生きる

The people in the room think he is not an American, but he is more American than almost any of them. He has discovered America and his spirit is the spirit of the pioneers. He is furious with America because it does not realize its strength and beauty and power. He talks about the workmen in the factory where he is employed… . He took the job “in order to understand the real America.” He thinks the men are wonderful. “Why don’t you American intellectuals ever get to them; talk to them?”

— “Who Goes Nazi?”, August 1941, Dorothy Thompson

I used to be the kind of person who would people-watch in order to mock other people, either silently or aloud to like minded Schadenfreude loving friends. I can’t believe I used to be that petty. Now, whenever I see anyone - anywhere - on the street, I try and think of one GOOD thing about that person. If I can’t notice anything physical that strikes me as beautiful, I simply remind myself that each of us was born and that the moment of our birth was the highlight of someone’s life.

— grapefruitmoon.

My parents have both gone, and I had this big hole in my heart and I realised that what you do is you take all of that love and you give it back.

— Bailey, Into The Abyss

Your success depends on you.
Your happiness depends on you.
You have to steer your own course.
You have to shape your own fortune.
You have to educate yourself.
You have to do your own thinking.
You have to live with your own conscience.
Your mind is yours and can be used only by you.
You come into this world alone.
You go to the grave alone.
You are alone with your inner thoughts during the journey between.
You make your own decisions.
You must abide by the consequences of your acts.
“I cannot make you well unless you make yourself well,” an eminent doctor often tells his patients.
You alone can regulate your habits and make or unmake your health.
You alone can assimilate things mental and things material.
Said a Brooklyn preacher, offering his parishioners communion one Sunday: “I cannot give you the blessings and teh benefits of this holy feast. You must appropriate them for yourselves. The banquet is spread; help yourself freely.
“You may be invited to a feast where the table is laden with the choicest foods, but unless you appropriate and assimilate them, they can do you no good. So it is with this holy feast. You must appropriate its blessings. I cannot infuse them into you.”
You have to do your own assimilation all through life.
You have be taught by a teacher, but you have to imbibe the knowledge. He cannot transfuse it into your brain.
You alone can control your mind cells and your brain cells.
You may have spread before you the wisdom of the ages, but unless you assimilate it you derive no benefit from it; no one can force it into your cranium.
You alone can move your own legs.
You alone can move your own arms.
You alone can utilize your own hands.
You alone can control your own muscles.
You must stand on your feet, physically and metaphorically.
You must take your own steps.
Your parents cannot enter into your skin, take control of your mental and physical machinery, and make something of you.
You cannot fight your son’s battles; that he must do for himself.
You have to be captain of your own destiny.
You have to see through your own eyes.
You have to use your own ears.
You have to master your own faculties.
You have to solve your own problems.
You have to form your own ideals.
You have to create your own ideas.
You must choose your own speech.
You must govern your own tongue.
Your real life is your thoughts.
Your thoughts are your own making.
Your character is your own handiwork.
You alone can select the materials that go into it.
You alone can reject what is not fit to go into it.
You are the creator of your own personality.
You can be disgraced by no man’s hand but your own.
You can be elevated and sustained by no man but yourself.
You have to write your own record.
You have to build your own monument – or dig your own pit.
Which are you doing?

— Keys To Success, B.C. Forbes

The sea gets deeper as you go further into it.