The Living Book

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It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.

Theodore Roosevelt (1858 – 1919)

If I were to discover that a certain kind of stone by the pond-shore was affected, say partially disintegrated, buy a particular natural sound, as of a bird or insect, I see that one could not be completely described without describing other. I am that rock by the pond side.

Henry David Thoreau (1817 – 1862)

It is the abuse of our faculties which make us wicked and miserable. Our cares, our anxieties, our griefs, are all owing to ourselves… If we could be contented with being what we are, we should have no inducement to lament our fate; but we inflict on ourselves a thousand real evils in seeking after an imaginary happiness.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712 – 1778)

A little consideration of what takes place around us every day would show us that a higher law than that of our will regulates events; that our painful labors are unnecessary and fruitless; that only in our easy, simple, spontaneous action are we strong. Place yourself in the middle of the stream of power and wisdom which animates all whom it floats, and you are without effort impelled to truth, to right, and a perfect contentment.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 – 1882)

Men make little effort to exercise their intellect, or they imagine they possess knowledge before they really learn, the consequence being that they never begin to have knowledge.

Origen (184 – 253)

Whatever forms Christianity assumed in later times, however distorted it became, it must be remembered that its introduction was heralded by John the Baptist preaching change of mind as the first step towards “eternal” life. And this change of mind was connected by him with the teaching on the Kingdom of Heaven — an idea so difficult to grasp and so contrary to all sense-thinking and external evidence that it remains a new idea for all time.

Maurice Nicoll (1884 – 1953)

The internal nature is much higher than the external, and much more difficult to grapple with, much more difficult to control; therefore he who has conquered the internal nature controls the whole universe; it becomes his servant.

Vivekananda (1863 – 1902)

Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought… Men do not sufficiently realize that their future is in their own hands. Theirs is the task of determining first of all whether they want to go on living or not. Theirs is the responsibility, then, for deciding if they want merely to live, or intend to make just the extra effort required for fulfilling, even on this refractory planet, the essential function of the universe, which is a machine for making gods.

Henri-Louis Bergson (1859 – 1941)

Our rash faults
Make trivial price of serious things we have,
Not knowing them until we know their grave:
Oft our displeasures, to ourselves unjust,
Destroy our friends and after weep their dust:
Our own love waking cries to see what’s done,
While shame full late sleeps out the afternoon.

William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616)