Happy New Year!

Some thoughts for 2010…

“Who is wise? He that learns from everyone. Who is powerful? He that governs his passions. Who is rich? He that is content. Who is that? Nobody.”
— Benjamin Franklin

“Tenderness and kindness are not signs of weakness and despair but manifestations of strength and resolution”
— Kahlil Gibran

“It’s not what we eat but what we digest that makes us strong; not what we gain but what we save that makes us rich; not what we read but what we remember that makes us learned; and not what we profess but what we practice that gives us integrity.”
— Francis Bacon, Sr.

Look at the trees, look at the birds, look at the clouds, look at the stars… and if you have eyes you will be able to see that the whole existence is joyful. Everything is simply happy. Trees are happy for no reason; they are not going to become prime ministers or presidents and they are not going to become rich and they will never have any bank balance. Look at the flowers – for no reason. It is simply unbelievable how happy flowers are.
— Osho

“Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.”
— Buddha

Blessed is he who has found his work. Let him ask no other blessedness.
— Thomas Carlyle

The best things in life are nearest: Breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of right just before you. Then do not grasp at the stars, but do life’s plain, common work as it comes, certain that daily duties and daily bread are the sweetest things in life.
— Robert Louis Stevenson

“All things will be produced in superior quantity and quality, and with greater ease, when each man works at a single occupation, in accordance with his natural gifts, and at the right moment, without meddling with anything else.”
— Plato

“We should pay as much reverence to youth as we should to age; there are points in which you young folks are altogether our superiors: and I can’t help constantly crying out to persons of my own years, when busied about their young people — leave them alone; don’t be always meddling with their affairs, which they can manage for themselves; don’t be always insisting upon managing their boats, and putting your oars in the water with theirs.”
— William Makepeace Thackeray

It is never wise to seek or wish for another’s misfortune. If malice or envy were tangible and had a shape, it would be the shape of a boomerang.
— Charley Reese

Rudeness is the weak man’s imitation of strength.
— Eric Hoffer

It is not by accident that the happiest people are those who make a conscious effort to live useful lives. Their happiness, of course, is not a shallow exhilaration where life is one continuous intoxicating party. Rather, their happiness is a deep sense of inner peace that comes when they believe their lives have meaning and that they are making a difference for good in the world.
— Ernest A. Fitzgerald  

Labour to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire, called conscience.
— George Washington.