Minnie Sawyer

    "Think positive! Never look back at what could have been. Look at what can be now. God has a way of showing us more."

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Creative Imagination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dr. Albert Einstein

    "The mere formulation of a problem is far more essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skills. To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from new angles requires creative imagination and marks real advances in science."

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Angry or Smile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bits & Pieces, June, 1979, p. 1

    "You can tell a lot about people by observing how often they get angry, the relative importance of the things they get angry about, and how long they stay that way. Of all the strong emotions, anger is probably the most common. Unfortunately, it’s also the least useful.…

    Whenever you start to feel angry, stop! Force yourself to smile. It’s almost impossible to be angry and smile at the same time."

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The Past . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Israel Zangwill

"The past is for inspiration, not imitation;
for continuation, not repetition."

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Plant a Seed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sunday Sermon Masterpiece Collection, Vol. I, p. 142

"When you plant a seed, you put it in the dark quiet ground and nothing happens: no violins sing, no trumpets blow, no drums roll. Nevertheless, the spark of life begins to ignite and, slowly but surely, the seed takes root and a plant pushes itself through the ground: there is a harvest!      When you turn your mind and heart to God, nothing happens—or so it seems. No heavenly choirs sing, no thunder rolls, no lightening strikes. Nevertheless, in the quietness of your prayer, the Divine Spark ignites and begins to take root in your being and, as it grows, it shows forth in your life. Something has changed. You are reaping a God-centered harvest of thought and action, different than ever before."

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To Wonder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . G.K. Chesterton

"We are perishing for want of wonder,
not for want of wonders."

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Baseball Teaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Fay T. Vincent, former Commissioner of Baseball

    "Baseball teaches us, or has taught most of us, how to deal with failure. We learn at a very young age that failure is the norm in baseball and, precisely because we have failed, we hold in high regard those who fail less often—those who hit safely in one out of three chances and become star players. I also find it fascinating that baseball alone in sport, considers errors to be part of the game, part of the its rigorous truth."

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Courage of Choice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Léon Blum, The Practical Cogitator, 103

"I have often thought that morality may perhaps consist solely in the courage of making a choice."

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Responsibility of a Manager. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bits & Pieces, 10/91, p. 11

    "The manager in business…may reward a subordinate or fail to; give understanding, or fail to; promise security, or instill fear; recommend pay increases, or fail to; provide a good working environment, or not; give a person hope, or kill it.

    The godlike power any supervisor or manager has over the life of a subordinate is awesome. The responsibility to be fair is absolutely essential to civilized society."

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On Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Anonymous

"Education will never become as expensive as ignorance."

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Competitive Spirit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dr. Norman Vincent Peale

"As long as one competes toward a goal with a constructive attitude the competitive effort is creative. It is when the competitive spirit so takes over that we become personally involved and emotionally off base that chaos follows. Competition nibbles at the basic peace of God’s people like an energetic band of termites, and still most of us fail to recognize it for what it is. And on it goes unhampered, wrecking relationships and dreams."

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On Assumptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Henry Winkler

"Assumptions are the termites of relationships."

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Origins of Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Emphasis, Jan.–Feb. ‘92

    Celtic priests in the old days of Ireland created books. They used the inside of the bark from a beech tree to write down their ideas. They called the beech tree by the word boc. They began to use the word boc for any writing material. They began to bind sheets of bark together and used the word boc for the collection. From this we have our word book.

They do not die who leave their thought
Imprinted on some deathless page.
Themselves may pass; the spell they wrought
Endures on earth from age to age.
                                                           Thomas Carlyle

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Conformity Is a Trap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Source Unknown

    Once a spider built a beautiful web in an old barn. She kept it clean and shiny so that flies would buzz a bit nearer. The minute she got a visitor she would clean up on it so the other flies would not get suspicious.

    Then one day a fairly intelligent fly came buzzing by the clean spider web. The spider called out, "Come in and sit." But the fly said, "No, ma’am. I don’t see other flies in your house, and I am not going in alone!"

    But presently the fly saw on the floor below a large crowd of flies dancing around on a piece of brown paper. It was delighted! It was not afraid if lots of flies were doing the same. So the fly came in for a landing.

    Just before it landed, a bee zoomed by, saying, "Don’t land there, stupid, that’s flypaper!" But the fly shouted back, "Don’t be silly, those flies are dancing. There’s a big crowd there. That many flies can’t be wrong." Well, you know what happened, the fly got stuck and died.

    Isn’t it strange how some of us want to be with the crowd so badly that we end up in a sticky mess. What does it profit a fly (or a person) if it escapes the web only to end up stuck in the glue?

 

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