Sometimes some things are so good, so constant, so much a part of our way of life, that we assume they were always there and always will be, regardless of any actions or attitude of ours, or any...
This terse advice comes from newspaper parlance: “If you don’t want it printed in the paper, don’t do it.” To this might be added: If you don’t want it printed,...
Repentance is one of the most important principles that God has given, and the fact that He gave it is evidence that He knew we would need it, and that He will accept it—when it is sincere. He will...
So much is at stake in life—the whole everlasting future before us, that persisting in unrepentance is exceedingly shortsighted. And following one mistake with more or many more, on the assumption...
There is a word considered sometimes as a virtue which is often not so, and indeed may be quite the contrary. The word is neutrality, which in dictionary definition means “neither one thing...
It is safe to rely on the old assumption often cited, that what we don’t know won’t hurt us—that what we don’t see or sense won’t hurt us. It is possible to be hurt without...
Part of life is lived in trying to avoid problems, part in trying to solve them and part in learning to live with them—to live with the facts that have to be faced—and to do it from day to day. When...
Among the most discouraging facts anyone faces is the feeling that he doesn’t have the promise, the possibilities for significant usefulness, or success, no real promise for the future. But...
“The great thing is this world,” said Oliver Wendell Holmes, “is not so much where we are, but in what direction we are moving.” This suggests the importance of doing, of...
From an “Essay on History” comes this significant sentence: “One lesson, and only one, [that] history may be said to repeat with distinctness is this; that the world is built...
We seem at times to find ourselves running in ruts, in discouragement, assuming that things must be about as they are, with not much vision, or encouragement for the future. There are some who find...
Along with the importance of beginning what should be done, there is also the importance of not beginning what should not be done. This suggests two or three citations, on from a man named Amiel,...
“The first step, my son…” said Voltaire, “is the one on which depends the rest of our days.” “The power of little things…should be the first lesson...
“Sometimes… as we travel through life, we swing around a circle,“ wrote Oscar Graeve. “We leave the calm faith of childhood for the … doubts of later years… But then, if we are...
Two lines from Tagore suggest a subject: “The song that I came to sing remains unsung…I have spent my days in stringing and in unstringing my instrument.” Stringing and unstringing our...
There is a sober, searching wonder and an awesome beauty in the swift movement of the seasons, and in the swift passing of the seasons there comes an awareness that today is the time to do what...
There are many who carry the worries of the present reasonably well. But there are some who won’t let go of worries of the past, and even try to take on the worries of the future—and they do...
In a plea for things to live and look for, Celia Cole pleaded for wisdom to listen, as she put it, to that “within that warns us of danger”—to the warning sense that says: “Look...
Humor is a wonderful lubricant in life. “Good humor,” said Stanislaus, “is the health of the soul,” and heaven spare us the starchy stiffness of living without sincere and...
“It takes courage to live,” said Jerome Fleishman, “⎯courage and strength and hope and humor.” Certainly humor has relieved much pressure, has saved many people, has served...