Family

Family life is the normal context in which we can learn that a life filled with thinking about others instead of ourselves is the sure road to the most fulfilling joys and satisfactions.
- Alan Keyes

It used to take courage - indeed, it was the act of courage par excellence - to leave the comforts of home and family and go out into the world seeking adventure. Today there are fewer places to discover, and the real adventure is to stay at home.
- Alvaro de Silva

You don't choose your family. They are God's gift to you, as you are to them.
- Desmond Tutu

No matter what you've done for yourself or for humanity, if you can't look back on having given love and attention to your own family, what have you really accomplished?
- Elbert Hubbard, 1856 - 1915

The family is one of nature's masterpieces.
- George Santayana, 1863 - 1921

The happiest moments of my life have a been the few which I have passed at home in the bosom of my family.
- Thomas Jefferson, 1743 - 1826

Thanksgiving

Some people are always grumbling because roses have thorns. I am thankful that thorns have roses.
- Jean Baptiste Alphonse Karr, 1808 - 1890

Develop an attitude of gratitude, and give thanks for everything that happens to you, knowing that every step forward is a step toward achieving something bigger and better than your current situation.
- Brian Tracy

If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, 'thank you,' that would suffice.
- Johannes Eckhart, 1260 - 1328

Not what we say about our blessings, but how we use them, is the true measure of our thanksgiving.
- W. T. Purkiser, 1910 - 1992

I may not be where I want to be, But thank God I'm not where I used to be.
- Ainsley Carry

Voltaire

All pleasantry should be short; and it might even be as well were the serious short also.

Better is the enemy of good.

Do well and you will have no need for ancestors.

Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly.

Nature has made us frivolous to console us for our miseries.

The public is a ferocious beast - one must either chain it up or flee from it.

The superfluous is very necessary.

A witty saying proves nothing.

Anything too stupid to be said is sung.

Appreciation is a wonderful thing: It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.

Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.

Every man is guilty of all the good he didn't do.

History is a pack of lies we play on the dead. Indolence is sweet, and its consequences bitter.

Judge of a man by his questions rather than by his answers.

Love is a canvas furnished by Nature and embroidered by imagination.

Men are equal; it is not birth but virtue that makes the difference.

The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.

The secret of being boring is to say everything.

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.

To be good only to yourself is to be good for nothing.
- All from François Marie Arouet (Voltaire), 1694 - 1778

About:

Francois Marie Arouet was born at Paris on 21 Nov in 1694. He received his education at a Jesuit college there, leaving school at age 16 and soon becoming a favorite among the aristocracy for his wit. Hubris struck, after he wrote a satire of the government he spent almost a year in the Bastille and was forced into exile in England for three years. Starting with a play he wrote in prison he made quite a name for himself as a playwright and philosopher, the name he made was Voltaire.

Rising Above

Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed.
- Booker Taliaferro Washington, 1856 - 1915

Inquisitiveness and strength make me want to rise above my valley-bound brothers. I must reach the summit to see the truth.
- Delores Seats

Rise above principal and do what's right.
- Joseph Heller, 1923 - 1999

Doubt yourself and you doubt everything you see. Judge yourself and you see judges everywhere. But if you listen to the sound of your own voice, you can rise above doubt and judgment. And you can see forever.
- Nancy Kerrigan

Great minds have great purposes, others have wishes. Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune; but great minds rise above them.
- Washington Irving, 1783 - 1859

Reality is something you rise above.
- Liza Minnelli

Wood

A life that hasn't a definite plan is likely to become driftwood.
- David Sarnoff

Chop your own wood, and it will warm you twice.
- Henry Ford, 1863 - 1947

Follow the grain in your own wood.
- Howard Thurman

And the wind said: May you be as strong as the oak, yet flexible as the birch; may you stand as
tall as the redwood, live gracefully as the willow; and may you always bear fruit all your days on this earth.
- Native American Prayer

Earth and sky, woods and fields, lakes and rivers, the mountain and the sea, are excellent schoolmasters, and teach some of us more than we can ever learn from books.
- Sir John Lubbock, 1834 - 1913