“We want to make good time, but for us now this is measured with emphasis on “good” rather than “time” and when you make that shift in emphasis the whole approach changes.” “The truth knocks on the door and you say, ‘Go away, I’m looking for the truth,’ and so it goes away. ” “Sometimes it’s a little better to travel than to arrive” “In the high country of the mind one has to become...
“In the high country of the mind one has to become adjusted to the thinner air of uncertainty, and to the enormous magnitude of questions asked, and to the answers proposed to these questions. The sweep goes on and on and on so obviously much further than the mind can grasp one hesitates even to go near for fear of getting lost in them and never finding one’s way out.” Robert M. Pirsig, Zen...
Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are Oh, the jobs people work at! Out west near Hawtch-Hawtch there’s a Hawtch-Hawtcher Bee-Watcher. His job is to watch… is to keep both his eyes on the lazy town bee. A bee that is watched will work harder, you see. Well… he watched and he watched. But, in spite of his watch, that bee didn’t work any harder. Not mawtch. So then somebody said...
“We have two lives, and the second begins when we realize we only have one.” Confucius
Each morning when I open my eyes I say to myself: I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn’t arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I’m going to be happy in it.” – Julius Henry “Groucho” Marx, 1890-1977, American comedian and film star
Don’t confuse character with reputation. Abraham Lincoln said, ‘Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.’ Some people spend too much time worrying about the shadow and too little about the tree. Reputation is fragile; character endures. Good character is ethics in action; it’s the ability to summon the moral...
“Loneliness is the inescapable lot of a man holding such a job. Subordinates can advise, urge, help, and pray – but only one man in his own mind and heart can decide, “Do we or do we not?” The stakes are always high, and the penalties are expressed in terms of loss of life or major or minor disasters to the nation. No man can always be right. So the struggle is to do...
Bad and mediocre people are tempted to sin by their own habitual weaknesses. The earlier lies or thefts or adulteries make the next one that much easier to contemplate. Having already cut so many corners, the thinking goes, what’s one more here or there? Why even aspire to virtues that you probably won’t achieve, when it’s easier to remain the sinner that you already know yourself to be? But...