Anything Worthwhile Quotes

The three great essentials to achieve anything worthwhile are, first, hard work; second, stick-to-itiveness; third, common sense.

For the world seems never to offer anything worthwhile without also providing a dreadful opposite.

I imagined the lies the valedictorian was telling them right now. About the exciting future that lies ahead. I wish she'd tell them the truth: Half of you have gone as far in life as you're ever going to. Look around. It's all downhill from here. The rest of us will go a bit further, a steady job, a trip to Hawaii, or a move to Phoenix, Arizona, but out of fifteen hundred how many will do anything truly worthwhile, write a play, paint a painting that will hang in a gallery, find a cure for herpes? Two of us, maybe three? And how many will find true love? About the same. And enlightenment? Maybe one. The rest of us will make compromises, find excuses, someone or something to blame, and hold that over our hearts like a pendant on a chain.

You overestimate the courage of those in power. They are often more interested in holding on to that power than in doing anything worthwhile with it.

You, Emily. You're worth fighting for. I fought all my life, but never for anything worthwhile. Now... Now I'm fighting for my heart. Bullshit ends here and now.

We will never accomplish anything worthwhile in life if we require the guarantee of success at the onset.

It's really going to happen. I really won't ever go back to school. Not ever. I'll never be famous or leave anything worthwhile behind. I'll never go to college or have a job. I won't see my brother grow up. I won't travel, never earn money, never drive, never fall in love or leave home or get my own house. It's really, really true. A thought stabs up, growing from my toes and ripping through me, until it stifles everything else and becomes the only thing I'm thinking. It fills me up like a silent scream.

He endured it to punish himself, and to prove to himself that he could; those were the only two reasons he ever chose to do anything worthwhile.

So what if you failed? You're never going to accomplish anything worthwhile if you keep to your comfort zone.

When you really have something to offer to the world, then you can become truly humble. A tree when it has no fruit to offer, remains erect. But when the tree is laden with fruit, it bends down. If you are all pride and ego, then nobody will be able to get anything worthwhile from you. When you have genuine humility, it is a sign that you have something to offer to mankind.

Do you often feel like parched ground, unable to produce anything worthwhile? I do. When I am in need of refreshment, it isn't easy to think of the needs of others. But I have found that if, instead of praying for my own comfort and satisfaction, I ask the Lord to enable me to give to others, an amazing thing often happens - I find my own needs wonderfully met. Refreshment comes in ways I would never have thought of, both for others, and then, incidentally, for myself.

Anything worthwhile is tough.

If my public existence does anything worthwhile, hopefully it at least demystifies the author a bit, because I know when I was younger I felt like authors were like wizards or something. Turns out they're total muggles.

Poor thing, consigned to a life of frivolousness and wretched things for breakfast. Not allowed to go to school or do anything worthwhile, and eel pie besides.

Anything worthwhile takes time. Maybe that's what time is for: to give meaning to the things we do; to create a context in which we can linger in something until, finally, we have given it something invaluable, something that we can never get back: time. And once we've invested the most precious commodity that we will ever have, it suddenly has meaning and importance. So maybe time is just how we measure meaning. Maybe time is how we best measure love.

You have to put in many, many, many tiny efforts that nobody sees or appreciates before you achieve anything worthwhile.

It's time, we're waiting for you. We're tired of your excuses, your complaining, your everything else. We need you now more than we have ever needed you before, so it's time for you to use your boredom wisely. Yes there will be time for you to have fun, and life is indeed meant to be fun, but if you fill every waking moment with something to amuse you, then you will never accomplish anything worthwhile - which makes me concerned for you, because after all, if you were not meant for something worthwhile, then why exactly are you here?

What a tragic waste of engagement (selfies). Enjoy the moment. Do something more worthwhile with your time, anything. Stare out the window and think about life.

We can’t curl up on our couches, read the pages of a book, pray, and simply will our minds to change. God is concerned not only with the posture of our hearts but also with the people on each of our arms. In terms of fulfilling our mission in this life, we can’t do anything worthwhile alone.

It's about what you've got to put yourself through to make anything worthwhile. It's about going to the dark places and using what you find there.

This is about me being ready to succeed. When I win in my mind, I truly win. Anything worthwhile deserves some time. I will do it this time! No excuses!

The truth is that anything worthwhile we do in life demands effort.

I'm going to write a novel and get it published. I'm going to do it because writing a novel is worthwhile and because I have the talent to do it. I'm going to do it because I have something important to say to the world. I refuse to let anything get in my way.

Despite what you may believe, you can disappoint people and still be good enough. You can make mistakes and still be capable and talented. You can let people down and still be worthwhile and deserving of love. Everyone has disappointed someone they care about. Everyone messes up, lets people down, and makes mistakes. Not because we’re inadequate or fundamentally inept, but because we’re imperfect and fundamentally human. Expecting anything different is setting yourself up for failure.

Keep going, keep going, anything worthwhile is rarely achieved without a measure of fear.

I know that this time, the worst thing I can do is let go. And I won't be losing anything. Because it's the most selfish thing I could ever do—to allow myself to fall for someone worthwhile.

Life is absurd. But there is one meaningful thing, one inarguable thing, and that is that there is suffering. Fine writing helps alleviate that suffering – and anything that puts meaning and beauty into the world in the form of story, helps people to live with more peace and purpose and balance, is deeply worthwhile.

As a SecUnit, a large part of my function was helping the company record everything my clients did and said so the company could data mine it and sell anything worthwhile. (They say good security comes at a price and the company takes that literally.)

A Guards regiment, eh, Comrade Colonel? These tit-sucking children could not guard a Turkish whorehouse; much less do anything worthwhile inside of it!” While commenting on how unprepared his troops are. -Alekseyev

We pay a tax to succeed at anything worthwhile. That tax is called dedication, and here's the most wonderful part. Once you pay it, once you truly dedicate yourself to something important, you'll find the price was worth it.

I will wait till after Christmas.” What should we all do without the calendar, when we want to put off a disagreeable duty? The admirable arrangements of the solar system, by which our time is measured, always supply us with a term before which it is hardly worthwhile to set about anything we are disinclined to.

Anything I have ever done that was ultimately worthwhile, initially scared me to death!

I knew that anything we do to show love is worthwhile: a smile, a word of encouragement, a small act of sacrifice. We grow by these actions.

Anything worthwhile is opposed.

You can't have anything worthwhile without difficulties.

Many times busyness is often mistakenly equated with productivity. But those words are not synonymous. Just because we're spinning our wheels, rushing from one commitment to the next, doesn't necessarily mean that we are doing anything worthwhile.

Enforcing silence is easy. All you have to do is make it feel like the safest option. You can, for example, make speaking as unpleasant as possible, by creating an anonymous social media account to flood women with virulent personal criticism, sexual harassment, and threats. You can talk over women, or talk down to them, until they begin to doubt that they have anything worthwhile to say. You can encourage men's speech, and ignore women's, so that women will get the message that they are taking up too much room, and contributing too little value. You can nitpick a woman's actual voice—the way she writes, her grammar, her tone, her register, her accent—until she honestly believes she's bad at talking, and spends more time trying to sound 'better' than thinking about what she wants to say. And if a woman somehow makes it past all this, you can humiliate her anyway.

So I withdrew and thought to myself: 'I am wiser than this man; it is likely that neither of us knows anything worthwhile, but he thinks he knows something when he does not, whereas when I do not know, neither do I think I know; so I am likely to be wiser than he to this small extent, that I do not think I know what I do not know.

I don’t like you in danger. When a man finds the only person of worth to him, that one person who matters more than anything and makes everything he’s ever seen or done or gone through worthwhile, believe me, Rikki, the urge to protect her is overwhelming. If that bothers you, then I’m sorry, because it’s going to be happening over and over throughout our years together.

It comes from a deep-rooted conviction that if there is anything worthwhile doing for the sake of culture, then it is touching on subject matters and situations which link people, and not those that divide people. There are too many things in the world which divide people, such as religion, politics, history, and nationalism. If culture is capable of anything, then it is finding that which unites us all. And there are so many things which unite people. It doesn’t matter who you are or who I am, if your tooth aches or mine, it’s still the same pain. Feelings are what link people together, because the word ‘love’ has the same meaning for everybody. Or ‘fear’, or ‘suffering’. We all fear the same way and the same things. And we all love in the same way. That’s why I tell about these things, because in all other things I immediately find division.

To succeed at anything worthwhile in life requires persistence, no matter how gifted, fortunate, or passionate you are. When I interviewed late bloomers for this book, nearly every one said that once you find your passion and your "pot," you need to hang in there--you need to persist.

What a tragic waste o engagement (selfies). Enjoy the moment. Do something more worthwhile with your time, anything. Stare out the window and think about life.

If I can’t find something worthwhile in my own reflection, how am I ever going to see anything worthwhile in the face of another? Maybe I can solve all of this by seeing the face of Jesus in everyone, starting with myself.

Old people only say that life happens quickly to make themselves feel better. The truth is that it all happens in tiny increments like now now now now now now and it only takes twenty to thirty consecutive nows to realize that you’re aimed straight at a bench in Singleton Park. Fair play though, if I was old and had forgotten to do something worthwhile with my life, I would spend those final few years on a bench in the botanical gardens, convincing myself that time is so quick that even plants – who have no responsibilities whatsoever – hardly get a chance to do anything decent with their lives except, perhaps, produce one or two red or yellow flowers and, with a bit of luck and insects, reproduce. If the old man manages to get the words father and husband on his bench plaque then he thinks he can be reasonably proud of himself.

So for all that we might speak words in each other's vicinity, this could never develop into anything that could be called a conversation. It was as though we were speaking in different languages. If the Dalai Lama were on his deathbed and the jazz musician Eric Dolphy were to try to explain to him the importance of choosing one's engine oil in accordance with changes in the sound of the bass clarinet, that exchange might have been more worthwhile and effective than my conversations with Noboru Wataya.

Lend sat up,craning his neck to see down my shirt,which I hurriedly pushed back into place. "Last time I checked, you couldn't see souls." He shrugged,an exaggerated look of innocence on his face. "Still,it wouldn't hurt for me to try,would it?" "You have got to be the most sefless boyfriend alive." "Like I said,anything worthwhile is worth making sacrifices for." "Speaking of which,weren't you going to give me a tongue demonstration?

