The parent-child relationship is one of life’s primary learning laboratories. It has important things to teach us about the rights and wrongs of human relationships: what the good life is and isn’t. It’s worth giving our very best effort to it.
For every hundred human beings who would be gallant on the battlefield or in the midst of some other physical crisis, there are far fewer who would show courage and nobility of spirit where it counts the most: in matters of the heart.
Virtuous character, which is the only kind we ought to be interested in having, requires that we do some things . . . and do them again the next day . . . and keep on doing them every day as long as we live. Continuity is what makes us count-on-able.
Whatever heartaches we may have, our heartaches are hardly ever the whole story, and if our priorities are what they ought to be, then it will be no exaggeration to say that “our cup runs over.” Today, let’s not miss the joy of rejoicing.
If you’d like to give your loved ones a remarkable gift, begin living in such a way that every member of your family can count on you to do the honorable thing, no matter what. You will be amazed how much your family will appreciate that gift.
If we’re serious about increasing our lifespan, we need to start granting more honor to old age. Youth was only meant to be the beginning of life, and we shouldn’t try to hang on to it. Old age is a good thing. It’s what a long life is all about.
All of us, even the most disadvantaged at birth, have been endowed with wonderful gifts. The good life means taking our birth-package of traits and circumstances and turning those raw materials into a worthwhile product.
Whatever we’d like to influence others to be, that’s what we ourselves need to be. Talk is pretty cheap, actually. Anybody can say what others ought to do. But if we want to have real impact, we’re going to have to walk our talk.
With patience, we enrich the lives of our families and our friends; without it we diminish their opportunity to grow. With patience, we find ourselves moving forward and becoming more alive; without it, we shrivel up and shrink.
Work itself is not a curse, and honest labor is not to be avoided. It’s simply in our nature that we want to do good work while the weather is warm, and then, as the year turns toward fall, we want the happiness of a harvest.