My Father
My Father
“With each passing day I realize more how much he lives within me, and how great a shadow he casts over my life. It is the same for all men. None of us can escape this shadow of the father, even if that shadow fills us with fear, even if it has no name or face. To be worthy of that man, to prove something to that man, to exocise the memory of that man from every corner of our life – however it affects us, the shadow of that man cannot be denied.”
My Father
“To become a father is to understand that power of that shadow from the other side. You realize that the touches you make upon your son will shape him, for better or worse, for his entire life.”
Being a Man and Male
… Being a man is something different. It is taking these male traits and forming them into a life that meets the demands of the world around you while serving the needs of others. It is action in service of a dream…
Being a Man and Male
“You were born into a different world that will present you with different gifts and challenges. A new vision of manhood will be called for that does not tie so closely into the more aggressive and competitive residues of our male character. You will need to search out new ways of expressing strength, showing mastery, and exhibiting courage – ways that do not depend upon confronting the world before you as an adversary.”
Being a Man and Male
“… when maleness operates untempered with moral value, it visits damage upon the earth.”
Being a Man and Male
“Being male is not enough; being a man is a right to be earned and an honor to be cherished.”
Being a Man and Male
“… the formation of your manhood must be a conscious act governed by the highest vision of the man you want to be.”
Being a Man and Male
“Most of all, do not fall prey to the false belief that mastery and domination are synonymous with manliness.”
Being a Man and Male
“Measure your greatness by the length of your reach, but also by the gentleness of your touch.”
Strength
“For ages we have lived with this biological imperative by which manhood has been defined as strength to master others, strength to master our emotions, strength to master the world around us.”
“The world doesn’t need this version of strength anymore. We are not locked in some physics of survival where we must turn force against counterforce in an elemental battle to see who will prevail. We need greatness of spirit more than we need greatness of physical strength.”
Strength
“But there is much more to strength than overcoming fear.”
“Martin Luther may have put it most succinctly when he stood up for his vision of God. ‘Here I stand,’ he said, ‘I cannot do otherwise.’
Strength
“Try to find this strength in yourself. It lies far below anger and righteousness and any impulse toward physical domination. It lies in a place where your heart is at peace.”
Strength
“Remember the words of Tao te Ching. ‘The only true strength is a strength that people do not fear.’ Strength based in force is strength people fear. Strength based in love is a strength people crave.”
Work
“Your work makes you who you are, because it is where you put your time.”
“We are what we do, and the more we do it, the more we become it.”
Work
“So a true vocation calls to you to perform it and it allows your life to speak.”
Work
“But now amount of security is worth the suffering of a life lived chained to a routine that has killed all your dreams.”
Money
“Yet money is not of central importance. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the lasting values that make life worth living.”
Money
“Knowing how to be poor means developing an unerring instinct for the difference between what is essential and what is only desirable. It means knowing how to take control of your life – how to repair and maintain the things around you, how to purchase wisely and well, how not to purchase at all when you do not have the means to do so, how to take joy in the simple pleasures in life.”
money means the loss of who they are. If you learn to accept poverty when it comes, it will make you clearer and stronger and more self-reliant. It will make you more appreciative of the simple gifts of life and will keep this appreciation close to the center of your heart. But you must learn to live by its rules. You must learn to embrace the life of limitations that it forces upon you.”
Tragedy And Suffering
You must embrace them and realize that they too, are a gift of life because they take you out of yourself and, for a moment, make you one with all others who have known loss or pain or suffering. The great lesson of suffering comes from the fact that it is so much greater than the confines in which we live our daily lives.”
“When we finally reclaim ourselves, as we ultimately do, we are changed. We have been dropped into chaos and nothing is as it was.”
Tragedy And Suffering
“Those who insulate themselves from further pain miss a great opportunity. They miss the chance to use their pain to grow outside themselves and recognize something greater and shared in our human experience.”
“Whatever it is, it is your measure, and you need to look upon it as a gift to help you reclaim what is important in your life.”