Your wound, your silly little wound! That's your real love, Leo, that wound, the one true love of your life! I know how it will be, even if we tried, even if we managed to build something all over again. The music too, that would be no different. Even if they'd accepted you tonight, even if you became celebrated in this town, you'd destroy it all, you'd destroy everything, pull it all down around you just as you did before. And all because of that wound. Me, the music, we're neither of us anything more to you than mistresses you seek consolation from. You'll always go back to your one real love. To that wound! And you know what makes me so angry? Leo, are you listening to me? Your wound, it's nothing special, nothing special at all. In this town alone, I know there are many people with far worse. And yet they carry on, every one of them, with far greater courage than you ever did. They go on with their lives. They become something worthwhile. But you, Leo, look at you. Always tending your wound.

Only a fool would think that anything they’ve done was on their own, Tabby,” Ms. Gretchen said. “Nobody makes it on their own, at least, not anywhere worthwhile.

life divides us into smaller and smaller pieces as we go, until each piece seems too small to do anything as worthwhile with it as we'd like

To accomplish anything worthwhile, and especially to achieve a goal others say is impossible, you have to work your ass off. There are no shortcuts. The only way is the hard way.

It is difficult to learn anything worthwhile if you only listen to those who share your views.

You, Emily. You're worth fighting for. I fought all my live, but never for anything worthwhile. Now .... Now I'm fighting for my heart" - (book) Torn from you

People who look down on us poor country folk usually won’t admit that anything worthwhile can come out of here.

Building anything worthwhile is a long-term process.

Man must believe in realities outside his own smallness, outside the ‘triviality of everydayness’, if he is to do anything worthwhile.

Life's full of chances to hurt yourself or someone else [...] In the next few days, you'll have more chances to hurt yourself than most men get in a lifetime. It's learning things and doing things right that make it worthwhile, make a man easy with himself. When I was young, nobody could tell me anything. I knew it all. It took a lot of mistakes to teach me that I didn't know goose shit from tapioca.

I've caused people a lot of grief. I haven't written anything worthwhile. It's all bluster. Dishonesty. Cravenness. Lies. Lechery. Cowardice. I don't need to wait for God's judgment, I'm already constantly spilling out lame excuses.

Single trees are extraordinary; trees in number more extraordinary still. To walk in a wood is to find fault with Socrates's declaration that 'Trees and open country cannot teach me anything, whereas men in town do.' Time is kept and curated and in different ways by trees, and so it is experienced in different ways when one is among them. This discretion of trees, and their patience, are both affecting. It is beyond our capacity to comprehend that the American hardwood forest waited seventy million years for people to come and live in it, though the effort of comprehension is itself worthwhile. It is valuable and disturbing to know that grand oak trees can take three hundred years to grow, three hundred years to live and three hundred years to die. Such knowledge, seriously considered, changes the grain of the mind. "Thought, like memory, inhabits external things as much as the inner regions of the human brain. When the physical correspondents of thought disappear, then thought, or its possibility, is also lost. When woods and trees are destroyed -- incidentally, deliberately -- imagination and memory go with them. W.H. Auden knew this. 'A culture,' he wrote warningly in 1953, 'is no better than its woods.'

She was nearly killed by royal assassins. Burn down the palace until you smoke out who ordered it, then have their hearts and eyes torn out. Give them to her on a plate." Key sneered. "What's the point of power, if you never do anything worthwhile?".

We live in a culture in which we are led to believe that anything you do not get paid for is not worth doing. As a consequence, the things that don't get done are often the most worthwhile.

Dad simply would not settle for second best. He always insisted on several basic rules of personal behavior. "Anything worthwhile costs an effort," or "If it's worth doing, it's worth doing well," or "Opportunities only come to those prepared to grasp them," or "Do the thing you fear and so overcome.

In general, no matter your field, you must think of yourself as a builder, using actual materials and ideas. You are producing something tangible in your work, something that affects people in some direct, concrete way. To build anything well—a house, a political organization, a business, or a film—you must understand the building process and possess the necessary skills. You are a craftsman learning to adhere to the highest standards. For all of this, you must go through a careful apprenticeship. You cannot make anything worthwhile in this world unless you have first developed and transformed yourself.

I began to understand that the most worthwhile obsession is an obsession that is actually independent of the object of fixation. The object is only borrowed as a pretext, a means, an environment, through which or in which the obsessed person can project his own eternal and essential hunger, thus fulfilling the requirements of death--the dissolution of the ego for something, anything, that exists independently outside of one's self. Perhaps that obsession should be controlled. At some point the most mundane catalyst, a skirt or fallen leaf, is enough to provoke a series of captivating chain reactions, while at another time much more important objects will inspire only an absurd indifference.

Now think of it this way: You exist. You didn’t do anything to deserve existing. You don’t even know why you started existing; you just did. Boom—you have a life. And you have no idea where it came from or why. If you believe God gave it to you, then, holy shit! Do you owe Him big time! But even if you don’t believe in God—damn, you’re blessed with life! What did you ever do to deserve that? How can you live in such a way as to make your life worthwhile? This is the constant, yet unanswerable question of the human condition, and why the inherent guilt of consciousness is the cornerstone of almost every spiritual religion.

everything worthwhile requires work and sacrifice. With enough motivation, you can achieve almost anything.

A writer who hasn't written anything worth-while is a most doubtful person.

Everything worthwhile has risks. We have to open ourselves up to hurt to do anything worth doing.

You cannot make anything worthwhile in this world unless you have first developed and transformed yourself.

He liked to say it was more about the act of appreciating beauty than creating anything worthwhile.” “My

People who don't want to do anything that doesn't come to them immediately rarely learn anything worthwhile

Anything worthwhile is opposed. Steven Pressfield (War of Art) calls this the Resistance.

Doing anything worthwhile will present challenges, but everyone who achieves their goal is an ordinary person who becomes extraordinary.

When we are spiritually deaf, we are not aware that anything important is happening in our lives. We keep running away from the present moment, and we try to create experiences that make our lives worthwhile. So we fill up our time to avoid the emptiness we otherwise would feel.

What happened? It took Gibbon six volumes to describe the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, so I shan’t embark on that. But thinking about this almost incredible episode does tell one something about the nature of civilisation. It shows that however complex and solid it seems, it is actually quite fragile. It can be destroyed. 

What are its enemies?
 
Well, first of all fear — fear of war, fear of invasion, fear of plague and famine, that make it simply not worthwhile constructing things, or planting trees or even planning next year’s crops. And fear of the supernatural, which means that you daren’t question anything or change anything. The late antique world was full of meaningless rituals, mystery religions, that destroyed self-confidence. And then exhaustion, the feeling of hopelessness which can overtake people even with a high degree of material prosperity. 

There is a poem by the modern Greek poet, Cavafy, in which he imagines the people of an antique town like Alexandria waiting every day for the barbarians to come and sack the city. Finally the barbarians move off somewhere else and the city is saved; but the people are disappointed — it would have been better than nothing. Of course, civilisation requires a modicum of material prosperity—

What civilization needs:

confidence in the society in which one lives, belief in its philosophy, belief in its laws, and confidence in one’s own mental powers. The way in which the stones of the Pont du Gard are laid is not only a triumph of technical skill, but shows a vigorous belief in law and discipline. Vigour, energy, vitality: all the civilisations—or civilising epochs—have had a weight of energy behind them. People sometimes think that civilisation consists in fine sensibilities and good conversations and all that. These can be among the agreeable results of civilisation, but they are not what make a civilisation, and a society can have these amenities and yet be dead and rigid.

Attachment, this argument runs, is the only thing that motivates anyone to accomplish anything worthwhile in the first place. If you weren’t attached to things being a certain way, rather than another way – and to feeling certain emotions, rather than others – why would you ever attempt to thrive professionally, to better your material circumstances, to raise children, or to change the world?

There’s little point in killing an idea by saying it might fail. Any idea might fail. If you’re doing anything worthwhile at all, you’ll suffer a dozen failures. Start failing so you can start succeeding

It is pointless waiting for perfect weather. You’ll never get anywhere or do anything worthwhile if you do. Perfect weather never comes, and even if it comes, it doesn’t last long. Make a move. Make a move now.

I advise everyone to choose a religion based upon the beauty that the religion has brought to the world. There is much to be said about every religion, there is much evil in history written about every religion, and at the end of the day, you're only going to find out which one works after you're dead and if you're lucky, that won't happen soon! Simply put, you believe in the things that you believe in right now, because you were indoctrinated with fear from a very young age, forward. You fear straying a path that you were told you should walk on. So what path should you really walk on? Walk on the path that has created, is creating, and will be creating— beauty. The only real sign of anything worthwhile, is beauty. The true religion is the belief in what is beautiful. So if something creates a beauty in your heart and in the world— walk that path.

It's like the frog that tried to outdo the cow...see, the consequences are reflected in each of us as individuals. A people so oppressed by the West have no mental leisure, they can't do anything worthwhile. They get an education that's stripped to the bare bone, and they're driven with their noses to the grindstone until they're dizzy -- that's why they all end up with nervous breakdowns. Try talking to them -- they're usually stupid. They haven't thought about a thing beyond themselves, that day, that very instant. They're too exhausted to think about anything else; it's not their fault. Unfortunately, exhaustion of the spirit and deterioration of the body come hand-in-hand. And that's not all. The decline of morality has set in too. Look where you will in this country, you won't find one square inch of brightness. It's all pitch black. So what difference would it make...

He hadn’t planned anything like that, and when things happen without planning or expectations they are that much more enjoyable and worthwhile—talking to a stranger without an eye to any romantic connection had allowed things to flow more naturally.

When we grow accustomed to neglecting beauty, we eventually become creatures of hatred. We lose our imagination, a virtue to which wonder is helplessly tied. Why care for barren land? Why advocate for justice in a system predicated on injustice? We become so accustomed to that bitter taste that we can taste nothing else. Slowly, even mirrors feel like an oppression. We become unable to conceive of anything worthwhile in our own image until we empty ourselves of all beauty and turn against our own bodies in disgust.

He said that I was a man. And like any man I deserved everything that was a man’s lot—joy, pain, sadness and struggle—and that the nature of one’s acts was unimportant as long as one acted as a warrior. Lowering his voice to almost a whisper, he said that if I really felt that my spirit was distorted I should simply fix it—purge it, make it perfect—because there was no other task in our entire lives which was more worthwhile. Not to fix the spirit was to seek death, and that was the same as to seek nothing, since death was going to overtake us regardless of anything. He paused for a long time and then he said with a tone of profound conviction, “To seek the perfection of the warrior’s spirit is the only task worthy of our manhood.

