INSPIRING WORDS

My first collection of 'Inspiring Words" was published as a hard cover book by Information Australia in 1998. Since then I have written into my commonplace book, more words from others which to me are either inspiring or have touched a chord of emotion. All, I believe, are worth remembering and recording for the interest and possibly the benefit of others. The source of each is identified .

"The life that I have
Is all that I have
And the life that I have
Is yours

"The love that I have
Of the life that I have
Is yours and yours and yours.

"A sleep I shall have
A rest I shall have
Yet death shall be but a pause.

"For the peace of my years
In the long green grass
Will be yours and yours and yours".
- Leo Marks, World War II English cryptographer to his lover Violette Szabo, an allied agent whom he briefed before she parachuted into France. She was captured by the Germans, tortured and executed by them.

'The amount of satisfaction you get from life depends largely on your ingenuity, self sufficiency and resourcefulness. People who wait around for life to supply their satisfaction usually find boredom instead'.
- WillIam Meinnger

'It is too late! Ah, nothing is too late.
Till the tired heart shall cease to palpitate
Cato learned Greek at the age of eighty; Sophocles
Wrote his grand Oedipus, and Simonides
Bore off the prize for verse from his compeers
When each had numbered more than four score years.

"Chaucer, at Woodstock with the nightingales,
At sixty wrote the Canterbury Tales
Goethe at Weimar, toiling to the last,
Completed Faust when eighty years were past.

"There are indeed exceptions but they show
How far the gulfstream of our youth may flow
Into the Arctic regions of our lives,
Where little else than life itself survives.

"For age is an opportunity no less
Than youth itself, though in another dress
And so as the evening twilight fades away
The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day"
- Longfellow

"I shall treasure your praises as my richest possession and hope to present them to the keeper of the Pearly Gates as evidence that if my life on earth did not deserve such praise, at least I had the ability to magnify a commonplace performance and make it appear important"
- Adolph Ochs, owner and publisher of the New York Times

"You cannot justify capitalism if there isn't risk".
- Rupert Murdoch

"When in doubt tell the truth."
- Mark Twain

"A soft answer turn away wrath".
- Proverbs 15:1

"It is surely not intelligent to worry about the time one will die. Live for the present not so much for the future and think that you are going to live forever".
- Christopher Wood

"Never trust a bank".
- Maurice Sloman

"Whatever you think you can do or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, magic and power in it".
- Goethe

"Freedom lies in being bold".
- Robert Frost

"There is nothing more liberating, no more exhilarating experience than to determine one's position, shake it bravely and then act".
- Eleanor Roosevelt

"When you go home, tell them of us and say
For your tomorrows we gave our today".
-The Kahima epitaph

"Let us therefore no longer pass judgment on each other, but resolve instead never to put a stumbling block or hinderance in the way of another. I know, and am persuaded that nothing is unclean in itself, but it is unclean for anyone who thinks it is unclean".
- Romans 14:13-14

"Accept without resentment whatever may befall".
- Marcus Aurelius

"I think we have to very vigilant. We have to stop the rot wherever we find it. The moment one hears someone say something offensive to human dignity in any way, whether against foreigners, or people of other faiths, or of other color, one must protest and argue. These individual attitudes must never be allowed to go unchallenged. Some fifty years ago, a few people created horror, but far too many, knowing about it, tolerated it. It started just as now - with graffiti, vulgar jokes, knowing winks. Then it was the Jews, now it is the Turks, the Vietnamese and the Muslims.
The obscenity of discrimination will only be stopped if we accept responsibility for never in a single instance, allowing it to go unchallenged. That, I think, is our task.
- Martin Bormann (eldest son of the Nazi leader Martin Bormann, deputy to Hitler), who became a Catholic priest and teacher.

"Anzac is not only about loss. It is about courage, endurance and duty. It is about love of country and mateship and good humour and the survival of a sense of self-worth and decency in the face of dreadful odds.
- Sir William Deane

"Most of us are as happy as we make up our minds to be".
- Abraham Lincoln

"It is amazing how complete is the illusion that beauty is goodness".
- Tolstoy

"Rudeness is the weak persons imitation of strength".
- Eric Hoffer

"What is it that leads human beings so often and so readily to embrace violence and immorality?"
- Asked by Gitta Sereny in her book 'The German trauma'

"If only people all over the world would stop for a moment - people along every coast and scattered across every island. Let them look through the smog and dust, through the fumes and smoke and see there are better ways to live.
If only people would realise that the environment that gives them life, the hills and the mountains are being turned into trash dumps, that the earths resources are disappearing. Surely there are better ways to live.,
If only people would see that they are wearing themselves out, that life is being lost to them. They pursue the goals that they think are important, but they miss out on the joy and the glory of God's creation.
There is a power beyond and within us that draws us to a better, higher humanity. There is something that calls us to reach beyond the smaller view to the larger life: that would have us step through and over our stress to find the joy; that reminds us again that beyond our emptiness there is a new energy; that after our losses there are seeds for a new tomorrow.
All you who search for the God of the bigger life, the God that is in you and the God that lifts you out of yourselves, all you who have an awareness of the God of a greater life, rejoice that you are part of this greater life and part of its expanded joy."
- Francis Macnab - a contemporary interpretative version of Psalm 97

"My pacifism is not based on any intellectual theory but on a deep antipathy to every form of cruelty and hatred".
- Albert Einstein

"Nothing can excuse this behaviour. No cause, however explained, however advocated, however twisted , can possibly justify the indiscriminate, unprovoked slaughter of innocent people".
- John Howard, (before Iraq)

.