"The
Hope of The World"
The
hope of the world lies in what one demands, not of others, but of oneself.
James
Baldwin
"Imagine
Greatness"
We
evolve into the images we carry in our minds. We become what we see.
Jerry
Mander
"Rise
And Shine"
Remember,
diamonds are only lumps of coal that stuck to their jobs.
B.C.
Forbes
"Paths
Clear"
Paths
clear before those who know where they're going and are determined to get there.
Anonymous
"Problem
Won't Budge?"
If
this stone won't budge at present and is wedged in, move some of the other
stones round it first.
Ludwig
Wittgenstein
"Just
Ask"
Many
things are lost for want of asking.
George
Herbert
"The
Art Of Life"
I
think the best results are obtained by people who work quietly away at limited
objectives, such as the abolition of the slave trade, or prison reform, or
factory acts, or tuberculosis, not by those who think they can achieve
universal justice, or health, or peace. I think the art of life consists in
tackling each immediate evil as well as we can...just as the dentist who can
stop one toothache has deserved better of humanity than all the men who think
they have some scheme for producing a perfectly healthy race.
C.S.
Lewis
"The
Sails of Your Seafaring Soul"
Your
reason and your passion are the rudder and the sails of your seafaring soul. If
either your sails or your rudder be broken, you can but toss and drift, or else
be held at a standstill in mid-seas.
Kahlil
Gibran
"Where's The Glory?"
The greater the difficulty, the greater the
glory.
Cicero
Cicero
"Change:
Not The Yardstick of Progress"
Change
is not always progress...A fever of newness has been everywhere confused with
the spirit of progress.
Henry
Ford
"Prepare
Your Soil"
We
cannot make it rain, but we can see to it that the rain falls on prepared soil.
Henri
J. M. Nouwen
"From
Thought To Destiny"
Thoughts
lead on to purposes; purposes go forth in action; actions form habits, habits
decide character; and character fixes our destiny.
Tyron
Edwards
"Being Choked? Weed Your
Life."
I'm so busy I don't have time to do
anything.
John Friedberg
John Friedberg
“Aim
High”
We aim above the mark to hit the mark.
Ralph
Waldo Emerson
"Sacrificing
the Dispersible to Gain the Indispensible
He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.
Jim Elliot
He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.
Jim Elliot
"Moving
Mountains"
The man who removes a mountain begins by carrying
away small stones
Chinese Proverb
Chinese Proverb
"What's
The Plan?"
Millions
long for immortality who don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy
Sunday afternoon.
Anonymous
"Dock
Thy Bark Aright"
No
wind favors he who has no destined port.
Michel
de Montaigne
"Shoot For The Stars"
Man must live on the summit to
avoid the abyss.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
Abraham Joshua Heschel
"Resolution"
Resolved, that I will live so, s I shall
wish I had done when I come to die...Therefore to resolve to maximize his
happiness in God was to resolve to show him more glorious than all other
sources of happiness. Seeking happiness in God and glorifying god were the
same..."The godly are designed for unknown and inconceivable
happiness...This glory of God, therefore [consists] in the creature's admiring
and rejoicing [and] exulting in the manifestation of his beauty and
excellency...So we see it comes to this at last: that the end of the creation
is that God may communicate happiness to the creature; for if God created the
world that he may be glorified in the creature, he created it that they might
rejoice in his glory: for we have shown that they are the same.
John Piper/Jonathon Edwards
John Piper/Jonathon Edwards
"Imagine"
Man’s desires are limited by his perceptions; none
can desire what he has not perceived.
William Blake
William Blake
"The
Efficiency Of Not Veering"
A
straight path never leads anywhere except to the objective.
Andree Gide
Andree Gide
"Over
Thinking A Goal"
Nothing will ever be attempted, if all possible
objections must first be overcome.
Lord Philip Dormer Stanhope Chesterfield
Lord Philip Dormer Stanhope Chesterfield
"Shape
Your Future"
The
future must be shaped or it will impose itself as catastrophe.
Henry
A. Kissinger
"Big
Hurdles"
The
greater the obstacle the more glory in overcoming it."
Jean
Baptiste Moliere
"A
Healthy Perspective In Baseball And In Life"
I
have no expectation of making a hit every time I come to bat. What I seek is
the highest possible batting average.
Franklin
D. Roosevelt
"Eye
On The Prize"
Anyone
who has achieved excellence in any form knows that it comes as a result of
ceaseless concentration.
Louise
Brooks
"Believe
To Achieve"
Strong
convictions precede great actions.
James
Freeman Clark
"Rooting
Out The Destructive"
With
the old Almanack and the old Year, Leave thy old Vices, tho' ever so
dear...Each year one vicious habit rooted out, in time might make the worse man
good throughout.
Benjamin
Franklin
"Lift
Up Your Eyes"
Those
who give too much attention to trifling things become generally incapable of
great ones.
Francois
duc de la Rochefoucauld
"The
End of Life"
I
still believe that standing up for the truth of God is the greatest thing in
the world. This is the end of life. The end of life is not to be happy. The end
of life is not to achieve pleasure and avoid pain. The end of life is to do the
will of God, come what may.