Any person striving to accomplish anything worthwhile will risk their personal vivacity by assuming responsibility that exceeds their talent and abilities and work beyond their physical strength and emotional stamina. A motivated person will endure loneliness and despair and open-mindedly accept righteous criticism.

Tell me something about her," he whispers. "Something good." "I didn't know anything." My voice cracks, and I clear my throat. "I knew her for weeks? Months? And I never even asked her anything worthwhile about her family or what it was like when she was young or- or what she wanted or what she hoped for. Because I thought we had more time.

in public i’m always talking about car ethics and the value of human community, but in my real life i don’t take on the work of caring for anyone except myself. who in the world relies on me for anything? no one. i can blame myself, and i do, but i also think the failure is general … of course if we all stay alone and practise celibacy and carefully police our personal boundaries, many problems will be avoided, but it seems we will also have almost nothing left that makes life worthwhile … what do we have now? instead? nothing. and we hate people for making mistakes so much more than we love them for doing good that the easiest way to live is to do nothing, say nothing, love no one.

Anything I've ever done that was ultimately worthwhile initially scared me to death.

Her words made her pause. She couldn't have anything that was truly worthwhile without fighting for it-her farm, her family, and perhaps even love -Annalisa

The only worthwhile birth control is listening to a baby scream for 6 hours straight while you’re puking and haven’t eaten anything in four days. -Reese to Georgia

I fought against everything, but more and more I worry that I was never for anything. I can criticize and complain and judge everything, but what does that get me? Griping isn't the same as creating something. Rebelling isn't rebuilding. Ridiculing isn't replacing. We've taken the world apart, but we have no idea what to do with the pieces. My generation, all of our making fun of things isn't making the world any better. We've spent too much time judging what other people created that we've created very, very little of our own. I used rebellion as a way to hide out. We use criticism as a fake participation. It only looks as if we've accomplished something. I've never contributed anything worthwhile to the world.

We often ask ourselves where the time goes, and no one really knows. But for things to be worthwhile, for making good times, for things to be timeless, we have to allow them to take the time they take. This doesn’t mean that we have to make them perfect, or wait for the perfect moment, or be perfectly optimized. The fruits of our labor might not reveal themselves in a day—some days it can look like we didn’t do anything at all—but the knowledge we put in the bank is priceless. So trust the timing of things—trust the timing of your life.

When Lehman Brothers collapsed on September 15, 2008, and inaugurated the biggest crisis since the 1930s, there were no real alternatives to hand. No one had laid the groundwork. For years, intellectuals, journalists, and politicians had all firmly maintained that we’d reached the end of the age of “big narratives” and that it was time to trade in ideologies for pragmatism. Naturally, we should still take pride in the liberty that generations before us fought for and won. But the question is, what is the value of free speech when we no longer have anything worthwhile to say? What’s the point of freedom of association when we no longer feel any sense of affiliation? What purpose does freedom of religion serve when we no longer believe in anything?

It was scary how quickly and completely his past could be rewritten, or overwritten. All those years felt worthwhile while they were happening, but only a few months on the other side of them and they were a gigantic waste of time. Of a life. It was an almost irrepressible urge of his brain to see the worst in that which had failed. To see it as something that had failed, rather than something that had succeeded until the end. Was he protecting himself from the loss by denying anything was lost? Or simply achieving some pathetic emotional nonvictory by not caring?

I was used to my mind being my best friend; of carrying on endless conversations within my head; of having a built-in source of laughter or analytic thought to rescue me from boring or painful surroundings. Now, all of a sudden, my mind had turned on me: it mocked me for my vapid enthusiasms; it laughed at all my foolish plans; it no longer found anything interesting or enjoyable or worthwhile.

No man succeeds without faith. Whether you call it religious faith or label it something else. I don't feel anything worthwhile is accomplished without it. When you believe there is a Supreme Being guiding the destiny of this universe and that within each of us there is a little part of that Being, then you will have faith in yourself, in your country, in that Supreme Being, and in humanity itself.

What in your life is worth fighting for? What has ever been worth fighting for? Have you ever had to fight for anything? I should warn you—a worthwhile life is not an easy life. Maybe I should ask that first: Do you want a worthwhile life?

I fought against everything, but more and more I worry that I was never for anything. I can criticize and complain and judge everything, but what does that get me? Griping isn't the same as creating something. Rebelling isn't rebuilding. Ridiculing isn't replacing. We've taken the world apart, but we have no idea what to do with the pieces. My generation, all of our making fun of things isn't making the world any better. We've spent too much time judging what other people created that we've created very, very little of our own. I used rebellion as a way to hide out. We use criticism as a fake participation. It only looks as if we've accomplished something. I've never contributed anythinf worthwhile to the world.

We pay attention half-heartedly on almost everything we do these days. We live in an activity illusion and think that ‘busyness’ is equal to good business. Busyness is sometimes just procrastination in disguise. Busyness may make you feel good and make you think you are more productive but when we look back at the end of the day we realize we haven’t done anything worthwhile. We are training our minds to have continuous partial attention, and our attention is being fragmented.

Bill cites three tenets to his personal philosophy as it applies to public health, which we would all do well to follow: First, as confusing and bewildering as things may seem, we live in a cause-and-effect world. So somewhere, the answers are out there. Second, know the truth—and the first step to knowing the truth is wanting to know the truth, rather than any alternative that seems more satisfying or closer to your own worldview. Third, not one of us does anything worthwhile on our own.

Complete anarchy rarely produces anything useful. In every setting, some degree of structure seems to help a group produce something worthwhile. The question is, how much? It is the role and burden of the leader to wrestle with this question constantly. We

you don’t have to do anything to be a worthwhile person. If you’re going to do it, however, you might as well choose to do it with full responsibility for the consequences. Your mind and body will be able to cooperate with that message. Every ‘I have to’ needs to be replaced with an adult decision about how you will begin the project or how you will explain to your boss that you will not do it.” She began after that first session to challenge every “I have to” with a decision—a clear choice that she made as a mature adult.

I suspect that both astronomers were, yet again, bending over backwards to be polite: theologians have nothing worthwhile to say about anything else; let’s throw them a sop and let them worry away at a couple of questions that nobody can answer and maybe never will.

Anything worth reading is not only worth reading twice, but worth reading again and again. If a book is worthwhile, then you will always be able to make new discoveries in it and find things in it that you didn’t notice before, even though you have read it many times.

I think that the old-young polarization and the male-female polarization are perhaps the two leading stereotypes that imprison people. The values associated with youth and with masculinity are considered to be the human norms, and anything else is taken to be at least less worthwhile or inferior.

Love is never supposed to hurt. Love is supposed to heal, to be your haven from misery, to make living fucking worthwhile. But as I stare at my wife, I know it’s all fucking bullshit. Love has the power to destroy you. If anything, I’m disgusted with myself because I let weakness get the best of me.

We were also alternately inspired by and jealous of P.E.’s “It Takes a Nation of Millions,” which Yauch played on the boomin’ system in his Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham D’elegance, because it made us question whether what we were making was even worthwhile. “Damn, they did it! We will never make anything this good.

Cal’s place is where Trey is taking the chair, later on. Cal and Trey mend furniture for people, or make it, and they buy old wrecked furniture and fix it up to sell at the Saturday market in Kilcarrow town. One time they picked up a side table that to Trey looked useless, too little and spindly to hold anything worthwhile, but when Cal went on the internet it turned out to be almost two hundred years old. When they got through with it, they sold it for a hundred and eighty quid. The chair Trey is carrying has two stretchers and one leg in splinters, like someone gave it the kind of kicking that takes time and dedication, but once she and Cal get done with it, no one will be able to tell it was ever broken

If you are pained by any external thing, it is not this thing that disturbs you, but your own judgment about it. And it is in your power to wipe out this judgment now. But if anything in your own disposition gives you pain, who hinders you from correcting your opinion? And even if you are pained because you are not doing some particular thing that seems to you to be right, why do you not rather act than complain? “But some insuperable obstacle is in the way.” Do not be grieved then, for the cause of its not being done depends not on you. “But it is not worthwhile to live if this cannot be done.” Take your departure then from life contentedly, just as he dies who is in full activity, and well pleased, too, with the things that are obstacles.

Then he continued: 'From the first day I met you, I knew better than to hope you might amount to anything. I saw no sign of promise, nothing in you that might suggest you might accomplish something worthwhile or even turn yourself into a respectable human being: nothing to shine or to shed light on anything ... There is nothing inside that head of yours but garbage and rocks.

The implants just give you a new set of reproductive-free imperatives, that's all. The rest, thank the gods, is up to you. They wouldn't be worth anything if they didn't give rise to the most troubling and complex problems of the heart. They are what makes all this glory, this madness worthwhile. We are born to the trouble as sparks fly upwards, that is what is great about us, man, woman, transgen, nute.

Easing Your Mind’s Responses to Anxiety When you are in social situations, your mind might race with negative thoughts about yourself, expectations about what is going to happen, or fears about what others are thinking. Often, these thoughts develop into a vicious cycle: Because you believe you don’t have anything worthwhile to express, you expect to have difficulty speaking. When you have difficulty speaking, you believe that people think you’re stupid. Because you believe people think you are stupid, you have even more difficulties with conversation. With your mind in such a tizzy, it is difficult to relax and be yourself. Your imagination is a very powerful tool to help combat negative self-talk and reduce stress, tension, and anxiety. This section will help you learn to think your way out of this mental trap.

People need something to worship, lad. They need a belief in something beyond this world. Look at it now. This world is in chaos. People are killing each other for conquest, stealing, bringing each other down whenever they get the chance. Believe it or not, most people know this in one way or another. Perhaps they don’t understand the magnitude, but they see that this world is anything but perfect. They need something that makes their comings and goings here worthwhile.

A lot of people are afraid to accept mediocrity because they believe that if they accept it, they’ll never achieve anything, never improve, and that their life won’t matter. This sort of thinking is dangerous. Once you accept the premise that a life is worthwhile only if it is truly notable and great, then you basically accept the fact that most of the human population (including yourself) sucks and is worthless. And this mindset can quickly turn dangerous, to both yourself and others.

Just wanted to encourage those who are struggling right now. This too shall pass, keep moving forward. Nothing worthwhile is gained without sacrifice, hard work and dedication. Never lose focus on your goals. Pray for strength and guidance daily, hourly, whatever it takes. Keep the faith, keep yourself in good company, and stay positive. You are worth it, your family is counting on you, and most of all God is waiting for you to take action so he can bless you beyond anything you could ever imagine!

