Category: Wisdom (Page 9 of 13)

Sam Ewing has been a professional writer since age 14 in 1935 when he was a reporter at the Vicksburg Evening Post and Morning Herald in Vicksburg, Mississippi. He also announced for WQBC, the local radio station. During the past 50 years Sam has produced five non-fiction books, dozens of self-help film, hundreds of magazine articles and witticisms. Sam’s writing was done free lance while he worked in TV, radio, advertising agencies and cable as a sales and program executive.

He attended the University of San Francisco until World Was II when he joined Naval Intelligence for three and a half years, serving both in the U.S. and in the Aleutians. In Dutch harbor, Alaska, Sam edited a daily Armed Forces paper, the Harbor News.

Now semi-retired with his wife Karol of 36-plus years, he concentrates on producing short humor and magazine pieces.

Ewing has authored five books:

• “The Cat Who Loved Christmas And Other Stories”
• “Professional Filmmaking”
• “Don’t Look At The Camera! Shortcuts To Television Photography & Filmmaking”
• “You’re on the air”
• “Sam Ewing”

Check Amazon or Google Books for availability.

“Hard work spotlights the character of people: some turn up their sleeves, some turn up their noses, and some don’t turn up at all.”

“It’s not the hours you put in your work that counts, it’s the work you put in the hours.”

“‘Now’ is the operative word. Everything you put in your way is just a method of putting off the hour when you could actually be doing your dream. You don’t need endless time and perfect conditions. Do it now. Do it today. Do it for twenty minutes and watch your heart start beating.”

“On the Plains of Hesitation bleach the bones of countless millions, who, at the Dawn of Victory, sat down to wait, and waiting…”

“Success has a simple formula: do your best, and people may like it.”

“Nothing is so embarrassing as watching someone do something that you said couldn’t be done.”

“Nothing is as frustrating as arguing with someone who knows what he’s talking about.”

“When you finally go back to your old home, you find it wasn’t the old home you missed but your childhood.”

Epicurus was born about 342 B.C. in the Greek colony on Samos, but spent most of his active life in Athens, where he founded a school of philosophy. At “the Garden,” Epicurus and his friends lived out their ideals for human life, talking about philosophical issues but deliberately detaching themselves from active involvement in social affairs.

Epicurus whole-heartedly adopted the atomism of Leucippus and Democritus, maintaining that all objects and events including human lives are in reality nothing more than physical interactions among minute indestructible particles. In his Letter to Menoeceus and Principle Doctrines, Epicurus discussed the consequences of this view for the human attempt to achieve happiness. Epicurus believed that death was a total annihilation and could not be experienced. His philosophy focused on the present promoting that we need only live a simple life and seek always to avoid physical pain. Epicurus died in 270 B.C.

“Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; but remember that what you now have was once among the things only hoped for.”

“The man least dependent upon the morrow goes to meet the morrow most cheerfully.”

“It is better for you to be free of fear lying upon a pallet, than to have a golden couch and a rich table and be full of trouble.”

“Not what we have But what we enjoy, constitutes our abundance.”

“Riches do not exhilarate us so much with their possession as they torment us with their loss.”

“The greater the difficulty, the more the glory in surmounting it.”

“You don’t develop courage by being happy in your relationships everyday. You develop it by surviving difficult times and challenging adversity.”

“It is not so much our friends’ help that helps us as the confident knowledge that they will help us.”

“Of all the things which wisdom acquires to produce the blessedness of the complete life far the greatest is the possession of Friendship.”

“If thou wilt make a man happy, add not unto his riches but take away from his desires.”

Epictetus (50 A.D.-138 A.D.) was a Stoic philosopher of the 1st century. He was born a Roman slave in Hieropolis, in Asia Minor (the peninsula comprising most of modern Turkey). While still a slave, he began studying with the Stoic Musonius Rufus. Shortly after his master freed him, Epictetus founded his own school in Nicopolis, Epirus. Like Socrates, Epictetus wrote nothing but his teachings were set down by his disciple Arrian (known also for writing the history of Alexander the Great) in the Discourses and the Encheiridion. Epictetus emphasized indifference to external goods and taught that the true good is within oneself. His Stoicism was outstanding in its insistence on the doctrine of the brotherhood of man.

Lame and physically weak from the time he had been a slave, Epictetus worked arduously in making his views known. He developed a large following, even among early Christians. In 90 A.D., the Emperor Domitian expelled him from Rome along with many other philosophers whose teachings he saw as dangerous to his reign.

“Control thy passions, lest they take vengeance on thee.”

