A Guide for Success
To laugh often and love much;
To win the respect of intelligent persons and the affection of children;
To earn the approbation of honest critics
And to endure the betrayal of false friends;
To appreciate beauty;
To find the best in others;
To give of one’s self;
To leave the world a better place, whether by a healthy child,
a garden patch or a redeemed social condition;
To have played and laughed with enthusiasm and sung with exultation;
To know that even one life has breathed easier because you have lived ––

This is to have succeeded.

Attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 – 1882)


Nelson Mandela
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness that frightens us.
We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous?
Actually, who are we not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small doesn’t serve the world.
There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It’s not just in some of us, it’s in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fears, our presence automatically liberates others.

from Nelson Mandela’s 1994 Inaugural Speech


IF
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!

-- Rudyard Kipling


A Quaker Song
My life flows on in endless song above earth's lamentation.
I hear the real though far off hymn that hails a new creation.
Through all the tumult and the strife I hear the music ringing.
It sounds an echo in my soul.
How can I keep from singing!

What though the tempest 'round me roars, I know the truth, it liveth.
What though the darkness 'round me close, songs in the night it giveth.
No storm can shake my inmost calm while to the rock I'm clinging.
Since love prevails in heav'n and earth
How can I keep from singing!

When tyrants tremble as they hear the bells of freedom ringing,
When friends rejoice both far and near, how can I keep from singing!
To prison cell and dungeon vile our thoughts to them are winging,
When friends by shame are undefiled,
How can I keep from singing!


OPERA (a definition)
n. A play representing life in another world, whose inhabitants have no speech but song, no emotions but gestures and no postures but attitudes. All acting is simulation, and the word simulation is from Simia, an ape; but in opera the actor takes for his model Simia audibilis (or Pithecanthropos stentor) –– the ape that howls. The actor apes a man –– at least in shape; the opera performer apes an ape.

From the Devils Dictionary