Useful friendships are the bread and butter of life. This is one reason why marriages that are not useful don’t last. Romantic feelings come and go. In useful marriages the parties depend on each other for the basics—the dull-normal stuff of everyday existence. This is true when it comes to children too. Children serve no useful purpose any more. We look at a child and say, “So long as he’s happy, that’s all that matters”—not accounting for usefulness in our account of happiness. Perhaps this is one reason that our children disappoint us—we expect them to pursue their passions, to develop their gifts, yada, yada, yada, but we don’t give them anything worth caring about. And so they shrug and they say, “Who cares?” And why should they care? And why should we be disappointed when they don’t amount to anything? We preached to them the gospel of happiness, implying, without meaning to, that they have nothing worthwhile to contribute to either a household, or the world at large. So they end up worthless and miserable.

I devised a sort of strategy for any sort of discussion that was over my head: I became the moderator. If you're the group's John McLaughlin, you can fake being informed while still being involved by deploying a few pointed but vague questions. If a person is holding forth and another is twitching to interrupt, jump in and ask her why she disagrees. Ask follow-up questions. Nod vigorously while saying things like 'in what sense?' or 'How, specifically?' That way, you smoothly take control of the conversation without actually contributing anything even remotely worthwhile or informative.

Who in the world relies on me for anything? No one. I can blame myself, and I do, but I also think the failure is general. People our age used to get married and have children and conduct love affairs, and now everyone is still single at thirty and lives with housemates they never see. Traditional marriage was obviously not fit for purpose, and almost ubiquitously ended in one kind of failure or another, but at least it was an effort at something, and not just a sad sterile foreclosure on the possibility of life. Of course if we all stay alone and practise celibacy and carefully police our personal boundaries, many problems will be avoided, but it seems we will also have almost nothing left that makes life worthwhile. I guess you could say the old ways of being together were wrong—they were!—and that we didn’t want to repeat old mistakes—we didn’t. But when we tore down what confined us, what did we have in mind to replace it? I offer no defence of coercive heterosexual monogamy, except that it was at least a way of doing things, a way of seeing life through. What do we have now? Instead? Nothing. And we hate people for making mistakes so much more than we love them for doing good that the easiest way to live is to do nothing, say nothing, and love no one.

The black newspaper writers were nearly unanimous in their support for integration, and so were the owners of Negro-league teams, even though Jim Crow was essential to the success of both their industries. The few voices crying out for the protection and preservation of black baseball tended to be whites, including Calvin Griffith, owner of the Washington Senators, who wrote that white baseball had “no right to destroy” the Negro leagues. He continued: “Your two [Negro] leagues have established a splendid reputation and now have the support and respect of the colored people all over this country as well as the decent white people. . . . Anything that is worthwhile is worth fighting for...

This resistant side is unable to free itself from statistical thinking and from extraverted rational prejudices... in our time genuine liberation can start only with a psychological transformation. To what end does one liberate one's country if afterward there is no meaningful goal of life--no goal for which it is worthwhile to be free? If man no longer finds any meaning in his life, it makes no difference whether he wastes away under a Communist or a capitalist regime. Only if he can use his freedom to create something meaningful is it relevant that he should be free. That is why finding the inner meaning of life is more important to the individual than anything else, and why the process of individuation must be given priority.

If you could have a gigantic billboard anywhere with anything on it, what would it say and why? “Discipline equals freedom.” Everyone wants freedom. We want to be physically free and mentally free. We want to be financially free and we want more free time. But where does that freedom come from? How do we get it? The answer is the opposite of freedom. The answer is discipline. You want more free time? Follow a more disciplined time-management system. You want financial freedom? Implement long-term financial discipline in your life. Do you want to be physically free to move how you want, and to be free from many health issues caused by poor lifestyle choices? Then you have to have the discipline to eat healthy food and consistently work out. We all want freedom. Discipline is the only way to get it. What is one of the best or most worthwhile investments you’ve ever made? Ever since I have had a home with a garage, I have had a gym in my garage. It is one of the most important factors in allowing me to work out every day regardless of the chaos and mayhem life delivers. The convenience of being able to work out any time, without packing a gym bag, driving, parking, changing, then waiting for equipment . . . The home gym is there for you. No driving. No parking. No little locker to cram your gear into. In your home gym, you never wait for equipment. It is waiting for you. Always. And, perhaps most important: You can listen to whatever music you want, as loud as you want. GET SOME.

The prosperity evangelists talk about “decreeing” things into existence by the “force of faith,” just as God created the world by His faith-filled words. But according to scripture, faith is not a power. Faith itself can do absolutely nothing. If faith could save, heal, or bring prosperity, faith would be God. The New Age mystics and prosperity preachers, in attributing to faith the attributes of deity, are propagating idolatry. Faith is like a telephone wire—it cannot create a conversation between two people, but can only be the instrument through which two people communicate. Faith in anyone or anything other than the true God as He has revealed Himself in Christ and the written Word is idolatry, even if it is faith in good, worth-while, and noble things.

We move around and that is why I think the church or Body is so feeble, because it doesn’t know how to live from the Living Head. We try to produce what the Head wants to produce. The Head wants to make the program. He only asks us to function as members, not as the Head! It takes us a long time to find that out. We are so used to directing from our own natural self; our own head directing what our body is to do, but God says, “No, not that any more. You will become just a member in My Body, for I am the Head.” All direction; all programs; anything that is worthwhile at all should originate in Him. He has to have us as a Body through whom He executes and moves. What a burden that would take off of our hearts and lives if we could ever believe it and learn it.

In 1934, Daphne’s book Gerald: A Portrait had caused a great furore, since it broke with conventional biography with all its polite limitations, and was instead a frank and honest portrait. Gerald was written with great love and sympathy; in it Daphne was never cruel or unkind, but she described the shadowed side of her matinée-idol father, haunted as Kicky had been before him by bouts of nerves and depression, unsure of himself or of those he loved best, and afflicted at times by a doubt that anything at all in life was really worthwhile. I read Gerald at one sitting, perched in the sun by the side window at Mena, and even now have only to open the book to find myself back at that wooden garden table, seated in a wicker chair that was shaped like an upturned Welsh coracle

Then he continued: 'From the first day I met you, I knew better than to hope you might amount to anything. I saw no sign of promise, nothing in you that might suggest you might accomplish something worthwhile or even turn yourself into a respectable human being: nothing to shine or to shed light on anything ... There is nothing inside that head of yours but garbage and rocks.'" #slacker #backtothefuture #japaneseLITERATURE Then he continued: 'From the first day I met you, I knew better than to hope you might amount to anything. I saw no sign of promise, nothing in you that might suggest you might accomplish something worthwhile or even turn yourself into a respectable human being: nothing to shine or to shed light on anything ... There is nothing inside that head of yours but garbage and rocks.

I want to contribute something; I don’t want to be just a consumer, like the rest of you.” His tone was hard and flat and very earnest. “We live in a world created and manufactured from the results of the work of millions of men, most of them dead, virtually none of them known or given any credit. I don’t care if I’m known for what I create; all I care about is having it be worthwhile and useful, with people able to depend on it as something they take for granted in their lives. Like the safety pin. Who knows who created that? But everyone in the goddam galaxy makes use of safety pins. [...] It wouldn’t matter, if this whole colony, everybody in it, died. None of us contribute anything. We’re nothing more than parasites, feeding off the galaxy. ‘The world will little note or long remember what we do here.

how often do we forget that there is hope as well, and that we seldom think about hope? We are ready to despair too soon, we are ready to say, ‘What’s the good of doing anything?’ Hope is the virtue we should cultivate most in this present day and age. We have made ourselves a Welfare State, which has given us freedom from fear, security, our daily bread and a little more than our daily bread; and yet it seems to me that now, in this Welfare State, every year it becomes more difficult for anybody to look forward to the future. Nothing is worth-while. Why? Is it because we no longer have to fight for existence? Is living not even interesting any more? We cannot appreciate the fact of being alive. Perhaps we need the difficulties of space, of new worlds opening up, of a different kind of hardship and agony, of illness and pain, and a wild yearning for survival? Oh

It seems like we’ll never reach the end of all these deceptions,” Cara says as we walk toward the storage room. “The factions, the video Edith Prior left us…all lies, designed to make us behave a particular way.” “Is that what you really think about the factions?” I say. “I thought you loved being an Erudite.” “I did.” She scratches the back of her neck, leaving little red lines on her skin from her fingernails. “But the Bureau made me feel like a fool for fighting for any of it, and for what the Allegiant stood for. And I don’t like to feel foolish.” “So you don’t think any of it was worthwhile,” I say. “Any of the Allegiant stuff.” “You do?” “It got us out,” I say, “and it got us to the truth, and it was better than the factionless commune Evelyn had in mind, where no one gets to choose anything at all.” “I suppose,” she says. “I just pride myself on being someone who can see through things, the faction system included.” “You know what the Abnegation used to say about pride?” “Something unfavorable, I assume.” I laugh. “Obviously. They said it blinds people to the truth of what they are.” We reach the door to the labs, and I knock a few times so Matthew will hear me and let us in. As I wait for him to open the door, Cara gives me a strange look. “The old Erudite writings said the same thing, more or less,” she says.

… this Japanese classic,Ikuru, which, you know, I had loved for most of my life, you know, I think I first saw it when I was a boy, on British TV and it had a huge impact on me, partly because of my Japanese background but I think quite regardless of that… and I thought – I mean, bit of an exaggeration – I think I always kind of lived my life informed by the message in that film as I was growing up. Ikuru is an untypical film of [Kurosawa’s] in many ways. It’s a quiet, personal film, set in what was then the present day. No gangsters or anything like this you know. It’s the story about this civil servant, aging civil servant… whose life has been kind of… semi-lived – if at all. But when he learns that he is terminally ill, he suddenly… it becomes very urgent for him this question, ‘How do I make my life worthwhile?’ Now what really appealed to me about this film... was I thought it said something new and different… You can actually, you can make your life meaningful and triumphant… without having to do anything that’s going to earn you headlines in the newspaper or earn you great applause, you know? You have to locate that sense of… you have to find a very lonely sense of success and failure. And you have to locate that sense of success… you have to be strong enough to locate that sense of success somewhere very private and secret within yourself. But nevertheless it can be absolutely redeeming and fulfilling, if you can find it, you know. And I think it’s a very important message.