“Difficulties show men what they are. In case of any difficulty remember that God has pitted you against a rough antagonist that you may be a conqueror, and this cannot be without toil.”

“He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has.”

“No greater thing is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig, I answer you that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.”

“First learn the meaning of what you say, and then speak.”

“Unless we place our religion and our treasure in the same thing, religion will always be sacrificed.”

“We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.”

“When you are offended at any man’s fault, turn to yourself and study your own failings. Then you will forget your anger.”

“Freedom is not procured by a full enjoyment of what is desired, but by controlling the desire.”

“God has entrusted me with myself.”

“It takes more than just a good looking body. You’ve got to have the heart and soul to go with it.”

“First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.”

“If you do not wish to be prone to anger, do not feed the habit; give it nothing which may tend to its increase.”

“No man is free who is not master of himself.”

“Remember that you are an actor in a drama, of such a part as it may please the master to assign you, for a long time or for a little as he may choose. And if he will you to take the part of a poor man, or a cripple, or a ruler, or a private citizen, then may you act that part with grace! For to act well the part that is allotted to us, that indeed is ours to do, but to choose it is another’s.”

“The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things.”

“Know, first, who you are; and then adorn yourself accordingly.”

“Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens.”

“The good or ill of a man lies within his own will.”

“When you close your doors, and make darkness within, remember never to say that you are alone, for you are not alone; nay, God is within, and your genius is within.”

“Only the educated are free.”

“Be careful to leave your sons well instructed rather than rich, for the hopes of the instructed are better than the wealth of the ignorant.”

Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) is considered the center of the American transcendental movement, setting out most of its ideas and values in a little book, Nature, published in 1836, that represented at least ten years of intense study in philosophy, religion, and literature, and in his First Series of essays. He resigned from his occupation as a Unitarian clergyman in 1832 to travel to Europe, where he befriended Carlyle, Coleridge and Wordsworth among others. In the U.S. he lectured in philosophy, while forming a transcendentalist group comprising fellow writers and poets such as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry David Thoreau.

Emerson’s first book, Nature expressed his theories that the imagination of man is shaped by nature and helped spark an entirely new philosophical movement in New England. Essays (1841 and 1844), containing his essays on philosophy and other subjects, brought him international renown. Representative Men (1850) is a collection of lectures held in Oxford and London in 1847. Later lecture collections include The Conduct of Life (1860) and Society and Solitude (1870). His poetry, Poems (1847) and May-Day and Other Pieces (1867) may not have been ground breaking as a whole, but some of his pieces are considered to be among the most important poetry of the 19th century.

Emerson was born in Boston, Massachusetts. His father died when he was eight, the first of many premature deaths which would shape his life–all three brothers, his first wife at 20, and his older son at 5. Most of his ancestors were clergymen as his father. He was educated in Boston and Harvard, like his father, and graduated in 1821. In 1825 he began to study at the Harvard Divinity School and next year he was licensed to preach by the Middlesex Association of Ministers. In 1829 Emerson married Ellen Louisa Tucker, who died in 1831 from consumption. Emerson’s first and only settlement was at the important Second Unitarian Church of Boston, where he became sole pastor in 1830. Three years later he had a crisis of faith, finding that he “was not interested” in the rite of Communion. Emerson’s controversial views caused his resignation. However, he never ceased to be both teacher and preacher, although without the support of any concrete idea of God. In 1835 he married Lydia Jackson; they lived in Concord and had four children while he settled into his life of conversations, reading and writing, and lecturing, which furnished a comfortable income.

On April 27, 1882, Emerson died of pneumonia, caught some weeks before after a rain-soaked walk through his beloved Concord woods. The tiny New England town tolled the bell for each of his years, shrouded itself in black, and prepared for the onslaught of mourners who came from far and near to accompany Emerson to his rest on Poets’ Knoll in Sleepy Hollow cemetery.

“Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.”

“Watch your thoughts for they become words, watch your words for they become actions, watch your actions, for they become habits, watch your habits for they become your character, watch your character for it becomes your destiny.”

“The greatest homage to truth is to use it.”

“The one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul.”

“The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.”

“Our faith comes in moments, yet there is a depth in those brief moments which constrains us to ascribe more reality to them than to all other experiences.”

“Thought is the blossom; language the bud; action the fruit behind.”

“The only reward of virtue is virtue.”

“The only way to have a friend is to be one.”

“Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis.”

“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.”

“All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.”

“Hitch your wagon to a star.”

“It is not length of life, but depth of life.”

“A friend might well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.”

“The less government we have the better.”

“Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.”

“Make yourself necessary to somebody.”

“We become what we think about all day long.”

