THE ART OF LIVING
THE ART OF LIVING
(Adapted From World Literature and Jewish Sources.)
The art of living successfully consists of being able to hold two opposite ideas in tension at the same time: first, to make long term plans as if we were going to live forever; and, second, to conduct ourselves daily as if we were going to die tomorrow.
Fear not that thy life shall come to and end, but rather fear that it shall never have a beginning.
Short is the little that remains to thee of life. Live as on a mountain!
A long life may not be good enough, but a good life is long enough.
We must make up for the threatened brevity of life by heightening the intensity of life.
The waste of life lies in the love we have not given, the powers we have not used, the selfish prudence which will risk nothing, and which, shirking pain, misses happiness as well.
Every one of us is given the gift of life, and what a strange gift it is. If it is preserved jealously and selfishly it impoverishes and saddens, but if it is spent for others it enriches and beautifies.
Life is not a having and a getting, but a being and a becoming.
Life’s greatest achievement is the continual remaking of yourself so that at last you know how to live.
Life is action and passion. It is expected of a man that he share in the action and passion of his time under penalty of being judged not to have lived!
To live well we must have: a faith fit to live by, a self fit to live with, and a work fit to live for.
Be such a man and live such a life, that if every man were such as you, and every life a life like yours, this earth would be God’s Paradise.
If I am not for myself, who will be for me? Yet if I am for myself alone, what am I? And if not now, when?
Life is no brief candle for me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I got hold of for a moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before turning it over to future generations.
((This was emailed to me from a friend))