… this Japanese classic, Ikuru, which, you know, I had loved for most of my life, you know, I think I first saw it when I was a boy, on British TV and it had a huge impact on me, partly because of my Japanese background but I think quite regardless of that… and I thought – I mean, bit of an exaggeration – I think I always kind of lived my life informed by the message in that film as I was growing up. Ikuru is an untypical film of [Kurosawa’s] in many ways. It’s a quiet, personal film, set in what was then the present day. No gangsters or anything like this you know. It’s the story about this civil servant, aging civil servant… whose life has been kind of… semi-lived – if at all. But when he learns that he is terminally ill, he suddenly… it becomes very urgent for him this question, ‘How do I make my life worthwhile?’ Now what really appealed to me about this film... was I thought it said something new and different… You can actually, you can make your life meaningful and triumphant… without having to do anything that’s going to earn you headlines in the newspaper or earn you great applause, you know? You have to locate that sense of… you have to find a very lonely sense of success and failure. And you have to locate that sense of success… you have to be strong enough to locate that sense of success somewhere very private and secret within yourself. But nevertheless it can be absolutely redeeming and fulfilling, if you can find it, you know. And I think it’s a very important message.

Questioner: In the tradition, we were always taught to be reverential towards God or the highest aspect. So how to reconcile this with Mirabai or Akka Mahadevi who took God as their lover? Sadhguru: Where there is no love, how can reverence come? When love reaches its peak, it naturally becomes reverence. People who are talking about reverence without love know neither this nor that. All they know is fear. So probably you are referring to God-fearing people. These sages and saints, especially the seers like Akka Mahadevi, Mirabai or Anusuya and so many of them in the past, have taken to this form of worship because it was more suitable for them – they could emote much more easily than they could intellectualize things. They just used their emotions to reach their Ultimate nature. Using emotion and reaching the Ultimate nature is what is called bhakti yoga. In every culture, there are different forms of worship. Some people worship God as the master and themselves as the slaves. Sometimes they even take God as their servant or as a partner in everything that they do. Yet others worship him as a friend, as a lover, or as their own child like Balakrishna. Generally, you become the feminine and you hold him as the ultimate purusha – masculine. How you worship is not at all the point; the whole point is just how deeply you relate. These are the different attitudes, but whatever the attitude, the love affair is such that you are not expecting anything from the other side. Not even a response. You crave for it. But if there is no response, you are not going to be angry, you are not going to be disappointed – nothing. Your life is just to crave and make something else tremendously more important than yourself. That is the fundamental thing. In the whole path of bhakti, the important thing is just this, that something else is far more important than you. So Akka, Mirabai and others like them, their bhakti was in that form and they took this mode of worship where they worshipped God – whether Shiva or Krishna – as their husband. In India, when a woman comes to a certain age, marriage is almost like a must, and it anyway happens. They wanted to eliminate that dimension of being married once again to another man, so they chose the Lord himself as their husband so that they don’t need any other relationship in their lives. How a devotee relates to his object of devotion does not really matter because the purpose of the path of devotion is just dissolution. The only objective of a devotee is to dissolve into his object of devotion. Whichever way they could relate best, that is how they would do it. The reason why you asked this question in terms of reverence juxtaposed with being a lover or a husband is because the word “love” or “being a lover” is always understood as a physical aspect. That is why this question has come. How can you be physical with somebody and still be reverential? This has been the tragedy of humanity that lovers have not known how to be reverential to each other. In fact the very objective of love is to dissolve into someone else. If you look at love as an emotion, you can see that love is a vehicle to bring oneness. It is the longing to become one with the other which we are referring to as love. When it is taken to its peak, it is very natural to become reverential towards what you consider worthwhile being “one” with. For whatever sake, you are willing to dissolve yourself. It is natural to be reverential towards that. Otherwise how would you feel that it is worthwhile to dissolve into? If you think it is something you can use or something you can just relate to and be benefited by, there can be no love. Always, the object of love is to dissolve. So, whatever you consider is worthwhile to dissolve your own self into, you are bound to be reverential towards that; there is no other way to be.

I counted my years and discovered that I have fewer years left to live compared to the time I have lived until now. I feel like a boy who won a package of treats. The first he eats with pleasure, but when he realizes that there are a few left, he then starts to contemplate upon them. I no longer have time for endless meetings that achieve nothing as statuses, rules, procedures and regulations are discussed. Neither do I have time to give encouragement to absurd people who, despite their age, have not grown up. I don't have time to deal with mediocrity. I don't want to be in meetings where egos parade. I won't tolerate manipulators and opportunists. I am bothered by envious people, seeking to discredit the able ones, to usurp their places, talents and accomplishments. I hate to witness the ill effects, generated by the struggle for a better job, among ambitious people. I detest people who do not argue about content but titles. My time is too precious to discuss titles. I want the essence, my soul is in a hurry. Not many treats are left in the packet. I want to live among human people, very human. People, who can laugh at their mistakes. Who do not become full of themselves because of their triumphs. Who do not consider themselves elite, before they have really become one. Who do not run away from their responsibilities. Who defend human dignity. Who do not want anything else but to walk along with truth, righteousness, honesty and integrity. The essential thing is what makes life worthwhile. I want to surround myself with people who can touch the hearts of others. People who despite the hard knockouts of life, grew up with a soft touch in their soul. Yes, I am in a hurry. So that I can live with the intensity, which only maturity can give me. I intend not to waste any of the treats I have left. I am sure they will be more exquisite compared to the ones I have eaten so far. My goal is to reach the end satisfied and at peace with my loved ones and my conscience. I hope yours is the same, because the end will come anyway...

The process of receiving teaching depends upon the student giving something in return; some kind of psychological surrender is necessary, a gift of some sort. This is why we must discuss surrendering, opening, giving up expectations, before we can speak of the relationship between teacher and student. It is essential to surrender, to open yourself, to present whatever you are to the guru, rather than trying to present yourself as a worthwhile student. It does not matter how much you are willing to pay, how correctly you behave, how clever you are at saying the right thing to your teacher. It is not like having an interview for a job or buying a new car. Whether or not you will get the job depends upon your credentials, how well you are dressed, how beautifully your shoes are polished, how well you speak, how good your manners are. If you are buying a car, it is a matter of how much money you have and how good your credit is. But when it comes to spirituality, something more is required. It is not a matter of applying for a job, of dressing up to impress our potential employer. Such deception does not apply to an interview with a guru, because he sees right through us. He is amused if we dress up especially for the interview. Making ingratiating gestures is not applicable in this situation; in fact it is futile. We must make a real commitment to being open with our teacher; we must be willing to give up all our preconceptions. Milarepa expected Marpa to be a great scholar and a saintly person, dressed in yogic costume with beads, reciting mantras, meditating. Instead he found Marpa working on his farm, directing the laborers and plowing his land. I am afraid the word guru is overused in the West. It would be better to speak of one’s “spiritual friend,” because the teachings emphasize a mutual meeting of two minds. It is a matter of mutual communication, rather than a master-servant relationship between a highly evolved being and a miserable, confused one. In the master-servant relationship the highly evolved being may appear not even to be sitting on his seat but may seem to be floating, levitating, looking down at us. His voice is penetrating, pervading space. Every word, every cough, every movement that he makes is a gesture of wisdom. But this is a dream. A guru should be a spiritual friend who communicates and presents his qualities to us, as Marpa did with Milarepa and Naropa with Marpa. Marpa presented his quality of being a farmer-yogi. He happened to have seven children and a wife, and he looked after his farm, cultivating the land and supporting himself and his family. But these activities were just an ordinary part of his life. He cared for his students as he cared for his crops and family. He was so thorough, paying attention to every detail of his life, that he was able to be a competent teacher as well as a competent father and farmer. There was no physical or spiritual materialism in Marpa’s lifestyle at all. He did not emphasize spirituality and ignore his family or his physical relationship to the earth. If you are not involved with materialism, either spiritually or physically, then there is no emphasis made on any extreme. Nor is it helpful to choose someone for your guru simply because he is famous, someone who is renowned for having published stacks of books and converted thousands or millions of people. Instead the guideline is whether or not you are able actually to communicate with the person, directly and thoroughly. How much self-deception are you involved in? If you really open yourself to your spiritual friend, then you are bound to work together. Are you able to talk to him thoroughly and properly? Does he know anything about you? Does he know anything about himself, for that matter? Is the guru really able to see through your masks, communicate with you properly, directly? In searching for a teacher, this seems to be the guideline rather than fame or wisdom.

Anything worth saying is worth repeating. It's rare that we come across something worthwhile in life, and a single encounter is enough for it to stay with us.

Long walks are so dumb. It’s not like a good cardio workout on a treadmill or elliptical machine or anything. You’re not getting your blood pumping enough to reap actual health benefits, and you can’t even watch or look at something worthwhile as you’re doing it.

No luck - or anything else worthwhile - will come your way unless you take some form of action.

Most of us pay half-hearted attention to almost everything we do. We live in an activity illusion and think that “busyness” is equal to good business, but it’s often just procrastination in disguise. Busyness may make you feel good and make you think you are productive, but if you look back at the end of the day, you’ll realize you haven’t done anything worthwhile. We’ve trained our minds to have continuous partial, fragmented attention.

At the end of nothing the Universe was created, or perhaps it was all that was left when the end of nothing, ended. And thus the possible end of the Universe too was created in the same way that the Universe made the creation of something else, something hopefully even better, perhaps a Universe with less pesky librarians possible. However that is not news. Though it supposedly happened recently. Just around 13.8 billions years ago. But since nothing is something that is not anything, and not simply "nothing" it would be more accurate to say: At the end of something that was probably nothing and hopefully nothing special. The Universe replaced it with itself, something that is probably more worthwhile but in worst case perhaps even less special. Anyway, nobody will never know and any living thing will just have to make do with whatever universe they happen to be born in. Since that happened, and the printing press was invented around 13,799,999,700 years after the birth of the current Universe. Humans may now instead of spending the evening looking at all the boring stars, look at repeating patterns of black ink printed on egg white paper forming a combination of any of around a couple of just a hundred thousands words called pages. Put in collections known as books. In reality it was probably just a conspiracy to create work for graphic artists, librarians and book reviewers. Backed by the PIC paper industrial complex. But you did not read that here.

If this journey has taught me anything, it is that sometimes in life you have to stand up for what you believe in, and for what you feel in your gut. Sure, it can be scary, and it requires some courage at times, but worthwhile things never come easy. And the best things in life always require a ‘never say die’ attitude.

In short, anything that bucks the status quo—whether on your team inside a big company, at a startup, or within a personal art project—will be an uphill battle. These are the battles worth fighting. If you put something out there and it meets no resistance, chances are it isn’t as vital and worthwhile as you think it is. When it generates a reaction, you know you’re onto something.