“What lies beyond us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”

Eliot (1819-1880) was born in Chilvers Coton, Warwickshire. When she was a few months old, her family moved to Griff and into a “cheerful red-brick, ivory-covered house.” There Eliot spent 21 years of her life among people that she later depicted in her novels. She was educated at home and in several schools, and developed a strong evangelical piety at Mrs. Wallington’s School at Neneaton. When her mother died in 1836 she took charge of the family household. In 1841 she moved with her father to Coventry, where she lived with him until his death in 1849.

In Coventry she met Charles Bray and later Charles Hennell, who introduced her to many new religious and political ideas. Eliot moved to London and began working as junior editor of the Westminster Review. Here she became the center of literary circles and met George Henry Lewes, who would be her companion until his death in 1878. Their unconventional union caused some difficulties because Lewes was still married when they met and unable to obtain divorce from his wife.

Eliot’s first collection of tales appeared in 1858 under the pseudonym George Eliot. Her novels followed it. After Lewes’s death she married twenty years younger friend, John Cross, on May 6, 1880. They made a wedding trip to Italy, and returned to London, where she died on the same year on December 22 1880.

“Belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul; unbelief, in denying them.”

“Blessed is the influence of one true, loving human soul on another.”

“Blessed is the man, who having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact.”

“When death, the great reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity.”

“We hand folks over to God’s mercy, and show none ourselves.”

“Wear a smile and have friends; wear a scowl and have wrinkles.”

“We must not sit still and look for miracles; up and doing, and the Lord will be with thee. Prayer and pains, through faith in Christ Jesus, will do anything.”

“There are many victories worse than a defeat.”

“The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always being asked to do things, and yet you are not decrepit enough to turn them down.”

“The strongest principle of growth lies in human choice.”

“Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds.”

“One must be poor to know the luxury of giving!”

“It is never too late to be what you might have been.”

Albert Einstein was born on March 14, 1879 in Ulm, Wurttemberg, Germany. Einstein contributed more than any other contemporary scientist to our understanding of physical reality. Einstein worked at the patent office in Bern, Switzerland from 1902 to 1909. During this period he completed an astonishing range of theoretical physics publications, written in his spare time, without the benefit of close contact with scientific literature or colleagues.

The most well known of these works is Einstein’s 1905 paper proposing “the special theory of relativity.” He based his new theory on the principle that the laws of physics are in the same form in any frame of reference. Later in 1905 Einstein showed how mass and energy were equivalent expressing it in the famous equation: E=mc2 (energy equals mass times the velocity of light squared). This equation became a cornerstone in the development of nuclear energy.

Einstein received the Nobel Prize in 1921 but not for relativity, rather for his 1905 work on the photoelectric effect. He worked on at Princeton University until the end of his life on an attempt to unify the laws of physics.

“There are two ways to live your life: One is as though nothing is a miracle — The other is though everything is a miracle.”

“Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”

“When the solution is simple, God is answering.”

“A coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous.”

“Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.”

“I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts; the rest are details.”

“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”

“Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.”

“Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.”

Thomas Alva Edison (1847 – 1931) was born in Milan, Ohio. Edison is considered by many as one of the greatest inventors in history. He obtained patents in such fields as telegraphy, phonography, electric lighting and photography. In 1882, he designed the first hydroelectric plant in Appleton, Wisconsin. In 1879, he and Sir Joseph Wilson Swan (in England) simultaneously invented similar carbon filament incandescent light bulbs but Edison improved upon Swan’s design. By the end of 1880, Edison had produced a 16-watt light bulb that would last for 1500 hours. As a boy, Edison had only three months of formal schooling. He was taught at home by his mother, a former teacher. He changed the lives of millions of people with such inventions as the electric light bulb and the phonograph. In his lifetime, he patented 1,093 inventions. After the death of his first wife, he married again. He had six children, three by each wife. Thomas Edison valued long, hard work.

“Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.”

“I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.”

“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”

“Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.”

“Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits.”

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

“The value of an idea lies in the using of it.”

“Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing.”

If we did all the things we are capable of, we would literally astound ourselves.”

“Great ideas originate in the muscles.”

“Hell, there are no rules here – we’re trying to accomplish something.”

“Show me a thoroughly satisfied man and I will show you a failure.”

“Be courageous! Have faith! Go forward!”

Will Durant (1885-1981) and his wife, Adriel, were the principal s of “The Story of Civilization.” Durant saw history as a branch of philosophy, and he peppered his stories of great historical actors and events with moral lessons and observed patterns. One of the most regular sequences in history is that a period of paganism is followed by an age of puritan restraint and moral discipline.

