Gratitude

Of all crimes that human creatures are capable of committing, the most horrid and unnatural is ingratitude, especially when it is committed against parents.

Goodness is the only investment that never fails.

In the time of your life, live—so that in that good time there shall be no ugliness or death for yourself or for any life your life touches.

To Herbert Westbrook, without whose never-failing advice, help, and encouragement this book would have been finished in half the time.

Life is short and we never have enough time for gladdening the hearts of those who travel the way with us. Oh, be swift to love! Make haste to be kind.

No foreign sky protected me, no stranger’s wing shielded my face. I stand as witness to the common lot, survivor of that time, that place.

The best way to know God is to love many things.

In the end we are always rewarded for our good will, our patience, fair-mindedness, and gentleness with what is strange.

The whole of my remaining realizable estate shall be dealt with the following way: the capital, invested in safe securities by my executors, shall constitute a fund, the interest on which shall be annually distributed in the form of prizes to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind.

Ingratitude is among them a capital Crime, . . . For they reason thus: that whoever makes ill Returns to his Benefactor, must needs be a common Enemy to the rest of Mankind, from whom he hath received no Obligation; andtherefore such a Man is not fit to live.

I got me flowers to strew Thy way, I got me boughs off many a tree: But Thou wast up by break of day, And brought’st Thy sweets along with Thee.

Blow out, you bugles, over the rich dead! There’s none of these so lonely and poor of old, But, dying, has made us rarer gifts than gold.

My eyes were glued on life and they were full of tears.

The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude.

When I approach a child, he inspires in me two sentiments: tenderness for what he is, and respect for what he may become.

The manner in which it is given is worth more than the gift.

O Woman! in our hours of ease, Uncertain, coy, and hard to please, And variable as the shade By the light quivering aspen made; When pain and anguish wring the brow, A ministering angel thou!

Then, the cool kindliness of sheets, that soon Smooth away trouble; and the rough male kiss Of blankets; grainy wood; live hair that is Shining and free; blue-massing clouds; the keen Unpassioned beauty of a great machine; The benison of hot water; furs to touch; The good smell of old clothes.

Tolle lege, tolle lege.

Here lies my past. Good-bye I have kissed it; Thank you, kids. I wouldn’t have missed it.

My apple trees will never get across

Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is, knows how deep a debt of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our race. He brought death into the world.

Take full account of what Excellences you possess, and in gratitude remember how you would hanker after them, if you had them not. Marcus Aurelius

For it is in giving that we receive.