Noreen wasn’t one for alcohol, or pot. In varying degrees, both brought her down, then pummeled her with dark thoughts—you’ll never write anything worthwhile and anyway your writing sucks, your mother could die, Adi Uncle could die, you could die, if you were funnier/smarter/prettier/a better writer maybe your father would want to know

I write down things I find interesting, discoveries I consider worthwhile.” “I hope you’re not writing about me…” “I haven’t yet found anything worthwhile to write about your person. I’m sorry. I’ll keep looking.

No matter what we say or do in life there will always be people who feel differently or have something negative to say, people whose unique life experiences don’t mesh with ours, but that is the beauty of it, there is balance to everything. If other people’s perspectives matter, your perspective matter too. If you have been alive for any amount of time, your take on this world is valid and worthwhile. Do not be ashamed of it, share it in any way you see fit, and stand by your creations, even if they make you cringe or feel like an impostor, believe in them and believe in your potential. If anyone is worthy, you are also worthy That is not to say that you should not take constructive criticism for what it is worth and always be improving your craft, but it is to say that you should always maintain the foundation of your work in honest self-expression, always keep the roots firmly in your truth and don’t let anything scare you away from that because if the fear of being rejected by others prevents you from exploring and sharing your true self, you are actually rejecting yourself and there is no worse rejection than that.

Consider the effect of trust on coordination in a team: without trust, it is often impossible to get anything worthwhile done. With trust, work proceeds more quickly, and vast simplifications are often possible.

Sometimes during the night when the crying gets louder, you pledge to yourself to never have kids again. But as soon as they sleep on your shoulder, you cannot think of anything more worthwhile than them.

You can’t have anything worthwhile without difficulties.” Mistakes would be made. No one who accomplished things could expect to avoid mistakes. Only those who did nothing made no mistakes.

I know, I know, everyone wants peace, why should I want a war? I'm fed up, bored to death. Besides, my life is worth nothing. If worthwhile types like scientists and engineers die, they're a big loss to the country; my death would be a good thing. As it is, I have not done anything worth a dog's fart. I often think I am a fly in a glass bottle, with light, but without any future, and I can't take out the cork to let myself out. Dammit, I often doubt, with the bad habits I have picked up these past few years, wether I could do an honest job of work in the factory. Its a good thing there aren't many people like me, or the country'd be in a bad way

He rubbed his hand over his jaw. “We used to be friends.” “We did, so imagine my surprise when my friend openly went after my family’s legacy. If we were such good friends, you should have known better than to get in between me and what is mine.” “It’s not like the fucking whisky business even nets a worthwhile profit,” he said, proving he knew nothing about anything. This business was at the heart of everything my family had built. “It’s just fucking business.

Obviously, we all want to feel pleasure. It can't be one of our highest priorities because, simply put, anything worthwhile in life is going to be un-pleasurable at times. Pleasure is the type of thing that if you get the other stuff right, pleasure will happen on its own.

Most philosophers are really deeply depressed because they can’t produce anything worthwhile.

Anything worthwhile is hard as hell. Sometimes the most difficult things are the most important, and the most rewarding.

Take a risk. You’ll have to take risks to do anything worthwhile with your life. Just be smart about it. Be sure the reward is worth the risk and that you have sufficient control to stay reasonably safe. A worthwhile risk sharpens your focus. Like sports, for instance. You can get hurt playing football or hockey, but you gain a lot from playing on a team and from getting fit.

Someone may have used an ingenious array of flavorful and rich words to explain something. However, that does not necessarily mean that they said anything.

First, let us take a quick pass of the 11 questions. Some of them might seem trite or useless at first glance. . . . But lo! Things are not always what they appear. What is the book (or books) you’ve given most as a gift, and why? Or what are one to three books that have greatly influenced your life? What purchase of $100 or less has most positively impacted your life in the last six months (or in recent memory)? My readers love specifics like brand and model, where you found it, etc. How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success? Do you have a “favorite failure” of yours? If you could have a gigantic billboard anywhere with anything on it—metaphorically speaking, getting a message out to millions or billions—what would it say and why? It could be a few words or a paragraph. (If helpful, it can be someone else’s quote: Are there any quotes you think of often or live your life by?) What is one of the best or most worthwhile investments you’ve ever made? (Could be an investment of money, time, energy, etc.) What is an unusual habit or an absurd thing that you love? In the last five years, what new belief, behavior, or habit has most improved your life? What advice would you give to a smart, driven college student about to enter the “real world”? What advice should they ignore? What are bad recommendations you hear in your profession or area of expertise? In the last five years, what have you become better at saying no to (distractions, invitations, etc.)? What new realizations and/or approaches helped? Any other tips? When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, or have lost your focus temporarily, what do you do? (If helpful: What questions do you ask yourself?)

Anything worthwhile takes time. Maybe that’s what time is for: to give meaning to the things we do; to create a context in which we can linger in something until, finally, we have given it something invaluable, something that we can never get back: time. And once we’ve invested the most precious commodity that we will ever have, it suddenly has meaning and importance. So maybe time is just how we measure meaning. Maybe time is how we best measure love. Finally,

Unfortunately, evangelicals—always late to every party—are enthusiastically jumping on another cultural bandwagon just as its wheels are about to come off. As an “analytical tool,” CRT has no more use than a wrecking ball. It can demolish core social structures and leave society itself in ruins, but it cannot clean up the mess, much less build anything worthwhile.

Creating anything worthwhile is like a marathon, and you must train for it.

Regretting the past is like poking a pig. It feels like you’re doing something, but you’re not accomplishing anything worthwhile.” River stared at her. “I –I don’t think I understand.” “Me either. Why would anyone poke a pig?” Cyn asked. “Forget the pig. It means that being angry about the past won’t change anything, but it can distract you from doing something to make the present better.

I wasn't any good at it," Elaine says, glancing at the guitar gathering dust in the corner of her lounge, along with the other failed experiments-- the notebooks of rubbishy poetry, the tubes of oil paint. So much money spent on ways to tell stories and when it came down to it, it turned out she hadn't got anything worthwhile to say.

Again, the males blinked at him. Aelin angled her head, blinking right back at them. “Don’t you lot have anything worthwhile to contribute?” She clicked her tongue. “Three of you are ancient as hell, you know. I’d have expected better from cranky old bastards.” Their nostrils flared. Aedion grinned, Ren wisely clamping his lips together to keep from doing the same. But Fenrys said, “Four. Four of us are old as hell.” Aelin arched a brow. Fenrys smirked, the movement stretching his scars. “Vaughan is still out there. And now free.” Rowan crossed his arms. “He’ll never be caught again.” But Fenrys’s smirk turned knowing. He pointed to the camped Fae army on the plain, the wolves and humans amongst them. “I have a feeling someone down there might know where we could start.” He glanced at Aelin. “If you’d be amenable to another cranky old bastard joining this court.” Aelin shrugged. “If you can convince him, I don’t see why not.” Rowan smiled at that, and scanned the sky, as if he could see his missing friend soaring there. Fenrys winked. “I promise he’s not as miserable as Lorcan.” Elide smacked his arm, and Fenrys darted away, hands up as he laughed. “You’ll like him,” he promised Aelin. “All the ladies do,” he added with another wink to her, Lysandra, and Elide. Aelin laughed, the sound lighter, freer than any she had made, and faced the stirring kingdom. “We promised everyone a better world,” she said after a moment, voice solemn. “So we’ll start with that.” “Starting small,” Fenrys said. “I like it.

What’s more beautiful than complete and total devotion to something you believe in, something bigger than yourself? That something can be anything you consider worthwhile that extends beyond the parameters of your own life:

Therefore, contemplation beholds the Truth as an end in itself, needing no further justification, such as “practical” benefits (though there are such benefits). God uses contemplation to purge us of idolatry. This idolatry includes an idolatrous utilitarian rationality, according to which anything, even God, is interesting to us only insofar as we can “get” something more important out of it. In this respect, beholding Christ’s glory in faith is supremely “useless.” But uselessness is not the same as worthlessness, because God is the fountain of all goodness, truth, and beauty. Beholding God is infinitely worthwhile because he is infinitely delightful. There is nothing more true, more interesting, or more worthy of our attention than God.

I have a shameful confession to make: Secretly, I am not lazy. I’ve learned that if I do literally nothing for more than a year, two at most, I start to get depressed. I’m not recanting my old manifesto. I still hope to make it to my grave without ever getting a job job — showing up for eight or more hours a day to a place with fluorescent lighting where I’m expected to feign bushido devotion to a company that could fire me tomorrow and someone’s allowed to yell at you but you’re not allowed to yell back. But once I become genuinely engaged in a project, I can become fanatically absorbed, spending hundreds of hours on it, no matter how useless and unremunerative. As a teacher, I edit my students’ writing with a nit-picking precision and big-picture ambition they may likely never experience again. And I don’t believe most people are lazy. They would love to be fully, deeply engaged in something worthwhile, something that actually mattered, instead of forfeiting their limited hours on Earth to make a little more money for men they’d rather throw fruit at as they pass by in tumbrels. It’s no coincidence that so many social movements arose during the enforced idleness of quarantine. One important function of jobs is to keep you too preoccupied and tired to do anything else. Grade school teachers called it “busywork” — pointless, time-wasting tasks to keep you from acting up and bothering them. ("It’s Time to Stop Living the American Scam", The New York Times)

Look, let's make a pact. Give me your hand. We shall never work as petty clerks anywhere, will never hanker after money, or tie ourselves down to anything trivial, all right? We'll... we'll do something really great, something truly worthwhile with our lives!

If anything, when you look at it with the right perspective, failure is actually the beginning of measurable success, because failure is only possible in situations where you've tried to accomplish something difficult and worth-while. You can't fail when you don't try. In that sense, failure is kind of like a progress report on your path to purpose. It shows you how far you've come, and it reminds you how far you still have to go and what you have to work on to get there. It's an opportunity to learn from your mistakes, to evolve your approach, and to come back better than ever.

when I started scoring films, the toughest parts of the creative process were spent trying to scrape away all of the unnecessary thoughts running around in my head—from internal feelings of unworthiness to external voices that verbally told me I wasn’t good enough. I had to keep chipping away at all of those thoughts until there was absolutely nothing left but the truth—that is, my soul and the message it wanted to communicate. Having tried it myself, I don’t think you can write or create anything worthwhile if you suppress your instincts and emotions. You’ve got to be sitting deep in truth in order to create truth.

Anything easy isn’t hardly worthwhile,

Anything great or worthwhile takes time to build.

