The source of failure

It is the individual who is not interested in his fellow men
who has the greatest difficulties in life
and provides the greatest injury to others.
It is from among such individuals that all human failures spring.

        Alfred Adler, What Life Should Mean to You 

 

 

 

Capacity

The capacity for growth depends on one's ability
to internalize and to take personal responsibility.
If we forever see our life as a problem caused by others,
a problem to be 'solved,' then no change will occur.

    James Hollis, The Middle Passage: From Misery to Meaning in Midlife 

 

 

 

 

Culture shock

The past is a foreign country;
        they do things differently there.

                L.P. Hartley, The Go-Between

Let the sun shine

But friendship is precious,
not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life;
and thanks to a benevolent arrangement of things,
the greater part of life is sunshine.

        Thomas Jefferson, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson

 

 

 

 

Something

I've learned what I can control is whether
I am going to live a day in fear and depression and panic, or
whether I am going to attack the day and make it as good a day,
as wonderful a day, as I can.

        Gilda Radner, It's Always Something

Patience

But the fact is, things always seem to come slowly
    when you are longing for them.

            Teresa of Ávila, The Letters of St. Teresa of Jesus

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poem: Triolet on a Line Apocryphally Attributed to Martin Luther

Why should the Devil get all the good tunes,
The booze and the neon and Saturday night,
The swaying in darkness, the lovers like spoons?
Why should the Devil get all the good tunes?
Does he hum them to while away sad afternoons
And the long, lonesome Sundays? Or sing them for spite?
Why should the Devil get all the good tunes,
The booze and the neon and Saturday night?

                A.E. Stallings