January 2011

Thoughts from My Reading

"We need to be the change we wish to see in the world."
Mahatma Gandhi 1869-1948
Indian Political Leader

"So astounding are the facts in this connection that it would seem as though the Creator Himself electrically designed this planet."
Albert Einstein 1879-1955

"Every moment of life is the best I've ever had."
Terry Lakin

"When the heart is set right, then the personal life if cultivated. When the personal life it cultivated, then the home life is regulated. When the home life is regulated, then the national life is orderly: and when the national life is orderly, then the world is at Peace."
Confucius 551-419 BC
Chinese Philosopher

"I shall still be as unable to understand with my reason why I pray and I shall go on praying; but my life now, my whole life apart from anything that can happen to me, every minute of it is now more meaningless, as it was before, but it has the positive meaning of goodness, which I have the power to put into it."
Levin in Anna Karenina – Tolstoy

"The distance is short, one should now readily see, from Defoe to Mark Twain and Swift to Orwell. That is why 'An Invention to Great Reading' was written, and why its author hopes it will accomplish that is suggested in its title; namely to bring the reader to the literary wonders around and before him. In discovering these, it is again the author's fervent hope that the reader will say; "this is splendid and marvelous; it all belongs to my own time; but I have strange feelings that I have been here before."
The Worlds Greatest Classics "An Invitation to Great Reading".

Chapter about: The Ground on Which We Stand: Basic Documents of American History
Two pages touching on the value of our basic documents – laced with profoundness that should be read on its entirety. "...each crisis undergone by the United States has been recorded in one or more speeches or documents written or spoken at the moment of peril. The most significant of these are found in "The Ground on Which We Stand". It will thus be for the reader to decide how close the alliance is between actuality and literature once he has read these selections of living history. He will also come to know how from his country's moments of triumph and despair came what can only be described as a vivid and vital testament of strength, majesty, fearlessness, and an awesome unflinching belief in human dignity and freedom. (Last paragraph)

Introduction "Certainly the Constitution is the most significant document in the volume the national life of the United States."
Ground on Which We Stand.

Thoughts to Assimilate

"The creation of the Heavens and the Earth and everything in them was complete."
Genesis 2:1

"Faith is to believe that which you do not see; and the reward of this faith is to see that which you believe."
Saint Augustine of Hippo 354-430
Theologian and Bishop

"Love is the fulfilling of the law."
Saint Paul circa 5-67
Christian Apostle in Romans 13:10

"One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life. That word is Love."
Sophocles 496-406 BC
Greek Playwright

"Love is the most powerful and still most unknown energy in the world."
Pierre Teilhard DeChardin 1881-1955
Priest and Philosopher

"I am still determined to be cheerful and happy in whatever situation I may be; for I have also learned from experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions, and not on our circumstances."
Martha Washington 1732-1802

"Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success."
Albert Scheitzer 1875-1965
Nobel Peace Prize winner, Medical Missionary and Ph

"A hundred times everyday I remind myself that my inner and outer life depend on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving."
Albert Einstein 1879-1955
Nobel Prize winning physicist

"A man who is master of himself can find a sorrow as he can invent a pleasure. I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them to enjoy them and to dominate them."
Oscar Wilde 1854-1900
Author and Poet