The first message that S-chools, like any other compulsory institution, send to the people who attend them is a message of distrust and contempt: If we didn't make you come here you wouldn't learn anything, you'd just waste your time, spend the whole day playing basketball or watching TV or making trouble, you'd hang out on the streets, never do anything worthwhile, grow up to be a bum. Along

It’s wonderful to see you falling in love at last, Caleb. I was beginning to think I’d never dance at your wedding.” Caleb went to the porch swing and sat down beside her, taking her hand in his and giving her knuckles a brief kiss. He didn’t know if he was in love, but he wasn’t about to spoil Gertrude’s delight. “If I can’t have you,” he teased, “I’ll have to settle.” “She’ll still be giving you trouble when you’re ninety, you know. Lily’s exactly what you need, Caleb. She’ll try your patience many a time, but she’ll also bring out the best that’s in you. And she’ll give you fine, handsome children.” Caleb allowed himself to imagine Lily bearing him a child and felt his groin tighten. “Are you suggesting that I court her?” he asked in a light voice, to cover the sweet despair he felt. “I know what John told you,” Gertrude answered, “and to a great degree I think he’s right. Lily’s the kind of person that’s got to be challenged; she doesn’t believe that anything worthwhile comes easily.” Caleb got up and walked to the porch railing again, bracing his hands on the whitewashed wood, searching the distance for Lily, but there was no sign of her. “I think she may drive me crazy before too long,” he said. Gertrude laughed, and the swing hinges creaked. She came and patted him gently on the back. “That’s a sure sign she’s the right one,” she said.

You grab a bit of connection wherever you can to survive. You have no idea how strong the pull to feel worthwhile is. It's more basic than food. You go to these people who make you feel lovely for an hour that one time, and that's all you get. You're probably not compatible with them for anything long term, but right this minute they can make you feel powerful and valuable. It does not matter what will happen in a month. Whatever happens in a month is probably going to be just about as indifferent as whatever happened today or last week. None of it matters. We don't plan long term because if we do we'll just get our hearts broken. It's best not to hope. You just take what you can get as you spot it. I am not asking for sympathy. I am just trying to explain, on a human level, how it is that people make what look from the outside like awful decisions.

You grab a bit of connection wherever you can to survive. You have no idea how strong the pull to feel worthwhile is. It's more basic than food. You go to these people who make you feel lovely for an hour that one time, and that's all you get. You're probably not compatible with them for anything long term, but right this minute they can make you feel powerful and valuable. It does not matter what will happen in a month. Whatever happens in a month is probably going to be just about as indifferent as whatever happened today or last week. None of it matters. We don't plan long term because if we do we'll just get our hearts broken. It's best not to hope. You just take what you can get as you spot it. I am not asking for sympathy. I am just trying to explain, on a human level, how it is that people make what look from the outside like awful decisions.

Like anything else worthwhile in life, a happy relationship takes some skill.

As if Jari’s openness had triggered something in Aamir, the older boy also began to reminisce. “My grandfather used to paint. He wasn’t very good, though my grandmother always encouraged him. He liked to say it was more about the act of appreciating beauty than creating anything worthwhile.

Like anything worthwhile, devoting ample time and effort to your practice is important.

When Lehman Brothers collapsed on September 15, 2008, and inaugurated the biggest crisis since the 1930s, there were no real alternatives to hand. No one had laid the groundwork. For years, intellectuals, journalists, and politicians had all firmly maintained that we’d reached the end of the age of “big narratives” and that it was time to trade in ideologies for pragmatism. Naturally, we should still take pride in the liberty that generations before us fought for and won. But the question is, what is the value of free speech when we no longer have anything worthwhile to say? What’s the point of freedom of association when we no longer feel any sense of affiliation? What purpose does freedom of religion serve when we no longer believe in anything? On the one hand, the world is still getting richer, safer, and healthier. Every day, more and more people are arriving in Cockaigne. That’s a huge triumph. On the other hand, it’s high time that we, the inhabitants of the Land of Plenty, staked out a new utopia. Let’s rehoist the sails. “Progress is the realisation of Utopias,” Oscar Wilde wrote many years ago.24 A fifteen-hour workweek, universal basic income, and a world without borders … They’re all crazy dreams – but for how much longer?

We must expect anything worthwhile to take a long time.

After a while, I seated myself amidst the wild grass growing along the ridge and went on gazing at Mori-san’s villa. I had bought some oranges at a stall by the village station, and taking these from my kerchief, I began to eat them one by one. And it was as I sat there, looking down at the villa, enjoying the taste of those fresh oranges, that that deep sense of triumph and satisfaction began to rise within me. It is hard to describe the feeling, for it was quite different from the sort of elation one feels from smaller triumphs – and, as I say, quite different from anything I had experienced during the celebrations at the Migi-Hidari. It was a profound sense of happiness deriving from the conviction that one’s efforts have been justified; that the hard work undertaken, the doubts overcome, have all been worthwhile; that one has achieved something of real value and distinction. I did not go any further towards the villa that day – it seemed quite pointless. I simply continued to sit there for an hour or so, in deep contentment, eating my oranges.

Sustained, complicated grief is hard- & yes, potentially dangerous- ANYTHING worthwhile in life holds a certain measure of risk to it- and friends who tell you grief is dangerous & caution you to short track your process- don't even get me started on that cop-out of a mentality. "Yes" friends are the unsafe ones, YEEE-IKESSS. Avoid them like the plague. Face your process head on and figure out your relationship status with your G-Friend- & I don't mean girlfriend. Grief is there to help us connect the islands, as it were, of our life. Without it, when something happens, we become wounded, detached & don't heal. We walk around with a gimp thinking we are stronger for ignoring that pesky, four-letter word of a third wheel friend.

The three great essentials to achieve anything worthwhile are: hard work, stick-to-itiveness and common sense.” Thomas A. Edison

What is the book (or books) you’ve given most as a gift, and why? Or what are one to three books that have greatly influenced your life? What purchase of $100 or less has most positively impacted your life in the last six months (or in recent memory)? My readers love specifics like brand and model, where you found it, etc. How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success? Do you have a “favorite failure” of yours? If you could have a gigantic billboard anywhere with anything on it—metaphorically speaking, getting a message out to millions or billions—what would it say and why? It could be a few words or a paragraph. (If helpful, it can be someone else’s quote: Are there any quotes you think of often or live your life by?) What is one of the best or most worthwhile investments you’ve ever made? (Could be an investment of money, time, energy, etc.) What is an unusual habit or an absurd thing that you love? In the last five years, what new belief, behavior, or habit has most improved your life? What advice would you give to a smart, driven college student about to enter the “real world”? What advice should they ignore? What are bad recommendations you hear in your profession or area of expertise? In the last five years, what have you become better at saying no to (distractions, invitations, etc.)? What new realizations and/or approaches helped? Any other tips? When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, or have lost your focus temporarily, what do you do? (If helpful: What questions do you ask yourself?)

Discontent is only the fear of missing something. Content is the knowledge that you aren't missing anything worth-while.

You can’t be friends with everyone. To be true to another is to be an enemy of the group. To have space to breathe, to think clearly, to have solitude and silence, one must make space. And to make space one must destroy what takes it up. Only then there is anything worthwhile to occupy by oneself or with a friend.

It’s a small thing, but often the smallest things make the biggest difference. It feels good to mark your progress, and anything you can do to feel good about your work is worthwhile 16

It scares us more than anything except death. Being alone. Our fear of solitude is so ingrained that given the choice of being alone or being with others we opt for safety in numbers, even at the expense of lingering in painful, boring, or totally unredeeming company. And yet more of us than ever are alone. While many more Americans have their solo lifestyles thrust on them--people die, people go away--a huge and growing population is choosing to be alone. Nonetheless, we persist in the conviction that a solitary existence is the harshest sentence life can mete to us. We loathe being alone--anytime, anywhere, for too long, for whatever reason. From childhood we're conditioned to accept that when alone we instinctively ache for company, that loners are outsiders yearning to get in rather than people who are content with their own company. Alone, we squander life by rejecting its full potential and wasting its remaining promises. Alone, we accept that experiences unshared are barely worthwhile, that sunsets viewed singly are not as spectacular, that time spent apart is fallow and pointless. And so we grow old believing we are nothing by ourselves, steadfastly shunning the opportunities for self-discovery and personal growth that time alone could bring us.

Investment In Real Estate Is A Worthwhile Endeavor Several factors has to be studied by any individual who is planning an investment in real estate. For example, if business properties are desired, the client should are aware of they may be targeting certain conditions that aren't typically seen with residential properties. Nonetheless, for the appropriate particular person, and for those who plan fastidiously and receive good recommendation, this feature investment will be highly profitable. Individuals looking for commercial properties can certainly find that there are numerous kinds of institutions by which to come up with selection. For instance, an individual should purchase a restaurant or lodge, or invest in a retail store. The consumer may also select to buy an investment property comparable to your rent amount advanced and make an income from leaseing every unit. Office constructings can also be a smart selection, as tenants will likely be seen reasonably ardmore three wheelock quickly. It's fundamental, nevertheless, to buy such properties in nearly anything that receives beneficiant traffic. Most commercial institutions fail if they can't appeal to a steady transfer of customers. Buying residential property is something customers may additionally wish to think about that these planning to decide on their investment portfolios. For instance, an individual may decide to obtain a dwelling that have been renovated. Sometimes called "handyman specials, " such properties will be repaired which can offered during profit. Fortuitously, usually they are cheaper than properties that are in good repair. It is also a possibility to build an ad or residential property can be an investment. Builders who've satisfactory money to finance exceptionally challenge made having a tract of land and fill homes for it on the market to the general public. However, as soon as again, it is essential to pick a location carefully, as it may possibly nominal good to supply homes for sale in a part of the country in which nobody wants to live. Purchasing the primary property one finds is rarely a clever program of action. Instead, it is always the most effective interest match investor to comparability store attempting to discover at a couple of home or business earlier than making a final decision. It will make sure that the excellent ill use made. It can be more suitable obtain authorized advice every time one is planning to purchase various types property. This is even if that the buyer must have assurance that the property just isn't encumbered, and he or she can even want knowledgeable to make all the paperwork regarding the transaction is legal. Finally, individuals planning an investment in real estate will find that it plan of action is sensible, supplied they plan with care and hire a reliable broker to supervise their transactions.

