Conditions are never just right.  People who delay action until all factors are favorable do nothing.”
– William Feather

Our best friends and our worst enemies are our thoughts.  A thought can do us more good than a doctor or a banker or a faithful friend.  It can also do us more harm than a brick.

–Frank Crane

How true this is!  How many times have I been prevented from doing something simply because of a doubtful or fearful thought?  How powerful and empowering are ‘true’ and ‘right’ thoughts about our self and others!

Men spend their lives in anticipation, in determining to be vastly happy at some period when they have time.  But the present time has one advantage over every other — it is our own.  Past opportunities are gone, future have not come.

–Charles C. Colton

If we all worked on the assumption that what is accepted as true really was true, there would be little hope of advance.

–Orville Wright

How different would all our lives be if Mr. Wright hadn’t challenged assumptions about the possibility of flight?

Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said.  A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made.  Or a garden planted.  Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there.  It doesn’t matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that’s like you after you take your hands away.  The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said.  The lawn cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.

Keep falsehood and lies far from me;
       give me neither poverty nor riches,
       but give me only my daily bread.

Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you
       and say, ‘Who is the LORD ?’
       Or I may become poor and steal,
       and so dishonor the name of my God.

People who know how to employ themselves, always find leisure moments, while those who do nothing are forever in a hurry.
–Jeanee-Marie Roland

Interesting.  If you know how to apply yourself and you actually do apply yourself (proactive), you’ll get meaningful things done.  However, if you don’t do anything (reactionary), you’ll never find a free moment.

There’s a power in poverty that breaks principalities
And brings the authority’s down to their knees
There’s a brewing frustration and ageless temptation
To fight for control by some manipulation

But the God of the kingdoms and the God of the Nations
The God of creation sends his revelation
Thru the homeless and penniless Jesus the son
The poor will inherit the Kingdom to come

Where will we turn when our world falls apart
And all of the treasures we’ve stored in our barns
Can’t buy the Kingdom of God?
Who will we praise when we’ve praised all our lives
men who build Kingdoms and men who build fame
What will we fear when all that remains
Is God on His throne, with a child in his arms,
and love in his eyes
And the sound of his heart cries

A little alarm now and then keeps life from stagnation.
– Fanny Burney

The hilltop hour would not be half so wonderful if there were no dark valleys to traverse.
– Helen Keller

Like an ox-cart driver in monsoon season or the skipper of a grounded ship, one must sometimes go forward by going back.
– John Barth