^We Forget^|We ask for a piece of sand and he gives us a beach.|We ask for a drop of water and he gives us an ocean.|We ask for time and he gives us life eternal.|And it is so easy for us to fall in love with the gift|and forget the Giver.
—Edward Farrell (American Sportsperson)
The creation of art is not the fulfillment of a need but the creation of a need. The world never needed Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony until he created it. Now we could not live without it.
—Louis Kahn (American Architect)
Affliction comes to us all not to make us sad, but sober; not to make us sorry, but wise; not to make us despondent, but by its darkness to refresh us, as the night refreshes the day; not to impoverish, but to enrich us, as the plough enriches the field; to multiply our joy, as the seed, by planting, is multiplied a thousand-fold.
—Henry Ward Beecher (American Protestant Clergyman)
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.
—Phillips Brooks (American Episcopal Clergyman)
Please all, and you will please none.
—Aesop (Greek Fabulist)
The most natural beauty in the world is honesty and moral truth; for all beauty is truth. True features make the beauty of a face; and true proportions the beauty of architecture; as true measures that of harmony and music. In poetry, which is all fable, truth still is the perfection.
—Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury
People who want the most approval get the least and people who need approval the least get the most.
—Wayne Dyer (American Motivational Writer)
What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves? This is the most important of all voyages of discovery, and without it, all the rest are not only useless, but disastrous…
—Thomas Merton (French-born American Clergyman)
The average estimate themselves by what they do, the above average by what they are.
—Friedrich Schiller (German Poet)