This was a very radical and dramatic thing to say, but it is the perfectly logical conclusion to the idea that apart from God’s grace, one can do nothing worthwhile. Anything good must come from God, so even in a sermon that was poorly written and delivered, God might manifest himself and touch the congregation. Conversely in a sermon wonderfully written and delivered, God might refuse to manifest himself. The “success” of the sermon is utterly dependent on the God who breaks through and “grasps” us, or we cannot be “grasped.

After a week of moping around London like a sick dog, I decided that the only cure for my humiliating disease was to see you in the flesh and prove that nothing uncanny had taken place when I saw that miniature.” “And what happened?” she asked, praying for him to say he hadn’t been disappointed. He’d spoken lightly of falling in love, but he was yet to say the words that every inch of her soul longed to hear. He gave her that smile that always made her silly. “You know precisely what happened. Miss Flora opened the door, and my fate was sealed.” “Oh,” she said, too stirred up to summon anything more meaningful. “Straightaway I saw the qualities I’d observed in the picture, the qualities your father had described. They were all there in the lassie who tried to leave me out in the rain.” “So you thought you’d found the perfect wife.” He burst out laughing and caught her hand. “My darling Charlotte, you’re bonny, but nobody in their right mind would call you a perfect wife.” “Is that so?” she asked in a dangerous voice. “I’ll have you know that—” Her scolding ended in a gasp as he lunged forward and tumbled her back against the rumpled bedding. “Now, before you fly up into the boughs, let me finish. You’re an impatient wee lass, my love.” She regarded him with sulky displeasure, even as happiness flowed through her veins, turning the cold night to bright summer. The sheet separated their bodies, but she could feel that, like her, he was becoming interested in more than conversation. However fascinating. “It had better be good.” “It is.” He kissed her with a thoroughness that stole her breath. When he raised his head, they were both panting. “I don’t want perfection, Charlotte. I want a wife who will stand up to me, and make me crazy with wanting her, and set me laughing with joy, and turn every day into an adventure. I doubt we’ll lead a quiet life, but by God, it will be interesting and worthwhile, and purposeful and passionate.” “And

There is nothing called as cheap patents. Anything cheap is not worthwhile.

I just want to encourage those who are struggling to focus on today. We get a chance to start over each day, which is a beautiful thing. Don't be anxious about anything, keep a positive attitude, stay on the right path, and keep chipping away at rebuilding your life. Remember that nothing worthwhile is easily gained, and to enjoy the journey. Keep a positive attitude, ask God for guidance daily, have faith that the right doors will open for you in God's timing, not yours. Just keep it simple and in time you will see blessings come that you could never of imagined! Stay excited about the direction that you are headed, and don't isolate! I wish the best for you, don't give up!

Everybody dies,” I answer. “It’s just a matter of when and whether you do anything worthwhile beforehand.

How do I rate books on GoodReads? 1-star = avoid 2-star = meh 3-star = worthwhile read anything > 3-stars has something special

I feel sorry for the person who can't get genuinely excited about his work. Not only will he never be satisfied, but he will never achieve anything worthwhile

How many worthwhile ideas have gone unthought and connections unmade because of my memory's shortcomings?" - Joshua Foer

We live in an activity illusion and think that ‘busyness’ is equal to good business. Busyness is sometimes just procrastination in disguise. Busyness may make you feel good and make you think you are more productive but when we look back at the end of the day we realize we haven’t done anything worthwhile.

From the Bridge” by Captain Hank Bracker Appreciation! Appreciation…. One of the nicer things we can get or give is appreciation. It makes what we do worthwhile! It inspires us to work harder, do better and above all, makes us feel better about ourselves. I feel appreciated when someone says thank you…. It’s as simple as that! Of course it’s also nice to receive an award for something I wrote. I recently won two awards for The Exciting Story of Cuba and it made my day! It felt even better to share the moment with my crew because they deserved it and I certainly appreciate them and their contribution, for the effort I got credit for. It’s really very nice when we appreciate people for what they have done for us and remember that it is better to give than receive. Now here is an existential thought that I’ll run past you. You might have heard the ancient chestnut.… “Does a tree make a noise when it falls in a forest with no one around to hear it?” The answer is debatable, with no definitive answer that everyone accepts. Now let’s take this thought one step further by contemplating life itself. Is there really anything, if there is no one to appreciate it? Could this account for our existence? Do we really have to exist at this time and place, within this sphere of infinity, to appreciate everything we are aware of including the universe? To me it’s an interesting thought, since philosophically “I am!” More interesting is that so are you and everyone else. Without us, would there be universe? And if so, would it make any difference, because there would be no one to know. What makes the difference is that we are here and we know that we are here! Therefore, we can appreciate it! I’m not a philosopher. I’m really just another “id” that is contemplating my existence, but what I want to impart is the importance of sharing this existence with others by appreciating them. The English poet John Donne said, “No man is an Island.” I guess the original content is found in prose, not poetry; however it’s the thought that counts. Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytical theory of personality states that, “The id is the personality component made up of unconscious psychic energy that works to satisfy basic urges, needs and desires.” Now the way I see it, is that the reason that we are here is to appreciate each other and our wondrous surroundings. I might even take things a step further by getting religion into the mix. If we are made in our creator’s image, could that mean that our creator, like us, desires the appreciation of his creation and we are here to appreciate what he, or she, has created? The way we as a people are polarized causes me to wonder, if we are not all acting like a bunch of spoiled brats. Has our generation been so spoiled that we all insist on getting things our way, without understanding that we are interdependent. Seeing as how we all inhabit this one planet, and that everything we possess, need, aspire to and love, is right here on this rock floating in space; we should take stock and care for each other and, above all, appreciate what we have, as well as each other. So much from me…. I’ve been busy trying to get Suppressed I Rise – Revised Edition and Seawater One…. Going To Sea!, published before the holidays. It’s been a long time in coming, but I’m hoping that with just a little extra effort, these books will be available at your favorite book dealer in time to find a place under your Christmas tree or Hanukkah bush. That’s right! Just look at your calendar and you’ll see its October and that the holidays are almost here again! Take care, appreciate each other and have a good week. It’s later than you think….

Change happens no matter what.” The butler cleared his throat. “And by the time she tried to kiss you, the change had already occurred. At least for Miss Westforth.” Philbert looked wistful for a moment. Then… “If I may impart some hard-earned wisdom, sir?” Sebastian nodded, but kept his eyes out into the darkness of Lady Winterson’s snowy garden. “There is a kind of love that does not happen all at once. It happens in increments. In inches. It takes a lifetime to grow. And invariably, for the people falling, it is difficult to recognize, because they are so close to each other. They cannot see the changes as they occur.” But then Sebastian had gone away. For three years. And coming home, all the changes that had taken place without him smacked him in the face, leaving him bereft. “Also invariably, one person will discover their true feelings before the other,” the butler continued. “And that person has a choice to make. Either they can alter the rules and start playing a different game… or they can be tortured. Wait for years and years on mere hope.” He paused, as if the words stuck in his throat. “I admire your Miss Westforth for choosing the former. It is the path others have been too cowardly to take.” Those words hung in the air, falling lightly to the ground like the snow. Settling into truth. “I… no,” Sebastian found himself saying. “Susannah may have had a… a crush on me, and I am deeply fond of her. But she’s not in love with me. And… I’m not in love with her,” Sebastian denied, shaking his head. “I can’t be. It’s… it’s Susannah. My little Susie.” Philbert shrugged. “That very well may be. But then perhaps it is worthwhile asking, why does her dancing and laughing with other gentlemen upset you so much?” “Because…” Sebastian tried, defensive. “Because she’s Susannah.” My Susannah . The words flashed through his mind, unbidden. And it was true. She had always been his Susannah. His friend. When he was young, he should have been more keen to rabble around with the young men in the village, or go shooting with his father, or any other more masculine pursuit… but no. He had always wanted to seek out Susie. To go for a ride with her. To spend the day playing cards with her by the fire. And the way she looked at him had made him feel… golden. But it had been more than that. He’d liked to hear her laugh. To know what she found amusing. To be himself with her. But now… now other men were making her laugh. Discovering her smiles. She could become someone else’s Susannah. He may not know if he was in love. But he knew for certain he did not want that to happen. A flash of conviction raced through him. And it wouldn’t, if he had anything to say about the matter. “If

Anything easy isn’t hardly worthwhile, Angus. You’ll look back on this journey when you’re older and remember this lesson. Nothing is as meaningful as something you’ve worked hard for and won. This lesson will repeat itself over and over in your life-time.

Be who you are called and created to "Be" ...and that is "Different" because nothing that is "Worthwhile" and "Priceless" is not the same.... that is what makes you "Unique".... because if we were ALL the same there would not be anything worth calling creative....

anything really worthwhile in life takes time to build.

If you poll people in the church, you will find a spectrum of opinions on psychiatric medication. Some will say it is from the Devil, some will say it is the answer, and some don't care. A more moderate opinion is that, although it is not wrong to take these medications, they are rarely our first line of attack against personal suffering. Instead, we should first consider that God can bless us through our suffering, and we might also weigh the possibility that psychiatric medications could numb us to the refining benefits of suffering. There is a worthwhile point here. Although it may sound strange or evening unloving to those who don't share a biblical position, there can be real benefits from having our faith testing a strengthened through trials. Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. (James 1:2-4) Suffering is not always something that must be escaped. In contrast to the growing American sentiment that we have a right to a pain-free existence, most everyone has personal examples of how suffering and difficulties have been essential to Christian maturity. Conversely, most everyone has witnessed the sad consequences of lives that have been artificially shielded from suffering by overprotective parents or illegal, mind-altering drugs. Given these common observations, suffering is not always the enemy that we think it is, and medication should not be considered the ultimate answer.

If you poll people in the church, you will find a spectrum of opinions on psychiatric medication. Some will say it is from the Devil, some will say it is the answer, and some don't care. A more moderate opinion is that, although it is not wrong to take these medications, they are rarely our first line of attack against personal suffering. Instead, we should first consider that God can bless us through our suffering, and we might also weigh the possibility that psychiatric medications could numb us to the refining benefits of suffering. There is a worthwhile point here. Although it may sound strange or even unloving to those who don't share a biblical position, there can be real benefits from having our faith testing a strengthened through trials. Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. (James 1:2-4) Suffering is not always something that must be escaped. In contrast to the growing American sentiment that we have a right to a pain-free existence, most everyone has personal examples of how suffering and difficulties have been essential to Christian maturity. Conversely, most everyone has witnessed the sad consequences of lives that have been artificially shielded from suffering by overprotective parents or illegal, mind-altering drugs. Given these common observations, suffering is not always the enemy that we think it is, and medication should not be considered the ultimate answer.