Highest Reward

"The highest reward for a person's toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it."

-- John Ruskin

New Serenity Prayer

Lord, grant me the sereninty to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to hide the bodies of the people I had to kill because they pissed me off.

Life

"We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give."

-- Winston Churchill

Doing Right

"Sometimes you have to grit your teeth to do right."

-- Dr. Laura Scheslinger

Curiosity

"Curiosity is one fo the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect."

-- Dr. Johnson

People's Pasts

"Identifying people by their pasts is an insult to the capacity of human beings to overcome."

-- Dr. Laura Schlesinger

Sports and Character

"Sports do not build character. They reveal it."

-- Heywood Hale Brown, famed sportswriter-broadcaster

Alone

"When I had been a small boy, someone told me that the blood in your veins was blue, the way it looked through the skin, and that it only turned red when you exposed it to air. What I felt was one thing when I kept it in. It changed color entirely when I exposed it."

-- Spenser
The Widening Gyre, 1983, by Robert Parker

Home Run

" Hit the ball over the fence and you can take your time going around the bases."

-- John W. Roper

Insight

" Too much insight can be devastating to one's self-esteem."

-- Nancy Kennedy, friend and fellow social worker

Victory

"Be ashamed to die before you have won a victory for humankind."

-- Horace Mann

Love's Returns

"Love has an amazing law of return. If we give love, it will come back to us by some means or path. We don't get to choose how it will come back, but there will always be a compensation far greater than what we've given. And it may only be in eternity that we will reap its full consequences."

Love

"Something done for another out of love is not easily forgotten. It stays in the heart and only eternity will know its consequences."

Vulcan Greeting

"Greetings. I am pleased to see that we are different. May we together become better that the sum of both of us."

-- Star Trek

Philanthropy

"Never think you need to apologize for asking someone to give to a worthy cause, any more than as though you were giving him an opportunity to participate in a high-grade investment. The duty of giving is as much his as is the duty of asking yours."

-- John D. Rockefeller, Jr.

Simon Wilder's Message

"You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books. You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me, you shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself."

-- from the movie, With Honors

Volunteering

"Too many people are eager to volunteer to carry the piano stool when it's the piano that needs to be moved."

-- Ann Landers

Hitting

"A child hits a child and we call it agression.

A child hits an adult and we call it hostility.

An adult hits an adult and we call it assault and battery.

An adult hits a child and we call it discipline."

-- Haim Ginott

Heroes

Today's world may have heroes, the historian Daniel Boorstin tells us, but they are now overshadowed by celebrities: "The hero is known for achievements," he says, "the celebrity for well-knownness. The hero reveals the possibilities of human nature, the celebrity reveals the possibilities of the press and the media. Celebrities are people who make the news, but heroes are people who make history. Time makes heroes but dissolves celebrities."

Most Service to Others

"I think I am of most service to others when I take the risk to express unconventional views, rather that saying what I think people want to hear. I then find a lot of similarly-minded people. My risking is like breaking the ice. Suddenly, other begin speaking out, too."

-- ???

Meeting Children's Parents

"The only reason I always try to meet and know the parents better is because it helps me to forgive their children."

-- Louis Johannot

Daybreak

"Someday all of this will have as much validity, no more and no lesss, as speculation as to the masculinity or feminity of the sun."

-- Nietzsche

May I Become...

May I become at all times, both now and forever
A protector for those without protection
A guide for those who have lost their way
A ship for those with oceans to cross
A bridge for those with rivers to cross
A sanctuary for those in danger
A lamp for those without light
A place of refuge for those who lack shelter
And a servant to all in need.

-- Dalai Lama

Imagine an America

...where every child is healthy, safe, and thriving, and where all children develop to their potential

...where all children are nurtured, getting what they need, as they require

...where all children grow into adults who are able to make positive contributions to family, community, and the nation

-- Children 2003, Gala Dinner and Award Presentations, 3/6/2003, Child Welfare League of America

Your Entire Existence

"It's silly to think that your entire existence depends upon other people's feelings about you."

-- Jerry Stiller in Esquire, May 2005

Genes

"I think that your genes give you the possibilities, but the way you were brought up influences whether you fulfill them. It's like your genes are a map of the city, but the directions you take are the way you were raised."

-- Tom, 19, a "super-baby", conceived with the help from the Nobel Prize sperm bank, when asked how much of a role genes play in who people become

Esquire, June 2005

Vanity

"If there is a single quality that is shared by all great men, it is vanity. But I mean by 'vanity' only that they appreciate their own worth. Without this kind of vanity they would not be great. And with vanity alone, of course, a man is nothing."

- Yousef Karsh

Balance

"All your problems are on the inside, in your heart. The problems aren't from the outside, from other people, so you really need to study who you are. Who's 100 percent you? If you understand your inside, then you're not afraid anymore."

-- Jet Li, discussing the Buddhist concept of balance, of inside--outside

Men's Health, September 2004