The million little things that drop into your hands, The small opportunities each day brings, He leaves us free to use or abuse, And goes unchanging along His silent way
I seldom think about my limitations, and they never make me sad. Perhaps there is just a touch of yearning at times; but it is vague, like a breeze among flowers.
What a joy it is to feel the soft, springy earth under my feet once more, to follow grassy roads that lead to ferny brooks where I can bathe my fingers in a cataract of rippling notes, or to clamber over a stone wall into green fields that tumble and roll and climb in riotous gladness!
The civilization of a state should be measured by the amount of suffering it prevents and the degree of happiness it makes possible for its citizens.
Strike against war, for without you no battles can be fought. Strike against manufacturing shrapnel and gas bombs and all other tools of murder. Strike against preparedness that means death and misery to millions of human beings. Be not dumb, obedient slaves in an army of destruction. Be heroes in an army of construction.
Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all - the apathy of human beings.
The joy of surmounting obstacles which once seemed unremovable, and pushing the frontier of accomplishment further — what joy is there like unto it?
Sometimes, it is true, a sense of isolation enfolds me like a cold mist as I sit alone and wait at life’s shut gate. Beyond there is light, and music, and sweet companionship; but I may not enter. Fate, silent, pitiless, bars the way…Silence sits immense upon my soul. Then comes hope with a smile and whispers, ‘there is joy is self-forgetfulness.’ So I try to make the light in others’ eyes my sun, the music in others; ears my symphony, the smile on others’ lips my happiness.
If we make up our minds that this is a drab and purposeless universe, it will be that, and nothing else. On the other hand, if we believe that the earth is ours, and that the sun and moon hang in the sky for our delight, there will be joy upon the hills and gladness in the fields because the Artist in our souls glorifies creation. Surely, it gives dignity to life to believe that we are born into this world for noble ends, and that we have a higher destiny than can be accomplished within the narrow limits of this physical life.
When one comes to think of it, there are no such things as divine, immutable, or inalienable rights. Rights are things we get when we are strong enough to make good our claim on them.
When one door closes, another one opens, but sometimes we wait too long looking at the closed door, and never realize that another door has been opened.
The few own the many because they possess the means of livelihood of all ... The country is governed for the richest, for the corporations, the bankers, the land speculators, and for the exploiters of labor. The majority of mankind are working people. So long as their fair demands - the ownership and control of their livelihoods - are set at naught, we can have neither men's rights nor women's rights. The majority of mankind is ground down by industrial oppression in order that the small remnant may live in ease.
Serious harm, I am afraid, has been wrought to our generation by fostering the idea that they would live secure in a permanent order of things.
The only real blind person at Christmas time is he who has not Christmas in his heart.
Make the most of every sense; glory in all the facets of pleasure and beauty which the world reveals to you...
Happiness cannot come from without. It must come from within. It is not what we see and touch or that which others do for us which makes us happy; it is that which we think and feel and do, first for the other fellow and then for ourselves.
What could be worse than being born without sight? Being born with sight and no vision.
The idea of brotherhood re-dawns upon the world with a broader significance than the narrow association of members in a sect or creed.
Oh, you think the darkness is your ally, but you merely adopted the dark. I was born in it. Molded by it.
I don't want to live in a hand -me -down world of others' experiences. I want to write about me, my discoveries, my fears, my feelings, about me.
It is certain that I cannot always distinguish my own thoughts from those I read, because what I read becomes the very substance and text of my mind.
Through my handicaps, I have found my self, my work, my God.
Now I feel as if I should succeed in doing something in mathematics, although I cannot see why it is so very important. . . The knowledge doesn't make life any sweeter or happier, does it?
No loss by flood and lightning, no destruction of cities and temples by the hostile forces of nature, has deprived man of so many noble lives and impulses as those which his intolerance has destroyed.
Children who hear acquire language without any particular effort; the words that fall from others' lips they catch on the wing, as it were, delightedly, while the little deaf child must trap them by a slow and often painful process. But whatever the process, the result is wonderful. Gradually from naming an object we advance step by step until we have traversed the vast distance between our first stammered syllable and the sweep of thought in a line of Shakespeare.
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