After working as a reporter, he went to Seton Hall College to teach and to study for the Catholic priesthood, but he left in 1911 and took up radical politics in New York City. He became director of the Labor Temple School in 1914 while taking a Ph.D. at Columbia University (1917). When his lectures on philosophy at the Labor Temple School were published as The Story of Philosophy (1926), it became such a best-seller that he was able to quit and write full time. After publishing various books, in 1935 he came out with Our Oriental Heritage, the first of his long-planned multivolume Story of Civilization.

Durant moved to Los Angeles and for the next 40 years largely devoted himself to this project; the 11th and final volume appeared in 1975. Chaya (or Ada) Kaufman Durant had been assisting him for some years and she was credited as co of the last five volumes. The 10th volume received the Pulitzer Prize in 1968 and the Durants received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977.

“The political machine triumphs because it is a united minority acting against a divided majority.”

“To speak ill of others is a dishonest way of praising ourselves. Nothing is often a good thing to say, and always a clever thing to say.”

“To say nothing, especially when speaking, is half the art of diplomacy.”

“The trouble with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes rather than with their minds.”

“Knowledge is the eye of desire and can become the pilot of the soul.”

“It may be true that you can’t fool all the people all the time, but you can fool enough of them to rule a large country.”

“Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.”

“No one man, however brilliant or well-informed, can come in one lifetime to such a fullness of understanding as to safely judge and dismiss the customs or institutions of his society, for these are the wisdom of the generations after centuries of experiment in the laboratory of history.”

Peter Drucker was born in 1909 in Austria. He fled to the United States in 1937 due to World War II. He became a US citizen in 1942 by naturalization. He was an incredibly intelligent business man and shared his knowledge as a management professor at New York University from 1950-1971. In 1971 he became the Clarke professor of Social Science and Management at the Claremont Graduate University. He worked there until his death in 2005.

Peter Drucker is famous for his long life and great business instincts and for sharing them in 39 books. The subjects range greatly with one being an autobiography, another on Japanese art, many others on business management and a couple of novels as well. He was a contributor to the Harvard Business Review and an editorial columnist for the Wall Street Journal. He continued consulting for the rest of his life and was still doling out business advice in his nineties!

George W. Bush awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1992. His long lived life afforded him the ability to make a difference and he died of natural causes at the age of 95.

“Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.”

“Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results not attributes.”

“Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action. ”

“People who don’t take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year. People who do take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year.”

“The only thing we know about the future is that it will be different.”

“There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.”

John Dryden (1631-1700) was an English poet of the late 17th century during Cromwell and King Charles II. He was a playwright, translator, and is most famous for his play titled “All for Love.” Dryden also translated works of Chaucer, Virgil and Ovid.

John Dryden was born into a rural but well-off family in Aldwincle, Northumpsonshire on August 9, 1631. He was educated at Westminster School in London and Cambridge University, where he enjoyed studying science as well as the arts. While he was still a child, the English Civil War was fought. Dryden’s family supported Oliver Cromwell, who won the struggle to overthrow King Charles I and make England a republic. Dryden was more concerned that the country should have a stable government than with who was in charge. When he was 28, he produced his first important poem, Heroic Stanzas on the Death of Cromwell. It was a celebration of Cromwell’s life, who had died the previous year after ruling the country since the end of the war.

During Cromwell’s dictatorship many theatres were closed. A year later Dryden welcomed the return of a new king, Charles II, and the end of the republic with his poem Astraea Redux, praising the new king, in 1660. John Dryden was a contemporary of John Milton, and along with him, Dryden worked as a civil servant, as an administrator during the Restoration.

“We first make our habits, and then our habits make us.”

“All things are subject to decay and when fate summons, monarchs must obey.”

“Death in itself is nothing; but we fear to be we know not what, we know not where.”

“Forgiveness to the injured does belong; but they ne’er pardon who have done wrong.”

“Go miser go, for money sell your soul. Trade wares for wares and trudge from pole to pole, So others may say when you are dead and gone. See what a vast estate he left his son.”

“God never made His work for man to mend.”

“He who would search for pearls must dive below.”

“If you be pungent, be brief; for it is with words as with sunbeams – the more they are condensed the deeper they burn.”

“It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend.”

“Look around the inhabited world; how few know their own good, or knowing it, pursue.”

“Seek not to know what must not be reveal, for joy only flows where fate is most concealed. A busy person would find their sorrows much more; if future fortunes were known before!”

“The sooner you treat your son as a man, the sooner he will be one.”

“Time, place, and action may with pains be wrought, but genius must be born; and never can be taught.”

“Words are but pictures of our thoughts.”