Tragedy And Suffering
“The question you must ask yourself is not if you will heal, but how you will heal. Grief and pain have their own duration, but when they begin to pass, you must take care to guide the shape of the new being you are to become.”
Loneliness And Solitude
Time spent alone returns to you a hundredfold, because it is the proving ground of the spirit.”
“Most people fear being alone because they understand only loneliness. They feel that unless the world presents them with a mirror in the form of another person responding to them, they are close to annihilation.”
“Solitude is a place you reach, not a decision you make.”
Fatherhood
“ So move cautiously toward fatherhood. It is much easier to become a father than to be one. When you become a father your whole life suddenly becomes measured against your vision of what good fatherhood should be.”
Fatherhood
“So look upon fatherhood as a gift. It is one of life’s common miracles, available to everyone and given freely to us all. A child, whether healthy or ill, misshapen or beautiful, opens the world into a new sunlight. It is an experience greater than a dream.”
The Burden Of Age
“They [elderly people] are a weight and an encumbrance and a mirror of our own mortality. It takes a person of great heart to see past this fact and to see the wisdom the elders have to offer, and to serve them out of gratitude for the life they have passed on to us.”
“But no matter how they make you feel, you should always watch them carefully. They were you and you will be them. You carry the seeds of your old age in you at this very moment, and they hear the echoes of their childhood each time they see you.”
…”they very often fear their own loss of importance. They face the uncertainty of death and are often embittered that the world they worked so hard to create is being discarded by the generations now in power. Their bodies are giving out on them. They increasingly find themselves surrounded only by people their own age, because they know that the young would rather be apart from them. They often live in memories.”
The Burden of Age
“You must remember this: even in their infirmity, elders seek and value their dignity. What they want, above all else, is to feel that their lives are valued, and that their time on earth has not been wasted.”
Masculinity
Norman Mailer, in Christians and Cannibals, made a similar observation: "Masculinity is not something given to you, something you're born with, but something you gain. And you gain it by winning small battles with honor."
Giving
We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give. (Winston Churchill)
Optimism – Pessimism (Winston Churchill)
For myself I am an optimist - it does not seem to be much use being anything else.
Mistakes (Winston Churchill)
If a thing is worth doing, it's worth doing badly.
You will make all kinds of mistakes; but as long as you are generous and true and also fierce you cannot hurt the world or even seriously distress her. She was meant to be wooed and won by youth
Personally I'm always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.
Giving up…. (Winston Churchill)
Here is the answer which I will give to President
Never give in--never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.
Success (Winston Churchill)
Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.
Winston Churchill (Misc)
He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.
I have always felt that a politician is to be judged by the animosities he excites among his opponents
The price of greatness is responsibility.
Never hold discussions with the monkey when the organ grinder is in the room.
Courage (Winston Churchill)
Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak.
Courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.
An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile - hoping it will eat him last.
Winston Churchill
One ought never to turn one's back on a threatened danger and try to run away from it. If you do that, you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half.
This truth is incontrovertible. Panic may resent it; ignorance may deride it; malice may distort it; but there it is.
Kites rise highest against the wind -- not with it.
Seneca
There is nothing in the world so much admired
as a man who knows how to bear unhappiness with courage.
Robert Frost
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Charles Darwin
It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent; it is the one that is most adaptable to change.
It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.
If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.
I have found the best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it.
Doing what is right . . .
Cowardice asks the question - is it safe?
Expediency asks the question - is it politic?
Vanity asks the question - is it popular?
But conscience asks the question - is it right?
And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular; but one must take it because it is right.
Martin Luther King
Courage
Martin Luther King
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
Martin Luther King
Principles
In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. That is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant. Martin Luther King
The measure of a man
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
If a man hasn't discovered something that he would die for, he isn't fit to live.
Martin Luther King
Enemies
Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names.
John F. Kennedy
Fear
When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.
Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.
First of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself - nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Future
We cannot always build the future for our youth, but we can build our youth for the future.
The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Albert Einstein . . .
Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.
The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives.
Love is a better teacher than duty.
It is only to the individual that a soul is given.
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