Live with Purpose

A group of alumni, highly established in their careers, got together to visit their old university professor. Conversation soon turned into complaints about stress in work and life. Offering his guests coffee, the professor went to the kitchen and returned with a large pot of coffee ,and an assortment of cups - porcelain, plastic , glass, crystal, some plain looking, some expensive, some exquisite - telling them to help themselves to the coffee. When all the students had a cup of coffee in hand, the professor said:If you noticed, all the nice looking expensive cups were taken up, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones. While it is normal for you to want only the best for yourselves, that is the source of your problems and stress.Be assured that the cup itself adds no quality to the coffee. In most cases it is just more expensive and in some cases even hides what we drink. What all of you really wanted was coffee, not the cup, but you consciously went for the best cups... And then you began eyeing each other's cups. Now consider this: Life is the coffee; the jobs, money and position in society are the cups. They are just tools to hold and contain Life, and the type of cup we have does not define, nor change the quality of Life We live.Sometimes, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy the coffee God has provided us. ' God brews the coffee, not the cups.....Enjoy your coffee! 'The happiest people don't have the best of everything. They just make the best of everything.

'Live simply.Love generously.Care deeply. Speak kindly.Leave the rest to God.You are the miracle, my friend,Your life either shines a light - or casts a shadow.'The purpose of life is to live life with purpose' !!!

Whose hands?

Give a Seed to a Gardner and you get a Tree. Give a seed to a Potter and you get a Bonsai ~~Chinese Proverb

new idea

Sometimes a person's mind is stretched by a new idea and never does go back to its old shape. -
-Oliver Wendell Holmes

Teacher

If he is indeed wise [the teacher] does not let you enter the house of his wisdom,but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind. -- Kahlil Gibran

Teacher

To be a teacher is, above all, to let others learn.
Heidegger

Why write

I write for very much the same reason I read: to startle my mind, to churn my heart, to tingle my spine, to knock the blinders off my eyes and allow me to see beyond the pale. I write for the specific and unique ways that words can evoke emotions and images and thus give both pain and pleasure, wonder and confirmation about what it means to be alive.
Amy Tan, 1996

prejudices and opinions

Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

Environment

The difference between animals and humans is that animals change themselves for the environment, but humans change the environment for themselves.
Ayn Rand (1905 - 1982)

Hold your ground

"Today's mighty oak is just yesterday's nut that held its ground." - Anon.

direction

"Speed is irrelevant if you are going in the wrong direction." - M. Gandhi

Live

"The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it" - W. M. Lewis
"Chance favors

Air and Water

In an underdeveloped country, don't drink the water; in a developed country, don't breathe the air. ~Changing Times magazine

survival of mankind

We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive. ~Albert Einstein

progress

Economic advance is not the same thing as human progress. ~John Clapham, A Concise Economic History of Britain, 1957

newspapers

They kill good trees to put out bad newspapers. ~James G. Watt, quoted in Newsweek, 8 March 1982

fuel!

Your grandchildren will likely find it incredible - or even sinful - that you burned up a gallon of gasoline to fetch a pack of cigarettes! ~Dr. Paul MacCready, Jr.

earth

Don't blow it - good planets are hard to find. ~Quoted in Time