When a man dreams his own dream, he is the sport of his dream; when Another gives it to him, that Other is able to fulfil it.
– Lilith, chapter XLVII,
George MacDonald
Tag: how to live
Every creature must one night
yield himself and lie down; he was made for liberty and must not be left a slave. […] A desert, wide and dreary, parts him who lies down to die from him who lies down to live.
– Lilith, chapter XLII,
George MacDonald
If you are what you should be, you will set the world on fire.
– St. Catherine of Siena
Prints
Finger-print.
Hand-print.
Body-print.
Soul-print.
Voice-print.
Mind-print.
Feeling-print.
Life-Print.
Where have you left
Yours?
– Douglas Groothuis
A Thought or Two for the New Year
Rather than wishes of prosperity and the like, I would wish upon all the quickening of heart that accompanies those moments of music, art, written word or wandered landscape when you are drawn out of yourself into something vaster and wilder of spirit, into those things which are part of us all but the property of none.
If a retainer will just think
about what he is to do for the day at hand, he will be able to do anything. If it is a single day’s work, one should be able to put up with it. Tomorrow, too, is but a single day.
– attributed to one Ikuno Oribe;
Hagakure, eighth chapter,
Yamamoto Tsunetomo
Though my soul may set in darkness, it shall rise in perfect light.
I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.
– excerpt from ‘The Old Astronomer’, Sarah Williams
The weakest living creature,
by concentrating his powers on a single object, can accomplish something. The strongest, by dispensing his over many, may fail to accomplish anything. The drop, by continually falling, bores its passage through the hardest rock. The hasty torrent rushes over it with hideous uproar, and leaves no trace behind.
– Thomas Carlyle,
essayist and historian (1795-1881)
God loves with a great love the man whose heart is bursting with a passion for the impossible.
– William Booth
On procrastination
A wise person does at once, what a fool does at last. Both do the same thing; only at different times.
– Baltasar Gracian
No unwelcome tasks become any the less unwelcome by putting them off till tomorrow. Undone, they stand threatening and disturbing our tranquility, and hindering our communion with God.
– Alexander Maclaren
No task is a long one but the task on which one dare not start. It becomes a nightmare.
– Charles Baudelaire
Take action. Procrastination is the death blow to self-motivation. “I’ll do it later…after I get organized” is the language of the unsuccessful and the frustrated. Successful, highly motivated men and women don’t put it off. They know their lives are no more than the accumulation of precious seconds, minutes, and days – golden moments never to be recaptured.
– Ted W. Engstrom
Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.
– Pablo Picasso