Poems and Quotes
______________________________
Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne’er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.
Not one of all the purple host
Who took the flag to-day
Can tell the definition,
So clear, of victory,
As he, defeated, dying,
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Break, agonized and clear.
-Emily Dickenson
______________________________
The Dash - By Linda Ellis
I read of a reverend who stood to speak
at the funeral of a friend.
He referred to the dates on her tombstone
from the beginning…to the end.
He noted that first came the date of her birth
and spoke of the following date with tears,
but he said what mattered most of all
was the dash between those years.
For that dash represents all the time
that spent alive on earth
and now only those who loved her
know what that little line is worth.
For it matters not, how much we own,
the cars…the house…the cash.
What matters is how we live and love
and how we spend our dash.
So think about this long and hard,
are there things you’d like to change?
For you never know how much time is left.
(You could be at “dash mid-range.”)
If we could just slow down enough
to consider what’s true and real
and always try to understand
the way other people feel.
And be less quick to anger
and show appreciation more
and love the people in our lives
like we’ve never loved before.
If we treat each other with respect
and more often wear a smile…
remembering that this special dash
might only last a little while.
So when your eulogy’s being read
with your life’s actions to rehash,
would you be proud of the things they say
about how you spend your dash?
______________________________
Masterpiece - From 7 Habits
If life were a painting
And you were the artist
What would you paint?
Which colors would you use?
Grey? Electric blue? Candy-apple red?
Is it a landscape?
Is it a still life?
A portrait of yourself?
Your true love?
Your most passionate hopes?
Would you hang it at the center of your home?
Or at the center of your office?
Or at the center of your heart?
When others see it…
What will they remember?
Just lines on a canvas?
Or a work of art?
This is your life.
Paint a bold picture.
Make it a masterpiece.
Sign your name.
______________________________
“Nothing can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
-Eleanor Roosevelt
“It’s not our job to determine culpability, but it is our job to determine what went wrong and insist on accountability.”
“When you have decided what you believe, what you feel must be done, have the courage to stand alone and be counted.”
-Eleanor Roosevelt
“Fail to Plan…Plan to Fail”
-Hillary Clinton
“You did what you know then, do what you know NOW”
-Maya Angelou
“When you change the way you look at things - the things you look at change.”
“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”
-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
-Albert Einstein
“A cat that steps on a hot stove will never step on a hot stove again…neither will it step on a cold one.”
-Mark Twain
“What a person thinks and believes always dictates how he acts.”
-Chuck Colson
“There’s so much good in the worst of us, and so much bad in the best of us, it hardly behooves any of us to talk about the rest of us.”
-John Wooden
“He that always gives way to others will end in having no principles of his own.”
-Aesop
“There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.”
-Peter Drucker
“The true test of character is not how much we know how to do it, but how we behave when we don’t know what to do.”
-John Holt
“Life is like a 10-speed bike. Most of us have gears we never use.”
Charles Schultz
“Values are like fingerprints. Nobody’s are the same, but you leave ‘em all over everything you do.”
-Elvis Presley
“It’s the action, not the fruit of the action, that’s important. You have to do the right thing. It may not be in your power, it may not be in your time, that there’ll be any fruit. But that doesn’t mean you stop doing the right thing. You may never know what results come from your action. But if you do nothing, there will be no result.”
-Mahatma Gandhi
“Just because we can do everything doesn’t mean we have to.”
-Susan Wyland, Editor, Real Simple
“There is nothing wrong with you that what is right with you cannot fix.”
-Anonymous
“It’s not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change.”
-Charles Darwin, Sea Turtle observations
“Don’t let your successes go to your head. Don’t let your failures go to your heart.”
-Phil Jackson
“One of the things I regret is always taking a magazine to the park. Now that my daughter is older, I don’t remember a thing I read, but neither do I remember her as a child on the swings – something I’ll never see again.”
-Mother of a 15 year-old
“The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.”
-Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“Only passions, great passions, can elevate the soul to great things.
-Denis Diderot
Character Quotes:
-“Early to Bed, early to rise…Makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.”
-“A penny saved, is a penny earned.”
-“Make hay, while the sun shines.”
Personality Quotes:
-“Fake it, until you make it.”
-“It is better to look good, than to feel good.”
-“The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese..”
“While I am busy with little things, I am not required to do greater things.”
-Sir Frances deSales
“I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.”
-Duke Ellington
“We first make our habits, then our habits make us.”
-Anonymous
“Give a man a fish, you feed him for the day; teach him how to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.”
-Lao-Tzu
“All the significant breakthroughs were breaks with old ways of thinking.”
-Thomas Kuhn
“If you want small changes, work on your behavior; if you want quantum-leap changes, work on your paradigms.”
“It’s not what people do to us that hurts us. In the most fundamental sense it is our chosen response to what they do to us that hurts us.”
“The key is not to prioritize your schedule but to schedule your priorities.
“You cannot talk yourself out of problems you behave yourself into.”
“Love the feeling is the fruit of love the verb.”
“Anytime I think the problem is out there, that is the problem.”
If I had my life to live over, I would have talked less and listened more. I would have invited friends over to dinner even though the carpet was stained and the sofa was faded. I would have eaten popcorn in the “good” living room and worried less about the dirt when someone wanted to light a fire in the fireplace. I would have burned a pink candle sculpted like a rose before it melted in storage. I would have sat on the lawn with my children and not worried about grass stains.
had my life to live over, I would have cried and laughed less while watching television and done more of it while watching life. I would have shared more of the responsibilities carried by my spouse. I would have gone to bed when I was sick instead of worrying that the earth would go into a holding pattern if I missed work for one day. I would never buy anything just because it was practical, wouldn’t show soil or was guaranteed to last a lifetime. There would have been more “I love you”, more “I am sorry”…but mostly, given another shot at life, I would seize every moment, look at it and really see it and live it – and never give it back.
-Anonymous
Hole in the Sidewalk, Chapter 1:
-I walk down the street.
-There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
-I fall in.
-I am lost…I am helpless.
-It isn’t my fault.
-It takes forever to find a way out.
Hole in the Sidewalk, Chapter 2:
-I walk down the street.
-There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
-I pretend that I don’t see it.
-I fall in again.
-I can’t believe I am in this same place.
-But, it isn’t my fault.
-It still takes a long time to get out.
Hole in the Sidewalk, Chapter 3:
-I walk down the same street.
-There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
-I see it is there.
-I still fall in…it’s a habit…but, my eyes are open.
-I know where I am.
-It is my fault.
-I get out immediately.
Hole in the Sidewalk, Chapter 4:
-I walk down the same street.
-There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
-I walk around it.
Hole in the Sidewalk, Chapter 5:
-I walk down another street.
