The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.
If you can’t be a pine on the top of the hill
Be a scrub in the valley—but be
The best little scrub by the side of the rill;
Be a bush if you can’t be a tree.
If you can’t be a bush be a bit of the grass,
And some highway some happier make;
If you can’t be a muskie then just be a bass—
But the liveliest bass in the lake!
We can’t all be captains, we’ve got to be crew,
There’s something for all of us here.
There’s big work to do and there’s lesser to do,
And the task we must do is the near.
If you can’t be a highway then just be a trail,
If you can’t be the sun be a star;
It isn’t by size that you win or you fail—
Be the best of whatever you are!
Any life is made up of a single moment, the moment in which a man finds out, once and for all, who he is.
Jorge Luis Borges
To Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love
All pray in their distress;
And to these virtues of delight
Return their thankfulness.
For Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love
Is God, our father dear,
And Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love
Is Man, his child and care.
For Mercy has a human heart,
Pity a human face,
And Love, the human form divine,
And Peace, the human dress.
Then every man, of every clime,
That prays in his distress,
Prays to the human form divine,
Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace.
And all must love the human form,
In heathen, turk, or jew;
Where Mercy, Love, & Pity dwell
There God is dwelling too.
I shall keep singing!
I shall keep singing!
Birds will pass me
On their way to Yellower Climes –
Each — with a Robin’s expectation –
I — with my Redbreast –
And my Rhymes –
Late — when I take my place in summer –
But — I shall bring a fuller tune –
Vespers — are sweeter than Matins — Signor –
Morning — only the seed of Noon –
Great opportunities are not seen with your eyes. They are seen with your mind.
Love can move the Sun and the stars.
Dante Alighieri
“All that we are is the result of what we have thought.
If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him.
If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought,
happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves him. “– Lord Buddha
“Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air and resign yourself to the influence of the earth.”
—Henry David Thoreau