Martin
Luther King, Jr
"Finish
Strong"
Some
men give up their designs when they have almost reached the goal; while others,
on the contrary, obtain a victory by exerting, at the last moment, more
vigorous efforts than before.
Polybius
"What
Is Your Angle?"
It
is not always by plugging away at a difficulty and sticking at it that one
overcomes it; but, rather, often by working on the one next to it. Certain
people and certain things require to be approached on an angle.
Andre
Gide
“Invisible
Monkeys”
“They’re on our backs, and getting them off will
unleash creativity | Andrée Seu
When my husband died and this kept woman was hired
for her first paying job in 20 years, managing the café of a seminary, I felt
anxious and insecure until my mother said the following: “Look at it this way,
your goal is to make a decent sandwich.”Why was this so helpful? Why did it dispel the
paralysis and release a burst of productive energy? Because it replaced
amorphous anxiety with a concrete goal, a goal (“decent sandwich”) from which I
could mentally work backwards to list the steps toward its accomplishment.If you have the same problem I have—walking around
in a cloud of vaguely nagging uncompleted tasks—management consultant David
Allen has suggestions for Getting Things Done. Look at the book as an
elaboration of “doing the next thing,” which, in its Christian application,
involves acknowledging the following division of labor: Trust the loving and
omniscient God to protect your life; you, attend to the next required action.The fact is that 80 percent of everything in every
drawer in your house never gets used. And you know in your heart that every new
paper you throw on the pile on your desk renders the paper directly beneath it
exponentially less likely to be dealt with. So you have started another pile in
another area of the house for “urgent-urgent things,” to distinguish them from
“urgent things” languishing in the first pile. All these are invisible monkeys on your back, not
unlike Pilgrim’s burden in the John Bunyan tale, except it’s not sin but mental
clutter that robs your peace. God would have you free of this (“We have the
mind of Christ”—1 Corinthians 2:16). It’s not a moral issue, of course, except
in the sense that everything under the sun is a moral issue, in a cosmos owned
by God. Keeping your rafters from sagging is a moral issue (Ecclesiastes 10:18).
Jesus tells us not to worry (Matthew 6), and David
Allen says much worry comes from a mental traffic jam of “inappropriately
managed commitments.” He says, “Your mind will keep working on anything that’s
still in an undecided state.” Get things off your mind by getting them done,
and see the creativity it releases. Get them done by taking 10 seconds to
identify what’s bugging you and making front-end decisions: do, delegate, or
defer. Allen defines a “project” as “an outcome requiring more than one action,”
and reminds us that no one ever did a project; he did an action. Is it bugging you that you haven’t read your Bible
in about six months? Okay, either live with the gnawing discomfort or take the
next action. Maybe the next action is, “Where’s my Bible? Honey, do we own a
Bible?” Or maybe what’s shipwrecked your good intentions is something as small
as the looming imagined hassle of not knowing where to start in your
reading—Old Testament or New Testament? Make an intuitive stab at that
decision, then break the Bible open to the place on your night table, so that
tomorrow morning you won’t be waylaid by that other psychological barrier of
having actually to thumb through for the right page. Having a clear goal is of first importance, and you
should review your projects from a series of different heights, from the bottom
at “current actions” to the “50,000-foot altitude level”—or Life. “I’m often
stunned by how many people have forgotten why they’re doing what they’re
doing,” says Allen. If anyone has a mandate to engage in this kind of
reflection, it’s the Christian, who has as his aerial view of life the building
of the kingdom of God. How do my present “projects” fit into that view? I just took mental inventory and noticed something
that’s been bugging me and stalled all summer: I want to have a dessert night
for all my neighbors. I want to spend a few days baking cakes and pies and then
see people stream in and be delighted and meet folks they've never met in 20
years on the street. The 10,000-foot altitude goal is “summer dessert for
neighborhood.” The 50,000-foot altitude goal is the advancement of the kingdom
of God. The sticking point is step one: What’s the next action?
"Good
Goals From Good Hearts"
Means
have no merit, if our end amiss.
If
wrong our hearts, our heads are right in vain.
Edward
Young
"Add
To Sincerity"
Perfect
sincerity offers No guarantee.
Chuang-Tzu
"Seek
What You Say"
Individuals
are considered sincere when there is little or no discrepancy between the goals
they seek and those they claim to be seeking.
Leonard
W. Doob
"Perhaps
A New Direction"
It
is not always by plugging away at a difficulty and sticking at it that one
overcomes it; but, rather, often by working on the one next to it. Certain
people and certain things require they be approached on an angle.
Andre
Gide
"Act
Boldly"
Success,
for the most part, attends those who act boldly, not those who weigh
everything, and are [slow] to venture.
Xerxes
"Success
Measured By Obstacles Overcome"
I
have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that
one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying
to succeed. Booker T. Washington
"The
Tipping Point"
There
is a moment in every battle at which the least maneuver is decisive and gives
superiority, as one drop of water causes overflow.
Napoleon
"Get
Over Yourself"
The
greatest of victories is the victory over oneself.
Martin
Buber
"Power
In Numbers"
Victory
waits upon unity of action.
Publius
Syrus